Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Flu Scare
Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms
by F. William Engdahl
Global Research, April 29, 2009
If we are to believe what our trusted international media report, the world is on the brink of a global pandemic outbreak of a new deadly strain of flu, H1N1 as it has been labelled, or more popularly, Swine Flu. As the story goes, the outbreak of the deadly flu was first discovered in Mexico. According to press reports, after several days, headlines reported as many as perhaps 150 deaths in Mexico were believed caused by this virulent people-killing pig virus that has spread to humans and now is allegedly being further spread from human to human. Cases were being reported hourly from Canada to Spain and beyond. The only thing wrong with this story is that it is largely based on lies, hype and coverup of possible real causes of Mexican deaths.
One website, revealingly named Swine Flu Vaccine, reports the alarming news, ‘One out of every five residents of Mexico's most populous city wore masks to protect themselves against the virus as Mexico City seems to be the epicenter of the outbreak. As many as 103 deaths have been attributed to the swine flu so far with many more feared to be on the horizon. The health department of Mexico said an additional 1,614 reported cases have been documented.’ We are told that the H1N1 ‘shares genetic material from human, avian and swine influenza viruses.’1
Airports around the world have installed passenger temperature scans to identify anyone with above normal body temperature as possible suspect for swine flu. Travel to Mexico has collapsed. Sales of flu vaccines, above all Tamiflu from Roche Inc., have exploded in days. People have stopped buying pork fearing certain death. The World Health Organization has declared a ‘a public health emergency of international concern,’ defined by them as ‘an occurrence or imminent threat of illness or health conditions caused by bioterrorism, epidemic or pandemic disease, or highly fatal infectious agents or toxins that pose serious risk to a significant number of people.’2
What are the symptoms of this purported Swine Flu? That’s not at all clear according to virologists and public health experts. They say Swine Flu symptoms are relatively general and nonspecific. ‘So many different things can cause these symptoms. it is a dilemma,’ says one doctor interviewed by CNN. ‘There is not a perfect test right now to let a doctor know that a person has the Swine Flu.’ It has been noted that most individuals with Swine Flu had an early on set of fever. Also it was common to see dizziness, body aches and vomiting in addition to the common sneezing, headache and other cold symptoms. These are symptoms so general as to say nothing.
The US Government’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta states on its official website, ‘Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen. Swine flu viruses have been reported to spread from person-to-person, but in the past, this transmission was limited and not sustained beyond three people.’ Nonetheless they add, ‘CDC has determined that this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. However, at this time, it is not known how easily the virus spreads between people.’3
How many media that have grabbed on the headline ‘suspected case of Swine Flu’ in recent days bother to double check with the local health authorities to ask some basic questions? For example, the number of confirmed cases of H1N1 and their location? The number of deaths confirmed to have resulted from H1N1? Dates of both? Number of suspected cases and of suspected deaths related to the Swine Flu disease?
Some known facts
According to Biosurveillance, itself part of Veratect, a US Pentagon and Government-linked epidemic reporting center, on April 6, 2009 local health officials declared a health alert due to a respiratory disease outbreak in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico.
They reported, ‘Sources characterized the event as a ‘strange’ outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to bronchial pneumonia in some pediatric cases. According to a local resident, symptoms included fever, severe cough, and large amounts of phlegm. Health officials recorded 400 cases that sought medical treatment in the last week in La Gloria, which has a population of 3,000; officials indicated that 60% of the town’s population (approximately 1,800 cases) has been affected. No precise timeframe was provided, but sources reported that a local official had been seeking health assistance for the town since February.’ What they later say is ‘strange’ is not the form of the illness but the time of year as most flu cases occur in Mexico in the period October to February.
The report went on to note, ‘Residents claimed that three pediatric cases, all under two years of age, died from the outbreak. However, health officials stated that there was no direct link between the pediatric deaths and the outbreak; they stated the three fatal cases were "isolated" and "not related" to each other.’
Then, most revealingly, the aspect of the story which has been largely ignored by major media, they reported, ‘Residents believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to "flu." However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.’4
Since the dawn of American ‘agribusiness,’ a project initiated with funding by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950’s to turn farming into a pure profit maximization business, US pig or hog production has been transformed into a highly efficient, mass production industrialized enterprise from birth to slaughter. Pigs are caged in what are called Factory Farms, industrial concentrations which are run with the efficiency of a Dachau or Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They are all conceived by artificial insemination and once born, are regularly injected with antibiotics, not because of illnesses which abound in the hyper-crowded growing pens, but in order to make them grow and add weight faster. Turn around time to slaughter is a profit factor of highest priority. The entire operation is vertically integrated from conception to slaughter to transport distribution to supermarket.
Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) happens to be such a Factory Farm concentration facility for hogs. In 2008 they produced almost one million factory hogs, 950,000 according to their own statistics. GCM is a joint venture operation owned 50% by the world’s largest pig producing industrial company, Smithfield Foods of Virginia.5 The pigs are grown in a tiny rural area of Mexico, a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and primarily trucked across the border to supermarkets in the USA, under the Smithfields’ family of labels. Most American consumers have no idea where the meat was raised.
Now the story becomes interesting.
Manure Lagoons and other playing fields
The Times of London interviewed the mother of 4-year-old Edgar Hernandez of La Gloria in Veracruz, the location of the giant Smithfield Foods hog production facility. Their local reporter notes, ‘Edgar Hernández plays among the dogs and goats that roam through the streets, seemingly unaware that the swine flu he contracted a few weeks ago — the first known case — has almost brought his country to a standstill and put the rest of the world on alert. ‘I feel great,’ the five-year-old boy said. ‘But I had a headache and a sore throat and a fever for a while. I had to lay down in bed.’’
The reporters add, ‘It was confirmed on Monday (April 27 2009-w.e.) that Edgar was the first known sufferer of swine flu, a revelation that has put La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons’ at the centre of a global race to find how this new and deadly strain of swine flu emerged.’ 6
That’s quite interesting. They speak of ‘La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons.’’ Presumably the manure lagoons around the LaGloria factory pig farm of Smithfield Foods are the waste dumping place for the feces and urine waste from at least 950,000 pigs a year that pass through the facility. The Smithfield’s Mexico joint venture, Norson, states that alone they slaughter 2,300 pigs daily. That’s a lot. It gives an idea of the volumes of pig waste involved in the concentration facility at La Gloria.
Significantly, according to the Times reporters, ‘residents of La Gloria have been complaining since March that the odour from Granjas Carroll’s pig waste was causing severe respiratory infections. They held a demonstration this month at which they carried signs of pigs crossed with an X and marked with the word peligro (danger).’7 There have been calls to exhume the bodies of the children who died of pneumonia so that they could be tested. The state legislature of Veracruz has demanded that Smithfield’s Granjas Carroll release documents about its waste-handling practices. Smithfield Foods reportedly declined to comment on the request, saying that it would ‘not respond to rumours.’8
A research compilation by Ed Harris reported, ‘According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to ‘flu.’ However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.’9 That would imply that the entire Swine Flu scare might have originated from the PR spin doctors of the world’s largest industrial pig factory farm operation, Smithfield Foods.
The Vera Cruz-based newspaper La Marcha blames Smithfield’s Granjos Carroll for the outbreak, highlighting inadequate treatment of massive quantities of animal waste from hog production.10
Understandably the company is perhaps more than a bit uncomfortable with the sudden attention. The company, which supplies the McDonald’s and Subway fast-food chains, was fined $12.3 million in the United States 1997 for violating the Clean Water Act. Perhaps they are in a remote tiny Mexican rural area enjoying a relatively lax regulatory climate where they need not worry about being cited for violations of any Clean Water Act.
Factory Farms as toxic concentrations
At the very least the driving force for giant industrial agribusiness outsourcing of facilities to third world sites such as Veracruz, Mexico has more to do with further cost reduction and lack of health and safety scrutiny than it does with improving the health and safety quality of the food end product. It has been widely documented and subject of US Congressional reports that large-scale indoor animal production facilities such as that of Granjos Carroll are notorious breeding grounds for toxic pathogens.
A recent report by the US Pew Foundation in cooperation with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health notes, ‘the method of producing food animals in the United States has changed from the extensive system of small and medium-sized farms owned by a single family to a system of large, intensive operations where the animals are housed in large numbers in enclosed structures that resemble industrial buildings more than they do a traditional barn. That change has happened primarily out of view of consumers but has come at a cost to the environment and a negative impact on public health, rural communities, and the health and well-being of the animals themselves. 11
The Pew study notes, ‘The diversified, independent, family-owned farms of 40 years ago that produced a variety of crops and a few animals are disappearing as an economic entity, replaced by much larger, and often highly leveraged, farm factories. The animals that many of these farms produce are owned by the meat packing companies from the time they are born
or hatched right through their arrival at the processing plant and from there to market.’ 12
The study emphasizes that application of ‘untreated animal waste on cropland can contribute to excessive nutrient loading, contaminate surface waters, and stimulate bacteria and algal growth and subsequent reductions in dissolved oxygen concentrations in surface waters.’13
That is where the real investigation ought to begin, with the health and sanitary dangers of the industrial factory pig farms like the one at Perote in Veracruz. The media spread of panic-mongering reports of every person in the world who happens to contract ‘symptoms’ which vaguely resemble flu or even Swine Flu and the statements to date of authorities such as WHO or CDC are far from conducive to a rational scientific investigation..
Tamiflu and Rummy
In October 2005 the Pentagon ordered vaccination of all US military personnel worldwide against what it called Avian Flu, H5N1. Scare stories filled world media. Then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced he had budgeted more than $1 billion to stockpile the vaccine, Oseltamivir sold under the name, Tamiflu. President Bush called on Congress to appropriate another $2 billion for Tamiflu stocks.
What Rumsfeld neglected to report at the time was a colossal conflict of interest. Prior to coming to Washington in January 2001, Rumsfeld had been chairman of a California pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences. Gilead Sciences held exclusive world patent rights to Tamiflu, a drug it had developed and whose world marketing rights were sold to the Swiss pharma giant, Roche. Rumsfeld was reportedly the largest stock holder in Gilead which got 10% of every Tamiflu dose Roche sold. 14 When it leaked out, the Pentagon issued a curt statement to the effect that Secretary Rumsfeld had decided not to sell but to retain his stock in Gilead, claiming that to sell would have indicated something to hide.’ That agonizing decision won him reported added millions as the Gilead share price soared more than 700% in weeks.
Tamiflu is no mild candy to be taken lightly. It has heavy side effects. It contains matter that could have potentially deadly consequences for a person’s breathing and often reportedly leads to nausea, dizziness and other flu-like symptoms.
Since the outbreak of Swine Flu Panic (not Swine Flu but Swine Flu Panic) sales of Tamiflu as well as any and every possible drug marketed as flu related have exploded. Wall Street firms have rushed to issue ‘buy’ recommendations for the company. ‘Gimme me a shot Doc, I don’t care what it is…I don’ wanna die…’
Panic and fear of death was used by the Bush Administration skilfully to promote the Avian Flu fraud. With ominous echoes of the current Swine Flu scare, Avian Flu was traced back to huge chicken factory farms in Thailand and other parts of Asia whose products were shipped across the world. Instead of a serious investigation into the sanitary conditions of those chicken factory farms, the Bush Administration and WHO blamed ‘free-roaming chickens’ on small family farms, a move that had devastating economic consequences to the farmers whose chickens were being raised in the most sanitary natural conditions. Tyson Foods of Arkansas and CG Group of Thailand reportedly smiled all the way to the bank.
Now it remains to be seen if the Obama Administration will use the scare around so-called Swine Flu to repeat the same scenario, this time with ‘flying pigs’ instead of flying birds. Already Mexican authorities have reported that the number of deaths confirmed from so-called Swine Flu is 7 not the 150 or more bandied in the media and that most other suspected cases were ordinary flu or influenza.
(To be continued)
Global Research, April 29, 2009
If we are to believe what our trusted international media report, the world is on the brink of a global pandemic outbreak of a new deadly strain of flu, H1N1 as it has been labelled, or more popularly, Swine Flu. As the story goes, the outbreak of the deadly flu was first discovered in Mexico. According to press reports, after several days, headlines reported as many as perhaps 150 deaths in Mexico were believed caused by this virulent people-killing pig virus that has spread to humans and now is allegedly being further spread from human to human. Cases were being reported hourly from Canada to Spain and beyond. The only thing wrong with this story is that it is largely based on lies, hype and coverup of possible real causes of Mexican deaths.
One website, revealingly named Swine Flu Vaccine, reports the alarming news, ‘One out of every five residents of Mexico's most populous city wore masks to protect themselves against the virus as Mexico City seems to be the epicenter of the outbreak. As many as 103 deaths have been attributed to the swine flu so far with many more feared to be on the horizon. The health department of Mexico said an additional 1,614 reported cases have been documented.’ We are told that the H1N1 ‘shares genetic material from human, avian and swine influenza viruses.’1
Airports around the world have installed passenger temperature scans to identify anyone with above normal body temperature as possible suspect for swine flu. Travel to Mexico has collapsed. Sales of flu vaccines, above all Tamiflu from Roche Inc., have exploded in days. People have stopped buying pork fearing certain death. The World Health Organization has declared a ‘a public health emergency of international concern,’ defined by them as ‘an occurrence or imminent threat of illness or health conditions caused by bioterrorism, epidemic or pandemic disease, or highly fatal infectious agents or toxins that pose serious risk to a significant number of people.’2
What are the symptoms of this purported Swine Flu? That’s not at all clear according to virologists and public health experts. They say Swine Flu symptoms are relatively general and nonspecific. ‘So many different things can cause these symptoms. it is a dilemma,’ says one doctor interviewed by CNN. ‘There is not a perfect test right now to let a doctor know that a person has the Swine Flu.’ It has been noted that most individuals with Swine Flu had an early on set of fever. Also it was common to see dizziness, body aches and vomiting in addition to the common sneezing, headache and other cold symptoms. These are symptoms so general as to say nothing.
The US Government’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta states on its official website, ‘Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen. Swine flu viruses have been reported to spread from person-to-person, but in the past, this transmission was limited and not sustained beyond three people.’ Nonetheless they add, ‘CDC has determined that this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. However, at this time, it is not known how easily the virus spreads between people.’3
How many media that have grabbed on the headline ‘suspected case of Swine Flu’ in recent days bother to double check with the local health authorities to ask some basic questions? For example, the number of confirmed cases of H1N1 and their location? The number of deaths confirmed to have resulted from H1N1? Dates of both? Number of suspected cases and of suspected deaths related to the Swine Flu disease?
Some known facts
According to Biosurveillance, itself part of Veratect, a US Pentagon and Government-linked epidemic reporting center, on April 6, 2009 local health officials declared a health alert due to a respiratory disease outbreak in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico.
They reported, ‘Sources characterized the event as a ‘strange’ outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to bronchial pneumonia in some pediatric cases. According to a local resident, symptoms included fever, severe cough, and large amounts of phlegm. Health officials recorded 400 cases that sought medical treatment in the last week in La Gloria, which has a population of 3,000; officials indicated that 60% of the town’s population (approximately 1,800 cases) has been affected. No precise timeframe was provided, but sources reported that a local official had been seeking health assistance for the town since February.’ What they later say is ‘strange’ is not the form of the illness but the time of year as most flu cases occur in Mexico in the period October to February.
The report went on to note, ‘Residents claimed that three pediatric cases, all under two years of age, died from the outbreak. However, health officials stated that there was no direct link between the pediatric deaths and the outbreak; they stated the three fatal cases were "isolated" and "not related" to each other.’
Then, most revealingly, the aspect of the story which has been largely ignored by major media, they reported, ‘Residents believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to "flu." However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.’4
Since the dawn of American ‘agribusiness,’ a project initiated with funding by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950’s to turn farming into a pure profit maximization business, US pig or hog production has been transformed into a highly efficient, mass production industrialized enterprise from birth to slaughter. Pigs are caged in what are called Factory Farms, industrial concentrations which are run with the efficiency of a Dachau or Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They are all conceived by artificial insemination and once born, are regularly injected with antibiotics, not because of illnesses which abound in the hyper-crowded growing pens, but in order to make them grow and add weight faster. Turn around time to slaughter is a profit factor of highest priority. The entire operation is vertically integrated from conception to slaughter to transport distribution to supermarket.
Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) happens to be such a Factory Farm concentration facility for hogs. In 2008 they produced almost one million factory hogs, 950,000 according to their own statistics. GCM is a joint venture operation owned 50% by the world’s largest pig producing industrial company, Smithfield Foods of Virginia.5 The pigs are grown in a tiny rural area of Mexico, a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and primarily trucked across the border to supermarkets in the USA, under the Smithfields’ family of labels. Most American consumers have no idea where the meat was raised.
Now the story becomes interesting.
Manure Lagoons and other playing fields
The Times of London interviewed the mother of 4-year-old Edgar Hernandez of La Gloria in Veracruz, the location of the giant Smithfield Foods hog production facility. Their local reporter notes, ‘Edgar Hernández plays among the dogs and goats that roam through the streets, seemingly unaware that the swine flu he contracted a few weeks ago — the first known case — has almost brought his country to a standstill and put the rest of the world on alert. ‘I feel great,’ the five-year-old boy said. ‘But I had a headache and a sore throat and a fever for a while. I had to lay down in bed.’’
The reporters add, ‘It was confirmed on Monday (April 27 2009-w.e.) that Edgar was the first known sufferer of swine flu, a revelation that has put La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons’ at the centre of a global race to find how this new and deadly strain of swine flu emerged.’ 6
That’s quite interesting. They speak of ‘La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons.’’ Presumably the manure lagoons around the LaGloria factory pig farm of Smithfield Foods are the waste dumping place for the feces and urine waste from at least 950,000 pigs a year that pass through the facility. The Smithfield’s Mexico joint venture, Norson, states that alone they slaughter 2,300 pigs daily. That’s a lot. It gives an idea of the volumes of pig waste involved in the concentration facility at La Gloria.
Significantly, according to the Times reporters, ‘residents of La Gloria have been complaining since March that the odour from Granjas Carroll’s pig waste was causing severe respiratory infections. They held a demonstration this month at which they carried signs of pigs crossed with an X and marked with the word peligro (danger).’7 There have been calls to exhume the bodies of the children who died of pneumonia so that they could be tested. The state legislature of Veracruz has demanded that Smithfield’s Granjas Carroll release documents about its waste-handling practices. Smithfield Foods reportedly declined to comment on the request, saying that it would ‘not respond to rumours.’8
A research compilation by Ed Harris reported, ‘According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to ‘flu.’ However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.’9 That would imply that the entire Swine Flu scare might have originated from the PR spin doctors of the world’s largest industrial pig factory farm operation, Smithfield Foods.
The Vera Cruz-based newspaper La Marcha blames Smithfield’s Granjos Carroll for the outbreak, highlighting inadequate treatment of massive quantities of animal waste from hog production.10
Understandably the company is perhaps more than a bit uncomfortable with the sudden attention. The company, which supplies the McDonald’s and Subway fast-food chains, was fined $12.3 million in the United States 1997 for violating the Clean Water Act. Perhaps they are in a remote tiny Mexican rural area enjoying a relatively lax regulatory climate where they need not worry about being cited for violations of any Clean Water Act.
Factory Farms as toxic concentrations
At the very least the driving force for giant industrial agribusiness outsourcing of facilities to third world sites such as Veracruz, Mexico has more to do with further cost reduction and lack of health and safety scrutiny than it does with improving the health and safety quality of the food end product. It has been widely documented and subject of US Congressional reports that large-scale indoor animal production facilities such as that of Granjos Carroll are notorious breeding grounds for toxic pathogens.
A recent report by the US Pew Foundation in cooperation with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health notes, ‘the method of producing food animals in the United States has changed from the extensive system of small and medium-sized farms owned by a single family to a system of large, intensive operations where the animals are housed in large numbers in enclosed structures that resemble industrial buildings more than they do a traditional barn. That change has happened primarily out of view of consumers but has come at a cost to the environment and a negative impact on public health, rural communities, and the health and well-being of the animals themselves. 11
The Pew study notes, ‘The diversified, independent, family-owned farms of 40 years ago that produced a variety of crops and a few animals are disappearing as an economic entity, replaced by much larger, and often highly leveraged, farm factories. The animals that many of these farms produce are owned by the meat packing companies from the time they are born
or hatched right through their arrival at the processing plant and from there to market.’ 12
The study emphasizes that application of ‘untreated animal waste on cropland can contribute to excessive nutrient loading, contaminate surface waters, and stimulate bacteria and algal growth and subsequent reductions in dissolved oxygen concentrations in surface waters.’13
That is where the real investigation ought to begin, with the health and sanitary dangers of the industrial factory pig farms like the one at Perote in Veracruz. The media spread of panic-mongering reports of every person in the world who happens to contract ‘symptoms’ which vaguely resemble flu or even Swine Flu and the statements to date of authorities such as WHO or CDC are far from conducive to a rational scientific investigation..
