COVERUP AS CONSPIRACY THEORY

Millions of words have been expended down the decades on the matter of the press’s role in “cover-ups.” Every cover-up has its own specific mix
as with the saga of the USS Liberty, the Agency’s role in the 1953 Guatemalan coup, the story that prompted the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Times to launch a collective onslaught on the San Jose Mercury News for Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in 1996.

The consistent features, starting with the extreme unease with which the corporate press approaches a story.

The onslaught on the Isolationists who strove to keep America clear of both World Wars. The clearest illustration of this antipathy is the mountain of evidence attesting to FDR’s campaign to get America into the war.

Professor Thomas Mahl published covert British campaign in the 1998 book Desperate Deception -- British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44 writes, “until recently, the study lacked respectability
smacks too much of conspiracy – a word with a very unprofessional ring among American historians…

Graduate students are warned about the ‘furtive fallacy.’… How does the historian avoid the charge that he is indulging in conspiracy history when he explores the activities of a thousand people.

The ruthless campaign to discredit Charles Beard’s pioneering 1948 book, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War 1941 attested to the determination by the foreign policy and academic establishments to crush the Non-Interventionists and neutralize them as a political force.

Denouncing “conspiracy mongering” was an integral part of this campaign – never more vehement than when addressing the whole issue of FDR’s conduct in the run-up to Pearl Harbor.

Sometimes a conspiracy does surface, propelled into the light of day by a tenacious journalist. But by then the caravan has moved on.

a case on which the jury is still out.” As so often, the jury came back in and issued its verdict, but by then the press box was empty.

But maybe now with the decline in power of corporate press. And the greater availability of dissenting versions. The exposure of the methods used to coerce publish support for the 2003 US attack on Iraq will lead to a greater sense of realism on the part of Americans as to what their government is capable of

ZINN DISTRACTORS

In looking for Zinn detractors, this is the rogues gallery.

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/howard-zinns-detractors/

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/?s=dissent+magazine

Master of Deceit By: Dan Flynn
FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, June 03, 2003

Who is the most influential historian among young people? Filmmaker Ken Burns? Could it be the Democrats’ court historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.? Biographer David McCullough? How about the late Stephen Ambrose, whose triumphant view of American history has brought alive such colorful characters as Meriwether Lewis, Crazy Horse, and George Custer?

Though an argument exists for any one of these men (even the ones who lack the proper academic credentials), a strong case could also be made for a decidedly less establishment figure: Howard Zinn.

http://smearcasting.com/index.html

http://www.muzzlewatch.com/2008/10/13/fairness-and-accuracy-in-reporting-on-islamophobia-tip-toes-to-the-edge-but-wont-jump-in/#more-408

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_Horowitz_%28ex-Marxist%29

http://www.campusprogress.org/tools/155/know-your-right-wing-speakers-david-horowitz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHe7epev3Gs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/the-demons-of-david-horow_1_b_71441.html

http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Horowitz_David

http://www.nndb.com/people/812/000049665/

http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo1031.html

http://mediamatters.org/research/200503160001

DISSENT MAGAZINE

I imagine that most people have heard Woody Allen’s joke about Dissent Magazine in “Annie Hall” but I love to repeat it every chance I get:

Alvy Singer: I’m so tired of spending evenings making fake insights with people who work for “Dysentery.”

Robin: “Commentary.”

Alvy Singer: Oh really? I had heard that “Commentary” and “Dissent” had merged and formed “Dysentery.”

Howard Zinn and the myth of the “People’s War”

This discussion led me to thinking about Zinn’s approach to WWII in chapter sixteen of “People’s History of the United States”, titled appropriately enough “A People’s War?” (The entire book can be read online here.) Written in 1980, the book adopts a “revisionist” perspective that was associated with a number of younger New Left historians such as Gar Alperovitz whose 1965 book “Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam” revealed U.S. war aims as setting the stage for the Cold War.




Alperovitz studied history at the University of Wisconsin under William Appleman Williams who was a seminal figure of the New Left. Williams, his 1959 “The Tragedy of American Diplomacy” was a highly influential work, arguing that the U.S. had imperial ambitions from the days of Thomas Jefferson.

Charles Beard, having an influence on Williams, was an “economic determinist”, Beard is known for a kind of class analysis of the American constitution. He was a member in good standing of the Progressivist current. he was immune, to get on FDR’s bandwagon. He was more in line with Marxist principles in refusing to treat WWII as a “people’s war”. Truman only bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to “teach the Russians a lesson” as Gar Alperovitz reported.



