Poisoned Fruit and Political Entrapment: “Birthers”and the Persistent Power of the Socialist Smear

“All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is opposed. Third it is accepted as being self evident.” -Arthur Schopenhauer

They must be laughing over at the leftist online website the DC Independent, other progressive circles, and in the liberal advocacy media (LAME).

Why?

Because one of their own, Dave Weigel, managed to cleverly plant the poisonous fruit of the “birther” controversy smack-dab in the middle of the Tea Party Convention in Nashville.

Yup.

Right in the midst of a conservative uprising and popular movement that is primarily dedicated to defeating the Left, excoriating progressives, and confronting the LAME, a clever little journalist just happened to come across evidence that THE narrative-the “birther” controversy- that the Left has already floated as the fatal wound that will inevitably fall the Tea Party Movement (and conservative resistance to Obama’s agenda), is beginning to do just that.

Weigel, a reporter for the Washington Independent, got lucky and apparently was able to instigate what turned into a somewhat heated exchange between two of the invited (and best) speakers at the Tea Party Convention; Joseph Farah, the founder of World Net Daily, and Andrew Breitbart, the founder of Big Hollywood and Breitbart TV. As Weigel tells it, he overhead Andrew Breitbart criticizing Joseph Farah for dedicating a significant amount of his Friday night keynote speech to the issue of President Obama’s birth certificate. Weigel reports that Breitbart was being interviewed by World Net Daily’s Chelsea Schilling who asked him if Obama’s birth certificate was a legitimate issue. Weigel reported that the exchange went like this:

“It’s self-indulgent, it’s narcissistic, it’s a losing issue,” Breitbart told Schilling. “It’s a losing situation. If you don’t have the frigging evidence — raising the question? You can do that to Republicans all day long. You have to disprove that you’re a racist! Forcing them to disprove something is a nightmare.”

“Wouldn’t you say,” asked Schilling, “in this case, that Farah is asking Obama to prove something rather than his disprove it?”

Breitbart rejected the premise. “When has a president ever been asked to prove his citizenship?”

According to Weigel, he was the one that initially engaged Farah when he asked him if his speech was approved by the organizers of the convention. Farah explained to him that no one told him what to say and that’s when Weigel, referring to Breitbart’s criticism, informed Farah that his speech “was getting negative attention already.”  This surprised Farah a bit and he then walked over to Breitbart in an effort to debunk the criticism.

That’s when the exchange on the question of the birth certificate took place. (For audio click here.)For the sake of brevity I will not repost the entire exchange here. If you want to read the entire thing, I suggest you go to the Washington Independent story I linked above, or listen to it on the audio I provided.

The actual exchange is worth analyzing a bit because there was more to it than just the question of the birth certificate issue. First, it is interesting to note that Farah’s original concern with Breitbart was not the “birther” critique, but the fact that he would openly criticize Farah and his speech to a reporter from the Washington Independent.

“Andrew is my friend,” Farah said.  “He has the right to disagree, and he has the right to say anything to a socialist newspaper that he wants. And if he wants to criticize his friend to you, and he’s dumb enough to do that…”

Upon hearing this, Breitbart turned to Farah and then asked: “I’m dumb to do what?”

“Criticize your friend to this socialist newspaper.”

But Breitbart then had to correct Farah and pointed out that he was talking to Chelsea Schilling, a World Net Daily reporter (whose articles prove she believes the “birther” argument to be legitimate). After Farah then repeatedly tried to point out to Breitbart that they were in the presence of a hostile reporter, implying he should reserve his criticism,  Breitbart finally said:

“I was talking to her..She was asking me if I thought it was wise to bring it up, and I said, no. We have a lot of strong arguments to be making, and that is a primary argument. That is an argument for the primaries that did not take hold. The arguments that these people right here are making are substantive arguments. The elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts were all won not on birther, but on substance. And to apply to this group of people the concept that they’re all obsessed with the birth certificate, when it’s not a winning issue–”

I think that this reveals something interesting and is one of the reasons that I said that the Left is laughing at this. Of course, in his main contention, Breitbart is correct. The elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts were not won by the “birther” argument. I don’t even think that it came up at all in any of those races. Republicans won because Americans have rejected, en masse, the leftist agenda of Obama and the Democrats.

However, I think that by Breitbart taking issue with the “birther” controversy publicly and criticizing one of the keynote speakers of the Tea Party Convention, he has unwittingly given some ground to the Left. The “birther” issue was intentionally poisoned by the Left in order for them to be able to use it as a form of political entrapment. I suppose that this technique of the” poisoned fruit” is easy to see from the sidelines, but difficult to fight in the midst of battle.

According to C. Edmund Wright at the American Thinker, the Left’s control of the “birther” issue (and others) is “naked political psych warfare.” The whole idea of the “poisoned fruit” (my term) is to “hitch a scarlet letter of craziness and extremism to the Tea Party and conservative movements” which will “keep the GOP apparatus scared of and embarrassed of their own base voter.” Eventually, this will drive a wedge between the party and its voters as it will become plain  to ” the suits inside the Beltway that the party must not get too cozy with these crazies — or they will never win another election.”

I think Breitbart took the bait when he criticized Joseph Farah, which is all the more ironic, because Breitbart gave one of the most rousing speeches against the media, the Left, and their diminishing monopoly on political information that has ever been heard. (“It’s not your business model that sucks; It’s you that suck!”) It was also surprising, because many of the writers on his own site, Big Hollywood, either defend the “birther”" argument as legitimate, or are outright “birthers” themselves.

So, I think that at this point, it is not only disingenuous for the Tea Party or people like Breitbart to distance itself from the “birther” argument (I don’t even know if there is actually a “birther” movement per se) but it is wholly unnecessary.

Why?

Because, as I indicated in a previous post, concerns about Obama’s birth certificate and whether he meets the constitutional requirements as a natural born citizen to be eligible for the presidency, are perfectly legitimate and reasonable. And, as I also maintained in that post, the “birther”issue is only one issue amongst many (like it was in Farah’s speech). It is now running its course through the courts and the only rulings against it have been on standing alone. Obama’s citizenship and eligibility have not been decided on in a court of law and probably never will be. But the only thing that can be done on a policy level about it now, is to wait and see what happens. That’s it.

