| THE HANDSTAND | 2ndWINTER2011 November-December |
We Need You Mort Sahl
MikePalecek sent me a copy of The NEW American Dream with
this interview. We need Sahl's realistic take on truth so
much. JB,editor
The complete
Argo interview
by Perry Adams with Mort Sahl
(This interview was conducted at the Hungry i in
San Francisco on Monday, March 18th, 1968)
ARGO: Why is the truth behind the assassination of President Kennedy the last chance of America for its survival?
SAHL: Because the evidence developed by District Attorney Garrison indicates that certain people had to take President Kennedy's life in order to control ours. In other words, as Richard Starnes of the New York World-Telegram said, the shots in Dallas were the opening shots of World War III. There's been a great change in this country since Kennedy. I'm afraid a great deal of our hope was interred with his remains.
ARGO: What is the long, hard night that America must go through that you've spoken of?
SAHL: She has to hang on through a period of the military and the CIA with a blank check trying to sell fascism. If she can hang on long enough, Americans may yet live in the country in which they were born. And that is the country structured by Tom Paine and Tom Jefferson.
ARGO: What is the renaissance following this long, hard night, that you also spoke about?
SAHL: We'll start pursuing the American dream again.
I don't know if we'll ever realize it, but we're supposed to have the right to pursue it. And that's what this country is. It's an active exercise in man reaching his upper limit, as they used to say in the math department. And the renaissance will be that a ground swell of public opinion will flush out the rascals because the CIA has infiltrated every area of our national life. I'm afraid that the country they subverted best was the United States, be they in the various right-wing churches or be they in the Dallas Police Department. In fact, the CIA is the only organization I know that could penetrate the Birch Society and make them drift further to the right.
ARGO: What is the extent of the conspiracy and why is the government so desperate to keep the truth from the American public?
SAHL: We have determined that elements of the Central Intelligence Agency planned the execution and killed the President. Lee Oswald attended those meetings planning it. He was the only non-CIA man at the meeting. And he worked for the FBI. We then find that an FBI code clerk has a message come through, a twx, through the southern regional offices of the FBI, warning five days ahead that the President will be assassinated and we still later find Oswald saying, "I was a patsy," in the Dallas Police Station. The "elements" are in the Central Intelligence Agency.
They don't want to lose their power. And they don't want to fall. It has become government by hoodlum. And I don't blame them. If I were them, I wouldn't want to fall either. I would pull out all the stops as well, as they have. On the other hand, while I know that neo-Nazis would want to kill a man like John Kennedy, I don't understand why liberals would want to protect them from prosecution.
ARGO: What would you say are the roots of this whole era?
SAHL: Fascism. It started with the death of Roosevelt.
They moved in and they negated every treaty we made with every world leader who didn't fit the fascist/militarist mold. We went back on our word. As David Schoenbrun says very well, "I am not a dissenter for saying this. Those who betrayed American policy are the dissenters." We've gone back on the dream of national independence and we were the model for the rest of the world. Then when they followed our model, we attacked them for it. Shameful. No one has a right to stain the American flag. And unfortunately, we have people in this country who did it. If America goes, it will surely be an inside job.
ARGO: What will make the American people face themselves and, to use your expression, rise up like an army?
SAHL: Well, they have very decent instincts. If they didn't, the government would not have to hide the facts from them. They could give them any facts and the people would be insensitive. But, they have a sense of decency because they come from better stock then that. And so, once the truth is revealed to them, they're no longer under a cloak of ignorance. Public opinion will change things. There will be a ground swell.
These people will resign or will be lost in the
shuffle. But, you know, the country was structured so
that we could have violent change without violent
overthrow. I'm very optimistic in that sense. The
principles of America may be better than the group
currently practicing or ignoring them, as you will. But,
the country has great relilience, and once they get the
information, they my yet have time to save themselves.
Our job here is to give the young people time. We're just
like the fellow in the movie The Seventh Cross. He works
with the partisans. We've got to give the young people
time to get here, to save America.