Tamiflu and Rummy
In October 2005 the Pentagon ordered vaccination of all US military personnel worldwide against what it called Avian Flu, H5N1. Scare stories filled world media. Then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced he had budgeted more than $1 billion to stockpile the vaccine, Oseltamivir sold under the name, Tamiflu. President Bush called on Congress to appropriate another $2 billion for Tamiflu stocks.
What Rumsfeld neglected to report at the time was a colossal conflict of interest. Prior to coming to Washington in January 2001, Rumsfeld had been chairman of a California pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences. Gilead Sciences held exclusive world patent rights to Tamiflu, a drug it had developed and whose world marketing rights were sold to the Swiss pharma giant, Roche. Rumsfeld was reportedly the largest stock holder in Gilead which got 10% of every Tamiflu dose Roche sold. 14 When it leaked out, the Pentagon issued a curt statement to the effect that Secretary Rumsfeld had decided not to sell but to retain his stock in Gilead, claiming that to sell would have indicated something to hide.’ That agonizing decision won him reported added millions as the Gilead share price soared more than 700% in weeks.
Tamiflu is no mild candy to be taken lightly. It has heavy side effects. It contains matter that could have potentially deadly consequences for a person’s breathing and often reportedly leads to nausea, dizziness and other flu-like symptoms.
Since the outbreak of Swine Flu Panic (not Swine Flu but Swine Flu Panic) sales of Tamiflu as well as any and every possible drug marketed as flu related have exploded. Wall Street firms have rushed to issue ‘buy’ recommendations for the company. ‘Gimme me a shot Doc, I don’t care what it is…I don’ wanna die…’
Panic and fear of death was used by the Bush Administration skilfully to promote the Avian Flu fraud. With ominous echoes of the current Swine Flu scare, Avian Flu was traced back to huge chicken factory farms in Thailand and other parts of Asia whose products were shipped across the world. Instead of a serious investigation into the sanitary conditions of those chicken factory farms, the Bush Administration and WHO blamed ‘free-roaming chickens’ on small family farms, a move that had devastating economic consequences to the farmers whose chickens were being raised in the most sanitary natural conditions. Tyson Foods of Arkansas and CG Group of Thailand reportedly smiled all the way to the bank.
Now it remains to be seen if the Obama Administration will use the scare around so-called Swine Flu to repeat the same scenario, this time with ‘flying pigs’ instead of flying birds. Already Mexican authorities have reported that the number of deaths confirmed from so-called Swine Flu is 7 not the 150 or more bandied in the media and that most other suspected cases were ordinary flu or influenza.
(To be continued)
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tapestry Of Lies
The US has supported every right wing military dictatorship in the World since World War II
By Mike Whitney
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!
Poem by Pablo Neruda
About a month before Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared on PBS's Charlie Rose Show and was asked whether he thought Obama would be a good choice for president. Brzezinski paused for a minute, peered at Rose out of the corner of his eye, and answered, "Just think of the symbolism." As soon as he said that, Brzezinski and Rose broke out into laughter as though they were sharing a private joke.
Brzezinski was right, of course. Obama was the perfect choice for president. Not because of his experience. He had none. He was a two year senator with a resume' small enough to fit on the back of a matchbox. Still Obama had what Brzezinski and Co. were looking for, symbolism; the kind of symbolism that connected him to people around the world and made them feel like one of their own had finally clawed their way to the top. Even better, Obama was a charismatic populist who could fill stadiums with adoring fans and put a benign face on America's interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. What more could Brzezinski hope for? After 8 years of dragging "Brand America" through the mud, the country would finally get the emergency facelift it needed and begin to restore its battered image as the world's indispensable nation.
For leftists, Obama has been a total bust. He's escalated the war in Afghanistan, increased the cross-border bombings of Pakistan, hemmed and hawed about prosecuting war crimes, refused to actively lobby House members to make it easier for workers to organize (EFCA), and surrounded himself with bank industry reps who've committed $12.8 trillion to sinking financial institutions with no assurance that the money would be repaid. Apart from a trifling bill on stem cells, Obama has done absolutely zero to confirm his bone fides as a liberal. The truth is, Obama is neither liberal nor conservative; he's simply an inspiring orator and a skillful politician who has no strong convictions about anything. If he achieves greatness, it will be because he was thrust into a crisis he couldn't avoid and reluctantly acted in the best interests of the American people. That possibility still exists, although it seems more unlikely by the day.
Foreign leaders are clearly relieved to see the last of George W. Bush, and they appear to be willing to give Obama every opportunity to mend fences and break with the past. But Obama has made little effort to reciprocate or show that he's serious about real change. The emphasis seems to be more on public relations than policy; more on glitzy photo ops, grandiose speeches and gadding about from one capital to another, than ending the chronic US meddling and militarism. Where's the beef or is it all just empty posturing?
No one's ready to write-off Obama just yet, but he needs to show he's the real-deal by taking steps to ratchet-down the war machine and reign in the corporate elites and bank vermin. But is it really possible for one man--however well-meaning--to change the course of a nation by standing up the gaggle of racketeers who pull the strings from behind the curtain? Keep in mind, America's history of violent interventions, unprovoked wars, color-coded revolutions and coup d' etats has a long pedigree that stretches from Bunker Hill to Baghdad. That river of blood did not begin with George Bush and it won't end with Barack Obama. Every generation has produced its own litany of crimes, from Wounded Knee to Nagasaki to My Lai to Falluja. In Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech, the playwright invokes one such incident which epitomizes the pattern of hostility which has been repeated over and over again wherever the Washington mandarins detect opposition to their iron-fisted rule.
Harold Pinter, Nobel Acceptance Speech:
"The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.
The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilized. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.
The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighboring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.
I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.
Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.
The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.
But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile.
The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it."
Analysis
Pinter's speech is a somber indictment of US foreign policy; a policy which is now cloaked behind the rock-star facade of Barack Obama. Nothing has changed and, perhaps, nothing will change. The same barbarous campaign that thrived under Bush has been passed along to Obama intact. Wherever there is resistance to US ambitions; there lies the enemy. Whether its Marxists in Bogota, nationalists in Kosovo, Bolivarians in Caracas, Shia militias in Beirut, Islamic moderates in Mogadishu or Quakers in Toledo. They're all enemies, every one of them, and they need to be dealt with.
Obama is no fool; he knows he's being used. He knows he wasn't chosen for his enlightened views on health care and stem cells. He was picked because the men in charge needed a new posterboy to hide behind while they carry out their illicit activities. Obama is not so much of a Commander in chief as he is master illusionist, diverting attention from the stealth war that goes on relentlessly with or without his consent. Here's Pinter again:
"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis...It's a scintillating stratagem."
Consider how the news was shaped to make it look like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were carried out for altruistic reasons. Thus, the war in Afghanistan became "Operation Enduring Freedom", stressing the selfless generosity of bombing a country into oblivion and reinstating the thuggish warlords to power. The same strategy was used for the invasion of Iraq which was celebrated as "liberation from a brutal dictator." Liberation which cost the lives of over 1 million Iraqis and the displacement of 4 million more. Still, no one in the UN or so called international community has pressed for removing the US from the Security Council or prosecuting its leaders for war crimes. It's a testimony to the success of the US media in upholding the "tapestry of lies" of which Pinter speaks. Under Obama, the charade has only gotten worse. The coverage of the war has stopped entirely. War? What war? What matters now is Obama's cheery banter with Jay Leno, or Michelle's well-proportioned arms or Malia's adorable Portuguese Waterdog. America is whole again. Let the killing resume.
Pinter: "What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticize our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us."
Obama doesn't need to solve the world's problems. He doesn't have to reverse global warming or slow peak oil, cure AIDS or end world hunger. All he needs to do is meet the minimal requirement of his job as president, which is to deliver justice to his people. That's why the prosecution of Bush for war crimes is more important than any other issue on the docket. Justice precedes everything; it's the thread that keeps the social fabric stitched together. Justice for the victims who were killed in their homes with their families while they were sleeping or eating dinner. Justice for the people who were bombed in wedding parties or going to work or at the mosque praying to God. That's what people want from Obama. Justice, nothing more. The Reverend Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." It's up to Obama follow that arc and take at least one step on the path of legitimacy, accountability and justice.
Pinter: "How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice."
It's highly unlikely that a black man with a background in community organizing really believes that expanding the war in Afghanistan is the right thing to do. Nor is it likely that he supports wiretapping, the crackdown on immigrants, penalizing sellers of medical marijuana, trillion dollar bank bailouts or "enhanced" interrogation. He is merely reading from the script that he has been given. But as the economic crisis deepens and the country becomes more radicalized and politically unstable, that script will have to be tossed aside. Obama will have plenty of opportunities to shrug off his handlers and show what he's really made of. Perhaps he is great man after all.
Pinter: "When we look into a mirror, we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimeter and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us."
Go ahead, Barack. Smash the mirror.
By Mike Whitney
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!
Poem by Pablo Neruda
About a month before Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared on PBS's Charlie Rose Show and was asked whether he thought Obama would be a good choice for president. Brzezinski paused for a minute, peered at Rose out of the corner of his eye, and answered, "Just think of the symbolism." As soon as he said that, Brzezinski and Rose broke out into laughter as though they were sharing a private joke.
Brzezinski was right, of course. Obama was the perfect choice for president. Not because of his experience. He had none. He was a two year senator with a resume' small enough to fit on the back of a matchbox. Still Obama had what Brzezinski and Co. were looking for, symbolism; the kind of symbolism that connected him to people around the world and made them feel like one of their own had finally clawed their way to the top. Even better, Obama was a charismatic populist who could fill stadiums with adoring fans and put a benign face on America's interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. What more could Brzezinski hope for? After 8 years of dragging "Brand America" through the mud, the country would finally get the emergency facelift it needed and begin to restore its battered image as the world's indispensable nation.
For leftists, Obama has been a total bust. He's escalated the war in Afghanistan, increased the cross-border bombings of Pakistan, hemmed and hawed about prosecuting war crimes, refused to actively lobby House members to make it easier for workers to organize (EFCA), and surrounded himself with bank industry reps who've committed $12.8 trillion to sinking financial institutions with no assurance that the money would be repaid. Apart from a trifling bill on stem cells, Obama has done absolutely zero to confirm his bone fides as a liberal. The truth is, Obama is neither liberal nor conservative; he's simply an inspiring orator and a skillful politician who has no strong convictions about anything. If he achieves greatness, it will be because he was thrust into a crisis he couldn't avoid and reluctantly acted in the best interests of the American people. That possibility still exists, although it seems more unlikely by the day.
Foreign leaders are clearly relieved to see the last of George W. Bush, and they appear to be willing to give Obama every opportunity to mend fences and break with the past. But Obama has made little effort to reciprocate or show that he's serious about real change. The emphasis seems to be more on public relations than policy; more on glitzy photo ops, grandiose speeches and gadding about from one capital to another, than ending the chronic US meddling and militarism. Where's the beef or is it all just empty posturing?
No one's ready to write-off Obama just yet, but he needs to show he's the real-deal by taking steps to ratchet-down the war machine and reign in the corporate elites and bank vermin. But is it really possible for one man--however well-meaning--to change the course of a nation by standing up the gaggle of racketeers who pull the strings from behind the curtain? Keep in mind, America's history of violent interventions, unprovoked wars, color-coded revolutions and coup d' etats has a long pedigree that stretches from Bunker Hill to Baghdad. That river of blood did not begin with George Bush and it won't end with Barack Obama. Every generation has produced its own litany of crimes, from Wounded Knee to Nagasaki to My Lai to Falluja. In Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech, the playwright invokes one such incident which epitomizes the pattern of hostility which has been repeated over and over again wherever the Washington mandarins detect opposition to their iron-fisted rule.
Harold Pinter, Nobel Acceptance Speech:
"The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.
The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilized. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.
The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighboring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.
I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.
Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.
The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.
But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile.
The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it."
Analysis
Pinter's speech is a somber indictment of US foreign policy; a policy which is now cloaked behind the rock-star facade of Barack Obama. Nothing has changed and, perhaps, nothing will change. The same barbarous campaign that thrived under Bush has been passed along to Obama intact. Wherever there is resistance to US ambitions; there lies the enemy. Whether its Marxists in Bogota, nationalists in Kosovo, Bolivarians in Caracas, Shia militias in Beirut, Islamic moderates in Mogadishu or Quakers in Toledo. They're all enemies, every one of them, and they need to be dealt with.
Obama is no fool; he knows he's being used. He knows he wasn't chosen for his enlightened views on health care and stem cells. He was picked because the men in charge needed a new posterboy to hide behind while they carry out their illicit activities. Obama is not so much of a Commander in chief as he is master illusionist, diverting attention from the stealth war that goes on relentlessly with or without his consent. Here's Pinter again:
"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis...It's a scintillating stratagem."
Consider how the news was shaped to make it look like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were carried out for altruistic reasons. Thus, the war in Afghanistan became "Operation Enduring Freedom", stressing the selfless generosity of bombing a country into oblivion and reinstating the thuggish warlords to power. The same strategy was used for the invasion of Iraq which was celebrated as "liberation from a brutal dictator." Liberation which cost the lives of over 1 million Iraqis and the displacement of 4 million more. Still, no one in the UN or so called international community has pressed for removing the US from the Security Council or prosecuting its leaders for war crimes. It's a testimony to the success of the US media in upholding the "tapestry of lies" of which Pinter speaks. Under Obama, the charade has only gotten worse. The coverage of the war has stopped entirely. War? What war? What matters now is Obama's cheery banter with Jay Leno, or Michelle's well-proportioned arms or Malia's adorable Portuguese Waterdog. America is whole again. Let the killing resume.
Pinter: "What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticize our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us."
Obama doesn't need to solve the world's problems. He doesn't have to reverse global warming or slow peak oil, cure AIDS or end world hunger. All he needs to do is meet the minimal requirement of his job as president, which is to deliver justice to his people. That's why the prosecution of Bush for war crimes is more important than any other issue on the docket. Justice precedes everything; it's the thread that keeps the social fabric stitched together. Justice for the victims who were killed in their homes with their families while they were sleeping or eating dinner. Justice for the people who were bombed in wedding parties or going to work or at the mosque praying to God. That's what people want from Obama. Justice, nothing more. The Reverend Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." It's up to Obama follow that arc and take at least one step on the path of legitimacy, accountability and justice.
Pinter: "How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice."
It's highly unlikely that a black man with a background in community organizing really believes that expanding the war in Afghanistan is the right thing to do. Nor is it likely that he supports wiretapping, the crackdown on immigrants, penalizing sellers of medical marijuana, trillion dollar bank bailouts or "enhanced" interrogation. He is merely reading from the script that he has been given. But as the economic crisis deepens and the country becomes more radicalized and politically unstable, that script will have to be tossed aside. Obama will have plenty of opportunities to shrug off his handlers and show what he's really made of. Perhaps he is great man after all.
Pinter: "When we look into a mirror, we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimeter and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us."
Go ahead, Barack. Smash the mirror.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Violence Types
Where The Violence Really Isby P.K. Moon AHD, April 27, 2009
[In order to distungish between America, the whole of the continent, and the nation that took the word for itself, I will use the names, America and Amerika, to avoid confusion]
I read the flood of articles everywhere about the violence in Mexico. But never a comparison of types of violence and why. This is what is important if one wants to keep reality in place and not replace it with distorted truths laced with downright lies.
Of course there is violence in Mexico, what country does not have violence that has had a war set up in it? And now the Amerikans complain because the country they have created a war in has violence, so they want to make another war on them for that violence? Evil reasoning.
What Mexico has is illegal drug traffickers, and the military and judicial system, fighting each other. Both are well armed and well financed through Amerikan means and needs. When solving a problem, one should not battle the results, but examine the core, where it starts from. And this so called war, is only the end result and has nothing to do with correcting what created the problem in the first place. Amerikan addicts or those whose needs and rights are illegal.
That is one kind of violence. Here is another. A nation that wants to claim being the best ever with all the answers that has its own citizens turning against each other. Family, friends, business relations, strangers. They are shooting each other for bizarre reasons, like a people gone mad loosing all sense of morals. This is not a struggle fought for dominance over a trillion dollar industry, supplying Amerikans with drugs, which whole countries vie for. But a sickness, a terrible gap in humanity, an aberration. It shows the terrible mental state of Amerika to do such things as has been happening so recently. This is sick violence born of a broken nation of failed humans who allowed themselves to accept death and destruction as their right from a god made in their own image. This is the violence of rot and decay, not the violence of fighting back an oppressor who has invaded your nation on false pretenses and turned two sources against each other.
This violence in Mexico is wherever Amerika directs its attention the world over. Who can have what, and how to take it. It is not the violence of a deluded doomed nation turning on itself and doing crimes that shock the heart and mind. School children shooting each other, fathers killing their families, random maniacs suddenly going on a spree, and on and on, as one can witness from their headlines. This is a nation that thrives on violence, even for its entertainment. They are siding off against each other and collecting the weapons for it. Not one that has had violence forced upon it for the benefit of its criminal neighbor.
This is what the world should look at, Amerika, not Mexico. It is the disease of Amerikanism that needs to focused on as the major disaster and threat to our world yet. Mexico is being used for a distraction and a possible new war for profit. Those who spread the fear mongering and disapproval over Mexico are supporters of Amerikan lies and the disaster that their country has become. Do not believe what Amerika says about Mexico, anymore than you would believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The belief in that is what enabled Amerika to further their atrocities there and ruin a nation and its people. Do not be part of doing this to Mexico. This is Amerikas creation, this war, this violence, and could be stopped by them. But they prefer to make a war of it to try to ruin a nation for their gain.
Compare these two countries, Mexico and Amerika. Mexico’s military does not go beyond its own borders, compared to Amerika. Mexico has a strong social and family structure, compared to Amerika where the violence proves this so. Amerika has terrible drug violence and crimes on every level there, compared to Mexico whose main violence is caused by a war caused by Amerika between two sources. Actually, there is no comparison because the differences are too extreme. One a nation collapsing, exhibiting every horror known to man, another nation on its shaky rise to better things interfered with by a country that is known for its interference and warmongering.
The people of Mexico are still the fine people they have always been, just trying to hold on until the great white shark to their north loses its grip. The world should realize to share the fate of the same border as Amerika is a very very hard position, and they are lucky to not have that added problem. It is Amerika that is the epitome of violence at its worse, permeated all thru their society and systems. It is what Amerika has always been about, violence, the use and sale of it. Do not pile the blame on Mexico because Amerika promotes that view if you do not want to be part of the attempt to destroy Mexico. Know better than to believe the headlines.
Amerika has a campaign of advertising crimes in Mexico and counting deaths daily, while acting like it has none of its own. What is revealing is to google the word 'shootings'.
[In order to distungish between America, the whole of the continent, and the nation that took the word for itself, I will use the names, America and Amerika, to avoid confusion]
I read the flood of articles everywhere about the violence in Mexico. But never a comparison of types of violence and why. This is what is important if one wants to keep reality in place and not replace it with distorted truths laced with downright lies.
Of course there is violence in Mexico, what country does not have violence that has had a war set up in it? And now the Amerikans complain because the country they have created a war in has violence, so they want to make another war on them for that violence? Evil reasoning.
What Mexico has is illegal drug traffickers, and the military and judicial system, fighting each other. Both are well armed and well financed through Amerikan means and needs. When solving a problem, one should not battle the results, but examine the core, where it starts from. And this so called war, is only the end result and has nothing to do with correcting what created the problem in the first place. Amerikan addicts or those whose needs and rights are illegal.
That is one kind of violence. Here is another. A nation that wants to claim being the best ever with all the answers that has its own citizens turning against each other. Family, friends, business relations, strangers. They are shooting each other for bizarre reasons, like a people gone mad loosing all sense of morals. This is not a struggle fought for dominance over a trillion dollar industry, supplying Amerikans with drugs, which whole countries vie for. But a sickness, a terrible gap in humanity, an aberration. It shows the terrible mental state of Amerika to do such things as has been happening so recently. This is sick violence born of a broken nation of failed humans who allowed themselves to accept death and destruction as their right from a god made in their own image. This is the violence of rot and decay, not the violence of fighting back an oppressor who has invaded your nation on false pretenses and turned two sources against each other.
This violence in Mexico is wherever Amerika directs its attention the world over. Who can have what, and how to take it. It is not the violence of a deluded doomed nation turning on itself and doing crimes that shock the heart and mind. School children shooting each other, fathers killing their families, random maniacs suddenly going on a spree, and on and on, as one can witness from their headlines. This is a nation that thrives on violence, even for its entertainment. They are siding off against each other and collecting the weapons for it. Not one that has had violence forced upon it for the benefit of its criminal neighbor.