I have no problem with individual citizens putting up billboards asking the president to show the country his birth certificate and assuring it that he is an eligible constitutional officer.The legitimacy of the issue should be-er, should have been self-evident by now a long time ago, as none of the cases pending in court have been dismissed as frivolous, and Obama has spent nearly $2 million in an attempt to get the various cases dismissed or to prevent release of the documents that prove his eligibility.

But every conservative should recognize that it was the Left that first poisoned the “birther” issue and every time a conservative backs down from defending its reasonableness, they are acceding ground to authoritarian minds. When accused of being wacky for believing reasonable things, can there be any other interpretation of what is happening in the realm of politics?

As many know, the Daily Kos recently commissioned a poll in order to prove that Republican voters are wacky. They found that a minority percentage of Republicans, 36 percent, felt that Obama was not born inside the United States. In the same poll, the Daily Kos also found that 63 percent of Republicans believe that Obama is a socialist. In other findings from the same poll,  a significantly smaller minority of Republican voters felt Obama was a racist (32 percent), the he “wants the terrorists to win” (24 percent), and believe that ACORN stole the 2008 election (23 percent).

These quite unremarkable findings prompted Daily Kos founder Markos Malitsas to write:

This is why it’s becoming impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country. They are a party beholden to conspiracy theorists who don’t even believe Obama was born in the United States, and already want to impeach him despite a glaring lack of scandal or wrongdoing. They think Obama is racist against white people and the second coming of Lenin. And if any of them stray and decide to do the right thing and try to work in a bipartisan fashion, they suffer primaries and attacks. Given what their base demands — and this poll illustrates them perfectly — it’s no wonder the GOP is the party of no.

Why hasn’t anyone called him out on his wacky interpretations of that poll? Has anyone asked Malitsas why  having legitimate questions about the president, despite the information firewall that has been put up around Obama by people like him and the LAME, all-of-sudden makes one a “conspiracy theorist”? And how can anyone, especially those who are major figures on the Left, like Malitsas, continue to deny Obama’s Marxist influences with a straight face?

Just look at his associations- and I’m not even talking about the typical rogue’s gallery of those inside his administration who have publicly declared their affinity for Marxist ideas and Marxist historical figures. Why don’t they talk about people like Dr. Quentin Young, the founder of Physicians for a National Health Care Program, who is a longtime friend of Barack Obama according to Democracy Now!. Dr. Young  who has been a Marxist all of his life, remains a major influence of Barck Obama’s thinking on health care reform, and this is freely and openly admitted.It is intellectually dishonest, pure and simple, to deny this and do deny it repeatedly, which the Left has done.

But if this little known, but important influence on Obama’s policy thinking isn’t convincing enough, how about taking the word of someone who went to Occidental College with him in the 1980s? Dr. John Drew has been writing in his blog about discussions he had with Obama when he knew him in college, where they were both radicals and participated in the Anti-Apartheid Movement together. According to him, Obama understood Marxism from a pretty simplistic perspective, which did not change much over time. Don’t believe me? Dr. Drew himself has begun to publicly explain what he knew of Obama and his ideology in college: (Click here for his video.)

Anyway, there are worse things about Obama out there, but you don’t see any of his opponents using that information against him. For instance, Larry Sinclair, a former homosexual prostitute, claims to have witnessed Barack Obama smoking crack cocaine in the back of a limousine in Chicago in 1999. At the same time, Sinclair claims, Barack Obama was receiving oral sex from him, because, he claims, that Obama is a bi-sexual.

The same guy, Larry Sinclair, also claims that Obama is somehow implicated in the death of Donald Young, the Choir Conductor for Trinity United Church, Obama’s former church in Chicago. Young was murdered in his Chicago apartment in 2007. His murder remains unsolved.

So, if this stuff is out there, why aren’t Obama’s opponents using it? I mean if the “birther” issue has been so discredited and is such “poisonous fruit” to the Tea Party and conservatives, and they still see fit to have a major proponent of it speak at their first convention, what is preventing them from using the Larry Sinclair story against Obama? If their intent is just to bring Obama down regardless of whether the charges are baseless or not, why not use the story of Larry Sinclair and Donald Young?

Perhaps the answer is integrity. And that is something the Left did not show to George W. Bush at all when he was the President. They should be grateful, for the resistance to Obama will continue to grow and the chickens of the Left are only  now just starting to come home to roost.

Honduran Generals Cleared for Actions During Crisis

…Or how the international Left got the crisis in Honduras completely wrong.

(from Associated Press)

Honduras judge clears generals, coup amnesty OK’d

By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – A Supreme Court judge cleared Honduras’ military commanders Tuesday in the coup that toppled Manuel Zelaya, and hours later lawmakers approved amnesty for the ousted leader and all those involved in his removal.

The two measures — combined with Wednesday’s inauguration of a new president, conservative rancher Porfirio Lobo — appeared to spell the last chapter in the bitter political dispute that led to Honduras’ international isolation.

Supreme Court President Jorge Rivera ruled the country’s top generals did not abuse their power in ordering soldiers to escort Zelaya out of the country at gunpoint June 28.

“Prosecutors failed to prove the military chiefs acted with malice,” he said in a statement.

The prosecution’s case did not question Zelaya’s ouster itself — only whether the six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff went too far in flying him to Costa Rica after he was arrested by soldiers in a dispute over a constitutional referendum.

Those charged included the head of the armed forces, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, and five other top-ranking officers, including the air force chief, Gen. Javier Prince, and the navy commander, Gen. Juan Pablo Rodriguez. The abuse of power charge carries a sentence of three to six years in prison.

Rivera said in his ruling that the commanders were justified in sending Zelaya into exile because their actions were aimed at preserving peace in Honduras and they did not intend to cause the leftist president any harm.

Late Tuesday, Congress approved an amnesty for all those involved in the coup as well as for pending charges against Zelaya.

The body voted along party lines, with Zelaya’s Liberal Party abstaining and Lobo’s National Party voting in favor.

The amnesty, expected to take effect Wednesday, freed the military and other forces of any legal responsibility in the coup, and absolved Zelaya of charges of treason and abuse of power stemming from his campaign to change the constitution, despite the fact that the Supreme Court had ruled his plans for a referendum illegal.