ARGO: Why is the trial that Mr. Garrison's pursuing really the trial of the American people?
SAHL: Because we have to decide. Once the neo-fascists became bold enough to slay the President on the street, they showed their hand. They showed how arrogant they had become. Now it's a question of symptom. That crime was a national symptom. If we can turn our back on that, we will pay a terrible price. That will be the end of this democracy. As a matter of fact, it's been dying since Kennedy's death. We have to cleanse our soul. It's much the same as the French when they regained their national honor, not by framing Dreyfus, but by admitting that they did.
ARGO: What does Garrison mean: "The key to the whole case is through the looking glass. Black is white; white is black"?
SAHL: He means that the first thing the government did when the President was killed was to ratify his death and to appoint a group of honorable men to initial a fraudulent report. To eventually say there is no fourth bullet, even though there's a fourth bullet hole. The man was shot at from three sides, but there was only one side. In other words, the government decrees it is so. And that eventually the government may be forced to form a Ministry of Truth which will rule there was no John Kennedy, if it becomes convenient.
That's what he means. When Lyndon Johnson says to us, as an example, "We have continually keep up brush fire wars to protect the peace." Well, that's Orwell. War is peace, and peace is war, and love is hate. And you finally sell it just that way; the contradiction. And you do it by making the American people mad because those are the mouthings of a madman. We can be driven mad; it's the same virus that bit the Germans.
ARGO: What is meant by "elements" of the CIA?
SAHL: I'm afraid we'll have to wait for the trial for that. But, elements within the CIA planned it and wanted the President dead and saw to it that he was.
ARGO: Is there a difference between "elements" of the CIA and "ex-employees" of the CIA?
SAHL: I'll tell you why that is, Perry. The evidence is developmental and as you get further into the case, you'll learn more. Jim always puts it on the basis of the elephant. He said an elephant had a trunk; now I find he has four legs, he's also grey, and he has a tail. That's where it is. In the beginning, Jim could not believe that people in the United States government would want to harm their president. He now believes that.
He's no longer an innocent. He's had a baptism of fire. And, of course, the lengths the agency's gone to, to see that nobody involved with this case is allowed to work in this country, and the wire taps, and the tails in the street, etc.; the great harrassment is phenomenal. The things that we've done to ourselves in the name of fighting communism. . .
When he said that the CIA had gone to such great lengths to protect the people charged in this case, and to keep witnesses from being extradited, and to smear Garrison, we didn't know how far they would go. But, it is evident now that if they will kill a President, they will go to any lengths not to be toppled. And they are so imbedded in the society that the Presidents are almost transients. The only President that ever went up against them was Kennedy. And we see what happened to him for his pains.
Ramsey Clark, on Face the Nation a couple of weeks ago, said that he saw nothing new in the Garrison investigation. I pointed that out to Garrison. He said to me, "Yes, there is nothing new as far as he's concerned. We found out the CIA killed the President and he knew it. So it's nothing new to him."
I know the pressure on those of us who have spoken up in this case. The minute I made a decision for America and decided to park everything else and go ahead, I suddenly was unemployable, and by an awful lot of people you'd call liberal.
I want to make it very clear. The people on the right are not large enough to be an army, but they have an army of indifferent men, men indifferent to terror. The road to fascism is paved with liberal bricks. While our job to give the young people time enough to become radicals, the job of the liberals is to castrate them before they can get to the radical side, before they can save America, in effect. It's wholly incredible to me. If I gave you the names of people in show business who are attempting to supress me, they all qualify as wild-eyed left-wing thinkers, in the popular mind.
ARGO: If the defense's request for a change of venue is denied, will the trial begin in April?
SAHL: Yes, it will. Shaw's latest gambit is to start challenging the first 89, but the judge is beginning to get bugged with it all. Also, Garrison is going to subpoena and charge more people. You'll begin to see some names you recognize, very soon.
ARGO: Was Dallas just an accident or could it have happened anywhere?