The term “New Left” was coined to distinguish the 1960s radicals from the political dry rot bequeathed by the Communist Party. It was a rejection of the dogmatism of all Marxist groups. whatever it lacked theoretically it made up for politically by breaking with the social patriotism of the CP.

Howard Zinn identified with this outlook. he demonstrated that WWII was an imperialist war, even if it coincided with anti-imperialist struggles and the necessary defense of the USSR.

veterans of the New Left are much stronger position to resist new efforts to “fight fascism”, especially in Yugoslavia and Iraq—two arenas that people like Christopher Hitchens have specifically likened to the efforts to defeat Hitlerism.



Beard belonged to the earlier Progressive school. Other members were John Dewey the philosopher and cultural historian Vernon Parrington. These were people of Eugene V. Debs’ generation and likely to take the “people’s war” rhetoric with a grain of salt

Beard's opposition to World War Two caused him to be an isolated figure in the world of cold-war liberalism

A new generation of “revisionist” historians came along in the 1960′s and put their support behind Beard’s interpretation. United States intervention as an ally of the USSR against the Nazis prove that it was fighting a “people’s war” as opposed to a war based on the need for power and profit? The USA had no intention of extending democracy to the colonies of its European allies. Sumner Welles assured the French that they could hold on to their colonies. Sec. of State Cordell Hull said, ...war was primarily for reasons of national self- interest.

Archibald MacLeish, “As things are now going, the peace we will make, the peace we seem to be making, will be a peace of oil, a peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace, in brief…without moral purpose or human interest.”

Roosevelt had no interest in saving Jews, see “While 6 Million Died”, by NY Times reporter Arthur D. Morse. In the USA, the class-struggle continued. During the war, there were 14,000 strikes, involving 6,770,00 workers.

“A People’s History is shaped by a radical populism tinged with anarchism

Jacques R. Pauwels’ The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, which is a short, but brilliant synthesis of German, Canadian and American “revisionist” writings on World War II…

Mickey Z.’s Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of “The Good War”
http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-887128-45-X

I agree that hagiographies of World War II as the “people’s war” instead of an inter-imperialist conflict tend to give cover to “humanitarian interventions

In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion by Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel, Introduction by Christopher Hitchens. This challenge the familiar understanding of Munich as the product of a naive “appeasement”, the culmination of cynical collaboration between the Tory government and the Nazis documents the steps taken
by the West to strike a bargain with Hitler based upon shared anti-Soviet premises

Allen Nasser disproves incontovertibly once & for all the myth that FDR had an “ideological abhorrence of fascism?
http://www.counterpunch.org/nasser10032008.html

on the eve of the bombing of Dresden the Red Army was poised to take over that city which housed the vast bulk of Germany’s indusrtial machine tools. The mythology to “terrorize” the German civilian population. The reality was that it was an atrocity committed purely to stop the Red Army from getting German technology

first novel to expose the American myth of the “good war” was CATCH 22, written by Joseph Heller in 1961

‘Marxism at the Millennium’, Tony Cliff recalls

something like a dozen American Divisions (being conservative) on the Western Front versus something like 119 USSR divisions at the Eastern Front. After all, 500,000 Americans died whereas anywhere from 25 to 50 million Soviets died.

He could have retorted that Allied bombings were decisive but I would have had him account for why Germany’s industrial output rose progresssively until sometime in 1944?

Although the great historians Christopher Hill , E. J. Hobsbawm, and E. P. Thompson were older than the New Left generation, and Communists, much of their work appeared during the 1960s and served as inspiration for the American “revisionist” historians. They all eventually broke with Stalinism but continued as active Leftists

The younger group around New Left Review – Robin Blackburn, Alex Cockburn, Perry Anderson, Tariq Ali and others, wrote and published independent Marxist analyses with a level of theoretical sophistication missing from the writings of virtually all their American counterparts.

The political and cultural journalism in British publications of the 1970s like “Seven Days” was more original and exciting than most left journalism in the U.S. during that period. Much work by the Americans was new and valuable, but there is no justification for U.S. exceptionalism here.

The Way to Pearl Harbor: US vs Japan

The US, the biggest oil supplier for Japan at the time, imposed the oil embargo on Japan in July, 1941, and it helped the Japanese to make up their minds to fight against the Americans
From 1939 to 1941, the US gradually tightened the level of economic sanction.