Zelaya sneaked back into the country in September to reclaim the presidency and finish out his term, but has been holed up in the Brazilian Embassy since then, facing the threat of arrest if he leaves.

A deal has been brokered for Zelaya’s safe passage into exile Wednesday, the day Lobo is sworn in.

With the threat of arrest eliminated by the amnesty, Zelaya could apparently leave the embassy at will Wednesday.

But Honduran chief prosecutor Luis Alberto Rubi said Saturday that he was investigating Zelaya for allegedly embezzling at least $1.5 million in government funds. Such a charge would apparently not be covered by the amnesty.

Zelaya is scheduled to travel to the Dominican Republic as a private citizen Wednesday under an accord signed by Lobo and Dominican President Leonel Fernandez.

Lobo said he would accompany Fernandez to the embassy when Zelaya exits the diplomatic mission. “Can you imagine starting a term with a president locked up in an embassy … that is not fair for a president,” Lobo said.

Lobo said at a news conference Tuesday that he believes the United States will re-establish normal relations with Honduras as soon as he is sworn into office and that he is confident other countries will soon follow suit.

“With the United States, starting tomorrow everything will be normalized … they are going to state that to me officially tomorrow, when I am president,” Lobo said.

The U.S. Embassy in Honduras had no immediate comment on that claim.

Only the presidents of three other countries are scheduled to attend the inauguration: Taiwan, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

Proofs of a conspiracy? Or how did the high-minded and international Progressives get Honduras so wrong?

 

Original Comment by Conservative Policy News: Part 1

Supporters of ousted Honduran president Zelaya prepare for resistance

The more research I do on the Crisis in Honduras, the more complicated the story becomes. What follows is a multi-part comment that will provide not only a basic historical outline of the crisis , but also important links to reports and other reference materials that will help the interested reader confirm the truth of events and the perspective taken here. Hopefully, it will also  provide the impetus for others to do their own research into the deep history of this important political event which has ramifications, not only for the future of Latin America, but also for rest of the world.

Unfortunately, the entire fascinating story of crisis in Honduras  has been under-reported or  misreported by the liberal advocacy media (LAME) in the United States and throughout the world. This biased reporting  has served to further undermine the efforts of the  Honduran people at  restoring democracy and the rule of law in their country. At the same time, it has given aid and comfort to those  groups inside Honduras who continue to benefit from unrest, disorder and conflict.

When one looks at the crisis in Honduras (which remains unresolved), there comes into view the outlines of an international Marxist plan at work. Obviously, most people will be skeptical of that idea because it would be very difficult to prove that diverse figures such as Miguel D’Escoto, President of the United Nations General Assembly; Jose Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States; and Harold Koh,  chief legal counsel for the US State Department;  coordinated their efforts to some degree in an attempt to intimidate Honduras to retain Manuel Zelaya as President, even though that would have clearly violated Honduran law and interfered with the sovereign laegal process of every institution in the Honduran government.

However, those individuals, along with many others, played key roles from outside the country in what I believe was  an effort to subvert Honduran democracy and to further integrate Honduras into the so-called “Bolivarian Revolution,” the Marxist movement in Latin America that has been fomented by the quasi-secretive Sao Paulo Forum, is led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and planned by Fidel Castro, and which has authoritarian regimes like Cuba as members and pariah countries like Iran and Zimbabawe as its allies.

The Honduran government has withstood the attack for now, and was able to hold  scheduled elections in November. Nevertheless, the same international Marxist and Progressive forces (with the exception of the US State Dept.-which changed its position reluctantly) continue to pressure Honduras in the name of getting Zelaya back into the presidency, even though the new president, Porofirio “Pepe” Lobos, takes office on January 27, 2010. The international political community, international human rights activists, and  the LAME continue to work to keep the crisis going and unresolved; a crisis that benefits no one except the “Bolivarian Revolution” and the fanatical Marxist forces inside Honduras.

Pro-Zelaya, Marxist protesters gather at Tegucigalpa Airport July 6, 2009.

It is easy to be skeptical because to say a “conspiracy” devised and maintained the crisis in Honduras and continues to, one would have to be able to prove the existence of a plan, which has definite ends, and that the means taken during the crisis have been verifiably taken to support the conspiratorial plan. I do not have a smoking gun that proves there was something drawn up and put on paper in Havana or Caracas and later put into motion by Zelaya according to instruction.

But, once the entire history of the crisis in Honduras is exposed, I feel it would be very hard to deny that the international left strategically located in international organizations, in the “human rights community,” in the press, and even in U.S. State Department and the U.S. Senate, showed their disregard for the law, social order, truth and democracy in order to subvert a national government and bring it in line with a socialist political scheme that was rejected by a majority of the Honduran people as well as both conservative and leftist parties within the Honduran  government.

Consequently, the report that follows will examine the actions of all these forces during the Honduran crisis, and will show that an international but quasi-secretive movement of Marxists, ignored by the mainstream press in Latin America, the United States, and the rest of the world, has been the main engine of the prolonged crisis in Honduras since it began. And, it will expose the technique of constitutional subversion that has been the model for instituting the program of the “Bolivarian Revolution” in countries that have repeatedly and democratically rejected it.

Bolivarian Puppets

A Manufactured Crisis

The ongoing crisis in Honduras began on June 28, 2009 when President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales was arrested for trying to run a rogue and illegal nationwide plebiscite ostensibly to gauge popular approval for a National Constituent Assembly (NCA) that would have initiated the rewriting of the Honduran Constitution. A warrant had been issued for Zelaya’s arrest by the Supreme Court the day before, and Zelaya was then arrested by the Armed Forces of Honduras and transported out of the country to Costa Rica.

It was first reported to most of the world that the arrest of Zelaya had been brazenly conducted by a “military-backed coup” that kidnapped the President in his sleep (pajamas included) and was supported by “reactionary” and  right-wing forces within the Honduran government and the United States. The imagery that was used by the press harkened back to an era when Central America was a very hot front in the Cold War, its democracies were fragile, and political crises often ended with the rule of the  military or strong man dictators.