SAHL: No, there's strong opinion that some people in Dallas are very much involved in this. Very much so. That's what caused a lot of suspicion to reflect on the President. Although, it is not too well founded, at this point. Of course, the President, ironically, has nurtured that by suppressing evidence and looking the other way. He has incubated the doubt about him. As Garrison says, "No, I don't think he's involved, but wouldn't it be nice to know."
ARGO: What is the importance of the book that Garrison mentioned entitled Nazis and Fascists of Today, published in Paris, France?
SAHL: That book mentions several of our friends here
in the United States, several people here who are
probably very well respected pillars of the community.
But, the book was seized and placed in the National
Archives until 2039 A.D.
It's a sick society, and that's really the crux. That's
why Garrison says this case is the crux of whether this
country goes on or not. Is it an open society? Can the
government tell you: "We know better what's good for
you than you know for yourself"? And a lot of this
has been incubated by the centralization of authority,
which I'm sure the liberals will defend.
They think it's a welfare program for Negroes. Hardly. The Federal government hasn't done anything good for anybody in quite a long time. You know, we ridicule our Ronald Reagans, and all. Mr. Reagan has to give somethig for the taxes. He has to give you Highway 99, or Highway 33, or 101. The Federal government doesn't have to give you anything, except a brainwash. When you think of the CIA bribing your brothers to turn you in, and you say, "Well, they've got an awful lot of money." An awful lot of money; it's ours! What do you mean they've got a lot of money? They're rag pickers. You know, and the American dream happens to be sticking to their pants legs like bicycle clips.
ARGO: Who has approached Robert Kennedy on all of this?
SAHL: No one. As a matter of fact, one of the favorite cliches people are continually saying to me is: "Why doesn't Bobby Kennedy investigate this?" But, somehow, when they sit next to Bobby Kennedy on a television show, they never bring it up. They bring it up to me with great arrogance, but they have no courage in his presence. I would suggest that they ask him. I've heard nothing from him on that case.
ARGO: What is the possibility for establishing a platform in Los Angeles, perhaps a new show?
SAHL: I may have something to announce on that soon.
Fascism will come to America in
the name of national security.— Jim Garrison
There will come a time when testimony taken by the
Commission will be made public. But it might not be in
your lifetime. There may be some things that would
involve security. This would be preserved but not made
public.— Earl Warren
Security classification is intended to protect the nation
from an enemy, not one branch of government against
another or the public, nor to protect the American people
from knowledge of mistakes. I do not accept as valid the
view of Mr. Arthur Sylvester, the former press officer of
the Pentagon, that the Government has a right to lie to
the people of this country.— J. William Fulbright
I want to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and
scatter it to the winds.— John F. Kennedy
I made it very clear to the CIA recruiter that the
invitation to come on campus was still open and that the
administration was not in any way trying to discourage
the CIA from coming to UCSB.— Stephen Goodspeed,
Vice-Chancellor, University of California, Santa Barbara
Mr. Sahl’s comedic style is said to have
helped pave the way for Lenny
Bruce and other comedians who provocatively
challenged the status quo. Mr. Sahl wrote jokes for
speeches for John F. Kennedy as well as screenplays. He
is also a professor these days, teaching
screenwriting at Claremont McKenna College in
Claremont, Calif.
Mort Sahl is wearing a new title this fall: “Professor.”(2007) Twice weekly the legendary comedian and actor can be found meeting with students on campus to discuss a broad range of timely issues––everything from war to gender to political assassination.And what does he hope to teach them? That public service doesn’t require holding public office; it starts by opening your eyes, he says––by asking questions.
“I want to show these young students some real heroes, not the ones they see on cable,” says Sahl, who will next semester instruct a course on screenwriting at CMC. “I want to teach them about their country’s hidden history.”Although the course title—The Revolutionary’s Handbook—may sound conspicuous alongside standard economics or political science offerings, it is hardly an exaggeration. For his entire career, Sahl has worked at the crucial crossroads where politics and satire meet. And it is because of his unique perspective that he was invited by The Family of Benjamin Z. Gould Center for Humanistic Studies to join CMC this fall as a visiting lecturer.