This is what the world should look at, Amerika, not Mexico. It is the disease of Amerikanism that needs to focused on as the major disaster and threat to our world yet. Mexico is being used for a distraction and a possible new war for profit. Those who spread the fear mongering and disapproval over Mexico are supporters of Amerikan lies and the disaster that their country has become. Do not believe what Amerika says about Mexico, anymore than you would believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The belief in that is what enabled Amerika to further their atrocities there and ruin a nation and its people. Do not be part of doing this to Mexico. This is Amerikas creation, this war, this violence, and could be stopped by them. But they prefer to make a war of it to try to ruin a nation for their gain.
Compare these two countries, Mexico and Amerika. Mexico’s military does not go beyond its own borders, compared to Amerika. Mexico has a strong social and family structure, compared to Amerika where the violence proves this so. Amerika has terrible drug violence and crimes on every level there, compared to Mexico whose main violence is caused by a war caused by Amerika between two sources. Actually, there is no comparison because the differences are too extreme. One a nation collapsing, exhibiting every horror known to man, another nation on its shaky rise to better things interfered with by a country that is known for its interference and warmongering.
The people of Mexico are still the fine people they have always been, just trying to hold on until the great white shark to their north loses its grip. The world should realize to share the fate of the same border as Amerika is a very very hard position, and they are lucky to not have that added problem. It is Amerika that is the epitome of violence at its worse, permeated all thru their society and systems. It is what Amerika has always been about, violence, the use and sale of it. Do not pile the blame on Mexico because Amerika promotes that view if you do not want to be part of the attempt to destroy Mexico. Know better than to believe the headlines.
Amerika has a campaign of advertising crimes in Mexico and counting deaths daily, while acting like it has none of its own. What is revealing is to google the word 'shootings'.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
March 10,1959 Truth
According to the Dalai Lama, a peaceful uprising on March 10, 1959 led to his exile. Is that the truth? It's high time some questions are answered today.
Today, China is modernizing. We're exploring Space, developing electric car technology and improving the lives of the ordinary Chinese.
Today, Tibet is also modernizing. Former slaves are now masters of their own destinies. Average life expectancy has almost doubled, from 35.5 in 1959 to 67 years now. Tibet's brand new university protects its glorious culture. Devotion to religions is visible everywhere.
China's journey towards modernization has not been easy. Fending off imperialist aggression was the first order of business. Then China turned inward, first with doubts and then with hope and determination, to rejuvenate an ossified ancient culture, as evidenced by a dying social-political-economic order during the late 1940s. All portend a revolution, to reassert the human rights of the poor, the oppressed, the illiterate, and, in the case of Tibet, the enslaved.
Tibet's journey was not an easy one either. For reforms in Tibet, Beijing took it slow. The 1951 17-Article Agreement states that the political system, including the "functions and power of the Dalai Lama", remains just as it was, and "shall carry out reforms of its own accord". To celebrate this agreement, Beijing, in 1954, rolled out the red carpet for the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama to a fanfare welcome. The Dalai Lama's sincere patriotic stance then was contagious. China's unbroken de jure sovereignty over Tibet was made de facto, once again, as a customary transfer of power to the new regime.
This "go-slow" policy was deferential to Tibet's unique social structure. Unlike other Chinese regions, Tibet was a theocratic feudal serfdom. Before the 1959 democratic reforms, 95 percent of Tibetans were brutally maltreated serfs owned by the ruling elite - monastery lamas, aristocrats, and local officials. Serf-slaves were reincarnated to do penance for past-life demerits by providing absolute subservient service to the elite, those who reincarnated well, like the Dalai Lama.
The owners had no responsibility for the serfs' maintenance, no interest in their survival. They worked without pay, and yet had to support themselves and pay exploitative taxes. Old Tibet was "hell on earth", which made slavery of medieval Europe and America look pale by comparison. The Dalai Lama's March 10, 2009 description of modern Tibet as "hell on earth" is pure sophistry.
In 1978, he said: "If the six million Tibetans in Tibet are really happy and prosperous as never before, there is no reason for us to argue otherwise." What went through his mind about the slaves under his command?
To allow slavery in the 20th century was unconscionable. It had to be abolished. Beijing insisted on self-initiated reforms, as agreed. But, in the end, the elite and the Dalai Lama failed to deliver. His 50-year saga of self-exile resulted from this failure.
For the elite, life was good and they wanted no change. But they committed to reform. What should be done? The separatist sentiment then surfaced, and outside contacts were made.
In 1951, Loy Wesley Henderson, then the US Ambassador to India, hurled out the first cold war salvo against China. He covertly offered support if the Dalai Lama would denounce the 1951 Agreement and exile to India to pursue a separatist agenda. Some elite liked the idea, but the Dalai Lama wavered. Then the CIA went to work. Dalai's two older brothers and a band of monks were trained in Saipan and Camp Hale, Colorado. Secret parachute drops into Tibet began.
In 1956, the Dalai Lama was in India for a Buddhist conference. The Dalai brothers schemed to retain him. Premier Zhou Enlai went to India and met the Dalai Lama and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru regarding this scheme. The Dalai Lama wavered again, took his time, heard his brothers, but eventually returned to Lhasa safely on his own accord.
It was already 1958, no self-generated reforms surfaced. The elite knew that time was running out. The CIA simply wanted the Dalai Lama to ask openly for outside help. The Dalai brothers urged. Once more, he wavered.
Then everything came to a head in 1959. The Dalai Lama, as a set up, requested for a military troupe performance on March 10. There was a rumor a day earlier that he had been abducted. On March 10, he did not show up, and Lhasa was surrounded by armed riotous separatists.
He sent out three letters to say that he was restricted. On March 17 midnight, he was escorted into the Lhasa darkness. The "government in exile" was hurriedly set up before they crossed into India on March 31.
Beijing did not pursue, but kept open his official title until 1964, just in case he wavers again. According to researcher A. Tom Grunfield, the whole episode was the handy work of the CIA. Henderson's cold war wish of 1951 was finally realized in 1959.
On March 28, 1959, Beijing formally ended political association with the Lhasa elite. On that day, over a million serfs were freed. Democratic reforms continued.
The Tibet Autonomous Region was established in 1965. March 28 became the Slave Emancipation Day. The rest is history.
The 1959 "peaceful uprising" is a myth created by the Dalai Lama to justify his exile and the independence cause. Two things are signified here. Point one, he failed to tell the world that the "uprising" was staged and the exile was self-induced, made possible by foreign machination and impelled by his refusal to liberate serfs.
Even more serious, he failed to acknowledge that, in his absence, China made the ultimate affirmation of human rights in the 20th century by emancipating over a million Tibetan slaves in 1959. In this regard, his claim that China killed 1.2 million Tibetans was a pure fabrication. If that were the case, there would be no serfs left to liberate, since the 1953 Tibet census count was only 1.274 million.
Point two, the Dalai Lama, by choice and despite Beijing's forbearance, missed being on the right side of history.
Due to his youth and inexperience, the Dalai Lama repeatedly wavered between the selfless Buddhist stance and the selfish practice of the elite. Finally, he made his choice and is facing the consequences since.
Fifty-three years ago in India, Premier Zhou Enlai gave him this sagacious and prophetic advice: As a man of faith you must stay around your monastery in Lhasa. If you stay out, Tibet will reform with or without you. The Dalai Lama has been without a monastery for 50 years. His worldly political possessions, Nobel peace prize notwithstanding, ultimately mean nothing for his next incarnation.
The author teaches philosophy in the United States.
Source: China Daily
Today, China is modernizing. We're exploring Space, developing electric car technology and improving the lives of the ordinary Chinese.
Today, Tibet is also modernizing. Former slaves are now masters of their own destinies. Average life expectancy has almost doubled, from 35.5 in 1959 to 67 years now. Tibet's brand new university protects its glorious culture. Devotion to religions is visible everywhere.
China's journey towards modernization has not been easy. Fending off imperialist aggression was the first order of business. Then China turned inward, first with doubts and then with hope and determination, to rejuvenate an ossified ancient culture, as evidenced by a dying social-political-economic order during the late 1940s. All portend a revolution, to reassert the human rights of the poor, the oppressed, the illiterate, and, in the case of Tibet, the enslaved.
Tibet's journey was not an easy one either. For reforms in Tibet, Beijing took it slow. The 1951 17-Article Agreement states that the political system, including the "functions and power of the Dalai Lama", remains just as it was, and "shall carry out reforms of its own accord". To celebrate this agreement, Beijing, in 1954, rolled out the red carpet for the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama to a fanfare welcome. The Dalai Lama's sincere patriotic stance then was contagious. China's unbroken de jure sovereignty over Tibet was made de facto, once again, as a customary transfer of power to the new regime.
This "go-slow" policy was deferential to Tibet's unique social structure. Unlike other Chinese regions, Tibet was a theocratic feudal serfdom. Before the 1959 democratic reforms, 95 percent of Tibetans were brutally maltreated serfs owned by the ruling elite - monastery lamas, aristocrats, and local officials. Serf-slaves were reincarnated to do penance for past-life demerits by providing absolute subservient service to the elite, those who reincarnated well, like the Dalai Lama.
The owners had no responsibility for the serfs' maintenance, no interest in their survival. They worked without pay, and yet had to support themselves and pay exploitative taxes. Old Tibet was "hell on earth", which made slavery of medieval Europe and America look pale by comparison. The Dalai Lama's March 10, 2009 description of modern Tibet as "hell on earth" is pure sophistry.
In 1978, he said: "If the six million Tibetans in Tibet are really happy and prosperous as never before, there is no reason for us to argue otherwise." What went through his mind about the slaves under his command?
To allow slavery in the 20th century was unconscionable. It had to be abolished. Beijing insisted on self-initiated reforms, as agreed. But, in the end, the elite and the Dalai Lama failed to deliver. His 50-year saga of self-exile resulted from this failure.
For the elite, life was good and they wanted no change. But they committed to reform. What should be done? The separatist sentiment then surfaced, and outside contacts were made.
In 1951, Loy Wesley Henderson, then the US Ambassador to India, hurled out the first cold war salvo against China. He covertly offered support if the Dalai Lama would denounce the 1951 Agreement and exile to India to pursue a separatist agenda. Some elite liked the idea, but the Dalai Lama wavered. Then the CIA went to work. Dalai's two older brothers and a band of monks were trained in Saipan and Camp Hale, Colorado. Secret parachute drops into Tibet began.
In 1956, the Dalai Lama was in India for a Buddhist conference. The Dalai brothers schemed to retain him. Premier Zhou Enlai went to India and met the Dalai Lama and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru regarding this scheme. The Dalai Lama wavered again, took his time, heard his brothers, but eventually returned to Lhasa safely on his own accord.
It was already 1958, no self-generated reforms surfaced. The elite knew that time was running out. The CIA simply wanted the Dalai Lama to ask openly for outside help. The Dalai brothers urged. Once more, he wavered.
Then everything came to a head in 1959. The Dalai Lama, as a set up, requested for a military troupe performance on March 10. There was a rumor a day earlier that he had been abducted. On March 10, he did not show up, and Lhasa was surrounded by armed riotous separatists.
He sent out three letters to say that he was restricted. On March 17 midnight, he was escorted into the Lhasa darkness. The "government in exile" was hurriedly set up before they crossed into India on March 31.
Beijing did not pursue, but kept open his official title until 1964, just in case he wavers again. According to researcher A. Tom Grunfield, the whole episode was the handy work of the CIA. Henderson's cold war wish of 1951 was finally realized in 1959.
On March 28, 1959, Beijing formally ended political association with the Lhasa elite. On that day, over a million serfs were freed. Democratic reforms continued.
The Tibet Autonomous Region was established in 1965. March 28 became the Slave Emancipation Day. The rest is history.
The 1959 "peaceful uprising" is a myth created by the Dalai Lama to justify his exile and the independence cause. Two things are signified here. Point one, he failed to tell the world that the "uprising" was staged and the exile was self-induced, made possible by foreign machination and impelled by his refusal to liberate serfs.
Even more serious, he failed to acknowledge that, in his absence, China made the ultimate affirmation of human rights in the 20th century by emancipating over a million Tibetan slaves in 1959. In this regard, his claim that China killed 1.2 million Tibetans was a pure fabrication. If that were the case, there would be no serfs left to liberate, since the 1953 Tibet census count was only 1.274 million.
Point two, the Dalai Lama, by choice and despite Beijing's forbearance, missed being on the right side of history.
Due to his youth and inexperience, the Dalai Lama repeatedly wavered between the selfless Buddhist stance and the selfish practice of the elite. Finally, he made his choice and is facing the consequences since.
Fifty-three years ago in India, Premier Zhou Enlai gave him this sagacious and prophetic advice: As a man of faith you must stay around your monastery in Lhasa. If you stay out, Tibet will reform with or without you. The Dalai Lama has been without a monastery for 50 years. His worldly political possessions, Nobel peace prize notwithstanding, ultimately mean nothing for his next incarnation.
The author teaches philosophy in the United States.
Source: China Daily
Friday, April 24, 2009
Interventions
Click Here for a list of
U.S. Interventions in Latin America
[the list ends 1996, so there is a dozen more years of the same to add on]
From 1845 when the Manifest Destiny lie was turned loose on Latin America the United States of AmeriKKKa has been raping pillaging and plundering Latin American countries no holds barred. It is no surprise that Obama would spit the same pile of lies about Latin America much less Hugo Chavez. It is also no surprise that Mr. Chavez would take all those lies turn them around and push them right back at Obama. Mr. Chavez objective, by giving him a book to read about the history of Latin America and AmeriKKKa, is to do serious damage to Obama’s ignorance (I hope Obama READS the book). But whether he reads the book or not he can never say that he did not have a chance to know the TRUTH about Latin America and AmeriKKKa or that no one from Latin America did not offer him the opportunity to know the TRUTH.
from sompist blog
USA Scorned
Viva Hugo Chavez!
by Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report, USA
When it comes to delivering health care and building economic opportunities for the poor, Barack Obama could learn a lot from Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. But with Obama repeating the same false charges that justified a US sponsored coup a few years ago, it seems that the empire and its president have learned nothing and forgotten nothing in their relations with Latin America over the last half century. On this front as many others, the Obama administration seems not to be much of a change from the arrogant imperial politics of the past.
The American public are fed lie upon lie about Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. He has been elected and re-elected president by the citizens of his country, and his party continues to emerge victorious in parliamentary elections. The Bush administration very openly bragged out wanting to over throw the Chavez government and used military force in the region to intimidate Venezuela and Ecuador. Chavez is not alone in generating American hostility. Interference with the current Bolivian government was so blatant that the American ambassador was kicked out of the country along with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The American public are fed lie upon lie about Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. He has been elected and re-elected president by the citizens of his country, and his party continues to emerge victorious in parliamentary elections. The Bush administration very openly bragged out wanting to over throw the Chavez government and used military force in the region to intimidate Venezuela and Ecuador. Chavez is not alone in generating American hostility. Interference with the current Bolivian government was so blatant that the American ambassador was kicked out of the country along with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Hugo Chavez should be thanked by people around the globe for his willingness to openly scorn the United States of America and its leaders. It is a good thing that Chavez called Bush the devil from the podium at the United Nations. It is a good thing that he led a demonstration of 25,000 people against Bush in Argentina in 2007.
Now Hugo Chavez has done the world another favor by taking Barack Obama to school. At the Summit of the Americas conference held in Trinidad and Tobago, Obama created a photo opportunity by seeking Chavez out for a much photographed handshake. The publicity was interesting, considering that as he was on the verge of being inaugurated, Obama repeated the Bush administration lie that Chavez “exported terrorism” and was an “obstacle” to peace.
Chavez, never at a loss for words, responded that Obama was "a poor ignoramus," who had “the same stench as Bush.” “…the real obstacle has been the empire that he today presides over, which has exported terrorism for nearly 200 years, has launched atom bombs on innocent cities, has bombarded, invaded and issued orders to kill whenever they have taken the notion.” He also added, “He should study so that he knows the reality of Latin America.” Just to be certain that Obama learns a thing or two about that region of the world, Chavez gave him a copy of the book “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Hundred Years of the Pillage of a Continent.”
After having created the great handshake scene, the Obama administration then didn’t know what to do with their own public relations coup that could have been followed up with real changes in policy. It was sad to see the immediate backpedaling from the administration over a smile and a handshake. One official claimed that Chavez was less popular than Obama among Venezuelans. David Axelrod said that Venezuela must stop "rampant and tasteless, anti-Americanism."
Chavez is not alone in his willingness to take on Uncle Sam. Almost all of the member nations of the Organization of American States are in favor of Cuba rejoining that organization. They are also agitating for the United States led embargo of Cuba to end.
None of the new leaders are unduly deferential to Barack Obama. Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, bristled at the United States criticism of Cuba’s human rights record. He pointed out, “The United States doesn't have any authority to speak about democracy, because from over there they install coup d'etats, like these civil coups now in Bolivia.” Morales and Chavez will not be lectured by a president who allowed Bush regime torturers to get away with their war crimes scott free.
The bankruptcy of United States foreign policy was on full display for all to see. Osama’s actions and the words of his top advisers prove that they do not want partnerships with other nations that are based on any kind of mutual interest. If foreign leaders object to American policy they are demonized and attacked and the corporate media dutifully joins in and repeats whatever the president says.
The American people are once again dependent on the rest of the world to tell them anything of significance. Hugo Chavez made Open Veins of Latin America an overnight bestseller and in the process proved that many Americans realize they aren’t getting the full story of the country’s history.
That is why Hugo Chavez should be lionized more than anyone who manages to get into the white house. American presidents are elected because a critical mass of wealthy people choose them before any voter arrives at a polling place. While Hugo Chavez rewrites history, Obama has no clue and no desire to join him in revolutionizing American foreign policy. We are left with a one party foreign policy. Fortunately, people in other parts of the world are able to make better choices.
Viva Hugo Chavez!
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monsanto World
Monday, April 20, 2009
Book For Obama
Chavez Gifts Obama With Book
That Assails U.S. for Exploiting Latin America
April 18, 2009 9:21 AM
At President Obama's meeting with the heads of South American countries this morning, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stood, walked over to him, and presented him with a copy of "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano.
Obama politely posed for a photograph with Chavez, shook his hand, and accepted the gift.
The book, first published in Spanish in 1971, offers a critique of the consequences of 500 years of European and U.S. colonization of Latin America.
"The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing," the book begins. "Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations. Centuries passed, and Latin America perfected its role."
Galeano writes that while the era of "lodes of gold" and "mountains of silver" has passed, "our region still works as a menial laborer. It continues to exist at the service of others' needs, as a source of oil and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit and coffee, the raw materials and foods destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming them than Latin America does from producing them."
At another point in the book, Galeano writes: "Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others."
The book also criticizes the U.S. for "spreading and imposing family planning. ... In Latin America it is more hygienic and effective to kill future guerillas in the womb that in the mountains or the streets."
Banned in Uruguay and Chile when it was first published, "Open Veins of Latin America" is considered a classic in Latin America.
In Isabel Allende's foreword to later versions of the book, the Chilean-American writer says that Galeano "has more first-hand knowledge of Latin America than anybody else I can think of, and uses it to tell the world of the dreams and disillusions, the hopes and the failures of its people. ... Galeano denounces exploitation with uncompromising ferocity, yet this book is almost poetic in its description of solidarity and human capacity for survival in the midst of the worst kind of despoliation."
The copy of the book Chavez gave Obama appears to be in Spanish, a language Obama does not speak.
At the start of the first plenary session at the Summit of the Americas later this morning, President Obama was asked what he thought of Chavez’s gift.
“You know, I thought it was one of Chavez’s books," Obama answered. "I was going to give him one of mine.”
- Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Obama & Mexico
More Criticism
of The Obama Administration
Epigmenio Carlos
Still less do I share the euphoria of those who lived with extreme excitement the very short visit of the American leader to Mexico. It's true that the man --this has happened on his international tours-- has the impact of a rock star. His charisma, the curiosity that his persona awakens, the hopes that he raises in his speeches are enormous, but nevertheless, the ataduras are as well, and through history, the Americans --beyond whether the Republicans or Democrats are in power-- have demonstrated that they are very bad neighbors, worse partners and highly capricious and volatile allies to say the least. With Obama things have no reason, I'm afraid, to be different.
On the other hand, I am profoundly worried by the excessive flattery --merely diplomatic resources transformed here for he who receives them into electoral capital-- that Obama and his functionaries offer to Felipe Calderón and his war against drug trafficking. Behind the flattery lies the same symptom-based, police-military vision of combatting a problem that would demand from all the actors a commitment very different in nature. Those that in Mexico encourage the installation of an authoritarian regime --perennial temptation of the panistas-- the apostles of the "firm hand" that love to wear olive green, may --and with reason--interpret the North American posture as an endorsement of their pretensions. Kennedy, in his time, another charismatic caudillo, imposed, quite a paradox given that it involves a Democrat, upon Latin American rights. In that era it was anti-Communism that made Washington walk with the most despicable allies; today with drug trafficking the same could happen.