The histrionic response to the crisis in Honduras was not only concentrated in the international press; the reaction by the international community and leaders from around the world was almost uniform in condemning Zelaya’s arrest and in demanding his return to the presidency. In one of the stronger and more important responses to the crisis, the Secretary-General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Miguel Insulza, not only condemned the “coup being carried out by a group within the military,” but also called on “the Honduran people, the nations of the Americas, and the international community to join forces against this grave disturbance of the democratic process…in Honduras.”

For the most part, this version of events has remained the one touted by leftists from all over the world. With very few exceptions, the record of the crisis in Honduras continues to be partial to Zelaya and his claims that he was acting legally through his executive authority, while it continues to cast the actions taken by the Honduran government and interim president, Roberto Micheletti, in the most negative light possible.

Yet, even though this is the popular version of the crisis in Honduras, it is false.

The evidence shows that not only did Zelaya repeatedly violate Honduran law, he also openly shunned the legal authority of the nation’s legal institutions, including numerous rulings by the Honduras Supreme Court and the National Congress. Moreover, for months leading up to the crisis, Zelaya was leading a very public and defiant campaign against the government and intentionally stoking the flames of popular insurrection amongst various Marxist groups within the country- essentially preparing them for the “revolutionary moment” he was working to generate.  And, further, as events during the summer of 2009 have proven, Zelaya was acting on behalf of- and with the assistance of-  Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries of the “Bolivarian Revolution” which have been spreading their tentacles throughout Latin America for a decade, and were the most obvious beneficiaries of a discredited constitution, a weakened rule of law, and a watered-down sovereignty within the traditionally conservative,  pro-American Honduras.

Next: Part 2, The Single Spark

What to do about climate change.

The emerging media  narrative about the results of the Copenhagen Summit is following a predictable path. Because it is so wedded to the idea of Obama becoming the greatest president in the history of the world, the liberal advocacy media (LAME)  will try to conceal the disappointment they feel that no binding agreement on global warming was passed. They will fittingly praise the President for his realism and of course, blame conservatism and the ignorance of the American people for tying his hands politically, thus not allowing him to commit the country to a more far-reaching concordat. Pledges of $100 billion per year to be transferred to Third World kleptocracies isn’t good enough when de-industrialization of the entire Western world is your goal.

People clean snow from globe at Copenhagen global warming climate conference, 12-17-09.

Unfortunately for Americans, the increasingly unpopular Obama will be the President for three more years and because the Left and the LAME are so wedded to writing a colorful hagiography for him already, this alone will probably prevent them from moving out of the cities to create new hunter/gatherer ecotopias -complete with daily drum circles- and prepare for the coming cataclysm. That will probably be unfortunate not only for conservatives, but also for the rest of the world. After all, if they truly believe  the pronouncements coming from the likes of Al Gore and UN General Secretary Ban-Ki-Moon, I can think of no other logical alternative for enlightened progressives.

If the world is truly at a  point-of-no-return crisis of exigency concerning the environment, it would make sense for the deeply committed to develop a plan to, at least, save themselves and do it soon.  Since they are possessed of such incredible precognition and purity of intent the rest of us obviously lack,  they should at least attempt to preserve progressive knowledge for future generations; for God’s sake.

This way we all can be more hopeful that once the rapacious, benighted, conservative citizenry commits suicide by energy gluttony and destroys civilization, humanity’s future generations- once they emerge from the wasteland- will be able to make  use of progressivism to rebuild. Even if the oafs of the “outworld” manage to fuck up the planet enough so that the progressive sanctuary does not survive, at least someone, somewhere, will have preserved the most important high-minded works ever produced by our civilization. Just imagine, a new world raised from the ashes by utilizing the wisdom contained in Das Kapital, Manufacturing Consent, and Planting Seeds in  Poison Soil:A History of the Weather Underground!

This isn’t that wacky of an idea. Just think about it. Enlightened progressives  could move to somewhere in the world and declare their independence from the capitalist world. Free from the retrograde flippancy of creatures like climate “deniers,”  the sonorous hubris of Rush Limbaugh, and the majority of humanity that doesn’t listen to them, the enlightened progressives could build a true “city on a hill” complete with clean water, genderless marriage, and organic turnips. The superior intelligence of the community, led by an all-female, multi-racial coop board with a rotating chairperson, could build glorious new green technology that will not only sustain the community and leave a negligible carbon footprint, but also protect it from the growing barbarity, decay, and fascism of the petroleum gulping “outworld.”

The perfect human being.

Because carbon producing activities effect the entire global eco-system many enlightened progressives may resist this project at first. After all, they have been selflesly dedicating their efforts to the political scientific indoctrination re-education of the uninformed and perplexed, and they are having success. No one can tell when the tipping point for acceptance of  socialist revolution free market solutions to climate change may come, when the proverbial twelfth monkey will be born, when critical mass has been reached and the entire world converted.

Yet, the hour is late and the time for deciding has come. Can the enlightened progressives wait any longer and risk being extinguished (along with warming denying fools) by raging torrents flowing uncontrollably from melting glaciers, massive, unstoppable tidal waves endemic to rising oceans, or starving polar bears rushing southward to escape the doomed arctic that was once their homeland?

If progressives stay and fight for everyone, think of the loss to the world!

There will be no one left to preserve the accumulated wisdom of the ages. No one left to pronounce the essential truths of progressivism. No one left to analyze the situation as succinctly and resplendent as humanists like Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela did at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. Reportedly his speech was met with the most resounding approval and thunderous applause of the entire two weeks of summitry. Listen:

Let’s not change the climate. Let’s change the system! And as a consequence, we will begin to save the planet. Capitalism is a destructive development model that is putting an end to life, that threatens to put a definitive end to the human species.”

One could say, Mr. President, that a spectre is haunting Copenhagen, to paraphrase Karl Marx, the great Karl Marx, a spectre is haunting the streets of Copenhagen, and I think that spectre walks silently through this room, walking around among us, through the halls, out below, it rises, this spectre is a terrible spectre almost nobody wants to mention it: Capitalism is the spectre, almost nobody wants to mention it.

Let’s talk about the cause, let’s not evade responsibilities, and let’s not evade the depth of this problem. The cause, undoubtedly, I return to the theme of this whole disastrous panorama, is the destructive metabolic system of capital and its embodied model: Capitalism.