In 1939, the US notified Japan that it would renounce the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation that was signed by both countries in 1911. President Roosevelt, then, went on to the imposition of partial embargo of gasoline for aircraft and scrap-metal on Japan in July 1940. Japan countered the partial embargo by advancing its troops to the northern Indo-China, and the US matched the Japan’s expansion with the addition of more subjects to the list of partial embargo. This vicious circle of retaliations escalated and reached its peak when Japan moved even into the southern Indo-China in July, 1941 and the US replied to it by freezing the Japanese assets in the US and, furthermore, by the complete oil embargo on Japan [12]. As a result, the Japanese leaders found themselves in an extremely difficult situation in which they had to make their decision out of two options: to bow before the US, or to fight a desperate war against the US.

The Japanese side proposed some plans, too. However, the US eventually refused to accept any plans presented by Japan and replied to Japan with the final proposition called the “Hull Note,” which contained only US original demands on issues on November 26th, 1941. As a result, the war became inevitable.

oil was one of the most crucial strategic materials that Japan desperately needed.
the US, which supplied Japan about 80% of oil
the power of life or death was in the hand of the American president. And President Roosevelt decided to choke Japan by keeping all oil, not even one drop, from going to Japan
and followed the America’s oil embargo in August of 1941
Only option that the Japanese leaders could come up with was to take the Dutch East India and control oil fields

STATE CRIMES AGAINST DEMOCRACY TWO

The McCollum memo, also known as the Eight Action Memo was a memorandum, dated October 7, 1940 (more than a year before the Pearl Harbor attack, sent by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, who "provided the president with intelligence reports on [Japan]... [and oversaw] every intercepted and decoded Japanese military and diplomatic report destined for the White House"

The memo outlined the general situation of several nations in World War II and recommended an eight-part course of action for the United States to take in regards to the Japanese Empire in the South Pacific, suggesting that the United States provoke Japan into committing an "overt act of war". The memo illustrates that several people in the Office of Naval Intelligence promoted the idea of goading Japan into war:

"It is not believed that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado [...]"It is not believed that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado [...] If by [the elucidated eight-point plan] Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better."

The McCollum memo was first widely disseminated with the publication of Robert Stinnett's book Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor. Stinnett presents the memo as part of his argument that the Roosevelt Administration conspired to secretly provoke the Japanese to attack the United States in order to bring the United States into the European war without generating public contempt over broken political promises. Roosevelt had recently issued a campaign promise that the United States would not become entangled in Europe's war under his watch.


The Eight-Action Plan

The McCollum memo contained an eight-part plan to counter rising Japanese power over East Asia:

1. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore
2. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies
3. Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang-Kai-Shek
4. Send a division of long range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore
5. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient
6. Keep the main strength of the U.S. fleet now in the Pacific[,] in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands
7. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil
8. Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire

QINGDAO

Before troops were garrisoned here by the imperial court of Qing in 1891, Qingdao had been a small fishing village. It became a German concession in 1897 and was occupied by Japan in 1914. The city reverted to Chinese rule in 1922,

ZINN, CHOMSKY AND ZIONISM

dan e said on January 29th, 2010 at 12:04pm #

Zinn does deserve high praise for his work and is definitely worth reading. However.
Long before Zinn came to prominence I’d encountered most of the history he reports in the works of earlier writers like WEB Dubois, Herbert Aptheker, Philip and Eric Foner, Charles & Mary Beard and others. Also I notice Zinn associated himself closely with the “semi-progressive” strain in recent US “left” politics, people like Amy Goodman & the “Z” publishing empire.
In my mind, there’s a parallel between the Great Man roles of Zinn and Noam Chomsky. Both are undoubtedly great writers, persons of great achievement, major figures on the US Left. But in Chomsky’s case also, before he came along I’d encountered the main facts about the “Isreal” problem in works by other writers such as Ralph Schoenman, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Rabbi Elmer Berger, Israel Shahak, Lenni Brenner, Rashid Khalidi, Jeff Blankfort, Livia Rokach, Hilton Obenzinger, just to name a few.

Now if some Historian would come along and provide us with a comprehensive true history of the emergence of the Jewish Zionist power network as a major force in US politics and warmaking…


#

Deadbeat said on January 29th, 2010 at 12:53pm #

I have to second DanE commentary. Zinn stood for a lot of the right things as does Chomsky but on the question of Zionism there was silence and/or that ethnocentrism that limits both these men from confronting this problem.