Obviously Washington --as always-- wants to have more men, more guns, more influence in Mexico. Why do we want more dollars and more bullets? If they already arrive from the North in hoards, than why are there more deaths in the streets? The fight against drug trafficking, the security of southern border are the ideal pretext; the new foreign enemy so necessary to the American political culture; the opportunity that the Pentagon and the security agencies to reaffirm their power and influence after the failure in Iraq.
On the other hand, I am profoundly worried by the excessive flattery --merely diplomatic resources transformed here for he who receives them into electoral capital-- that Obama and his functionaries offer to Felipe Calderón and his war against drug trafficking. Behind the flattery lies the same symptom-based, police-military vision of combatting a problem that would demand from all the actors a commitment very different in nature. Those that in Mexico encourage the installation of an authoritarian regime --perennial temptation of the panistas-- the apostles of the "firm hand" that love to wear olive green, may --and with reason--interpret the North American posture as an endorsement of their pretensions. Kennedy, in his time, another charismatic caudillo, imposed, quite a paradox given that it involves a Democrat, upon Latin American rights. In that era it was anti-Communism that made Washington walk with the most despicable allies; today with drug trafficking the same could happen.
Obviously Washington --as always-- wants to have more men, more guns, more influence in Mexico. Why do we want more dollars and more bullets? If they already arrive from the North in hoards, than why are there more deaths in the streets? The fight against drug trafficking, the security of southern border are the ideal pretext; the new foreign enemy so necessary to the American political culture; the opportunity that the Pentagon and the security agencies to reaffirm their power and influence after the failure in Iraq.
This is obviously deluded in several spots, but it's a good illustration of where a lot of Latin American critiques of the US go from valuably contrarian to divorced reality. From a Latin American standpoint, I can see calling Kennedy a caudillo. It's also helpful to be periodically reminded that in a lot of ways the US has been an extremely bad neighbor, and one friendly visit can't overcome two centuries of mistrust. However, when Ibarra drifts from analyzing the limits of Obama's trip to speculating about the possible consequences, he takes a severe wrong turn.
It is in general bad practice to attempt to distill the constellation of governmental goals into a short list of ulterior motives; beyond that, Ibarra is also spectacularly misguided in his specific analysis. Comparing the fear provoked by the Cold War to Mexico's drug violence is like comparing Salingrad to a snowball fight. A newly authoritarian Mexico would be a disaster for Obama. The idea that the Pentagon would want to bounce back from Iraq by involving itself in another intractable foreign basket case boggles the mind. The possibility that the US wanting more men in Mexico is a means to an end (less effective and weaker drug traffickers) rather than an end in and of itself seems not to have occurred to Ibarra. Too often in such critiques, whatever the worst possible result is for your country is actually the foremost goal of American policy in Latin America.
De-fanging Peace
First Black President
Defeats U.S. Antiwar Movement
Glen Ford 04/15/2009
De-fanging the peace movement
The arrival of the Obama administration has crippled the U.S. anti-war movement, which has neither the fortitude nor political depth to confront imperialism with a Black face. The Out of Iraq caucus on Capitol Hill might as well call itself the Out of Action caucus, since it can’t figure out a way to respond to President Obama’s expanding military budgets and wars. National anti-war organizations cling to the fiction that Obama is really seeking a military withdrawal from Iraq. “The anti-war movement has hit rock-bottom because of its failure to challenge this particular president, an imperialist with charm, a warmonger with a winning smile.
“Obama pretends he wants peace, and anti-war members of Congress pretend to believe him.”
In the streets, on the2009campuses and on Capitol Hill, the anti-war movement is no longer moving anywhere. It has been crippled by the Obama Effect, the deep and wide delusion that imperialism with a Black face is somehow – something else. When a movement disbands itself without coming even close to achieving its objective, that is a defeat. We can now definitively state that, for the time being, the U.S. anti-war movement has been defeated – not by Republicans, but by Barack Obama’s Democratic Party.
A recent article in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress, relates a meeting among staffers for Out of Iraq caucus leaders Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters and Lynn Woolsey. They were supposed to come up with a response to President Obama’s announcement that he would immediately send 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, with lots more to come. Obama is determined to leave at least 50,000 troops in Iraq for an open-ended period of time under the guise of “training” the Iraqis, and is rapidly merging Afghanistan and Pakistan into one theater of war, called Af-Pak. Clearly, the Obama administration is expanding its war in Af-Pak, and has no intention of ending the U.S. military presence in Iraq – ever. The staffers for the Out of Iraq caucus leaders spent two hours trying to come up with a position. They failed.
For all intents and purposes, the Out of Iraq caucus has ceased to function. Black Congresswomen Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters have at times shown great courage in the face of stupendous odds. But they will not confront Barack Obama, even when he expands the arenas of war, claims that combat soldiers are merely trainers and advisers, and pushes through a war budget that is bigger than any of George Bush’s war budgets. Obama pretends he wants peace, and anti-war members of Congress pretend to believe him.
“The anti-war movement has hit rock-bottom because of its failure to challenge this particular president.”
Another Capitol Hill publication, the Congressional Quarterly, recently ran an article on the low demonstration turn-out and money woes of the anti-war movement. A March 21st rally at the Pentagon drew pitiful numbers of demonstrators, only 3,000 according to police. Organizers claim they can’t raise money these days, and have been forced to cut staff. A spokesperson for ANSWER, the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition, said the peace movement is seeing the impact of the “promises the Obama campaign made.” Outgoing United for Peace and Justice leader Leslie Cagan says her money people aren’t giving because “It’s enough for many of them that Obama has a plan to end the war and that things are moving in the right direction.”
But Obama has no plans or intention to end his wars except on imperialism’s own terms – which means never-ending war, just like under Bush – a basic truth that United for Peace and Justice refuses to recognize or admit. ANSWER organizers also fail to confront the Obama White House head-on. The Congressional Quarterly article concludes that the anti-war movement is suffering from the results of “its own success.” That’s absolute nonsense. The anti-war movement has hit rock-bottom because of its failure to challenge this particular president, an imperialist with charm, a warmonger with a winning smile. Obama has whipped them, but good. And they will stay whipped, until they stand up like men, like women, like leaders.
I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Only Solution
Celente Calls For
'Revolution' As The Only Solution
By George Celente
4-13-9
KINGSTON, NY -- Taxed to death, angry at government bailouts, outraged by Wall Street greed, and bitterly resentful of a system that rewards the undeserving rich, the American public is ready to revolt.
"The Tea Parties and Tax Protests sprouting across the nation, which we had predicted, are harbingers of revolution," said Gerald Celente, Director of The Trends Research Institute. "But they are not enough. Much stronger and directed action is required. Our call for 'Revolution' will galvanize the people, destroy the corrupt ruling systems, and produce a prosperous and more just nation."
The Revolution Celente proposes is unique in concept and bold in execution. It is about a lot more than just "taxation without representation."
"Nothing short of total repudiation of our entrenched systems can rescue America," said Celente. "We are under the control of a two-headed, one party political system. Wall Street controls our financial lives; the media manipulates our minds. These systems cannot be changed from within. There is no alternative. Without a revolution, these institutions will bankrupt the country, keep fighting failed wars, start new ones, and hold us in perpetual intellectual subjugation."
The country is restless, and ripe for radical reform. There is no doubt protests will proliferate and intensify. In response, the government will call out the troops and bring in the police. They will use the Patriot Act to silence, detain, harass, persecute and prosecute groups and individuals exercising their Constitutional rights.
But Celente's Revolution need not degenerate into violence or open warfare.
"Intellectual Revolution"
"I am calling for an 'Intellectual Revolution'. I ask American citizens to free their minds from the tyranny of 'Dumb Think.' This is a revolution about thinking - not manning the barricades. It's about brain power - not brute force."
For society to survive and grow, it must wake up and grow up. Americans must acknowledge what their opinions are based on, who they listen to ... and why.
What are America's prime information sources? CNN, "The most trusted name in news"? Fox, "Fair and balanced"? CNBC, "First in Business Worldwide"? The New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print"?
Who do the people listen to? A closed circuit of familiar faces guaranteed to take predictable positions. Authorities on nothing, yet pronouncing upon everything; a cadre of media aristocrats, pretending they're the people's voice.
Bill O'Reilly, Steven Colbert, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, Jon Stewart, Chris Matthews, Jim Cramer, Joe Scarborough, Anderson Cooper, Bill Maher.
TV tough guys, broadcast big mouths and Beltway blowhards have now been joined by featherweight comics throwing powder puff punches at sitting targets.
This new addition to the critical debate is celebrated by the world's leading financial newspaper:
Wall Street riveted by comedy clash
Financial Times, 13 March 2009
"A showdown between a comedian who has become one of America's most challenging commentators and a news commentator known for his comedic antics has shown the brightest spotlight on the media's market coverage since the financial crisis began.
On Thursday night, two cable television celebrities squared off as Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show ... on Comedy Central ... confronted Jim Cramer ... star of CNBC's Mad Money programme."
Without a hint of irony, FT bestows the title of highest American intellectual common denominator upon a clown. A pencil throwing, screaming, wryly grimacing professional comedian has become "... one of America's most challenging commentators"?
"Wall Street riveted by comedy clash"? "The brightest spotlight on the media's market coverage"?
With the world financial markets in collapse, this rivets Wall Street? Nearly two years into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, this shines as "the brightest spotlight"?
From Wall Street, comedy moves to the White House. President Obama made history using comic Jay Leno's Tonight Show as a platform to peddle his policies.
World shaping decisions are packaged in sound bites and pitched by the nation's Showman-in-Chief. There is no time or place for debate or discussion. It's all entertainment.
"The 'Intellectual Revolution' must be waged on the battlefield of the mind," said Celente. "Americans are doomed unless they kick the junk news habit, deprogram themselves from celebrity worship, refuse to blindly follow political leaders and question all ideological dogmas ... especially their own.
"For the revolution to succeed, people must repudiate the one-headed, two party system, and learn to think for themselves," said Celente.
While the corporate-owned mainstream media and the government still control the broad avenues of news and information, only willing and lazy minds need be held hostage to it. The Internet world is awash in data, facts, analyses and opinions (independent and mainstream) for all to access and assess.
4-13-9
KINGSTON, NY -- Taxed to death, angry at government bailouts, outraged by Wall Street greed, and bitterly resentful of a system that rewards the undeserving rich, the American public is ready to revolt.
"The Tea Parties and Tax Protests sprouting across the nation, which we had predicted, are harbingers of revolution," said Gerald Celente, Director of The Trends Research Institute. "But they are not enough. Much stronger and directed action is required. Our call for 'Revolution' will galvanize the people, destroy the corrupt ruling systems, and produce a prosperous and more just nation."
The Revolution Celente proposes is unique in concept and bold in execution. It is about a lot more than just "taxation without representation."
"Nothing short of total repudiation of our entrenched systems can rescue America," said Celente. "We are under the control of a two-headed, one party political system. Wall Street controls our financial lives; the media manipulates our minds. These systems cannot be changed from within. There is no alternative. Without a revolution, these institutions will bankrupt the country, keep fighting failed wars, start new ones, and hold us in perpetual intellectual subjugation."
The country is restless, and ripe for radical reform. There is no doubt protests will proliferate and intensify. In response, the government will call out the troops and bring in the police. They will use the Patriot Act to silence, detain, harass, persecute and prosecute groups and individuals exercising their Constitutional rights.
But Celente's Revolution need not degenerate into violence or open warfare.
"Intellectual Revolution"
"I am calling for an 'Intellectual Revolution'. I ask American citizens to free their minds from the tyranny of 'Dumb Think.' This is a revolution about thinking - not manning the barricades. It's about brain power - not brute force."
For society to survive and grow, it must wake up and grow up. Americans must acknowledge what their opinions are based on, who they listen to ... and why.
What are America's prime information sources? CNN, "The most trusted name in news"? Fox, "Fair and balanced"? CNBC, "First in Business Worldwide"? The New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print"?
Who do the people listen to? A closed circuit of familiar faces guaranteed to take predictable positions. Authorities on nothing, yet pronouncing upon everything; a cadre of media aristocrats, pretending they're the people's voice.
Bill O'Reilly, Steven Colbert, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, Jon Stewart, Chris Matthews, Jim Cramer, Joe Scarborough, Anderson Cooper, Bill Maher.
TV tough guys, broadcast big mouths and Beltway blowhards have now been joined by featherweight comics throwing powder puff punches at sitting targets.
This new addition to the critical debate is celebrated by the world's leading financial newspaper:
Wall Street riveted by comedy clash
Financial Times, 13 March 2009
"A showdown between a comedian who has become one of America's most challenging commentators and a news commentator known for his comedic antics has shown the brightest spotlight on the media's market coverage since the financial crisis began.
On Thursday night, two cable television celebrities squared off as Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show ... on Comedy Central ... confronted Jim Cramer ... star of CNBC's Mad Money programme."
Without a hint of irony, FT bestows the title of highest American intellectual common denominator upon a clown. A pencil throwing, screaming, wryly grimacing professional comedian has become "... one of America's most challenging commentators"?
"Wall Street riveted by comedy clash"? "The brightest spotlight on the media's market coverage"?
With the world financial markets in collapse, this rivets Wall Street? Nearly two years into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, this shines as "the brightest spotlight"?
From Wall Street, comedy moves to the White House. President Obama made history using comic Jay Leno's Tonight Show as a platform to peddle his policies.
World shaping decisions are packaged in sound bites and pitched by the nation's Showman-in-Chief. There is no time or place for debate or discussion. It's all entertainment.
"The 'Intellectual Revolution' must be waged on the battlefield of the mind," said Celente. "Americans are doomed unless they kick the junk news habit, deprogram themselves from celebrity worship, refuse to blindly follow political leaders and question all ideological dogmas ... especially their own.
"For the revolution to succeed, people must repudiate the one-headed, two party system, and learn to think for themselves," said Celente.
While the corporate-owned mainstream media and the government still control the broad avenues of news and information, only willing and lazy minds need be held hostage to it. The Internet world is awash in data, facts, analyses and opinions (independent and mainstream) for all to access and assess.
THINK FOR YOURSELF. THE "INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTION" HAS BEGUN.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Racism Conference
Will Obama Be a No-Go to Racism Conference?
By Marlene Nadle April 13, 2009
THERE IS A bitter irony in America’s first black president continuing to boycott the UN’s international conference on racism scheduled for this month.
President Barack Obama’s position on attending the conference translates roughly into: Do it our way or we won’t play. He has already gotten all references to Israel, to reparations for slavery, and to a proposed ban on speech defaming any religion dropped from the conference’s draft document. Yet, he is still unwilling to have the United States attend. Even if the administration bullies its way into getting its final points, it is not really a win for the United States.
Obama’s foot dragging and threat of a boycott will begin to deplete whatever goodwill he has created for himself and America in the nations of color. People in those countries, like many Americans, hoped he would head up the fight for racial justice, not become one of the obstacles to it.
The president’s decision to boycott will undercut his attempt in Turkey to reach out to the Muslim world. It has been reported that the boycott was urged by members of the Jewish community in both the United States and Israel. If he continues to cave to that pressure, it will be seen in the Muslim world as more proof that America cannot be counted on as an honest broker in any peace process.
Despite the harm his threat of a boycott is doing, his administration continues its power play. State Department Spokesman Robert A. Wood said the United States would reengage in the conference only if its document meets our criteria. The main remaining objection is to a section reaffirming the declaration of the 2001 UN conference on racism.
That 2001 declaration contains statements many Israelis consider hostile. Obama seems to be adopting a policy of killing the messenger rather than dealing with the message. He is reacting to the symptoms, not the cause. It is a narrow, ineffective response to Arab and world anger at Israel, some of it ugly, some of it anti-Semitic, but much of it rage over legitimate grievances. By limiting people’s right to speak their feelings and be heard, President Obama will have neutered the conference even if the United States finally participates in it.
Whatever Obama’s final decision on the boycott, some members of the Congressional Black Caucus are planning to attend the conference. Although Congress members don’t usually travel when in session, the leadership of the House Foreign Relations Committee is said to be open to the idea.
Meanwhile, the Black Caucus is trying to persuade the administration to attend, but without great success so far. In a meeting with State Department officials, the Caucus asked the obvious question: Why not just reject the parts of the document Obama cannot support, and go to the conference anyway? There is nothing radical about that. It is standard UN procedure to place a reservation on a particular paragraph of a document and then go on to endorse the rest of the document.
Instead of dealing with the logic of the Caucus’s question, the State Department staff just sputtered on about people trying to hijack the conference.
In the run-up to the conference, the Congressional Black Caucus will continue to speak to State Department officials. Its case will be strengthened by a national Call-Obama campaign organized by the TransAfrica Forum, which is working with the Caucus. In its statement announcing the campaign, the Forum said, "There is a widespread belief in the administration that our communities simply do not care about the upcoming conference. We know differently. "
It was, perhaps, a way of saying Obama is taking America’s black community for granted.
The chilling effect on the goodwill toward the States will only grow with Obama’s continued silence and reluctance to commit to attending the conference. Hopefully, he is "flexible" enough and brave enough to reverse the boycott before it does more damage to America and his administration.
THERE IS A bitter irony in America’s first black president continuing to boycott the UN’s international conference on racism scheduled for this month.
President Barack Obama’s position on attending the conference translates roughly into: Do it our way or we won’t play. He has already gotten all references to Israel, to reparations for slavery, and to a proposed ban on speech defaming any religion dropped from the conference’s draft document. Yet, he is still unwilling to have the United States attend. Even if the administration bullies its way into getting its final points, it is not really a win for the United States.
Obama’s foot dragging and threat of a boycott will begin to deplete whatever goodwill he has created for himself and America in the nations of color. People in those countries, like many Americans, hoped he would head up the fight for racial justice, not become one of the obstacles to it.
The president’s decision to boycott will undercut his attempt in Turkey to reach out to the Muslim world. It has been reported that the boycott was urged by members of the Jewish community in both the United States and Israel. If he continues to cave to that pressure, it will be seen in the Muslim world as more proof that America cannot be counted on as an honest broker in any peace process.
Despite the harm his threat of a boycott is doing, his administration continues its power play. State Department Spokesman Robert A. Wood said the United States would reengage in the conference only if its document meets our criteria. The main remaining objection is to a section reaffirming the declaration of the 2001 UN conference on racism.
That 2001 declaration contains statements many Israelis consider hostile. Obama seems to be adopting a policy of killing the messenger rather than dealing with the message. He is reacting to the symptoms, not the cause. It is a narrow, ineffective response to Arab and world anger at Israel, some of it ugly, some of it anti-Semitic, but much of it rage over legitimate grievances. By limiting people’s right to speak their feelings and be heard, President Obama will have neutered the conference even if the United States finally participates in it.
Whatever Obama’s final decision on the boycott, some members of the Congressional Black Caucus are planning to attend the conference. Although Congress members don’t usually travel when in session, the leadership of the House Foreign Relations Committee is said to be open to the idea.
Meanwhile, the Black Caucus is trying to persuade the administration to attend, but without great success so far. In a meeting with State Department officials, the Caucus asked the obvious question: Why not just reject the parts of the document Obama cannot support, and go to the conference anyway? There is nothing radical about that. It is standard UN procedure to place a reservation on a particular paragraph of a document and then go on to endorse the rest of the document.
Instead of dealing with the logic of the Caucus’s question, the State Department staff just sputtered on about people trying to hijack the conference.
In the run-up to the conference, the Congressional Black Caucus will continue to speak to State Department officials. Its case will be strengthened by a national Call-Obama campaign organized by the TransAfrica Forum, which is working with the Caucus. In its statement announcing the campaign, the Forum said, "There is a widespread belief in the administration that our communities simply do not care about the upcoming conference. We know differently. "
It was, perhaps, a way of saying Obama is taking America’s black community for granted.
The chilling effect on the goodwill toward the States will only grow with Obama’s continued silence and reluctance to commit to attending the conference. Hopefully, he is "flexible" enough and brave enough to reverse the boycott before it does more damage to America and his administration.
In Memory
TESTIMONY OF ABBIE HOFFMAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you please identify yourself for the record?
THE WITNESS: My name is Abbie. I am an orphan of America.
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the record show it is the defendant Hoffman who has taken the stand?
THE COURT: Oh, yes. It may so indicate. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Where do you reside?
THE WITNESS: I live in Woodstock Nation.
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you tell the Court and jury where it is?
THE WITNESS: Yes. It is a nation of alienated young people. We carry it around with us as a state of mind in the same way as the Sioux Indians carried the Sioux nation around with them. It is a nation dedicated to cooperation versus competition, to the idea that people should have better means of exchange than property or money, that there should be some other basis for human interaction. It is a nation dedicated to--
THE COURT: Just where it is, that is all.
THE WITNESS: It is in my mind and in the minds of my brothers and sisters. It does not consist of property or material but, rather, of ideas and certain values. We believe in a society--
THE COURT: No, we want the place of residence, if he has one, place of doing business, if you have a business. Nothing about philosophy or India, sir. Just where you live, if you have a place to live. Now you said Woodstock. In what state is Woodstock?