Socialism, the other spectre Karl Marx spoke about, which walks here too, rather it is like a counter-spectre. Socialism, this is the direction, this is the path to save the planet, I don’t have the least doubt. Capitalism is the road to hell, to the destruction of the world. We say this from Venezuela, which because of socialism faces threats from the U.S. Empire.

If the destructive nature of capitalism opposes us, let’s fight against it and make it obey us, let’s not wait idly by for the death of humanity.History calls on us to unite and to fight.

If capitalism resists, we are obliged to take up a battle against capitalism and open the way for the salvation of the human species. It’s up to us, raising the banners of Christ, Mohammed, equality, love, justice, humanity, the true and most profound humanism. If we don’t do it, the most wonderful creation of the universe, the human being, will disappear, it will disappear.

So, progressives, I implore you, by saving yourselves you are saving humanity.  Crisis is upon us and it requires the commitment of  really, really intelligent people to take brilliant action.  Please, take the advice of your brother Hugo Chavez and do what he has done; separate yourselves from capitalism, build your own society far from the conservative horde, and create the utopia of your dreams somewhere (preferably) outside the really evil United States.

In just a few short years, Hugo Chavez has turned Venezuela into a country of your most naughty progressive dreams. He has destroyed the independence of the Venezuelan judiciary, he has prevented duly elected officials in Venezuela from taking office, he has suppressed the freedom of speeech,   he has all but endorsed anti-semitism in the Venezuelan government, and he has embraced other renowned enlightened progressives to his professed cause of saving humanity.

If you are having doubts about the potential for your new community do not. Your brother, Hugo Chavez, has also shown you the way to developing your own green paradise. Being in control of vast oil, natural gas, and hydroelectric energy in Venezuela has not tempted brother Chavez from the goal of green paradise. Thanks to the policies which he controls, blackouts and water shortages have become so frequent in Venezuela, the great liberator himself has had to take drastic measures and recommended that people take “3-minute showers, lose weight and buy generators.”

Good, solid green advice.

Blackouts in Venezuela

Although the less energy the better, some capitalists have made the Venezuelan energy crisis a big deal. According to them, as Venezuela becomes more socialist, it becomes more difficult to to extract the energy the people need. The New York Times says,  “a combination of negligence and poor planning” has been the cause of new electricity plants fueled by natural gas “to remain completely or partly idle.” It also has reported that  “nationalization effectively halted renewable-energy projects” and “is the reason renewable energy remains negligible in Venezuela, despite its vast potential.”

To hell with such criticism. The time for action is now. The world awaits the enlightened progressives to begin plowing the way to the future. While the rest of us burn and starve due to our skepticism about global warming and socialism, it is my sincerest wish that you, enlightened progressives, join with your brother Hugo Chavez and his friends, to develop the architecture of the sustainable planet.

I just hope  you can find a place far from the United States so you are allowed to do your best work and are not troubled by inconvenient things like open debate.

Brother Chavez can help you with that too.

I wish you the best. Goodbye, and good luck!

Unions may decide to pull support from Senate health care bill

Support for for the Senate’s compromise health care bill amongst the Democratic far-left is fading. Along with statements made today by former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean urging defeat of the bill, The Hill newspaper has reported that the SEIU has pulled out of a  Washington press conference scheduled for today where they, along with other liberal groups, were supposed to announce support for the legislation.

Earlier today Dean urged the Senate to reject the bill as Senate majority leader Harry Reid has taken out provisions that would include a government-funded insurance option and a medicare buy-in for persons who reach the age of 55.

The SEIU did not indicate that their reason for pulling out of the press conference was a loss of confidence in the bill. Instead, they announced that their executive board would convene an emergency meeting Wednesday night to decide “how to move forward.”

Earlier today, a 767 page amendment that would reinstate the single-payer, government-run insurance option was introdued by  Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. After Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) requested that the clerk read the entire amendment on the Senate floor, Sanders objected and the reading was stopped by the parliamentarian.

The Republican leadership have called this an unprecedented breach of the procedural rules as Senate procedures clearly state that  before an amendment is taken up for debate, it must be read by the clerk unless a waiver is granted or the reading is halted by unanimous consent. It cannot be stopped by the Senator who proposed the amendment.

Sanders withdrew the amendment shortly after.

Did Obama Check with Joe Biden about 1991 Persian Gulf War “Consensus?”

The Powerline blog reveals that Obama has had to revise  history for his Nobel Prize speech. In the speech Obama says:

Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait – a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.

Powerline then points out that there was no such consenus about the exigencies of thwarting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in the United States Congress in 1991. Vice-President Joe Biden was one of 47 Democrats in the U.S. Senate who voted against sending this “clear message about the cost of aggression.”

The vote in the Senate on the authorization of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, which took place on January 12, 1991, was 52-47. The Democrats controlled the Senate at the time; they voted 45-10 against the “consensus” on “the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait.” John Kerry, Joe Biden and 43 other Democrats voted to let Saddam Hussein keep Kuwait and expand his control over Middle Eastern oil from there, while continuing to develop nuclear weapons–which, we later learned, he would have had by 1992 or 1993, at the latest.

In the House, the story was similar. The vote was 250-183, with a large majority of Democrats voting with Saddam Hussein. Sure, it would be possible to be more pathetic on national security than the Democratic Party, but it wouldn’t be easy. What is interesting about all of this is the Democrats’ need to rewrite history. Can anyone doubt that if Barack Obama had been in the Senate in 1991, he would have joined 45 of his Democratic colleagues in voting for Saddam Hussein’s control over the Middle East? Of course not. Yet today, Obama is forced to pretend that ousting Saddam was a “consensus” decision taken by “the world.” Thus does truth force itself on even the most unwilling auditors.

Oh yeah. And there’s this pleasant little story at Newsreal about the White House serving ACORN cookies to guests at the December 7, 2009 White House Christmas Party.

Do you like ACORN? We like ACORN.

Newsreal writes:

At the Dec. 7 White House Christmas Party attendees were treated with acorn-shaped chocolate cookies, rubbing the President’s affiliation with the controversial group ACORN in everyone’s faces as though they were punishing a puppy by rubbing its nose in their sh*&.

