Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:46:07 +0000 From: Paul Swann <•••@••.•••> Subject: Fwd: P(I)C Memoir (conspiracy theory and much more) Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 22:43:44 -0700 From: Alan E Lewis <•••@••.•••> Subject: P(I)C Memoir (conspiracy theory and much more) This whole article is a good read, but if you don't have time, here are excerpts........... ---------------- An Incorrect Political Memoir by Daniel Brandt http://www.pir.org/ppost01.html ..... By the time the microcomputer revolution came along I was technically ahead of every other leftist in the country. That isn't saying much; the phrase "technically-advanced leftist" is a lot like the phrase "military intelligence." But I could design and build circuits and write software. With the microcomputer, something I had been trying to do the hard way was suddenly within reach the easy way... Within several years there were plenty of amazing CIA revelations on record, confirming that our most paranoid fantasies in the 1960s were underestimations. I began compiling a name index of CounterSpy and Covert Action Information Bulletin using little pieces of paper. Someone had to track the beast. When I saw my first microcomputer in action in 1980, I knew instantly that I was doing it all wrong -- those clanking floppy disks were like lightening compared to my fingers sorting little pieces of paper... We eventually incorporated as Public Information Research. Ten years of inputting and five computers later, NameBase has 135,000 citations and 64,000 names... we are self-sufficient and answer to no one. NameBase exists from the purest of populist, anti-establishment impulses, and it is used by hundreds of journalists and researchers all over the world. But ironically, NameBase it isn't used that much on the U.S. left. Even worse, I've spent far too much energy over the past few months defending PIR against charges of political incorrectness. They're not only moving the goalpost on us, they're beating us over the head with it. And all we're doing is developing something that would have saved us massive amounts of time in the 1960s. Surprisingly, ten years after the micro-computer became available we still don't have any competition, so it's not as if someone else was doing it better. What's going on here? Is it us, or is the U.S. left a basket case?... It wasn't called PC then, but by 1991 "Politically Correct" became a buzzword to describe a phenomenon that was happening on U.S. campuses. Critics like Dinesh D'Souza, funded by conservative foundations and think tanks, helped popularize the concept. Although I rarely agree with anything they write, I'll give credit where it's due. Because of them it now takes just two letters to describe something that's real, and everyone I've talked to knows exactly what I mean, even if they see me as part of the problem. Anything that facilitates communication as thoroughly as this is a step forward... It's worth noting that this piece you're reading cannot get published in the U.S. unless I defect to the right, or I'm lucky enough to stumble onto some mainstream editor who happens to think it's cute, harmless, and topical. That, in a nutshell, is what PC is all about. It's the exact opposite of what we were about in the late sixties... The reason [the left is] increasingly marginal has somehow escaped them. It's simply because the PC left is becoming a privileged segment of society and frequently acts only to preserve their privileges... I don't think the PC left has any legitimate use for theory at all. I haven't seen any for over ten years, and that makes me reasonably skeptical. When I requested the names of the Board of Directors from Political Research Associates, the group that sponsors Berlet, it looked like theory had nothing to do with anything. I discovered that their Board is less diverse than one might expect. For me this makes the situation transparent -- these are people who have something to lose if populist conspiracism replaces political correctness. They are the System. They don't need theory, they need protection. If theory provides some protection, that's when we'll get theory... This "progressive" press has been blindsided by a special-interest multiculturalism that has the ruling class laughing all the way to their banks... The populist right considers Clinton a set-up, in the sense that the rich will continue to get richer. The ruling class knows that more subtle techniques are needed than those used by Bush, and will offer some health insurance and job training to deflect discontent. But ultimately free trade will prevail in the New World Order, and the U.S. middle class will be picked clean. I'm "incorrect" if I try to explain this to the U.S. left, and treasonous if I enclose a clipping from Spotlight... A distinction is evolving between the conspiracists and the structuralists. The former see specific historical events (e.g., the assassination of JFK) as probable determinants of other events (the war in Vietnam), while the latter view this as a naive challenge to the conventional left wisdom about infrastructure and economics as major determinants. The structuralists feel it's inconceivable that John Kennedy, who was initially a predictable product of the System, changed his mind about the System once in office. And more amazingly, that the System would deal with it the way they did -- real people with real names (if only we knew who they were!) deciding he was a threat to their private interests and successfully engineering a coup. Besides Fletcher Prouty, who has long maintained this view, another Stone advisor was Maj. John M. Newman, a professor and military intelligence officer, whose competence was demonstrated in JFK and Vietnam. As soon as it was published this year, structuralists like Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn went scurrying back to the documents to try and refute him, as if their careers depended on it. But as Newman pointed out in a folksy talk on June 17, 1992, it's finally unimportant whether you are "left wing, right wing, or from the middle of the bird." There are a number of ex-Cold Warrior analyst-academic types in the military who are taking a fresh look at recent history, he assured us, and that has to be healthy. If he's telling the truth -- and I have no reason to doubt him -- then I have to agree... It appears to me that there is no potential at all in business as usual on the PC left. Everyone knows it except them. The 75% of the population that feels JFK was the victim of a high-level conspiracy involving the CIA or mafia know it. The 50% of the population who don't vote know it (this year I voted for the first time since 1972). The conspiracy "buffs," "nuts," and "crackpots," -- the ones against whom Berlet crusades and Alexander Cockburn pontificates -- know it. But it is still news to a small group that controls the diminishing "progressive" press in America. --------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.pir.org/ Public Information Research, Inc. NameBase, a database with nearly 200,000 citations covering the international intelligence community, political elites from the right and left, the U.S. foreign policy establishment, assassination theory, Latin America, big business, and organized crime. 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