THE WITNESS: It is in the state of mind, in the mind of myself and my brothers and sisters. It is a conspiracy. Presently, the nation is held captive, in the penitentiaries of the institutions of a decaying system.
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you tell the Court and jury your present age?
THE WITNESS: My age is 33. 1 am a child of the 60s.
MR. WEINGLASS: When were you born?
THE WITNESS: Psychologically, 1960.
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please. I move to strike the answer.
MR. WEINGLASS: What is the actual date of your birth?
THE WITNESS: November 30,1936.
MR. WEINGLASS: Between the date of your birth, November 30, 1936, and May 1, 1960, what if anything occurred in your life?
THE WITNESS: Nothing. I believe it is called an American education.
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
THE WITNESS: Huh.
MR. WEINGLASS: Abbie, could you tell the Court and jury--
MR. SCHULTZ: His name isn't Abbie. I object to this informality.
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you tell the Court and jury what is your present occupation?
THE WITNESS: I am a cultural revolutionary. Well, I am really a defendant---full-time.
MR. WEINGLASS: What do you mean by the phrase "cultural revolutionary?"
THE WITNESS: Well, I suppose it is a person who tries to shape and participate in the values, and the mores, the customs and the style of living of new people who eventually become inhabitants of a new nation and a new society through art and poetry, theater, and music.
MR. WEINGLASS: What have you done yourself to participate in that revolution?
THE WITNESS: Well, I have been a rock and roll singer. I am a reporter with the Liberation News Service. I am a poet. I am a film maker. I made a movie called "Yippies Tour Chicago or How I Spent My Summer Vacation." Currently, I am negotiating with United Artists and MGM to do a movie in Hollywood.
I have written an extensive pamphlet on how to live free in the city of New York.
I have written two books, one called Revolution for The Hell of It under the pseudonym Free, and one called, Woodstock Nation.
MR. WEINGLASS: Taking you back to the spring of 1960, approximately May 1, 1960, will you tell the Court and jury where you were?
MR. SCHULTZ: 1960?
THE WITNESS: That's right.
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, that date has great relevance to the trial. May 1, 1960, was this witness' first public demonstration. I am going to bring him down through Chicago.
THE COURT: Not in my presence, you are not going to bring him down. I sustain the objection to the question.
THE WITNESS: My background has nothing to do with my state of mind?
THE COURT: Will you remain quiet while I am making a ruling? I know you have no respect for me.
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, that is totally unwarranted. I think your remarks call for a motion for a mistrial.
THE COURT: And your motion calls for a denial of the motion. Mr. Weinglass, continue with your examination.
MR. KUNSTLER: You denied my motion? I hadn't even started to argue it.
THE COURT: I don't need any argument on that one. The witness turned his back on me while he was on the witness stand.
THE WITNESS: I was just looking at the pictures of the long hairs up on the wall . . . .
THE COURT: . . . . I will let the witness tell about this asserted conversation with Mr. Rubin on the occasion described.
MR. WEINGLASS: What was the conversation at that time?
THE WITNESS: Jerry Rubin told me that he had come to New York to be project director of a peace march in Washington that was going to march to the Pentagon in October, October 21. He said that the peace movement suffered from a certain kind of attitude, mainly that it was based solely on the issue of the Vietnam war. He said that the war in Vietnam was not just an accident but a direct by-product of the kind of system, a capitalist system in the country, and that we had to begin to put forth new kinds of values, especially to young people in the country, to make a kind of society in which a Vietnam war would not be possible.
And he felt that these attitudes and values were present in the hippie movement and many of the techniques, the guerrilla theater techniques that had been used and many of these methods of communication would allow for people to participate and become involved in a new kind of democracy.
I said that the Pentagon was a five-sided evil symbol in most religions and that it might be possible to approach this from a religious point of view. If we got large numbers of people to surround the Pentagon, we could exorcize it of its evil spirits.
So I had agreed at that point to begin working on the exorcism of the Pentagon demonstration.
MR. WEINGLASS: Prior to the date of the demonstration which is October, did you go to the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: Yes. I went about a week or two before with one of my close brothers, Martin Carey, a poster maker, and we measured the Pentagon, the two of us, to see how many people would fit around it. We only had to do one side because it is just multiplied by five.
We got arrested. It's illegal to measure the Pentagon. I didn't know it up to that point.
When we were arrested they asked us what we were doing. We said it was to measure the Pentagon and we wanted a permit to raise it 300 feet in the air, and they said "How about 10?" So we said "OK".
And they threw us out of the Pentagon and we went back to New York and had a press conference, told them what it was about.
We also introduced a drug called lace, which, when you squirted it at the policemen made them take their clothes off and make love, a very potent drug.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you mean literally that the building was to rise up 300 feet off the ground?
MR. SCHULTZ: I can't cross-examine about his meaning literally.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. SCHULTZ: I would ask Mr. Weinglass please get on with the trial of this case and stop playing around with raising the Pentagon 10 feet or 300 feet off the ground.
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, I am glad to see Mr. Schultz finally concedes that things like levitating the Pentagon building, putting LSD in the water, 10,000 people walking nude on Lake Michigan, and a $200,000 bribe attempt are all playing around. I am willing to concede that fact, that it was all playing around, it was a play idea of this witness, and if he is willing to concede it, we can all go home.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you intend that the people who surrounded the Pentagon should do anything of a violent nature whatever to cause the building to rise 300 feet in the air and be exercised of evil spirits?
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you indicate to the Court and jury whether or not the Pentagon was, in fact, exercised of its evil spirits?
THE WITNESS: Yes, I believe it was. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, drawing your attention to the first week of December 1967, did you have occasion to meet with Jerry Rubin and the others?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you relate to the Court and jury what the conversation was?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
We talked about the possibility of having demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Illinois, that was going to be occurring that August. I am not sure that we knew at that point that it was in Chicago. Wherever it was, we were planning on going.
Jerry Rubin, I believe, said that it would be a good idea to call it the Festival of Life in contrast to the Convention of Death, and to have it in some kind of public area, like a park or something, in Chicago.
One thing that I was very particular about was that we didn't have any concept of leadership involved. There was a feeling of young people that they didn't want to listen to leaders. We had to create a kind of situation in which people would be allowed to participate and become in a real sense their own leaders.
I think it was then after this that Paul Krassner said the word "YIPPIE," and we felt that that expressed in a kind of slogan and advertising sense the spirit that we wanted to put forth in Chicago, and we adopted that as our password, really. . . .
Anita [Hoffman] said that "Yippie" would be understood by our generation, that straight newspapers like the New York Times and the U.S. Government and the courts and everything wouldn't take it seriously unless it had a formal name, so she came up with the name: "Youth International Party." She said we could play a lot of jokes on the concept of "party" because everybody would think that we were this huge international conspiracy, but that in actuality we were a party that you had fun at.
Nancy [Kursham] said that fun was an integral ingredient, that people in America, because they were being programmed like IBM cards, weren't having enough fun in life and that if you watched television, the only people that you saw having any fun were people who were buying lousy junk on television commercials, and that this would be a whole new attitude because you would see people, young people, having fun while they were protesting the system, and that young people all around this country and around the world would be turned on for that kind of an attitude.
I said that fun was very important, too, that it was a direct rebuttal of the kind of ethics and morals that were being put forth in the country to keep people working in a rat race which didn't make any sense because in a few years that machines would do all the work anyway, that there was a whole system of values that people were taught to postpone their pleasure, to put all their money in the bank, to buy life insurance, a whole bunch of things that didn't make any sense to our generation at all, and that fun actually was becoming quite subversive.
Jerry said that because of our action at the Stock Exchange in throwing out the money, that within a few weeks the Wall Street brokers there had totally enclosed the whole stock exchange in bulletproof, shatterproof glass, that cost something like $20,000 because they were afraid we'd come back and throw money out again.
He said that for hundreds of years political cartoonists had always pictured corrupt politicians in the guise of a pig, and he said that it would be great theater if we ran a pig for President, and we all took that on as like a great idea and that's more or less---that was the founding.
MR. WEINGLASS: The document that is before you, D-222 for identification, what is that document?
THE WITNESS: It was our initial call to people to describe what Yippie was about and why we were coming to Chicago.
Mk. WEINGLASS: Now, Abbie, could you read the entire document to the jury.
THE WITNESS: It says:
"A STATEMENT FROM YIP!
"Join us in Chicago in August for an international festival of youth, music, and theater. Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball! Come all you rebels, youth spirits, rock minstrels, truth-seekers, peacock-freaks, poets, barricade-jumpers, dancers, lovers and artists!
"It is summer. It is the last week in August, and the NATIONAL DEATH PARTY meets to bless Lyndon Johnson. We are there! There are 50,000 of us dancing in the streets, throbbing with amplifiers and harmony. We are making love in the parks. We are reading, singing, laughing, printing newspapers, groping, and making a mock convention, and celebrating the birth of FREE AMERICA in our own time.
"Everything will be free. Bring blankets, tents, draft-cards, body-paint, Mr. Leary's Cow, food to share, music, eager skin, and happiness. The threats of LBJ, Mayor Daley, and J. Edgar Freako will not stop us. We are coming! We are coming from all over the world!
"The life of the American spirit is being torn asunder by the forces of violence, decay, and the napalm-cancer fiend. We demand the Politics of Ecstasy! We are the delicate spores of the new fierceness that will change America. We will create our own reality, we are Free America! And we will not accept the false theater of the Death Convention.
"We will be in Chicago. Begin preparations now! Chicago is yours! Do it!"
"Do it!" was a slogan like "Yippie." We use that a lot and it meant that each person that came should take on the responsibility for being his own leader-that we should, in fact, have a leaderless society.
We shortly thereafter opened an office and people worked in the office on what we call movement salaries, subsistence, thirty dollars a week. We had what the straight world would call a staff and an office although we called it an energy center and regarded ourselves as a tribe or a family.
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you explain to the Court and jury, if you know, how this staff functioned in your office?
THE WITNESS: Well, I would describe it as anarchistic. People would pick up the phone and give information and people from all over the country were now becoming interested and they would ask for more information, whether we were going to get a permit, how the people in Chicago were relating, and we would bring flyers and banners and posters. We would have large general meetings that were open to anybody who wanted to come.
MR. WEINGLASS: How many people would attend these weekly meetings?
THE WITNESS: There were about two to three hundred people there that were attending the meetings. Eventually we had to move into Union Square and hold meetings out in the public. There would be maybe three to five hundred people attending meetings. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Where did you go [March 23], if you can recall
THE WITNESS: I flew to Chicago to observe a meeting being sponsored, I believe, by the National Mobilization Committee. It was held at a place called Lake Villa, I believe, about twenty miles outside of Chicago here.
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall how you were dressed for that meeting?
THE WITNESS: I was dressed as an Indian. I had gone to Grand Central Station as an Indian and so I just got on a plane and flew as an Indian.
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, when you flew to Chicago, were you alone?
THE WITNESS: No. Present were Jerry, myself, Paul Krassner, and Marshall Bloom, the head of this Liberation News Service.
MR. WEINGLASS: When you arrived at Lake Villa, did you have occasion to meet any of the defendants who are seated here at this table?
THE WITNESS: Yes, I met for the first time Rennie, Tom Hayden---who I had met before, and that's it, you know. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Was any decision reached at that meeting about coming to Chicago?
THE WITNESS: I believe that they debated for two days about whether they should come or not to Chicago. They decided to have more meetings. We said we had already made up our minds to come to Chicago and we passed out buttons and posters and said that if they were there, good, it would be a good time.
MR. WEINGLASS: Following the Lake Villa conference, do you recall where you went?
THE WITNESS: Yes. The next day, March 25, 1 went to the Aragon Ballroom. It was a benefit to raise money again for the Yippies but we had a meeting backstage in one of the dressing rooms with the Chicago Yippies.
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall what was discussed?
THE WITNESS: Yes. We drafted a permit application for the Festival to take place in Chicago. We agreed that Grant Park would be best.
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to the following morning, which was Monday morning, March 26, do you recall where you were at that morning?
THE WITNESS: We went to the Parks Department. Jerry was there, Paul, Helen Runningwater, Abe Peck, Reverend John Tuttle---there were a group of about twenty to thirty people, Yippies.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you meet with anyone at the Park District at that time?
THE WITNESS: Yes. There were officials from the Parks Department to greet us, they took us into this office, and we presented a permit application.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever receive a reply to this application?
THE WITNESS: Not to my knowledge.
MR. WEINGLASS: After your meeting with the Park District, where, if anywhere, did you go?
THE WITNESS: We held a brief press conference on the lawn in front of the Parks Department, and then we went to see Mayor Daley at City Hall. When we arrived, we were told that the mayor was indisposed and that Deputy Mayor David Stahl would see us.
MR. WEINGLASS: When you met with Deputy Mayor Stahl, what, if anything, occurred?
THE WITNESS: Helen Runningwater presented him with a copy of the permit application that we had submitted to the Parks Department. It was rolled up in the Playmate of the Month that said "To Dick with Love, the Yippies," on it. And we presented it to him and gave him a kiss and put a Yippie button on him, and when he opened it up, the Playmate was just there.
And he was very embarrassed by the whole thing, and he said that we had followed the right procedure, the city would give it proper attention and things like that . . . .
December 29, 1969
MR. WEINGLASS: I direct your attention now to August 5, 1968, and I ask you where you were on that day.
THE WITNESS: I was in my apartment, St. Marks Place, on the Lower East Side in New York City.
MR. WEINGLASS: Who was with you?
THE WITNESS: Jerry Rubin was there, Paul Krassner was there, and Nancy. Anita was there; five of us, I believe.
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you describe the conversation which occurred between you and Abe Peck on the telephone?
THE WITNESS: Mr. Peck and other people from Chicago, Yippies---had just returned from a meeting on Monday afternoon with David Stahl and other people from the City administration. He said that he was quite shocked because---they said that they didn't know that we wanted to sleep in the park.
Abe Peck said that it had been known all along that one of the key elements of this Festival was to let us sleep in the park, that it was impossible for people to sleep in hotels since the delegates were staying there and it would only be natural to sleep in the park.
He furthermore told me in his opinion the City was laying down certain threats to them in order to try and get them to withdraw their permit application, and that we should come immediately back to Chicago.
MR. WEINGLASS: After that phone conversation what occurred?
THE WITNESS: We subsequently went to Chicago on August 7 at night.
MR.WEINGLASS: Did a meeting occur on that evening?
THE WITNESS: Yes, in Mayor Daley's press conference room, where he holds his press conferences.
MR. WEINGLASS: Can y ou relate what occurred at this meeting?
THE WITNESS: It was more or less an informal kind of meeting. Mr. Stahl made clear that these were just exploratory talks, that the mayor didn't have it in his power to grant the permits. We said that that was absurd, that we had been negotiating now for a period of four or five months, that the City was acting like an ostrich, sticking its head in the sand, hoping that we would all go away like it was some bad dream.
I pointed out that it was in the best interests of the City to have us in Lincoln Park ten miles away from the Convention hall. I said we had no intention of marching on the Convention hall, that I didn't particularly think that politics in America could be changed by marches and rallies, that what we were presenting was an alternative life style, and we hoped that people of Chicago would come up, and mingle in Lincoln Park and see what we were about.
I said that the City ought to give us a hundred grand, a hundred thousand dollars to run the Festival. It would be so much in their best interests.
And then I said, "Why don't you just give two hundred grand, and I'll split town?"
It was a very informal meeting. We were just sitting around on metal chairs that they had.
All the time David Stahl had been insisting that they did not make decisions in the city, that he and the mayor did not make the decisions. We greeted this with a lot of laughter and said that it was generally understood all around the country that Daley was the boss of Chicago and made all the decisions.
I also said that I considered that our right to assemble in Lincoln Park and to present our society was a right that I was willing to die for, that this was a fundamental human right . . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: On August 14, approximately three days later, in the morning of that day, do you recall where you were?
THE WITNESS: I went to speak to Jay Miller, head of the American Civil Liberties Union. I asked if it was possible for them to work with us on an injunction in the Federal court to sue Mayor Daley and other city officials about the fact that they would not grant us a permit and were denying us our right to freedom of speech and assembly.
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, can you relate to the Court and jury what happened in court when you appeared at 10:00 A.M.?
THE WITNESS: It was heard before Judge Lynch.
There was a fantastic amount of guards all over the place.
We were searched, made to take off our shirts, empty our pockets---
MR. SCHULTZ. That is totally irrelevant. There happened to be threats at that time, your Honor---
THE WITNESS: He is right. There were threats. I had twenty that week.
THE COURT: The language, "There were a fantastic amount of guards," may go out and the jury is directed to disregard them.
MR. WEINGLASS: After the---
THE WITNESS: We came before the judge. It was a room similar to this, similar, kind of wall-to wall bourgeois, rugs and neon lights. Federal courts are all the same, I think.
The judge made a couple of references to us in the room, said that our dress was an affront to the Court.
It was pointed out by a lawyer that came by that Judge Lynch was Mayor Daley's ex-law partner. As as result of this conversation we went back into court about twenty, thirty minutes later.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you speak to the Court?
THE WITNESS: I spoke to Judge Lynch. I said that we were withdrawing our suit, that we had as little faith in the judicial system in this country as we had in the political system.
He said, "Be careful, young man. I will find a place for you to sleep."
And I thanked him for that, said I had one, and left.
We withdrew our suit. Then we had a press conference downstairs to explain the reasons for that. We explained to the press that we were leaving in our permit application but withdrawing our Federal injunction to sue the city. We said it was a bit futile to end up before a judge, Judge Lynch, who was the ex-law partner of Mayor Daley, that the Federal judges were closely tied in with the Daley and Democratic political machine in Chicago and that we could have little recourse of grievance.
Furthermore, that we suspected that the judge would order us not to go into Lincoln Park at all and that if we did, that we would be in violation of contempt of court, and that it was a setup, and Judge Lynch planned to lynch us in the same way that Stahl was stalling us.
I pointed out that the names in this thing were getting really absurd, similarities. I also read a list of Yippie demands that I had written that morning--sort of Yippie philosophy.
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, will you read for the Court and jury the eighteen demands first, then the postscript.
THE WITNESS: I will read it in the order that I wrote it. "Revolution toward a free society, Yippie, by A. Yippie.
"This is a personal statement. There are no spokesmen for the Yippies. We are all our own leaders. We realize this list of demands is inconsistent. They are not really demands. For people to make demands of the Democratic Party is an exercise in wasted wish fulfillment. If we have a demand, it is simply and emphatically that they, along with their fellow inmates in the Republican Party, cease to exist. We demand a society built along the alternative community in Lincoln Park, a society based on humanitarian cooperation and equality, a society which allows and promotes the creativity present in all people and especially our youth.
"Number one. An immediate end to the war in Vietnam and a restructuring of our foreign policy which totally eliminates aspects of military, economic and cultural imperialism; the withdrawal of all foreign based troops and the abolition of military draft.
"Two. An immediate freedom for Huey Newton of the Black Panthers and all other black people; adoption of the community control concept in our ghetto areas; an end to the cultural and economic domination of minority groups.
"Three. The legalization of marijuana and all other psychedelic drugs; the freeing of all prisoners currently imprisoned on narcotics charges.
"Number four. A prison system based on the concept of rehabilitation rather than punishment.
"Five. A judicial system which works towards the abolition of all laws related to crimes without victims; that is, retention only of laws relating to crimes in which there is an unwilling injured party: i.e. murder, rape, or assault.
"Six. The total disarmament of all the people beginning with the police. This includes not only guns but such brutal vices as tear gas, Mace, electric prods, blackjacks, billy clubs, and the like.
"Seven. The abolition of money, the abolition of pay housing, pay media, pay transportation, pay food, pay education. pay clothing, pay medical health, and pay toilets.
"Eight. A society which works towards and actively promotes the concept of full unemployment, a society in which people are free from the drudgery of work, adoption of the concept 'Let the machines do it.'
"Number ten. A program of ecological development that would provide incentives for the decentralization of crowded cities and encourage rural living.
"Eleven. A program which provides not only free birth control information and devices, but also abortions when desired.
"Twelve. A restructured educational system which provides a student power to determine his course of study, student participation in over-all policy planning; an educational system which breaks down its barriers between school and community; a system which uses the surrounding community as a classroom so that students may learn directly the problems of the people.
"Number thirteen. The open and free use of the media; a program which actively supports and promotes cable television as a method of increasing the selection of channels available to the viewer.
"Fourteen. An end to all censorship. We are sick of a society that has no hesitation about showing people committing violence and refuses to show a couple fucking.
"Fifteen. We believe that people should fuck all the time, any time, wherever they wish. This is not a programmed demand but a simple recognition of the reality around its.
"Sixteen. A political system which is more streamlined and responsive to the needs of all the people regardless of age. sex, or race; perhaps a national referendum system conducted via television or a telephone voting system; perhaps a decentralization of -power and authority with many varied tribal groups, groups in which people exist in a state of basic trust and are free to choose their tribe.