Sweet.

Poles Protest Plan for Stalin Memorial in U.S.

(from November 23, 2009 Polskie Radio)

Statue of Stalin being taunted and spit on during 1956 Hungarian Uprising

The Polish community in the United States is outraged by a plan to honour Josef Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.

According to William McIntosh, the director of the Bradford museum, which is coordinating the project, the Soviet dictator deserves to be acknowledged alongside Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has he was an ally of the US after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

The plans have met with protests from Polish war veterans in New York.  President of the Kosciuszko Foundation, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex Storozynski described the plans as a ‘misguided move’ that “will haunt millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Jews, etc. whose families were massacred by this Soviet tyrant. Stalin’s killing machine slaughtered more people than Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did. “

How the memory of Stalin is commemorated in Eastern Europe today. From Monument Park in Budapest.

Storozynski writes in an article at the Huffington Post web site: “Hitler and Stalin were allies and started World War II in 1939 by both attacking Poland at the same time. (…) Stalin only gave lip service to the allies so that they would attack Nazi Germany on the Western front. Stalin did not liberate Eastern Europe from the Nazis in 1945…”

(read more here. Also see Huffington Post article here.)

New European Union foreign minister faces questions over pro-Soviet sympathies

As the Lisbon Treaty, ostensibly the new constitution of Europe, is put into place, the newly appointed foreign minister-a position with vastly more powers than any EU foreign policy body has had in the past-faces questions about possible connections to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Baroness Cathy Ashton, the newly appointed EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs was the treasurer of the  anti-nuke group the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the early 1980s. Members of the British Independence Party have sent a letter to EU Commission President, Manuel Barrosso, asking him to investigate whether Baroness Ashton ever was party to  payments from Moscow via the CND.

More here.

Also, for a comprehensive report of Soviet influence on the early 1980s anti-nuke movement, read here.

It is also  interesting that Ashton was chosen by the “inner machinations of the Brussels elite” after a “byzantine” process of leader selection. Interesting.

Important Finding from Al Gore’s Global Warming NGO: Propoganda, the cult of personality, and single-minded devotion by membership works to spread climate alarmism.

Al Gore’s global warming NGO, The Climate Project (TCP), recently released a study it did on the impact that the organziation was having on the global warming debate. The study commissioned by TCP was conducted by Milepost Consulting in collaboration with Stork Marketing and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The report concludes that TCP is having marked effects on public attitudes towards climate change. The report finds that:

those who previously did not identify as “environmentalists” underwent the greatest mental shift, becoming more likely to support emissions reduction and to reduce their carbon footprint. Moreover, the evaluation suggests that TCP, an international non-profit founded by former Vice President Al Gore, has created a new, unique environmental movement by customizing its message by region and community.

Other key finding from the report’s Executive Summary include:

• Approximately 34,000 presentations have been delivered to nearly 3.4 million audience members spanning the political and social spectrum throughout the U.S.

• Many of those who participated in TCP trainings during 2006 and 2007 were already very concerned about climate change, but lacked a specific mechanism for acting on that concern. TCP training, personal encouragement from Vice President Al Gore and participation in a community of individuals with a shared goal, worked to give these motivated individuals the skills and emotional encouragement they needed to take effective action.

• TCP training increased presenters’ awareness and understanding of climate science and the key issues of the climate change problem—and their ability to convey that information to others.

• By devoting hundreds of hours to research, preparation and delivery of presentations; speaking out to family and friends; and creating change within their professional networks, presenters made climate change work an important part of their lives.

According to TCP’s website, thousands of  volunteers  have been trained to  “present a version of the slide show featured in the Academy Award-winning film An Inconvenient Truth.” One wonders if those trained by the TCP and/or their apparently malleable audiences have been given any information about the fallacies a British Court ruled were contained in Al Gore’s movie, or if the fallacies are simply left unaddressed?

For those of you not familiar with the story (easy to imagine if you rely on the mainstream press for important news), in 2007, British truck driver Stewart Dimmock challenged An Inconvenient Truth from being shown to British schoolchildren. His claim was based on the theory that the movie was not settled science, but rather a work of political indoctrination, which violated section 406(1)(b) of the Education Act 1996 which prohibits “promotion of partisan views in the teaching of any subject in schools.”

The Court ruled in favor of Dimmock and determined that:

1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument.

2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination.

3.) Nine inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

These inaccuracies are:

• The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming.  The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.

• The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years.  The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.

• The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming.  The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
• The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming.  The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.

• The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice.  It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.

• The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

• The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching.  The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

• The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

• The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand.  The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

During the trial, the defense’s expert witnesss, Professor Robert Merlin Carter testified that that An Inconvenient Truth actually contained 20 verifibale errors (“20 separate departures from the scientific consensus”). It makes for interesting reading and I include the testimony below:

View this document on Scribd

If, in fact, the climate change alarmists have not addressed the findings in this decision, hoping it just goes away,  I wonder what their  tactics will be in addressing ClimateGate,  recent revelations that some of the lead alarmist scientists were willing to ignore important data in order to maintain an illusion of consensus about global warming.

For an overview of ClimateGate I recommend these links:

The Sound of All Hell Breaking Loose

Statements by University of Colorado climatologist  Roger Pielke Sr.

And for a good quick rundown of the scandal: Christopher Booker’s Telegraph blog.

“Send the Body Bag to Glenn Beck!”

Death in Clay County

The Left just knew that they were right about the the tragic death death of U.S, Census worker Bill Sparkman. They just knew it! How could the progressive and high-minded ever be wrong? An actual employee of the federal government, the U.S. Census (?) no less, hanging from a tree in Clay County, Kentucky?

“The right-wing did it!’

“Come on! I mean Clay County. Kentucky.”

“Delicious!”

“Is that the impoverished and benighted little redoubt of American backwardness named after Henry Clay, one of those irascible, bigoted southerners from pre-Emancipation days? Oh, the joy!”

“Wait a minute, they called Henry Clay the Great Compromiser? Helped end slavery in Washington, D.C.? Helped California be admitted as a free state? Ran for President on not allowing Texas into the Union for fears it would reignite the debate about slavery and force war with Mexico?