He is ranked 40th on Comedy Central’s list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians.He is 84 yrs old.
The
Future Lies Behind!
By John Whiting
Thank you, Mort Sahl . . . for telling it like it was
In the early Fifties, Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue bars and coffee houses were free theaters where, for the price of a drink, you could linger into the early morning hours listening to a succession of world class monologists. My favourites included an aging Trotskyite with the mellifluous voice of a vintage radio announcer, a decadent Viennese scholar who came on like Karl Kraus on steroids, and an unemployed pianist who could hold you spellbound with an illustrated lecture on the evolution of the sonata allegro form.
My usual hangout was Robbie’s, which was always buzzing ‘til three or four in the morning. In 1953 a new voice appeared that made Lucky’s Waiting for Godot monolog sound like a haiku. Its owner could, and did, take off from any topic you put to him, building rhetorical edifices that proliferated endlessly in Gaudian splendour. His girl friend persuaded him to audition for Enrico Banducci, who had taken over a bar/night club in San Francisco, the hungry i. Thus was Berkeley’s own Mort Sahl launched on his meteoric career.
At first they didn’t know what to make of him—an intellectual comic was an oxymoron. One of my vivid memories is of a heckler who kept interrupting. Finally Mort stopped and let him talk himself out. Then he set out in a totally different direction: "You know, this wasn't always a night club. In fact, it used to be a basement flat and I actually lived here. Over there was the living room, that was the bedroom and—excuse me, sir, would you stand up, please?—right there was the toilet."
After he’d been discovered by Herb Caen, Mort took off into the stratosphere, but well before he became a celebrity I sometimes rode over with him in his clapped-out Jag Mark V. He never stopped talking. On the way he’d pick up the evening Examiner from a newspaper dispenser and leave it folded on the seat beside him. He didn’t look at it until he went on stage, whereupon he opened it up and took off from a headline like Charlie Parker chasing a fugitive melody.
I’d sit through the evening’s shows, wondering what he was going to say next—no two were ever the same. Then we’d pile into the Jag and head back across the bay to Kip’s, an all-night hamburger joint on Bancroft just below Telegraph. All the way back and on into the morning, three a.m. or later, he never stopped talking. His monolog was as seamless and as endless as the Ring Cycle, its familiar leitmotivs weaving in and out of the structure—Ike, Nixon, Joe McCarthy, the FBI, the DAR. All those up-tight right-wingers who made the political, intellectual and artistic life in Fifties America a tightrope walk over an abyss became larger-than-life caricatures on Mort’s colorful canvas.
Mort Sahl at Sunset was not the first of his records to be released, but it was the first to be recorded. He was taped in 1955 at the Sunset Auditorium in Carmel, California at a jazz concert featuring Dave Brubeck (who was a couple of years ahead of me at College of the Pacific, but that’s another story). Mort’s own website calls it a “red vinyl rarity”—fortunately, I bought my copy long before it became a collector’s item. Listening to it today, it’s impossible to imagine audiences across America lining up in their thousands to listen to such mind-stretching stream-of-consciousness free association. He’s perhaps the only man who ever lived who could have been (and was) an intimate friend of Adlai Stevenson, Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
Since the album is impossible to get
hold of, I’ve reproduced it HERE.
It includes two of my favourite riffs: (1) Abank robber
comes up against an intellectual teller, to whom he hands
a note that says "act normal." The teller
writes back, "define your terms." (2) Mort goes
to a poetry reading at Stanford U at which Truman Capote
falls out after totally wasting himself with the
climactic line, “long thin blades of green
grass”, and is carried back to the limo by his
minders.
John Whiting
The Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter
Nobel Lecture:
"Art, Truth & Politics"
by Harold Pinter
Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, 2005
... Political language, as used by politicians, does not
venture into any of this territory since the majority of
politicians, on the evidence available to us, are
interested not in truth, but in power and in the
maintenance of that power.
