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Tag Archives: Branko Marcetic

Jacobin | The CIA’s Secret Global War Against the Left

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Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Fascism, Memoirs

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Branko Marcetic, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Fred Hampton (1948-1969), Jacobin Magazine

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Even as a kid, growing up in California, much of this was pretty obvious to me (and, I imagine, to others) even back then. But it’s refreshing to find corroborating evidence to end the gaslighting.  One social studies teacher at San Mateo High School did her best to answer my questions about what was going on in Russia at the time, circa 1990.  But it came in a hushed whisper after class, only me and my homie, who stayed after class, heard this bit.  What they need is glasnost without perestroika. Or was it, perestroika without glasnost?  Sepa la chingada.  Hay que leer mas.  She sure seemed right on.  But the streets… 

Something keeps calling… me… I feel the burdens on me… Something keeps calling… me… This is so heavy for me…

Raphael Saadiq, “Something Keeps Calling“

Another high school teacher searched for answers to my restless questioning and simply ripped a piece of paper and wrote the name: “Noam Chomsky“. She said, “Read him.”  The sincerity and earnestness in her idealistic Latin American face seemed to hope I would read Chomsky.  I had no idea, who Chomsky was.  But, deep inside, I believed her; and I hoped I would follow through.  To read something, which was corroborating my teenage suspicions would have been like salvation because it would have ended the gaslighting so much sooner.  And it would have been me practicing what I preached.  But teenagers are moody and fickle.  They need guidance.

But, wait, why did I have to learn about the great Dr. Noam Chomsky via a snippet of paper with two words on it, passed hand to hand, as we happened to pass by each other on campus after school?  Why wasn’t the work of Noam Chomsky taught widely in the classroom?  What does this say about our nation, that an educator could only informally present valid information and analysis to a student?  Were we living under fascist censorship?  Has anything changed?  This was like secret information I was getting here, a secret tip pointing to the reality behind the veil.  But it also seemed to confirm all of the best educators, the most liberating educators, were all marginalized.

Forty-five years ago, under a cloak of secrecy, Operation Condor was officially launched: a global campaign of violent repression against the Latin American left by the region’s quasi-fascist military dictatorships. The US government not only knew about the program — it helped to engineer it.

Jacobin, December 2020

Basically, my whole entire life, forces within my government have been engaging in the erasure of the left and of grassroots democracy movements around the world.  Everything good and just and fair and kind, which my American teachers taught me and our great American leaders, Martin and Malcolm, taught me was thrown under the bus by the fake consumerist world of corporate America.  Teenagers can see through the bullshit of society.  Unfortunately, they usually lack the emotional intelligence to process it all.  My moral guidance came from my peers, or at least the only guidance I valued at the time.  So, I was a fool, disregarding the best intentions of my overworked parents.  It all seemed like bullshit.  But instead of reading Chomsky, like the kind educator lady was advising me, and becoming a serious scholar as a teenager.  I dropped out, or rather tested out of high school at 15, thinking it was all bullshit.  

Fuck the white education; so, I skipped a lot of classes…

MC Eiht, quoted in “Hood Took Me Under“, from Music to Driveby, Compton’s Most Wanted

But it wasn’t all bullshit.  I had work to do.  I just couldn’t see it.  There was a real, meaningful intellectual battle going on in the nation. And not everyone in institutions of power was insincere. It wasn’t totally bleak. I carried on as if there were no honest intellectuals out there; or I just wasn’t up to the task of reading as a lumpenproletarian teenager, despite the support of a few angelic teachers.  I can’t explain it.  If I do, perhaps it may explain why so few people today read scholars and experts, such as Noam Chomsky, who are so accurate and articulate about the world around us and can teach us so much.  Who knows?

Even as a high school drop out, dropped into the lumpenproletariat, so many sociological truths seemed so blatantly evident, that it’s disturbing to find institutional silence to injustice. It can be traumatic and disturbing to learn about so many horrible atrocities, killings, coup de tats, political destabilization, and other crimes of state committed by U.S. intelligence agencies to the point that we must question their very legitimacy.  One must overcome such trauma, rejoin the academic life, and adhere to the responsibility of intellectuals, as argued by Dr. Noam Chomsky, to search for the truth and to expose lies. To become responsible intellectuals, teenagers need mentors and role models to act as sounding boards to their teenage angst. Teens see the bullshit of society all around them, but then are gaslighted by the fake norms of institutions of power seeking to gloss over their abuses and failings, by schools and school districts, by police agencies and city councils, by environmental polluters and slumlords, by radio networks and TV networks, by all types of powerful institutions, who abuse their power. All of those institutions tell kids, everything is fine.  They manufacture consent.  They inhibit questioning through their abuse of power.

So, the youth might self-censor and become fake to get along in a sham corporate world, where the ills of society are airbrushed out. Or the youth might become withdrawn, unwittingly disillusioned with the emptiness of capitalist modes of production, mired in what Prof. John Vervaeke calls the meaning crisis.  This might overlap with the generation of apathetic millenials, which Simon Sinek makes viral videos about.  I’m reminded of the corporate media descriptions of apathetic shoe-gazing Generation X of the 1990s.    