"Seventeen. A program that encourages and promotes the arts. However, we feel that if the free society we envision were to be sought for and achieved, all of us would actualize the creativity within us; in a very real sense we would have a society in which every man would be an artist.'
And eighteen was left blank for anybody to fill in what they wanted. "It was for these reasons that we had come to Chicago, it was for these reasons that many of us may fight and die here. We recognize this as the vision of the founders of this nation. We recognize that we are America; we recognize that we are free men. The present-day politicians and their armies of automatons have selfishly robbed us of our birthright. The evilness they stand for will go unchallenged no longer. Political pigs, your days are numbered. We are the second American Revolution. We shall win.
"YIPPIE."
MR. WEINGLASS: When you used the words "fight and die here," in what context were you using those words?
THE WITNESS: It is a metaphor. That means that we felt strongly about our right to assemble in the park and that people should be willing to take risks for it. It doesn't spell it out because people were capable of fighting in their own way and making their own decisions and We never would tell anyone specifically that they should fight, fistfight.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you during the week of the Convention and the period of time immediately before the Convention tell any person singly or in groups that they should fight in the park?
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to the morning of August 19, 1968, did you attend a meeting on that day?
THE WITNESS: Yes. I went to the office of the Mobilization Committee.
MR. WEINGLASS: Was there a discussion?
THE WITNESS: I never stayed long at these meetings. I just went and made an announcement and maybe stayed ten or fifteen minutes. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Was there a course given in snake dancing on that day also?
THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes. People would have a pole and there would be about six people, and then about six people behind them, holding them around the waist, four or five lines of these people with men, women, and kids maybe eight years old in on this whole thing, and people would bounce from one foot to the other and yell "Wash oi, Wash oi," which is kind of Japanese for "Yippie," I guess.
And they would just march up and down the park like this, mostly laughing and giggling, because the newsmen were taking this quite seriously, and then at a certain point everybody would turn in and sort of just collapse and fall on the ground and laugh. I believe we lost about four or five Yippies during that great training.
The exciting part was when the police arrested two army intelligence officers in the trees.
MR. WEINGLASS: During the course of that day when you were in the park, did you notice that the police were hanging any signs in the park?
THE WITNESS: Late in the day, maybe four or five, I became aware that there were police nailing signs on the trees that said "11:00 p.m. curfew," maybe a few other words, but that was the gist of the signs.
MR. WEINGLASS: From Friday, August 23, on to the end of Convention week, did you ever discuss with any people the question of staying in the park after the curfew hours?
THE WITNESS: At a meeting on August 24, that subject came up, and there was lengthy discussion. ..
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, did you hear Jerry Rubin speak at that meeting?
THE WITNESS: Jerry said that the park wasn't worth fighting for; that we should leave at the eleven p.m. curfew. He said that we should put out a statement to that effect.
MR. WEINGLASS: And did you speak at that meeting?
THE WITNESS: I reported on a meeting that morning with Chief Lynskey. I had asked the Chicago cops who were tailing me to take me to Chief Lynskey who was in charge of the area of Lincoln Park. I went up to the chief and said, "Well, are you going to let us have the Festival?"
He said "No festival under any circumstances. If anybody breaks one city ordinance in that park, we clear the whole park."
He said, "You do any one thing wrong and I will arrest you on sight."
He said, "Why don't you try to kick me in the shins right now?"
And I said NBC wasn't there.
And he said, "Well, at least the kid's honest," and stuff like that.
Then I gave a speech to the police that were all assembled and I said, "Have a good time." I said, "The National Guard's coming in, they're probably going to whip you guys up, and I hope your walkie-talkies work better than ours," and stuff like that. And I just walked out.
Then we discussed what we were going to do. I said it was my feeling that Chicago was in a total state of anarchy as far as the police mentality worked. I said that we were going to have to fight for every single thing, we were going to have to fight for the electricity, we were going to have to fight to have the stage come in, we were going to have to fight for every rock musician to play, that the whole week was going to be like that.
I said that we should proceed with the festival as planned, we should try to do everything that we had come to Chicago to do, even though the police and the city officials were standing in our way.
MR. WEINGLASS: During the course of this Saturday and prior to this meeting, did you have occasion to meet Irv Bock in the park?
THE WITNESS: Oh, I met Irv Bock Saturday afternoon during some of the marshal training. Marshal training is a difficult phrase to use for Yippies. We always have a reluctance to marshals because they are telling people what to do and we were more anarchistic than that, more leaderless.
I sort of bumped into Irv Bock. I showed him a---it wasn't a gas mask but it was a thing with two plastic eyes and a little piece of leather that I got, I purchased in an army-navy store for about nineteen cents, and I said that these would be good protection against Mace.
He started running down to me all this complicated military jargon and I looked at him and said, "Irv, you're a cop, ain't you?"
He sort of smiled and said, "No, I'm not."
"Come on," I said, "We don't grow peaceniks that big. We are all quarterbacks. You've got to be a cop.''
I said, "Show me your wallet."
So he said, "No, no. Don't you trust me?"
So I said, "Irv," I said, "last night there was a guy running around my house with a pistol trying to kill me," that I had twenty threats that week, and at that point I didn't trust Jerry Rubin. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to approximately two o'clock in the morning, which would now be Monday morning, do you recall what you were doing?
THE WITNESS: I made a telephone call to David Stahl, Deputy Mayor of Chicago at his home. I had his home number.
I said, "Hi, Dave. How's it going? Your police got to be the dumbest and the most brutal in the country," I said.
"The decision to drive people out of the park in order to protect the City was about the dumbest military tactic since the Trojans let the Trojan horse inside the gate and there was nothing to be compared with that stupidity."
I again pleaded with him to let people stay in the park the following night. "There will be more people coming Monday, Tuesday, and subsequently Wednesday night," I said, "and they should be allowed to sleep." I said that he ought to intercede with the Police Department. I said to him that the City officials, in particular his boss, Daley, were totally out of their minds.
I said, "I read in the paper the day before that they had 2,000 troops surrounding the reservoirs in order to protect against the Yippie plot to dump LSD in the drinking water. There isn't a kid in the country," I said, "never mind a Yippie, who thinks that such a thing could be done."
I told him to check with all the scientists at the University of Chicago---he owned them all.
He said that he knew it couldn't be done, but they weren't taking any chances anyway . . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you tell the Court and jury where you were in Lincoln Park at approximately 11:30 Monday night?
THE WITNESS: I was walking through the barricade, my wife Anita and I.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you see Allen Ginsberg at the barricade?
THE WITNESS: Yes. He was kneeling.
There was a crowd of people around. He was playing that instrument that he plays and people were chanting.
There was a police car that would come by and I believe it was making announcements and people would yell at the police car, you know, "Beat it. Get out. The parks belong to the people. Oink Oink. Pig Pig. Pigs are coming. Peace Now."
People were waving flags. People were running around being scared and people were running around sort of joyous. I mean, it was strange, different emotions. It was very dark in that place.
MR. SCHULTZ: The witness is not answering the question any more. He is giving another essay. I object.
MR. WEINGLASS: When the police finally came to the barricade, from what direction did they come?
THE WITNESS: They came in through the zoo.
They proceeded to climb and immediately started to club people.
They were throwing parts of the barricade, trashcans, at people.
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, at the time the police came to the barricade what did you do?
THE WITNESS: Well, I was coughing and spitting because there was tear gas totally flooding the air, cannisters were exploding all around me---I moved with the people out this way, out of the park trying to duck, picking up people that were being clubbed, getting off the ground myself a few times.
The police were just coming through in this wedge, solid wedge, clubbing people right and left, and I tried to get out of the park.
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to approximately six o'clock the following morning, do you recall where you were?
THE WITNESS: I got in the car of the police that were following me and asked them to take me to the beach---the beach part of Lincoln Park.
MR. WEINGLASS: What was occurring when you got there?
THE WITNESS: Allen Ginsberg and about---oh 150-200 people were kneeling, most of the people in lotus position which is a position with their legs crossed like this---chanting and praying and meditating.
There were five or six police cars on the boardwalk right in back, and there were police surrounding the group. Dawn was breaking. It was very cold, very chilly. People had a number of blankets wrapped around them, sitting in a circle.
I went and sat next to Allen and chanted and prayed for about an hour. Then I talked to the group. People would give talks about their feelings of what was going on in Chicago. I said, "I am very sad about what has happened in Chicago.
"What is going on here is very beautiful, but it won't be in the evening news that night.
"The American mass media is a glutton for violence, and it would be only shots of what was happening in the streets of Chicago."
I said, "America can't be changed by people sitting and praying, and this is an unfortunate reality that we have to face."
I said that we were a community that had to learn how to survive, that we had seen what had happened the last few nights in Lincoln Park. We had seen the destruction of the Festival.
I said, "I will never again tell people to sit quietly and pray for change.". . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to approximately 6:00 A.M. the following morning, Wednesday, August 28, do you recall what you were doing?
THE WITNESS: I went to eat. I went with Paul Krassner, Beverly Baskinger, and Anita and four police officers--- Paul also had two Chicago police officers following him, as well as the two that were following me. We walked and the four of them would drive along behind us.
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you describe for the jury and the Court what you were wearing at that time?
THE WITNESS: Well, I had cowboy boots, and brown pants and a shirt, and I had a grey felt ranger cowboy type hat down over my eyes, like this.
MR.WEINGLASS: What, if anything occurred while you were sitting there having breakfast?
THE WITNESS: Well, two policemen came in and said, "We have orders to arrest you. You have something under your hat."
So I asked them if they had a search warrant and I said 'Did you check it out with Commander Braasch? Me and him got an agreement"---and they went to check it out with him, while we were eating breakfast.
MR. WEINGLASS: After a period of time, did they come back?
THE WITNESS: They came back with more police officers---there were about four or five patrol cars surrounding the restaurant. The Red Squad cops who had been following us came in the restaurant, four or five police, and they said, "We checked. Now will you take off your hat?" They were stern, more serious about it.
MR. WEINGLASS: What did you do?
THE WITNESS: Well, I lifted up the hat and I went "Bang! Bang!"
They grabbed me by the jacket and pulled me across the bacon and eggs and Anita over the table, threw me on the floor and out the door and threw me against the car, and they handcuffed me.
I was just eating the bacon and going "Oink Oink!"
MR. WEINGLASS: Did they tell you why you were being arrested?
THE WITNESS: They said they arrested me because I had the word "Fuck" on my forehead. I had put it on with this magic marker before we left the house. They called it an "obscenary."
I put it on for a couple of reasons, One was that I was tired of seeing my picture in the paper and having newsmen come around, and I know if you got that word on your forehead they ain't going to print your picture in the paper. Secondly, it sort of summed up my attitude about the whole thing---what was going on in Chicago.
I like that four letter word---I thought it was kind of holy, actually.
MR. WEINGLASS: Abbie Hoffman, prior to coming to Chicago, from April 1968 on to the week of the Convention, did you enter into an agreement with David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner or Rennie Davis, to come to the city of Chicago for the purpose of encouraging and promoting violence during the Convention week?
THE WITNESS: An agreement?
MR. WEINGLASS: Yes.
THE WITNESS: We couldn't agree on lunch.
MR. WEINGLASS: I have no further questions.
THE COURT: Cross-examine.
MR. SCHULTZ: Thank you, your Honor. . . .
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you see numerous instances of people attacking the Guardsmen at the Pentagon, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS. I don not believe that I saw any instances of people attacking National Guardsmen. In fact, the attitude was one of comradeship. They would talk to the National Guardsmen continuously and tell them they were not the people that they had come to confront, that they were their brothers and you don't get people to oppose [their ways] by attacking them.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, the Guards and the troops were trying to keep the people from entering into the Pentagon for two days, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: I assume that they were there to guard the Pentagon from rising in the air possibly. I mean, who knows what they are there for? Were you there?
You probably watched it on television and got a different impression of what was happening. That is one aspect of myth-making---you can envisualize hoardes and hoardes of people when in reality that was not what happened.
MR SCHULTZ: Did you see some people urinate on the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: On the Pentagon itself?
MR. SCHULTZ: Or at the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: There were over 100,000 people. People have that biological habit, you know.
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you symbolically urinate on the Pentagon, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: I symbolically urinate on the Pentagon?
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes.
THE WITNESS: I didn't get that close. Pee on the walls of the Pentagon?
You are getting to be out of sight, actually. You think there is a law against it?
MR. SCHULTZ: Are you done, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: I am done when you are.
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you ever state that a sense of integration possesses you and comes from pissing on the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: I said from combining political attitudes with biological necessity, there is a sense of integration, yes.
MR. SCHULTZ: You had a good time at the Pentagon, didn't you. Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: Yes I did. I'm having a good time now too. I feel that biological necessity now. Could I be excused for a slight recess?
THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we will take a brief recess.
(brief recess)
MR. SCHULTZ: On the seventh of August, you told David Stahl that at your liberated area you---
THE WITNESS: What meeting was this, August 7?
MR. SCHULTZ: That's when you just flew in from New York.
THE WITNESS: Crossing state lines---
MR. SCHULTZ: At this meeting on the evening of August 7, you told Mr. Stahl that you were going to have nude-ins in your liberated zone, didn't you?
THE WITNESS: A nude-in? I don't believe I would use that phrase, no. I don't think it's very poetic, frankly.
I might have told him that ten thousand people were going to walk naked on the waters of Lake Michigan, something like that.
MR. SCHULTZ: You told him, did you not, Mr. Hoffman, that in your liberated zone, you would have---
THE WITNESS: I'm not even sure what it is, a nude-in.
MR. SCHULTZ: ---public fornication.
THE WITNESS: If it means ten thousand people, naked people, walking on Lake Michigan, yes.
MR.KUNSTLER: I object to this because Mr.Schultz is acting like a dirty old man.
MR. SCHULTZ: We are not going into dirty old men. If they are going to have nude-ins and public fornication, the City officials react to that, and I am establishing through this witness that that's what be did.
THE COURT: Do you object?
MR. KUNSTLER: I am just remarking, your Honor, that a young man can be a dirty old man.
THE WITNESS: I don't mind talking about it.
THE COURT: I could make an observation. I have seen some exhibits here that are not exactly exemplary documents.
MR. KUNSTLER: But they are, your Honor, only from your point of view-making a dirty word of something that can be beautiful and lovely, and---
MR. SCHULTZ: We are not litigating here, your Honor, whether sexual intercourse is beautiful or not. We are litigating whether or not the City could permit tens of thousands of people to come in and do in their parks what this man said they were going to do.
In getting people to Chicago you created your Yippie myth, isn't that right? And part of your myth was "We'll burn Chicago to the ground," isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: It was part of the myth that there were trainloads of dynamite headed for Chicago, it was part of the myth that they were going to form white vigilante groups and round up demonstrators. All these things were part of the myth. A myth is a process of telling stories, most of which ain't true.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman---
Your Honor, Mr. Davis is having a very fine time here whispering at me. He has been doing it for the last twenty minutes. He moved up here when I started the examination so he could whisper in my ear. I would ask Mr. Davis, if he cannot be quiet, to move to another part of the table so that he will stop distracting me.
THE COURT: Try not to speak too loudly, Mr. Davis.
MR. DAVIS: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: Go ahead.
THE WITNESS: Go ahead, Dick.
MR. SCHULTZ: Didn't you state, Mr. Hoffman, that part of the myth that was being created to get people to come to Chicago was that "We will fuck on the beaches"?
THE WITNESS: Yes, me and Marshall McLuhan. Half of that quote was from Marshall McLuhan.
MR. SCHULTZ: "And there will be acid for all" ---that was another one of your Yippie myths, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: That was well known.
MR. SCHULTZ: By the way, was there any acid in Lincoln Park in Chicago?
THE WITNESS: In the reservoir, in the lake?
MR. SCHULTZ: No, among the people.
THE WITNESS: Well, there might have been, I don't know. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless. One can never tell. . . .
MR. SCHULTZ: The fact is, Mr. Hoffman, that what you were trying to do was to create a situation where the State and the United States Government would have to bring in the Army and bring in the National Guard during the Convention in order to protect the delegates so that it would appear that the Convention had to be held under military conditions, isn't that a fact, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: You can do that with a yo-yo in this country. It's quite easy. You can see just from this courtroom. Look at all the troops around---
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the answer be stricken?
THE COURT: Yes, it may go out. . . .
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, in the afternoon on that Thursday you participated ;in a march, and then you laid down in front of an armored personnel carrier at the end of that march, at 16th or 19th on Michigan, laid down on the street?
THE WITNESS: Was that what it was? I thought it was a tank.
It looked like a tank.
Do you want me to show you how I did it? Laid down in front of the tank?
MR. SCHULTZ: All right, Mr. Hoffman. Did you make any gestures of any sort?
THE WITNESS: When I was laying down? See. I went like that, lying down in front of the tank.
I had seen Czechoslovakian students do it to Russian tanks.
MR. SCHULTZ: And then you saw a Chicago police officer who appeared to be in high command because of all the things he had on his shoulders come over to the group and start leading them back toward Grant Park, didn't you?
THE WITNESS: He came and then people left---and went back to the park, yes.
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you say to anybody, "Well, you see that cat?", pointing to Deputy Superintendent Rochford. "When we get to the top of the hill, if the cat doesn't talk right, we're going to hold him there, and then we can do whatever we want and the police won't bother us." Did you say that to anybody out there, Mr. Hoffman?
MR. WEINGLASS: That's the testimony of the intelligence officer, the intelligence police officer of the Chicago Police Department.
THE WITNESS: I asked the Chicago police officers to help me kidnap Deputy Superintendent Rochford? That's pretty weird.
MR. SCHULTZ: Isn't it a fact that you announced publicly a plan to kidnap the head pig---
THE WITNESS: Cheese, wasn't it?
MR. SCHULTZ: ---and then snuff him---
THE WITNESS: I thought it was "cheese."
MR. SCHULTZ: ---and then snuff him if other policemen touched you? Isn't that a fact, sir?
THE WITNESS: I do not believe that I used the reference of "pig" to any policemen in Chicago including some of the top cheeses. I did not use it during that week. . .
MR. SCHULTZ: You and Albert, Mr. Hoffman, were united in Chicago in your determination to smash the system by using any means at your disposal, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: Did I write that?
MR. SCHULTZ: No, did you have that thought?
THE WITNESS: That thought? Is a thought like a dream? If I dreamed to smash the system, that's a thought. Yes, I had that thought.
THE COURT: Mr. Witness, you may not interrogate the lawyer who is examining you.
THE WITNESS: Judge, you have always told people to describe what they see or what they hear. I'm the only one that has to describe what I think.
MR. WEINGLASS: I object to any reference to what a person thought or his being tried for what he thought. He may be tried for his intent.
THE COURT: Overrule the objection.
THE WITNESS: Well, I had a lot of dreams at night. One of the dreams might have been that me and Stew were united.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, isn't it a fact that one of the reasons why you came to Chicago was simply to wreck American society?
THE WITNESS: My feeling at the time, and still is, that society is going to wreck itself. I said that on a number of occasions, that our role is to survive while the society comes tumbling down around us; our role is to survive.
We have to learn how to defend ourselves, given this type of society, because of the war in Vietnam, because of racism, because of the attack on the cultural revolution---in fact because of this trial.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, by Thursday, the twenty-ninth, the last day of the Convention, you knew you had smashed the Democrats' chances for victory, isn't that a fact?
THE WITNESS: No. My attitude was it was a type of psychic jujitsu where the people smash themselves--or the party wrecks themselves. The same way this trial is.
MR. SCHULTZ: By Thursday there was no doubt in your mind when you saw the acceptance speech that you had won, and there would be a pig in the White House in '69?
THE WITNESS: Well, that was our role in coming here, to nominate a pig. That pig did win. He didn't actually---which one did?
MR. SCHULTZ: And you went out for champagne, and you brought it back to Mobilization headquarters and toasted the revolution, you did just that, right?
THE WITNESS: We drank some champagne. It was warm, warm champagne.
MR. SCHULTZ: And toasted to your success, to your victory, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: We toasted to the fact that we were still alive.
That was the miracle as far as I saw it, is still being alive by that last Thursday.
MR. SCHULTZ: That's all, your Honor.
THE WITNESSS: Right on!
THE COURT: Have you finished your cross-examination?
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes, I have.
THE WITNESS: Right on!
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MR. WEINGLASS: Will you please identify yourself for the record?
THE WITNESS: My name is Abbie. I am an orphan of America.
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the record show it is the defendant Hoffman who has taken the stand?
THE COURT: Oh, yes. It may so indicate. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Where do you reside?
THE WITNESS: I live in Woodstock Nation.
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you tell the Court and jury where it is?