To maintain that power it is essential that people remain
in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth,
even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us
therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
As every single person here knows, the justification for
the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a
highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction,
some of which could be fired in forty-five minutes,
bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured
that was true. It was not true.
We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda
and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of
September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true.
It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the
security of the world. We were assured it was true.
It was not true.
The truth is something entirely different. The truth is
to do with how the United States understands its role in
the world and how it chooses to embody it.
But before I come back to the present I would like to
look at the recent past, by which I mean United States
foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I
believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period
to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is
all that time will allow here.
Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and
throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the
systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the
ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has
been fully documented and verified.
But my contention here is that the U.S. crimes in the
same period have only been superficially recorded, let
alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone
recognised as crimes at all.
I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has
considerable bearing on where the world stands now.
Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the
existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions
throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded
it had carte blanche to do what it liked.
Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact
been America's favoured method. In the main, it has
preferred what it has described as 'low intensity
conflict'.
Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die
but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell
swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country,
that you establish a malignant growth and watch the
gangrene bloom.
When the populace has been subdued — or beaten to
death — the same thing — and your own friends,
the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably
in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy
has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign
policy in the years to which I refer.
... 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 civilised. 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, neighbouring
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.
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.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it
was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It
was of no interest.
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.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the
greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful
and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever.
As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable
commodity is self love. It's a winner.
Listen to all American presidents on television say the
words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say
to the American people it is time to pray and to defend
the rights of the American people and I ask the American
people to trust their president in the action he is about
to take on behalf of the American people.'
It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually
employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American
people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance.
You don't need to think.
Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be
suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties
but it's very comfortable.
This does not apply of course to the forty million people
living below the poverty line and the two million men and
women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which
extends across the US.
The United States no longer bothers about low intensity
conflict.
It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even
devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or
favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the
United Nations, international law or critical dissent,
which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has
its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead,
the pathetic and supine Great Britain.
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?
The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant
state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the
concept of international law.
The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by
a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the
media and therefore of the public; an act intended to
consolidate American military and economic control of the
Middle East masquerading - as a last resort — all
other justifications having failed to justify themselves
— as liberation.
A formidable assertion of military force responsible for
the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of
innocent people.
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium,
innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation
and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing
freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.
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.
Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair
place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000
Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before
the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment.
Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not
even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,'
said the American general Tommy Franks.
Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on
the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair
kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful
child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a
story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old
boy with no arms.
His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the
only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked.
The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding
him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated
child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty.
It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a
sincere speech on television.
I have said earlier that the United States is now totally
frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the
case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full
spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full
spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and
space and all attendant resources.
The United States now occupies 702 military installations
throughout the world in 132 countries, with the
honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite
know how they got there but they are there all right.
We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a
permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing
it.
Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United
States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and
angered by their government's actions, but as things
stand they are not a coherent political force — yet.
Note: Harold Pinter died on December 24, 2008, at
the age of 78, after a long battle with cancer. He was
survived by his wife, Lady Antonia Fraser.
Occupy Wall Street Lives To Fight Another Day
By Danny Schechter
Saturday, October 15, 2011
New York: It had all the makings of a classic confrontation. No doubt that’s why all the TV trucks and cameras were in Zuccotti Park in Downtown Manhattan this morning. There was a smell of blood in the water after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a surprise five minute strut through the Occupy Wall Street encampment in the financial district on Wednesday pronouncing it filthy.I was there and am not sure what he could see in the darkness. He did not speak to anyone and attracted light heckling.He had determined that the Police would enforce a call by the Realty company that owns and operates the park nominally to serve the public to shut it down for a “cleaning.”To the protesters, that term sounded more like “clearing.” They saw the cleanliness issue as a pretext for an enforced political cleansing.