In addition, Zinn on the “moving train” in 2004 decided to back the “Anybody But Bush” / support Democratic candidate “John Kerry” / diffuse the anti-war movement anti-Nadar tactic (ABB). This “strategy” was supported by the Z-Mag crowd primarily due to the fact that other members in the anti-war movement started to shine a light on the influence of Zionism on the War on Iraq. The Z-Mag crew preferred the “War for Oil” canard which has been completely discredited and only shows that the Z-Mag crew chose deception and lies over confronting the truth.

The consequence of Zinn’s support for the ABB strategy helped not only to weaken the anti-war movement but placed the Left in an extremely weaken position for the 2008 election cycle which opened the door for Obama. In addition, the weak and divided condition of the Left creates a vacuum that is now being filled by right-wing populism. The Left today is too divided and does not have a coherent strategy to offer a real challenge to the Capitalist crisis and the political domination of Zionism.

Dan mentions WEB DuBios, now here’s a man who didn’t compromise his principles on the moving train.

A People's History of the United States

A People's History of the United States
Howard Zinn
1980

Table of Contents
1.	Columbus the Indians, and Human Progress
2.	Drawing the Color Line
3.	Persons of Mean and Vile Condition
4.	Tyranny Is Tyranny
5.	A Kind of Revolution

SWANS.COM

When given the opportunity humans have a strong tendency to cooperate, and so elites have always attempted to monopolize and co-opt this aspect of human nature to serve their ideological purposes. Thus in the seventeenth century, in spite of the widespread occurrence of slavery, it was the case that "where whites and blacks found themselves with common problems, common work, common enemy in their master, they behaved toward one another as equals." (1) Such a state of affairs was problematic for those ruling elites profiting from slavery so laws were passed to prevent, or at least limit, such cooperation. Moreover, by playing different groups within society (classes) against one another, elites consolidated class loyalty to their regime of injustice by making limited concessions to selected constituencies (i.e., the middle class).

Consequently, by appropriating the "language of liberty and equality" elites succeeded in "unit[ing] just enough whites to fight a Revolution against England, without ending either slavery or inequality."

It seems that the rebellion against British rule allowed a certain group of the colonial elite to replace those loyal to England, give some benefits to small landholders, and leave poor white working people and tenant farmers in very much their old situation. (6)

The American Constitution itself provides another illustration of how the interests of the wealthy minority were protected by offering enough concessions "for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support." (Not so for "the blacks, the Indians, [and] the very poor whites.")

On top of this, the chaotic nature of the economic system meant that...

... only the very rich were secure. It was a system of periodic crisis -- 1837, 1857, 1873 (and later: 1893, 1907, 1919, 1929) -- that wiped out small businesses and brought cold, hunger, and death to working people while the fortunes of the Astors, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Morgans, kept growing through war and peace, crisis and recovery. During the 1873 crisis, Carnegie was capturing the steel market, Rockefeller was wiping out his competitors in oil. (p.237)

And so it went, in industry after industry -- shrewd, efficient businessmen building empires, choking out competition, maintaining high prices, keeping wages low, using government subsidies. These industries were the first beneficiaries of the "welfare state." By the turn of the century, American Telephone and Telegraph had a monopoly of the nation's telephone system, International Harvester made 85 percent of all farm machinery, and in every other industry resources became concentrated, controlled. The banks had interests in so many of these monopolies as to create an interlocking network of powerful corporation directors, each of whom sat on the boards of many other corporations. According to a Senate report of the early twentieth century, Morgan at his peak sat on the board of forty-eight corporations; Rockefeller, thirty-seven corporations. (pp.251-2)

... in modern times, when social control rests on "the consent of the governed," force is kept in abeyance for emergencies, and every-day control is exercised by a set of rules, a fabric of values passed on from one generation to another by the priests and the teachers of the society. What we call the rise of democracy in the world means that force is replaced by deception (a blunt way of saying "education") as the chief method for keeping society as it is. (11)

Only when one recognizes the manner by which capitalist elites proactively manipulate civil society and co-opt agents of progressive social change can progressive citizens present an effective challenge to elite domination. This challenge will involve undermining the legitimacy of all aspects of elite power, most especially in those areas which are least understood, like that of liberal philanthropy.