In 1957, a U.S. Senate committee -headed by John F. Kennedy- named Henry Clay the greatest Senator that ever lived.”

“Never mind. These are dark times of crisis, no time to niggle about history and whatnot. Who really cares about who Henry Clay was and why this stupid little county in the Kentucky backwater was named after him.  Sparkman was found hanging from a tree!

“I agree, this calls for the intrepid Southern Poverty Law Center to earn their pay. There is such a threat of right-wing violence today, isn’t there?”

(reading newspaper) “Well, says here he wasn’t exactly hanging from a tree?“

“Uh Oh. That doesn’t make us look like paranoid wingnuts  readily willing to overexaggerate and politicize tragedy. Does it?“

(in unison) “We’re better than that!”

“But this is Lower Glennbeckistan territory. This is the place, in 2009, where the right-wing goes to die forever and the progressive and high-minded prove their courage and the reason they can be counted on to stand against paranoia and bigotry of all kinds, even if we do falsely accuse innocents from time to time.”

“Wait. What? It was ruled a suicide? By whom?”

“The State Police, the FBI, the U.S. Forest Service, the State Medical Examiner’s Office, and the Clay County Coroner’s Office.”

“How? Well maybe these notorious government forces have colluded in a cover-up… a, well, nevermind.

Whispered aside-(Yes, I got the memo! I know, we’re in anti- conspiracy mode now!)

(in unison) “Anyway we know SHE caused it!”

(SHE is journalist Michelle Malkin, the diminuitive Asian terrorist fear-monger right-wing extremist standing with a teabagger below at one of their teabagging gatherings in the nation’s capital. We said “teabag” twice there-do we get enlightenment points for that?)

“Hey, wait! Look.“

“There, in Tampa Bay, one of those air-conditioned nightmares of a Florida City with sprawl creating McMansions and Disney-mesmerized idiots; some stupid Marine Reservist, pumped up on imperialism, roids, and anti-Muslim hatred attacks a Greek Orthodox Priest because some old men discussed Islam on a radio station in Buffalo, New York!”

“And those old men, they were talking about Islam at a time when a Muslim Army Major, perhaps in touch with Islamic extremists , slaughtered 13 American soldiers at Fort Hood, Tx?!”

“Yes! It’s true. Hard to believe, I know.”

“That’s why the world needs the progressive and the high-minded so much! So we can make these complex connections for the idiots we have been so unfortunate to be born in the same era with. And who interpret the world only through their bigoted instincts.”

“We are necessary because we need to inform the vast American brainwashed population (we just happen to disagree with on public policy) that:

1) Their fears are irrational and solely based on ignorance and bigotry, while our fears our reasonable, because we primarily fear them!

2) Their paranoia about the government is totally irrational and based on bigotry, but our paranoia about the government  is rational and based on even-tempered analysis at ALL TIMES. There is the notable exception however, of when they are in power. Which brings us to:

3) Even though the right-wing extremists “feel” that we gratuitously hurl unfounded insults and invective their way, falsely charging them of  crimes they did not commit, positions they have not taken, and back it up (if forced to) with illusory historical references, that is not the case at all.”

“Why?”

“Because we say so, that’s why.”

“And don’t forget, we  are also necessary,  so we can eventually blame HER, somehow, for every random act of violence in America.”

“Wait, the Tampa ‘Lance Corporal’ is speaking? Can the guy even put two coherent thoughts together? The Priest grabbed his genitals? He’s confused about the charges?”

“Hah! What kind of tea-bagging knuckle dragger would question the integrity of a man of the cloth and create civil disruption like this? Progressives certainly don’t…ahh.”

“Well, he still may be guilty.”

“No, he is!”

(In unison) “Because we say so! (Phew! That usually works. It worked for global warming!)”

“They will never catch on! (Er…teabaggers).”

Thanks to The Other McCain for the inspiration and  much of the info in this post.

The Economics of Fascism

To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement … Whoever defeats the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus … thereby it becomes its enemies.

-Philip K. Dick

I remember the day that it happened. The sky was dark and covered by grey clouds. The air was bitter and wet snow was being splashed up by vehicles on the street. I was walking in mid-winter and pondering why the study of history was so fraught with despair.

Sometimes enlightenment comes in flashes but awareness is not always pleasant.

As the wind kicked up and I passed the vast, broken landscape of my de-industrialized city, that flash happened. Words are used to construct a reality around us and they are the most important of tools for politics. We are immersed in words and our cognitive understanding of our place in history and the history of the nation is usually limited by the words and imagery uttered by the cognoscenti and approved of by some “authority.” Mostly, these are very limited sources.

But, the truth is out there.

One of the most astounding things that needs to be dealt with by anyone in this world, is how the individual is sold on the idea that he lives in liberty and is ultimately the sovereign of any democratic government, but in reality has very little power to promote change. In the United States,  there has been an anxiety amongst many that democracy has been under threat of extinction.

Power has a tendency to self-perpetuate and to see itself as having an entitlement to lead, rule, and control the levers of  social action.   In the U.S., there is  no better evidence of the decline of the “people’s sovereignty” than the fact that  the government and the more influential media venues have been increasingly under the control of a hereditary political class. Certainly, the temptations for leaders to insinuate their progeny into the  power class is great as the rewards are tremendous. This is one of the side-effects of ever-expanding government economy based on spending and the government having a large portion of the  the economy under its regulatory control. Expansive government, as most historians have recognized, is the seedcorn of corruption.

But just how expansive is the  government economy in the U.S.? As a reform movement, conservatism states that one of its principals is limited government. But just how limited do conservatives want the government to be? It is easy for the critics of conservatism to poke holes in one of its most important principles when there never seems to be a comprehensive plan to initiate serious reform. Or worse, when conservatives actually expand the government while they are in power.

I think that the following video will be helpful for those who truly want to understand the framework of the centralized state and its history in the U.S.

In the video, Professor Thomas DiLorenzo, one of the most important economic historians in the country today, discusses the  nature of  the Fascist economy.  He clearly suggests, albeit in revisionist fashion, that the centralized state that exists in the U.S. today  has a lot in common with the economics of Fascist Italy. He also discusses why the free market economy, that supposedly championed by conservatism and reviled by the Left, has probably not existed in the U.S. since the beginning of the Civil War.