And so the conflict flared. Activists and labor unions in New York mobilized. Even The AFL-CIO sent out an alert urging members to go to the park. By 6 AM the park was overrun with sympathizes.Sympathetic local politicians endorsed the occupiers in the name of free speech. The City went silent, but behind the scenes the Real Estate company had second thoughts when the telephone numbers of their CEO and international offices were circulated.A rare outbreak of common sense seems to have erupted. The expected 6 AM battle of Wall Street was called off—for now.
On Thursday, the occupation marshaled a volunteer army of their own cleaners to scrub the park down. The NY Times featured a front-page picture of activists with the headline, "We spruced up the Park, Now can We Stay?" Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway issued some official speak: "Our position has been consistent throughout: the City’s role is to protect public health and safety, to enforce the law, and guarantee the rights of all New Yorkers," "Brookfield believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown, and we will continue to monitor the situation.”
When it was clear the police calvary was not coming, there were shouts of Victory and calls to March on Wall Street two blocks to the South. Police mobilized quickly with scooters and horses. One man was reportedly run over by a cycle, leading to a physical confrontation resulting in arrests. This festering situation is still underway as I write.
The Police may be preparing a wave of mass arrests after a police commander fell to the ground tussling with protesters.So far the Occupy Wall Street approach has been non-violent to a fault but tempers are rising on all sides along with the testosterone of the more militant marchers. This violence could have a negative impact on growing public support although recent police overreactions actually swelled the ranks of the protest.A march on Times Square is expected on Saturday.They insist that the city does not have a right to prevent protests on Wall Street and question Mayor Bloomberg’s deep ties to Wall Street where he and his company has made billions.The protesters may have the sympathy but Wall Street owns the property. A story earlier this week reported on how many Wall Street firms hire off duty policemen. JP Morgan Chase recently donated $4.6 million to a police charity.
The Occupy Movement was reported to have sympathizers in 866 cities in 78 countries. It has clearly captured the imagination and support of activists worldwide. More than 700,000 people have signed a petition of support.The Iranian government, under attack for a “plot“ against Saudi And Israeli officials has endorsed the movement as a sign of a deepening crisis in the US.This occupation activation continues to focus attention on economic inequality in America and allegedly criminal conduct by Wall Street firms. It is now a big story creating space for dissenting voices that have been denied airtime.
Far right writers like Ann Coulter remain on the attack calling protesters “tattooed, body-pierced, sunken-chested 19-year-olds getting in fights with the police for fun.” Walter Brasch writes, “she claimed the protestors, now in the thousands in New York, are “directionless losers [who] pose for cameras while uttering random liberal clichés lacking any reason or coherence.”When you spend time with the Occupation, you know this is blatantly untrue but we are in a world where images create impressions that shape conflicting narratives.
Occupy Wall Street has lived to fight another day, but not all the occupations have. Police raided the Occupy San Diego, vamped on activists in Austin Texas and arrested l00 in Boston Massachusetts."Many see themselves as part of an awakening, an “American Autumn” in the spirit of the Arab Spring There is an ongoing face off between the upholders of a selective “law and order” and a movement for economic justice.
Writes journalist John Pilger, “The Occupy Wall Street Movement is one of the most exciting signs that the US resistance is finally waking from its Obama-induced sleep. This is the critical issue, above all others, that will ignite support across the US. On the day in 2008 that Bush announced the first bail-out of Wall Street, the White House received some 24,000 emails, most of them from ordinary Americans and all of them angry. If the current protests can join up with this populism, in the best sense of the populist tradition, it will give rise to genuine hope -- and, more important, an unerring resistance!"
One side in this continuing conflict has physical power but lacks moral power.And that can make the difference as we approach the weekend for the official opening of the Martin Luther King Jr, statue on the Mall. It was King who said, “We have a right to fight for what’s right.”
News Dissector Danny Schechter writes
the newsdissetor.com blog and made the film Plunder The
Crime of Our Time (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com) on
financial crimes and the economic crisis. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org.