THE WITNESS: Yes. It is a nation of alienated young people. We carry it around with us as a state of mind in the same way as the Sioux Indians carried the Sioux nation around with them. It is a nation dedicated to cooperation versus competition, to the idea that people should have better means of exchange than property or money, that there should be some other basis for human interaction. It is a nation dedicated to--
THE COURT: Just where it is, that is all.
THE WITNESS: It is in my mind and in the minds of my brothers and sisters. It does not consist of property or material but, rather, of ideas and certain values. We believe in a society--
THE COURT: No, we want the place of residence, if he has one, place of doing business, if you have a business. Nothing about philosophy or India, sir. Just where you live, if you have a place to live. Now you said Woodstock. In what state is Woodstock?
THE WITNESS: It is in the state of mind, in the mind of myself and my brothers and sisters. It is a conspiracy. Presently, the nation is held captive, in the penitentiaries of the institutions of a decaying system.
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you tell the Court and jury your present age?
THE WITNESS: My age is 33. 1 am a child of the 60s.
MR. WEINGLASS: When were you born?
THE WITNESS: Psychologically, 1960.
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please. I move to strike the answer.
MR. WEINGLASS: What is the actual date of your birth?
THE WITNESS: November 30,1936.
MR. WEINGLASS: Between the date of your birth, November 30, 1936, and May 1, 1960, what if anything occurred in your life?
THE WITNESS: Nothing. I believe it is called an American education.
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
THE WITNESS: Huh.
MR. WEINGLASS: Abbie, could you tell the Court and jury--
MR. SCHULTZ: His name isn't Abbie. I object to this informality.
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you tell the Court and jury what is your present occupation?
THE WITNESS: I am a cultural revolutionary. Well, I am really a defendant---full-time.
MR. WEINGLASS: What do you mean by the phrase "cultural revolutionary?"
THE WITNESS: Well, I suppose it is a person who tries to shape and participate in the values, and the mores, the customs and the style of living of new people who eventually become inhabitants of a new nation and a new society through art and poetry, theater, and music.
MR. WEINGLASS: What have you done yourself to participate in that revolution?
THE WITNESS: Well, I have been a rock and roll singer. I am a reporter with the Liberation News Service. I am a poet. I am a film maker. I made a movie called "Yippies Tour Chicago or How I Spent My Summer Vacation." Currently, I am negotiating with United Artists and MGM to do a movie in Hollywood.
I have written an extensive pamphlet on how to live free in the city of New York.
I have written two books, one called Revolution for The Hell of It under the pseudonym Free, and one called, Woodstock Nation.
MR. WEINGLASS: Taking you back to the spring of 1960, approximately May 1, 1960, will you tell the Court and jury where you were?
MR. SCHULTZ: 1960?
THE WITNESS: That's right.
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, that date has great relevance to the trial. May 1, 1960, was this witness' first public demonstration. I am going to bring him down through Chicago.
THE COURT: Not in my presence, you are not going to bring him down. I sustain the objection to the question.
THE WITNESS: My background has nothing to do with my state of mind?
THE COURT: Will you remain quiet while I am making a ruling? I know you have no respect for me.
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, that is totally unwarranted. I think your remarks call for a motion for a mistrial.
THE COURT: And your motion calls for a denial of the motion. Mr. Weinglass, continue with your examination.
MR. KUNSTLER: You denied my motion? I hadn't even started to argue it.
THE COURT: I don't need any argument on that one. The witness turned his back on me while he was on the witness stand.
THE WITNESS: I was just looking at the pictures of the long hairs up on the wall . . . .
THE COURT: . . . . I will let the witness tell about this asserted conversation with Mr. Rubin on the occasion described.
MR. WEINGLASS: What was the conversation at that time?
THE WITNESS: Jerry Rubin told me that he had come to New York to be project director of a peace march in Washington that was going to march to the Pentagon in October, October 21. He said that the peace movement suffered from a certain kind of attitude, mainly that it was based solely on the issue of the Vietnam war. He said that the war in Vietnam was not just an accident but a direct by-product of the kind of system, a capitalist system in the country, and that we had to begin to put forth new kinds of values, especially to young people in the country, to make a kind of society in which a Vietnam war would not be possible.
And he felt that these attitudes and values were present in the hippie movement and many of the techniques, the guerrilla theater techniques that had been used and many of these methods of communication would allow for people to participate and become involved in a new kind of democracy.
I said that the Pentagon was a five-sided evil symbol in most religions and that it might be possible to approach this from a religious point of view. If we got large numbers of people to surround the Pentagon, we could exorcize it of its evil spirits.
So I had agreed at that point to begin working on the exorcism of the Pentagon demonstration.
MR. WEINGLASS: Prior to the date of the demonstration which is October, did you go to the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: Yes. I went about a week or two before with one of my close brothers, Martin Carey, a poster maker, and we measured the Pentagon, the two of us, to see how many people would fit around it. We only had to do one side because it is just multiplied by five.
We got arrested. It's illegal to measure the Pentagon. I didn't know it up to that point.
When we were arrested they asked us what we were doing. We said it was to measure the Pentagon and we wanted a permit to raise it 300 feet in the air, and they said "How about 10?" So we said "OK".
And they threw us out of the Pentagon and we went back to New York and had a press conference, told them what it was about.
We also introduced a drug called lace, which, when you squirted it at the policemen made them take their clothes off and make love, a very potent drug.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you mean literally that the building was to rise up 300 feet off the ground?
MR. SCHULTZ: I can't cross-examine about his meaning literally.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. SCHULTZ: I would ask Mr. Weinglass please get on with the trial of this case and stop playing around with raising the Pentagon 10 feet or 300 feet off the ground.
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, I am glad to see Mr. Schultz finally concedes that things like levitating the Pentagon building, putting LSD in the water, 10,000 people walking nude on Lake Michigan, and a $200,000 bribe attempt are all playing around. I am willing to concede that fact, that it was all playing around, it was a play idea of this witness, and if he is willing to concede it, we can all go home.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you intend that the people who surrounded the Pentagon should do anything of a violent nature whatever to cause the building to rise 300 feet in the air and be exercised of evil spirits?
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you indicate to the Court and jury whether or not the Pentagon was, in fact, exercised of its evil spirits?
THE WITNESS: Yes, I believe it was. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, drawing your attention to the first week of December 1967, did you have occasion to meet with Jerry Rubin and the others?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you relate to the Court and jury what the conversation was?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
We talked about the possibility of having demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Illinois, that was going to be occurring that August. I am not sure that we knew at that point that it was in Chicago. Wherever it was, we were planning on going.
Jerry Rubin, I believe, said that it would be a good idea to call it the Festival of Life in contrast to the Convention of Death, and to have it in some kind of public area, like a park or something, in Chicago.
One thing that I was very particular about was that we didn't have any concept of leadership involved. There was a feeling of young people that they didn't want to listen to leaders. We had to create a kind of situation in which people would be allowed to participate and become in a real sense their own leaders.
I think it was then after this that Paul Krassner said the word "YIPPIE," and we felt that that expressed in a kind of slogan and advertising sense the spirit that we wanted to put forth in Chicago, and we adopted that as our password, really. . . .
Anita [Hoffman] said that "Yippie" would be understood by our generation, that straight newspapers like the New York Times and the U.S. Government and the courts and everything wouldn't take it seriously unless it had a formal name, so she came up with the name: "Youth International Party." She said we could play a lot of jokes on the concept of "party" because everybody would think that we were this huge international conspiracy, but that in actuality we were a party that you had fun at.
Nancy [Kursham] said that fun was an integral ingredient, that people in America, because they were being programmed like IBM cards, weren't having enough fun in life and that if you watched television, the only people that you saw having any fun were people who were buying lousy junk on television commercials, and that this would be a whole new attitude because you would see people, young people, having fun while they were protesting the system, and that young people all around this country and around the world would be turned on for that kind of an attitude.
I said that fun was very important, too, that it was a direct rebuttal of the kind of ethics and morals that were being put forth in the country to keep people working in a rat race which didn't make any sense because in a few years that machines would do all the work anyway, that there was a whole system of values that people were taught to postpone their pleasure, to put all their money in the bank, to buy life insurance, a whole bunch of things that didn't make any sense to our generation at all, and that fun actually was becoming quite subversive.
Jerry said that because of our action at the Stock Exchange in throwing out the money, that within a few weeks the Wall Street brokers there had totally enclosed the whole stock exchange in bulletproof, shatterproof glass, that cost something like $20,000 because they were afraid we'd come back and throw money out again.
He said that for hundreds of years political cartoonists had always pictured corrupt politicians in the guise of a pig, and he said that it would be great theater if we ran a pig for President, and we all took that on as like a great idea and that's more or less---that was the founding.
MR. WEINGLASS: The document that is before you, D-222 for identification, what is that document?
THE WITNESS: It was our initial call to people to describe what Yippie was about and why we were coming to Chicago.
Mk. WEINGLASS: Now, Abbie, could you read the entire document to the jury.
THE WITNESS: It says:
"A STATEMENT FROM YIP!
"Join us in Chicago in August for an international festival of youth, music, and theater. Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball! Come all you rebels, youth spirits, rock minstrels, truth-seekers, peacock-freaks, poets, barricade-jumpers, dancers, lovers and artists!
"It is summer. It is the last week in August, and the NATIONAL DEATH PARTY meets to bless Lyndon Johnson. We are there! There are 50,000 of us dancing in the streets, throbbing with amplifiers and harmony. We are making love in the parks. We are reading, singing, laughing, printing newspapers, groping, and making a mock convention, and celebrating the birth of FREE AMERICA in our own time.
"Everything will be free. Bring blankets, tents, draft-cards, body-paint, Mr. Leary's Cow, food to share, music, eager skin, and happiness. The threats of LBJ, Mayor Daley, and J. Edgar Freako will not stop us. We are coming! We are coming from all over the world!
"The life of the American spirit is being torn asunder by the forces of violence, decay, and the napalm-cancer fiend. We demand the Politics of Ecstasy! We are the delicate spores of the new fierceness that will change America. We will create our own reality, we are Free America! And we will not accept the false theater of the Death Convention.
"We will be in Chicago. Begin preparations now! Chicago is yours! Do it!"
"Do it!" was a slogan like "Yippie." We use that a lot and it meant that each person that came should take on the responsibility for being his own leader-that we should, in fact, have a leaderless society.
We shortly thereafter opened an office and people worked in the office on what we call movement salaries, subsistence, thirty dollars a week. We had what the straight world would call a staff and an office although we called it an energy center and regarded ourselves as a tribe or a family.
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you explain to the Court and jury, if you know, how this staff functioned in your office?
THE WITNESS: Well, I would describe it as anarchistic. People would pick up the phone and give information and people from all over the country were now becoming interested and they would ask for more information, whether we were going to get a permit, how the people in Chicago were relating, and we would bring flyers and banners and posters. We would have large general meetings that were open to anybody who wanted to come.
MR. WEINGLASS: How many people would attend these weekly meetings?
THE WITNESS: There were about two to three hundred people there that were attending the meetings. Eventually we had to move into Union Square and hold meetings out in the public. There would be maybe three to five hundred people attending meetings. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Where did you go [March 23], if you can recall
THE WITNESS: I flew to Chicago to observe a meeting being sponsored, I believe, by the National Mobilization Committee. It was held at a place called Lake Villa, I believe, about twenty miles outside of Chicago here.
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall how you were dressed for that meeting?
THE WITNESS: I was dressed as an Indian. I had gone to Grand Central Station as an Indian and so I just got on a plane and flew as an Indian.
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, when you flew to Chicago, were you alone?
THE WITNESS: No. Present were Jerry, myself, Paul Krassner, and Marshall Bloom, the head of this Liberation News Service.
MR. WEINGLASS: When you arrived at Lake Villa, did you have occasion to meet any of the defendants who are seated here at this table?
THE WITNESS: Yes, I met for the first time Rennie, Tom Hayden---who I had met before, and that's it, you know. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Was any decision reached at that meeting about coming to Chicago?
THE WITNESS: I believe that they debated for two days about whether they should come or not to Chicago. They decided to have more meetings. We said we had already made up our minds to come to Chicago and we passed out buttons and posters and said that if they were there, good, it would be a good time.
MR. WEINGLASS: Following the Lake Villa conference, do you recall where you went?
THE WITNESS: Yes. The next day, March 25, 1 went to the Aragon Ballroom. It was a benefit to raise money again for the Yippies but we had a meeting backstage in one of the dressing rooms with the Chicago Yippies.
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall what was discussed?
THE WITNESS: Yes. We drafted a permit application for the Festival to take place in Chicago. We agreed that Grant Park would be best.
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to the following morning, which was Monday morning, March 26, do you recall where you were at that morning?
THE WITNESS: We went to the Parks Department. Jerry was there, Paul, Helen Runningwater, Abe Peck, Reverend John Tuttle---there were a group of about twenty to thirty people, Yippies.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you meet with anyone at the Park District at that time?
THE WITNESS: Yes. There were officials from the Parks Department to greet us, they took us into this office, and we presented a permit application.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever receive a reply to this application?
THE WITNESS: Not to my knowledge.
MR. WEINGLASS: After your meeting with the Park District, where, if anywhere, did you go?
THE WITNESS: We held a brief press conference on the lawn in front of the Parks Department, and then we went to see Mayor Daley at City Hall. When we arrived, we were told that the mayor was indisposed and that Deputy Mayor David Stahl would see us.
MR. WEINGLASS: When you met with Deputy Mayor Stahl, what, if anything, occurred?
THE WITNESS: Helen Runningwater presented him with a copy of the permit application that we had submitted to the Parks Department. It was rolled up in the Playmate of the Month that said "To Dick with Love, the Yippies," on it. And we presented it to him and gave him a kiss and put a Yippie button on him, and when he opened it up, the Playmate was just there.
And he was very embarrassed by the whole thing, and he said that we had followed the right procedure, the city would give it proper attention and things like that . . . .
December 29, 1969
MR. WEINGLASS: I direct your attention now to August 5, 1968, and I ask you where you were on that day.
THE WITNESS: I was in my apartment, St. Marks Place, on the Lower East Side in New York City.
MR. WEINGLASS: Who was with you?
THE WITNESS: Jerry Rubin was there, Paul Krassner was there, and Nancy. Anita was there; five of us, I believe.
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you describe the conversation which occurred between you and Abe Peck on the telephone?
THE WITNESS: Mr. Peck and other people from Chicago, Yippies---had just returned from a meeting on Monday afternoon with David Stahl and other people from the City administration. He said that he was quite shocked because---they said that they didn't know that we wanted to sleep in the park.
Abe Peck said that it had been known all along that one of the key elements of this Festival was to let us sleep in the park, that it was impossible for people to sleep in hotels since the delegates were staying there and it would only be natural to sleep in the park.
He furthermore told me in his opinion the City was laying down certain threats to them in order to try and get them to withdraw their permit application, and that we should come immediately back to Chicago.
MR. WEINGLASS: After that phone conversation what occurred?
THE WITNESS: We subsequently went to Chicago on August 7 at night.
MR.WEINGLASS: Did a meeting occur on that evening?
THE WITNESS: Yes, in Mayor Daley's press conference room, where he holds his press conferences.
MR. WEINGLASS: Can y ou relate what occurred at this meeting?
THE WITNESS: It was more or less an informal kind of meeting. Mr. Stahl made clear that these were just exploratory talks, that the mayor didn't have it in his power to grant the permits. We said that that was absurd, that we had been negotiating now for a period of four or five months, that the City was acting like an ostrich, sticking its head in the sand, hoping that we would all go away like it was some bad dream.
I pointed out that it was in the best interests of the City to have us in Lincoln Park ten miles away from the Convention hall. I said we had no intention of marching on the Convention hall, that I didn't particularly think that politics in America could be changed by marches and rallies, that what we were presenting was an alternative life style, and we hoped that people of Chicago would come up, and mingle in Lincoln Park and see what we were about.
I said that the City ought to give us a hundred grand, a hundred thousand dollars to run the Festival. It would be so much in their best interests.
And then I said, "Why don't you just give two hundred grand, and I'll split town?"
It was a very informal meeting. We were just sitting around on metal chairs that they had.
All the time David Stahl had been insisting that they did not make decisions in the city, that he and the mayor did not make the decisions. We greeted this with a lot of laughter and said that it was generally understood all around the country that Daley was the boss of Chicago and made all the decisions.
I also said that I considered that our right to assemble in Lincoln Park and to present our society was a right that I was willing to die for, that this was a fundamental human right . . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: On August 14, approximately three days later, in the morning of that day, do you recall where you were?
THE WITNESS: I went to speak to Jay Miller, head of the American Civil Liberties Union. I asked if it was possible for them to work with us on an injunction in the Federal court to sue Mayor Daley and other city officials about the fact that they would not grant us a permit and were denying us our right to freedom of speech and assembly.
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, can you relate to the Court and jury what happened in court when you appeared at 10:00 A.M.?
THE WITNESS: It was heard before Judge Lynch.
There was a fantastic amount of guards all over the place.
We were searched, made to take off our shirts, empty our pockets---
MR. SCHULTZ. That is totally irrelevant. There happened to be threats at that time, your Honor---
THE WITNESS: He is right. There were threats. I had twenty that week.
THE COURT: The language, "There were a fantastic amount of guards," may go out and the jury is directed to disregard them.
MR. WEINGLASS: After the---
THE WITNESS: We came before the judge. It was a room similar to this, similar, kind of wall-to wall bourgeois, rugs and neon lights. Federal courts are all the same, I think.
The judge made a couple of references to us in the room, said that our dress was an affront to the Court.
It was pointed out by a lawyer that came by that Judge Lynch was Mayor Daley's ex-law partner. As as result of this conversation we went back into court about twenty, thirty minutes later.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you speak to the Court?
THE WITNESS: I spoke to Judge Lynch. I said that we were withdrawing our suit, that we had as little faith in the judicial system in this country as we had in the political system.
He said, "Be careful, young man. I will find a place for you to sleep."
And I thanked him for that, said I had one, and left.
We withdrew our suit. Then we had a press conference downstairs to explain the reasons for that. We explained to the press that we were leaving in our permit application but withdrawing our Federal injunction to sue the city. We said it was a bit futile to end up before a judge, Judge Lynch, who was the ex-law partner of Mayor Daley, that the Federal judges were closely tied in with the Daley and Democratic political machine in Chicago and that we could have little recourse of grievance.
Furthermore, that we suspected that the judge would order us not to go into Lincoln Park at all and that if we did, that we would be in violation of contempt of court, and that it was a setup, and Judge Lynch planned to lynch us in the same way that Stahl was stalling us.
I pointed out that the names in this thing were getting really absurd, similarities. I also read a list of Yippie demands that I had written that morning--sort of Yippie philosophy.
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, will you read for the Court and jury the eighteen demands first, then the postscript.
THE WITNESS: I will read it in the order that I wrote it. "Revolution toward a free society, Yippie, by A. Yippie.
"This is a personal statement. There are no spokesmen for the Yippies. We are all our own leaders. We realize this list of demands is inconsistent. They are not really demands. For people to make demands of the Democratic Party is an exercise in wasted wish fulfillment. If we have a demand, it is simply and emphatically that they, along with their fellow inmates in the Republican Party, cease to exist. We demand a society built along the alternative community in Lincoln Park, a society based on humanitarian cooperation and equality, a society which allows and promotes the creativity present in all people and especially our youth.
"Number one. An immediate end to the war in Vietnam and a restructuring of our foreign policy which totally eliminates aspects of military, economic and cultural imperialism; the withdrawal of all foreign based troops and the abolition of military draft.
"Two. An immediate freedom for Huey Newton of the Black Panthers and all other black people; adoption of the community control concept in our ghetto areas; an end to the cultural and economic domination of minority groups.
"Three. The legalization of marijuana and all other psychedelic drugs; the freeing of all prisoners currently imprisoned on narcotics charges.
"Number four. A prison system based on the concept of rehabilitation rather than punishment.
"Five. A judicial system which works towards the abolition of all laws related to crimes without victims; that is, retention only of laws relating to crimes in which there is an unwilling injured party: i.e. murder, rape, or assault.
"Six. The total disarmament of all the people beginning with the police. This includes not only guns but such brutal vices as tear gas, Mace, electric prods, blackjacks, billy clubs, and the like.
"Seven. The abolition of money, the abolition of pay housing, pay media, pay transportation, pay food, pay education. pay clothing, pay medical health, and pay toilets.
"Eight. A society which works towards and actively promotes the concept of full unemployment, a society in which people are free from the drudgery of work, adoption of the concept 'Let the machines do it.'
"Number ten. A program of ecological development that would provide incentives for the decentralization of crowded cities and encourage rural living.
"Eleven. A program which provides not only free birth control information and devices, but also abortions when desired.
"Twelve. A restructured educational system which provides a student power to determine his course of study, student participation in over-all policy planning; an educational system which breaks down its barriers between school and community; a system which uses the surrounding community as a classroom so that students may learn directly the problems of the people.
"Number thirteen. The open and free use of the media; a program which actively supports and promotes cable television as a method of increasing the selection of channels available to the viewer.
