Spooking South Africa

S. Africa: British Spooks, Jack Abramoff & the Red-Baiting of the ANC – A Capsule History
Constatine Report, 2014

McCarthyism rounds on Freedom Charter 2014 (Excerpt)

Among the authors of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen were wealthy merchants from Bordeaux, Marseilles and Paris, many of whom owed their riches to the Caribbean slave trade. Though it was amended at least twice, it is universally recognised as a significant statement of civil and human rights, the dubious moral character of its authors notwithstanding.

Thirty days after Madiba’s passing, Stephen Ellis, editor of Africa Confidential in the 1980s, crawled out of the woodwork to pronounce this challenge: “Maybe the South African Communist Party’s chieftains will now admit the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) key statement of principles, the 1955 Freedom Charter, was written by white communists. ” For the committed cold warriors, being a communist or an

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Creating Criminals

Essays from Willful Disobedience
Various Authors, Volume 1–2 , 2000

Manipulative Language and the Growing Repression of Anarchists [Edited]

With the retreat of marxism into academia and largely irrelevant theorizing, anarchism has come to represent the most significant revolutionary movement. […] The state inevitable responds to such movements of revolt with repression. For example, the Oregon Department of Corrections choosing to put anarchists on their list of gangs, thus criminalizing anarchists as gang members, implying a formalized organization with malicious intent. Within the prison system this allows prison officials greater control over communications to prisoners so labeled. Such prisoners can also have their visits restricted and any act of violence on their part becomes a gang-related incident, allowing for increased penalties. But this labeling is not just applied in prisons.

In Eugene, Oregon, police began to stop known anarchist, as well as any young person wearing all black and looking too punk, in order to do “gang profiles”. This is not merely harassment. Several states are introducing measures to make penalties for so-called “gang-related” illegal activities substantially harsher. Thus, in

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Security of Disobedience

Essays from Willful Disobedience
Various Authors, Volume 1–2, 2000

Why can’t anarchists be anarchists

When people make the choice to call themselves anarchists, I assume they mean that they are making a choice about how they want to go about their lives, their projects and the creation of revolution. There are plenty of other perspectives on how to go about creating social transformation, that there is no need for those who don’t wish to go about their projects in an anarchist manner to use that label. Thus, when I went to the anarchist conference in L.A., I was disappointed, not in the level of discussion or the sort of people who showed up — I had no expectations for the former and am aware enough of the general make-up of the anarchist movement to expect a predominantly young white turn-out for such a thing. What disappointed me was that the conference itself was not organized in an anarchist manner.

When people call themselves anarchists, they are stating that they absolutely reject all state institutions, all external rule and all delegation of the decisions relating to their lives and actions. This is simply a most basic definition of what anarchism is. On a practical level, this means that in creating our projects, we refuse to imitate state institutions, we avoid making hard and fast rules and we only make decisions that relate

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Drinking the Kool-Aid

Jonestown survivors talk of concentration camp existence
By Robert James, The Stanford Daily, Volume 175, Issue 1, 29 January 1979

Two members of the Peoples Temple who escaped the Jonestown camp last November addressed a psychology class here last Tuesday. Both Diane Louie, 26, and Richard Clark, 42, made their first public presentation as part of Prof. Philip Zimbardo’s class, “The Human Connection.” Louie and Clark have been active members of the Temple for over six years, they said.

They fled the settlement into the Guyana jungle November 17, the day of the arrival of the late Rep. Leo Ryan (D-San Mateo). The following day, Ryan and his party were ambushed and the mass suicides occurred.

The speakers attributed psychic powers to the group’s leader, the Rev. Jim lones, including the ability to

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Jonestown Genocide

Jonestown: Population Zero
The Jonestown Massacre: CIA Mind Control Run Amok?

Excerpted from 50 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time
By Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, Copyright © 1995

On November 18, 1978, in a cleared-out patch of Guyanese jungle, the Reverend Jim Jones ordered the 911 members of his flock to kill themselves by drinking a cyanide potion, and they did.

The cultists were brainwashed by the megalomaniac Jones, who had named their jungle village after himself and held them as virtual slaves, if not living zombies. Jones himself was found dead. He’d shot himself in the head, or someone else had shot him. Square-jaw, jet black hair and sunglasses, looking like a secret service agent on antipsychotic drugs, Jones takes his place alongside Charles Manson in America’s iconography of evil.

But was Jones really a lone madman as Americans are so often advised about their villains? Is it plausible that more than nine hundred people took their own lives willingly, simply because he told them to? Or is there another explanation?

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Jonestown Concentration Camp

The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre
by John Judge, 1985

You Know the Official Version

A fanatic religious leader in California led a multiracial community into the jungles of remote Guyana to establish a socialist utopia. The People’s Temple, his church, was in the heart of San Francisco and drew poor people, social activists, Blacks and Hispanics, young and old. The message was racial harmony and justice, and criticism of the hypocrisy of the world around his followers.[2]

The Temple rose in a vacuum of leadership at the end of an era. The political confrontations of the 60s were almost over, and religious cults and “personal transformation” were on the rise. Those who had preached a similar message on the political soap box were gone, burnt out, discredited, or dead. The counter-culture had apparently degenerated into drugs and violence. Charlie Manson was the only visible image of the period. Suddenly, religion seemed to offer a last hope.[3]

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AmerIndian Policy – White and Red Papers

Indian Policy: The 1969 White Paper
From Digging Up Bones

The 1969 White Paper tabled by the Federal Government had the most profound effect on the Indian and government relationship. For the first time in history the Indian people were united in a collective way across Canada to oppose the Canadian government’s White Paper initiative. Today however, the intent of the 1969 White Paper is alive and well because Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada is capable of absorbing progressive self government ideas and crafting them to fit their assimilative purpose. ‘Self-government’ today comes in a tightly defined form similar to a municipal model in which a community has to apply and qualify for. This paper will examine prior

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