21st century youth might learn to never complain, to always keep their mouths shut, to always follow instructions, to never question a single thing, and to earn their little piece of the racist empire, which preys on weaker nations around the world.

But isolated, atomized, individually or in little pods, we lose our collective power. To fulfill the responsibility of intellectuals requires a community. Rappers and singer-songwriters, folk singers, and poets, filmmakers, authors, and other artists have long exposed lies and uncomfortable truths. It’s only a lack of grit or our own inability to stomach our own reality, which has prevented us from calling out bullshit, when perpetrated by our own people or allies. But we must always speak out when we find the truth in order to expose lies and, hopefully, save lives.

Messina

***

Forty-five years ago, under a cloak of secrecy, Operation Condor was officially launched: a global campaign of violent repression against the Latin American left by the region’s quasi-fascist military dictatorships. The US government not only knew about the program — it helped to engineer it.

In Buenos Aires, a former Chilean general returns home, opens his garage door, and is blasted thirteen feet in the air when his car explodes, incinerating his wife. A conservative opponent of the country’s military dictatorship and his wife take an afternoon walk on the streets of Rome and are swiftly gunned down. On a rainy autumn morning, a car blows up in the middle of Washington, DC’s Embassy Row, killing two of the three inside: a leader of Chile’s opposition in exile and his newlywed American friend.

These were just some of the most prized scalps claimed by Operation Condor, officially inaugurated forty-five years and two days ago. With South America in the grip of military dictatorships and rocked by the same kinds of social and political movements that were demanding change all over the world in the 1960s and ’70s, a handful of the continent’s governments made a pact to work together to roll back the rising tide of “subversives” and “terrorists.”

What followed was a secret, global campaign of violent repression that spanned not just countries, but continents, and featured everything from abduction and torture to murder. To say it was known about by the US government, which backed these regimes, is an understatement: though even this simple fact was denied at the time, years of investigations and document releases since then mean that we now know the CIA and top-ranking US officials supported, laid the groundwork for, and were even directly involved in Condor’s crimes.

— snip —

Learn more at JACOBIN MAGAZINE.

***

[29 DEC 2020]

[Last modified on 11 JAN 2021 at 04:21 PST]

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The Secret History of Superdelegates by Branko Marcetic

17 Tue May 2016

Posted by ztnh in Democracy Deferred, Democratic Party (USA), Political Science, Presidential Election 2016

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Branko Marcetic, Democracy Now!, In These Times, Letters and Politics, Mitch Jeserich, superdelegates, transcript

rigged 2016LUMPENPROLETARIAT—One of the most antidemocratic aspects of the 2016 Presidential Primary Elections is the role of (unelected) superdelegates in both corporate political parties, particularly the Democratic Party.  Like the electoral college in presidential elections, which has the legal ability of overriding the popular vote, superdelegates have the legal ability to override the popular will in primary elections.  Branko Marcetic has written a new article for In These Times entitled “The Secret History of Superdelegates”.  Marcetic spoke with free speech radio’s Letters and Politics to help demistify one of the most important, and least understood, decision-making bodies in the presidential primary elections.  Listen (or download) here. [1]

UPDATE [18 MAY 2016]  “Will 712 Democratic Officials Decide 2016 Election?  Uncovering the Secret History of Superdelegates” by Democracy Now!  Watch the newscast here. [2]

Messina

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Letters and Politics]

LETTERS AND POLITICS—[17 MAY 2016]  This is Pacifica Radio’s Letters and Politics.  On today’s show:

BRANKO MARCETIC:  “You know; when you read the transcripts, and when you look at what people like Jim Hunt and other members of the commission were telling the press at the time, they made no secret about it.  They say pretty openly: We don’t want another McGovern or a Carter.  You know?  They saw these guys as failed candidates and, actually, they saw them as unrepresentative of what the Democratic Party was.  In the case of McGovern, they saw him as too far to the left, running against Nixon.  In the case of Carter, interestingly, actually, he was seen as more of a conservative candidate.  So, he was actually seen as being more to the right.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “A conversation on how we got superdelegates in the Democratic primary contest.  Our guest is Branko Marcetic.  He’s a reporter with In These Times.  And he went through documents at the National Archives about the 1981/1982 Hunt Commission, that instituted such superdelegates.  His article is called “The Secret History of Superdelegates.”  And he joins us, next, on Letters and Politics.”

[KPFA News Headlines (read by Aileen Alfandary) omitted by scribe]

[SNIP]

[SNIP]  (c. 59:59)

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

[1]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Letters and Politics, hosted by Mitch Jeserich, Tuesday, 17 MAY 2016, 10:00 PDT, one hour broadcast.

[2]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Demoracy Now!, hosted by Amy Goodman, Wednesday, 18 MAY 2016, 9:00 PDT, one hour broadcast.

Also streamed online and carried by affiliates across the nation at DemocracyNow!.org.

[10 JUN 2016]

[Last modified 08:30 PDT  10 JUN 2016]

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