"Fourteen. An end to all censorship. We are sick of a society that has no hesitation about showing people committing violence and refuses to show a couple fucking.
"Fifteen. We believe that people should fuck all the time, any time, wherever they wish. This is not a programmed demand but a simple recognition of the reality around its.
"Sixteen. A political system which is more streamlined and responsive to the needs of all the people regardless of age. sex, or race; perhaps a national referendum system conducted via television or a telephone voting system; perhaps a decentralization of -power and authority with many varied tribal groups, groups in which people exist in a state of basic trust and are free to choose their tribe.
"Seventeen. A program that encourages and promotes the arts. However, we feel that if the free society we envision were to be sought for and achieved, all of us would actualize the creativity within us; in a very real sense we would have a society in which every man would be an artist.'
And eighteen was left blank for anybody to fill in what they wanted. "It was for these reasons that we had come to Chicago, it was for these reasons that many of us may fight and die here. We recognize this as the vision of the founders of this nation. We recognize that we are America; we recognize that we are free men. The present-day politicians and their armies of automatons have selfishly robbed us of our birthright. The evilness they stand for will go unchallenged no longer. Political pigs, your days are numbered. We are the second American Revolution. We shall win.
"YIPPIE."
MR. WEINGLASS: When you used the words "fight and die here," in what context were you using those words?
THE WITNESS: It is a metaphor. That means that we felt strongly about our right to assemble in the park and that people should be willing to take risks for it. It doesn't spell it out because people were capable of fighting in their own way and making their own decisions and We never would tell anyone specifically that they should fight, fistfight.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you during the week of the Convention and the period of time immediately before the Convention tell any person singly or in groups that they should fight in the park?
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to the morning of August 19, 1968, did you attend a meeting on that day?
THE WITNESS: Yes. I went to the office of the Mobilization Committee.
MR. WEINGLASS: Was there a discussion?
THE WITNESS: I never stayed long at these meetings. I just went and made an announcement and maybe stayed ten or fifteen minutes. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Was there a course given in snake dancing on that day also?
THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes. People would have a pole and there would be about six people, and then about six people behind them, holding them around the waist, four or five lines of these people with men, women, and kids maybe eight years old in on this whole thing, and people would bounce from one foot to the other and yell "Wash oi, Wash oi," which is kind of Japanese for "Yippie," I guess.
And they would just march up and down the park like this, mostly laughing and giggling, because the newsmen were taking this quite seriously, and then at a certain point everybody would turn in and sort of just collapse and fall on the ground and laugh. I believe we lost about four or five Yippies during that great training.
The exciting part was when the police arrested two army intelligence officers in the trees.
MR. WEINGLASS: During the course of that day when you were in the park, did you notice that the police were hanging any signs in the park?
THE WITNESS: Late in the day, maybe four or five, I became aware that there were police nailing signs on the trees that said "11:00 p.m. curfew," maybe a few other words, but that was the gist of the signs.
MR. WEINGLASS: From Friday, August 23, on to the end of Convention week, did you ever discuss with any people the question of staying in the park after the curfew hours?
THE WITNESS: At a meeting on August 24, that subject came up, and there was lengthy discussion. ..
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, did you hear Jerry Rubin speak at that meeting?
THE WITNESS: Jerry said that the park wasn't worth fighting for; that we should leave at the eleven p.m. curfew. He said that we should put out a statement to that effect.
MR. WEINGLASS: And did you speak at that meeting?
THE WITNESS: I reported on a meeting that morning with Chief Lynskey. I had asked the Chicago cops who were tailing me to take me to Chief Lynskey who was in charge of the area of Lincoln Park. I went up to the chief and said, "Well, are you going to let us have the Festival?"
He said "No festival under any circumstances. If anybody breaks one city ordinance in that park, we clear the whole park."
He said, "You do any one thing wrong and I will arrest you on sight."
He said, "Why don't you try to kick me in the shins right now?"
And I said NBC wasn't there.
And he said, "Well, at least the kid's honest," and stuff like that.
Then I gave a speech to the police that were all assembled and I said, "Have a good time." I said, "The National Guard's coming in, they're probably going to whip you guys up, and I hope your walkie-talkies work better than ours," and stuff like that. And I just walked out.
Then we discussed what we were going to do. I said it was my feeling that Chicago was in a total state of anarchy as far as the police mentality worked. I said that we were going to have to fight for every single thing, we were going to have to fight for the electricity, we were going to have to fight to have the stage come in, we were going to have to fight for every rock musician to play, that the whole week was going to be like that.
I said that we should proceed with the festival as planned, we should try to do everything that we had come to Chicago to do, even though the police and the city officials were standing in our way.
MR. WEINGLASS: During the course of this Saturday and prior to this meeting, did you have occasion to meet Irv Bock in the park?
THE WITNESS: Oh, I met Irv Bock Saturday afternoon during some of the marshal training. Marshal training is a difficult phrase to use for Yippies. We always have a reluctance to marshals because they are telling people what to do and we were more anarchistic than that, more leaderless.
I sort of bumped into Irv Bock. I showed him a---it wasn't a gas mask but it was a thing with two plastic eyes and a little piece of leather that I got, I purchased in an army-navy store for about nineteen cents, and I said that these would be good protection against Mace.
He started running down to me all this complicated military jargon and I looked at him and said, "Irv, you're a cop, ain't you?"
He sort of smiled and said, "No, I'm not."
"Come on," I said, "We don't grow peaceniks that big. We are all quarterbacks. You've got to be a cop.''
I said, "Show me your wallet."
So he said, "No, no. Don't you trust me?"
So I said, "Irv," I said, "last night there was a guy running around my house with a pistol trying to kill me," that I had twenty threats that week, and at that point I didn't trust Jerry Rubin. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to approximately two o'clock in the morning, which would now be Monday morning, do you recall what you were doing?
THE WITNESS: I made a telephone call to David Stahl, Deputy Mayor of Chicago at his home. I had his home number.
I said, "Hi, Dave. How's it going? Your police got to be the dumbest and the most brutal in the country," I said.
"The decision to drive people out of the park in order to protect the City was about the dumbest military tactic since the Trojans let the Trojan horse inside the gate and there was nothing to be compared with that stupidity."
I again pleaded with him to let people stay in the park the following night. "There will be more people coming Monday, Tuesday, and subsequently Wednesday night," I said, "and they should be allowed to sleep." I said that he ought to intercede with the Police Department. I said to him that the City officials, in particular his boss, Daley, were totally out of their minds.
I said, "I read in the paper the day before that they had 2,000 troops surrounding the reservoirs in order to protect against the Yippie plot to dump LSD in the drinking water. There isn't a kid in the country," I said, "never mind a Yippie, who thinks that such a thing could be done."
I told him to check with all the scientists at the University of Chicago---he owned them all.
He said that he knew it couldn't be done, but they weren't taking any chances anyway . . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you tell the Court and jury where you were in Lincoln Park at approximately 11:30 Monday night?
THE WITNESS: I was walking through the barricade, my wife Anita and I.
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you see Allen Ginsberg at the barricade?
THE WITNESS: Yes. He was kneeling.
There was a crowd of people around. He was playing that instrument that he plays and people were chanting.
There was a police car that would come by and I believe it was making announcements and people would yell at the police car, you know, "Beat it. Get out. The parks belong to the people. Oink Oink. Pig Pig. Pigs are coming. Peace Now."
People were waving flags. People were running around being scared and people were running around sort of joyous. I mean, it was strange, different emotions. It was very dark in that place.
MR. SCHULTZ: The witness is not answering the question any more. He is giving another essay. I object.
MR. WEINGLASS: When the police finally came to the barricade, from what direction did they come?
THE WITNESS: They came in through the zoo.
They proceeded to climb and immediately started to club people.
They were throwing parts of the barricade, trashcans, at people.
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, at the time the police came to the barricade what did you do?
THE WITNESS: Well, I was coughing and spitting because there was tear gas totally flooding the air, cannisters were exploding all around me---I moved with the people out this way, out of the park trying to duck, picking up people that were being clubbed, getting off the ground myself a few times.
The police were just coming through in this wedge, solid wedge, clubbing people right and left, and I tried to get out of the park.
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to approximately six o'clock the following morning, do you recall where you were?
THE WITNESS: I got in the car of the police that were following me and asked them to take me to the beach---the beach part of Lincoln Park.
MR. WEINGLASS: What was occurring when you got there?
THE WITNESS: Allen Ginsberg and about---oh 150-200 people were kneeling, most of the people in lotus position which is a position with their legs crossed like this---chanting and praying and meditating.
There were five or six police cars on the boardwalk right in back, and there were police surrounding the group. Dawn was breaking. It was very cold, very chilly. People had a number of blankets wrapped around them, sitting in a circle.
I went and sat next to Allen and chanted and prayed for about an hour. Then I talked to the group. People would give talks about their feelings of what was going on in Chicago. I said, "I am very sad about what has happened in Chicago.
"What is going on here is very beautiful, but it won't be in the evening news that night.
"The American mass media is a glutton for violence, and it would be only shots of what was happening in the streets of Chicago."
I said, "America can't be changed by people sitting and praying, and this is an unfortunate reality that we have to face."
I said that we were a community that had to learn how to survive, that we had seen what had happened the last few nights in Lincoln Park. We had seen the destruction of the Festival.
I said, "I will never again tell people to sit quietly and pray for change.". . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to approximately 6:00 A.M. the following morning, Wednesday, August 28, do you recall what you were doing?
THE WITNESS: I went to eat. I went with Paul Krassner, Beverly Baskinger, and Anita and four police officers--- Paul also had two Chicago police officers following him, as well as the two that were following me. We walked and the four of them would drive along behind us.
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you describe for the jury and the Court what you were wearing at that time?
THE WITNESS: Well, I had cowboy boots, and brown pants and a shirt, and I had a grey felt ranger cowboy type hat down over my eyes, like this.
MR.WEINGLASS: What, if anything occurred while you were sitting there having breakfast?
THE WITNESS: Well, two policemen came in and said, "We have orders to arrest you. You have something under your hat."
So I asked them if they had a search warrant and I said 'Did you check it out with Commander Braasch? Me and him got an agreement"---and they went to check it out with him, while we were eating breakfast.
MR. WEINGLASS: After a period of time, did they come back?
THE WITNESS: They came back with more police officers---there were about four or five patrol cars surrounding the restaurant. The Red Squad cops who had been following us came in the restaurant, four or five police, and they said, "We checked. Now will you take off your hat?" They were stern, more serious about it.
MR. WEINGLASS: What did you do?
THE WITNESS: Well, I lifted up the hat and I went "Bang! Bang!"
They grabbed me by the jacket and pulled me across the bacon and eggs and Anita over the table, threw me on the floor and out the door and threw me against the car, and they handcuffed me.
I was just eating the bacon and going "Oink Oink!"
MR. WEINGLASS: Did they tell you why you were being arrested?
THE WITNESS: They said they arrested me because I had the word "Fuck" on my forehead. I had put it on with this magic marker before we left the house. They called it an "obscenary."
I put it on for a couple of reasons, One was that I was tired of seeing my picture in the paper and having newsmen come around, and I know if you got that word on your forehead they ain't going to print your picture in the paper. Secondly, it sort of summed up my attitude about the whole thing---what was going on in Chicago.
I like that four letter word---I thought it was kind of holy, actually.
MR. WEINGLASS: Abbie Hoffman, prior to coming to Chicago, from April 1968 on to the week of the Convention, did you enter into an agreement with David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner or Rennie Davis, to come to the city of Chicago for the purpose of encouraging and promoting violence during the Convention week?
THE WITNESS: An agreement?
MR. WEINGLASS: Yes.
THE WITNESS: We couldn't agree on lunch.
MR. WEINGLASS: I have no further questions.
THE COURT: Cross-examine.
MR. SCHULTZ: Thank you, your Honor. . . .
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you see numerous instances of people attacking the Guardsmen at the Pentagon, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS. I don not believe that I saw any instances of people attacking National Guardsmen. In fact, the attitude was one of comradeship. They would talk to the National Guardsmen continuously and tell them they were not the people that they had come to confront, that they were their brothers and you don't get people to oppose [their ways] by attacking them.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, the Guards and the troops were trying to keep the people from entering into the Pentagon for two days, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: I assume that they were there to guard the Pentagon from rising in the air possibly. I mean, who knows what they are there for? Were you there?
You probably watched it on television and got a different impression of what was happening. That is one aspect of myth-making---you can envisualize hoardes and hoardes of people when in reality that was not what happened.
MR SCHULTZ: Did you see some people urinate on the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: On the Pentagon itself?
MR. SCHULTZ: Or at the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: There were over 100,000 people. People have that biological habit, you know.
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you symbolically urinate on the Pentagon, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: I symbolically urinate on the Pentagon?
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes.
THE WITNESS: I didn't get that close. Pee on the walls of the Pentagon?
You are getting to be out of sight, actually. You think there is a law against it?
MR. SCHULTZ: Are you done, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: I am done when you are.
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you ever state that a sense of integration possesses you and comes from pissing on the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: I said from combining political attitudes with biological necessity, there is a sense of integration, yes.
MR. SCHULTZ: You had a good time at the Pentagon, didn't you. Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: Yes I did. I'm having a good time now too. I feel that biological necessity now. Could I be excused for a slight recess?
THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we will take a brief recess.
(brief recess)
MR. SCHULTZ: On the seventh of August, you told David Stahl that at your liberated area you---
THE WITNESS: What meeting was this, August 7?
MR. SCHULTZ: That's when you just flew in from New York.
THE WITNESS: Crossing state lines---
MR. SCHULTZ: At this meeting on the evening of August 7, you told Mr. Stahl that you were going to have nude-ins in your liberated zone, didn't you?
THE WITNESS: A nude-in? I don't believe I would use that phrase, no. I don't think it's very poetic, frankly.
I might have told him that ten thousand people were going to walk naked on the waters of Lake Michigan, something like that.
MR. SCHULTZ: You told him, did you not, Mr. Hoffman, that in your liberated zone, you would have---
THE WITNESS: I'm not even sure what it is, a nude-in.
MR. SCHULTZ: ---public fornication.
THE WITNESS: If it means ten thousand people, naked people, walking on Lake Michigan, yes.
MR.KUNSTLER: I object to this because Mr.Schultz is acting like a dirty old man.
MR. SCHULTZ: We are not going into dirty old men. If they are going to have nude-ins and public fornication, the City officials react to that, and I am establishing through this witness that that's what be did.
THE COURT: Do you object?
MR. KUNSTLER: I am just remarking, your Honor, that a young man can be a dirty old man.
THE WITNESS: I don't mind talking about it.
THE COURT: I could make an observation. I have seen some exhibits here that are not exactly exemplary documents.
MR. KUNSTLER: But they are, your Honor, only from your point of view-making a dirty word of something that can be beautiful and lovely, and---
MR. SCHULTZ: We are not litigating here, your Honor, whether sexual intercourse is beautiful or not. We are litigating whether or not the City could permit tens of thousands of people to come in and do in their parks what this man said they were going to do.
In getting people to Chicago you created your Yippie myth, isn't that right? And part of your myth was "We'll burn Chicago to the ground," isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: It was part of the myth that there were trainloads of dynamite headed for Chicago, it was part of the myth that they were going to form white vigilante groups and round up demonstrators. All these things were part of the myth. A myth is a process of telling stories, most of which ain't true.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman---
Your Honor, Mr. Davis is having a very fine time here whispering at me. He has been doing it for the last twenty minutes. He moved up here when I started the examination so he could whisper in my ear. I would ask Mr. Davis, if he cannot be quiet, to move to another part of the table so that he will stop distracting me.
THE COURT: Try not to speak too loudly, Mr. Davis.
MR. DAVIS: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: Go ahead.
THE WITNESS: Go ahead, Dick.
MR. SCHULTZ: Didn't you state, Mr. Hoffman, that part of the myth that was being created to get people to come to Chicago was that "We will fuck on the beaches"?
THE WITNESS: Yes, me and Marshall McLuhan. Half of that quote was from Marshall McLuhan.
MR. SCHULTZ: "And there will be acid for all" ---that was another one of your Yippie myths, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: That was well known.
MR. SCHULTZ: By the way, was there any acid in Lincoln Park in Chicago?
THE WITNESS: In the reservoir, in the lake?
MR. SCHULTZ: No, among the people.
THE WITNESS: Well, there might have been, I don't know. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless. One can never tell. . . .
MR. SCHULTZ: The fact is, Mr. Hoffman, that what you were trying to do was to create a situation where the State and the United States Government would have to bring in the Army and bring in the National Guard during the Convention in order to protect the delegates so that it would appear that the Convention had to be held under military conditions, isn't that a fact, Mr. Hoffman?
THE WITNESS: You can do that with a yo-yo in this country. It's quite easy. You can see just from this courtroom. Look at all the troops around---
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the answer be stricken?
THE COURT: Yes, it may go out. . . .
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, in the afternoon on that Thursday you participated ;in a march, and then you laid down in front of an armored personnel carrier at the end of that march, at 16th or 19th on Michigan, laid down on the street?
THE WITNESS: Was that what it was? I thought it was a tank.
It looked like a tank.
Do you want me to show you how I did it? Laid down in front of the tank?
MR. SCHULTZ: All right, Mr. Hoffman. Did you make any gestures of any sort?
THE WITNESS: When I was laying down? See. I went like that, lying down in front of the tank.
I had seen Czechoslovakian students do it to Russian tanks.
MR. SCHULTZ: And then you saw a Chicago police officer who appeared to be in high command because of all the things he had on his shoulders come over to the group and start leading them back toward Grant Park, didn't you?
THE WITNESS: He came and then people left---and went back to the park, yes.
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you say to anybody, "Well, you see that cat?", pointing to Deputy Superintendent Rochford. "When we get to the top of the hill, if the cat doesn't talk right, we're going to hold him there, and then we can do whatever we want and the police won't bother us." Did you say that to anybody out there, Mr. Hoffman?
MR. WEINGLASS: That's the testimony of the intelligence officer, the intelligence police officer of the Chicago Police Department.
THE WITNESS: I asked the Chicago police officers to help me kidnap Deputy Superintendent Rochford? That's pretty weird.
MR. SCHULTZ: Isn't it a fact that you announced publicly a plan to kidnap the head pig---
THE WITNESS: Cheese, wasn't it?
MR. SCHULTZ: ---and then snuff him---
THE WITNESS: I thought it was "cheese."
MR. SCHULTZ: ---and then snuff him if other policemen touched you? Isn't that a fact, sir?
THE WITNESS: I do not believe that I used the reference of "pig" to any policemen in Chicago including some of the top cheeses. I did not use it during that week. . .
MR. SCHULTZ: You and Albert, Mr. Hoffman, were united in Chicago in your determination to smash the system by using any means at your disposal, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: Did I write that?
MR. SCHULTZ: No, did you have that thought?
THE WITNESS: That thought? Is a thought like a dream? If I dreamed to smash the system, that's a thought. Yes, I had that thought.
THE COURT: Mr. Witness, you may not interrogate the lawyer who is examining you.
THE WITNESS: Judge, you have always told people to describe what they see or what they hear. I'm the only one that has to describe what I think.
MR. WEINGLASS: I object to any reference to what a person thought or his being tried for what he thought. He may be tried for his intent.
THE COURT: Overrule the objection.
THE WITNESS: Well, I had a lot of dreams at night. One of the dreams might have been that me and Stew were united.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, isn't it a fact that one of the reasons why you came to Chicago was simply to wreck American society?
THE WITNESS: My feeling at the time, and still is, that society is going to wreck itself. I said that on a number of occasions, that our role is to survive while the society comes tumbling down around us; our role is to survive.
We have to learn how to defend ourselves, given this type of society, because of the war in Vietnam, because of racism, because of the attack on the cultural revolution---in fact because of this trial.
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, by Thursday, the twenty-ninth, the last day of the Convention, you knew you had smashed the Democrats' chances for victory, isn't that a fact?
THE WITNESS: No. My attitude was it was a type of psychic jujitsu where the people smash themselves--or the party wrecks themselves. The same way this trial is.
MR. SCHULTZ: By Thursday there was no doubt in your mind when you saw the acceptance speech that you had won, and there would be a pig in the White House in '69?
THE WITNESS: Well, that was our role in coming here, to nominate a pig. That pig did win. He didn't actually---which one did?
MR. SCHULTZ: And you went out for champagne, and you brought it back to Mobilization headquarters and toasted the revolution, you did just that, right?
THE WITNESS: We drank some champagne. It was warm, warm champagne.
MR. SCHULTZ: And toasted to your success, to your victory, isn't that right?
THE WITNESS: We toasted to the fact that we were still alive.
That was the miracle as far as I saw it, is still being alive by that last Thursday.
MR. SCHULTZ: That's all, your Honor.
THE WITNESSS: Right on!
THE COURT: Have you finished your cross-examination?
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes, I have.
THE WITNESS: Right on!
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