It is a very interesting journey into economic history and is a good starting point for anyone interested in understanding modern, centralized, state-controlled economic ideas.

Some of the more fascinating highlights:

• The comparison between Fascist economic thinking and modern liberal thinking about central government planning.

• Abraham Lincoln as economic nationalist

• Connection between American centralization and the Bismarckian Welfare State of Germany-one of the first welfare states in Europe.

• Alexander Hamilton’s arguments for a centralized economy at the founding.

• The fondness for Fascism amongst American political elites of the 1920s and 1930s.

• The Fascist attack on classical liberalism.

Crocodile Tears for Left-Wing Fears

Harvey Milk’s people do not have anything to apologize for. Now the society is going to have to deal with us not as nice little fairies who have hairdressing salons, but as people capable of violence. We’re not going to put up with Dan Whites anymore.

-San Franciso Supervisor Harry Britt, May 22, 1979

There is a joke floating around about the tactics employed by supporters of President Obama and the Democratic Party to discredit the critics of their increasingly unpopular, aggressive, and radical social agenda.  It goes:

“How do you know if someone is a racist?”

“Easy, it is anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal.”

If there was any doubt that the Left and the Democrats would go to the well and use one of their most potent rhetorical weapons-the demagoguery of identity politics-in order to defend President Barack Obama and his domestic agenda, there shouldn’t be anymore. In the face of polling which shows President Obama declining in popularity and an increasing number of Americans disapproving of most of the Democrats’ policy initiatives, the Left has been exerting a lot of energy  in order to remind Americans that the  history of the U.S.  is filled with  bigoted violence. Their intentions, of course, are not to make reasoned policy counter- arguments against  effective opposition and to set an example of “civil discourse” they feel only they possess,  but rather to browbeat critics into shame and, eventually, a silence born of  historical guilt.

They do this without much evidence that the critics are in fact bigots or plan any kind of violent resistance to Obama’s left-wing social policies. Ironically, however, the rhetorical attacks on the critics  evoke some of the most sweeping conspiracy theories and harken back to the industrial-sized paranoia that afflicted  the Left during the political tumult of the 1960s and 70s. An atmosphere that, incidentally, bred some of the most extreme violence and worst domestic acts of  terror ever witnessed on American soil; most, if not all, committed by devotees of some Marxist, revolutionary or some other counter-cultural cause associated with the radical Left.

One of the most misleading examples of this appeal to identity politics was recently pursued by Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.. On Wednesday, September 15 the Speaker held her weekly press conference where she talked about the state of health care reform amongst other issues. During the conference, Pelosi was asked a number of questions about the growing opposition to health care reform and the increasing disapproval ratings of President Barack Obama. After a week where critics of the Democrats’ legislative agenda mobilized hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters to march on Washington D.C, and spurious charges of racism were attributed to that crowd ostensibly by supporters of this agenda,  Nancy Pelosi responded by warning that the language being used by the critics in the debate should be scaled down as it might incite violence. Choking down her tears, Pelosi said:

“I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this, myself, in the late ’70s in San Francisco. This kind of rhetoric was very frightening, and it created a climate in which violence took place.”

For anyone who knows the history, it is difficult to fathom what “frightening language” Pelosi was referring to when she warned about the dangerous, perhaps deadly,  potential of free and open political debate and aggrieved citizens’ assembly. The specific violence the Speaker amorphously alluded to, as confirmed by her office, was the murder of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the gay politician recently depicted in Gus Van Zant’s biopic starring Sean Penn. Milk was murdered by fellow supervisor Dan White, who received a very light sentence because of the use of the notorious “Twinkie defense” at his trial.

The City’s homosexual population was enraged by the sentencing that followed ( White got 7 years for involuntary manslaughter) and their outrage was exacerbated by an unfounded theory that there was a concerted effort by a secret cabal within the San Francisco police department to harass and malign them, and that somehow White, the jury, and an unspecified number of the San Francisco political establishment were a  part of this conspiracy. It is curious to note that the prosecutor in the case, Thomas Norman, denied these allegations as he had diligently sought to convict White of first-degree murder,  and that the Chief of Police, Charles Gain, was rated as one of the most progressive police officials in the nation and had been implementing pro-gay policies since the beginning of his tenure. (It was San Francisco after all; by that time already an uber-liberal American city. Remember the kinder, gentler powder blue police cars from 1970s police movies?)

Nonetheless, the outrage was felt so deeply by San Francisco’s gays that this street-level conspiracy theory helped to ignite what was known as the White Night Riots on May 21, 1979, the night of White’s conviction. Far from being a peaceful protest, White Night rioters (in one night) burned and smashed City Hall, attacked and injured police officers,  set police cars on fire, and caused millions of dollars in property damage. The rioters ended up also trashing the Civic Center and most of the Castro District, which was the most gay-friendly neighborhood in San Francisco and the center of gay political power in the City. Hundreds of arrests were made.

Despite the fact that some of Harvey Milk’s supporters tried to calm the crowd before most of the violence broke out, there were many gay leaders who refused to apologize for the riots and the damage that was done. So deeply was the loss of Harvey Milk felt that it was seen as a sort of rough justice that the community’s outrage was expressed through violence and disruption, even if the mob’s case was not entirely based on verifiable truth of a real conspiracy. Regardless, the White Night Riots are not remembered as an outburst of paranoid extremists, but as an expression of justifiable gay rage that spawned a new era for homosexual activism and the struggle for gay civil rights. For instance, in a compilation of personal histories recounting the event, one proud activist remembered his rage in an essay about the events he called “I Was There!”:

“i sprinted up the stairs of the state building until i reached the doors, front and center. i gesticulated wildly at the guards on the other side. they were two huge riot-geared cops. i smiled at them and tugged the bricks out from under my jacket. through the glass doors divided us, we were no more than four feet apart from each other. i hurled the bricks with all my strength into their faces. the doors splintered and the cops fell back. i was covered with glass, screaming, “fuck you, fuck you. i’ve been living for this, you cowards, i would kill you if i could!” i was shaking with the expulsion of a rage that fed hungrily upon itself.”

Part Two coming soon