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antoine-roquentin · 1 year ago

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The previous part of this series, Part 2, is available here.

In the world of internal Democratic Party politics, the chosen party of the professional-managerial class, fighting for a role in the party hierarchy is done by resume-padding. You have to have worked the correct jobs under the right managers with subsequent letters of recommendation from your patrons, showing both that you care but your primary commitment is to the job itself, not to the cause you were purportedly fighting for in that position. In that sense, Allard Lowenstein fits the bill as a typical upwardly mobile member of the party in the same way Pete Buttigieg does today. If America knows Lowenstein at all, it's from his role in the popular PBS documentary series on the civil rights movement Eyes on the Prize, especially episode 5. The emotional climax of the episode comes over the party machinations to keep the alternative slate of black voters from being seated at the 1964 Democratic convention, which LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, and his protege Walter Mondale succeeded in because of their superior knowledge of debate club tactics. A series of copyright claims by rightsholders for whom licenses had expired kept this show off the air in the 90s, but early filesharing advocates got to work promoting the show across the internet. After all, if they were trying to ban it, it must be important. The clip here is from that episode.

Lowenstein got his law degree at Yale, did his stint in the military like an honorable American, and then got a job from Eleanor Roosevelt directly, always the most powerful player in the party from her husband's death to 1960. However, Lowenstein also cared to an extent. He wanted the black people of the American south to have a chance to vote, based to a large extent on what he witnessed on a fact-finding tour of Namibia, then an internal colony of Apartheid South Africa. His passion was such that he was a major player in the movement to prevent LBJ from being renominated in 1968, recruiting Eugene McCarthy to run against him. This was because they were both politics nerds in the West Wing sense. Young guns, they believed they knew better than the Democratic machine politicians what voters wanted. They knew the people wanted an anti-war candidate who satisfied liberal pieties and who thumbed his nose at the old hierarchies. The result was three unsuccessful campaigns for presidential nomination and Lowenstein himself becoming a one-term congressman. As Gus Tyler, president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (himself a young rebel against an old guard at one point, now an old man leading younger women) said, Lowenstein was leading politics "away from economics to ethics and aesthetics, to morality and culture", and ultimately "to the Republican Wolves".

The problem here wasn't that Lowenstein cared too much, as most of his contemporaries wrote. Rather, he'd performed like a racer trying to slipstream/draft who had spun out of control. This was because of Lowenstein's background and training. As the consummate liberal striver, he'd managed to become president of the National Student Association in 1951 (note this in particular for future posts). This was a union of students' unions, which was basically the debate club to end all debate clubs because that's all student unions are. Even today, but especially so in the 40s and 50s, the only reason to get involved in student politics was because it was a training ground for how parliaments and congresses work. All they do is argue over arcane resolutions on mundane subject matter, until one manages to land a blow strong enough to gain a majority in favour. It's a weirdo politics junkie's dream.

Lowenstein brought that energy to organizing black people in the American South. Even before his role in organizing 1964's Freedom Summer in Mississippi, the project for which Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were murdered, he was already getting on the nerves of more radical black people. James Forman, right of MLK in the pic below, ended up on the wrong side of Lowenstein at the 1956 NSA convention. Lowenstein didn't want passage of a more progressive civil rights platform than the one the Democratic Party had adopted. At one point, he literally shoved a black man to the microphone to speak on his behalf, according to Forman. He won, of course, because he knew his debate club tactics better.

7 years later, Lowenstein and Forman butted heads over the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's work in Mississippi and Alabama. Forman notes that he arrived almost unannounced, and yet many of the white volunteers suddenly claimed that they were under his orders to do what they were doing, including going to towns that were centres of white violence and had no organizing done. As a Yale alumni, Lowenstein probably had links to major white supremacist orgs to protect these people given that Yale was the university of choice for white southerners in the Ivy Leagues. On the other hand, Lowenstein's line was against black radical politics and towards conciliation. Forman found that Lowenstein often worked hand-in-hand with Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, and John Lewis (far right in the pic above), and were close to Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington's Socialist Party (eventually Democratic Socialists of America), bankrolled by Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers union. He was particularly piqued when they went to the Dominican Republic as supposedly independent observers and certified the election of the pro-American candidate not long after an American invasion, despite the well-known popularity of his opponent Juan Bosch.

This rankled Forman because the struggle in America for the civil rights of black people was part and parcel of the decolonization struggle abroad, or so he thought. To have America going around and imposing governments on nations through its military industrial complex and arcane intelligence apparatus reeked of what South Africa was doing in Namibia. After all, there was a reason the SNCC had adopted the phrase "one man, one vote" for its 1964 Freedom Summer campaign: it had been a slogan of the 1958 All African Peoples' Conference, the first meeting of black revolutionaries from all of Africa in history.

This conference was convened by the newly independent Ghana, the eighth independent nation in Africa and the first of a long wave which gained independence between 1958 and 1994. The resounding waves of this action were felt in America. Martin Luther King Jr explained in an interview that year "This event will give impetus to oppressed peoples all over the world. I think it will have worldwide implications and repercussions—not only for Asia and Africa, but also for America… At bottom, both segregation in America and colonialism in Africa are based on the same thing—white supremacy and contempt for life". But "Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent", incoming Ghanian prime minister Kwame Nkrumah declared, which is why the All African Peoples' Conference had to be held.

Nkrumah did not learn his debating skills from the NSA. As a student in America in the 30s, he'd given sermons in churches across New York City and Philadelphia, talking always about Africa. Yet it was his experience of American segregation that radicalized him. Being told he was only fit to drink from a spittoon was one of many insults he faced from white Americans. At times, he would buy a subway ticket so that he had a place to sleep. He knew the civil rights struggle was the same as his own, and this followed to the rest of his government. When Ghana became independent, it had virtually no skilled workers because universities in the country barred black students and everybody who had the ability travelled to America to learn. In 1958, Nkrumah spoke at an NAACP dinner in Harlem, telling black American dignitaries that the next step in their fight for civil rights was to send their well educated members back to Ghana, where they would receive a warm welcome and teach their fellow Africans to build a strong, independent nation that could one day bring together a united Africa to rival America.

The opening salvo in this project was the call for all freedom fighters of Africa to send representatives to the AAPC. Nkrumah welcomed them personally. First came Tom Mboya (keep your eyes on this guy) from Kenya, a trade unionist official and future Minister of Justice who one day soon would ensure a member of his tribe, Barack Obama Senior, made his way to America to attend university. Future successful and failed revolutionaries like Joshua Nkomo, George Padmore, Kenneth Kaunda, Hastings Banda, Frantz Fanon, Dr. Felix-Roland Moumie, and Holden Roberto, as well as notable black US Congressman Charles Diggs, were among 300 delegates. Perhaps the most important delegate was accidental. Joseph Kasavubu had initially been invited as the representative from the Congo. However, when the plane to Ghana stopped in Leopoldville/Kinshasa, Belgian authorities had stopped him from getting on, recognizing him from anti-colonial speeches earlier. However, they did allow Patrice Lumumba and two comrades who had impressed the plane's passengers with their rhetoric at a bar to join in. When Nkrumah met Lumumba, he was deeply impressed and called for a photographer to record the moment.

Also among them was Horace Mann Bond as a representative of the African American Institute, a group funded by western mining interests but staffed with academics from major American black universities like Howard and Lincoln. He brought along a reporter named Bob Keith, who was arrested during a closed session of the congress with bugging equipment. Bond was also president of the American Society of African Culture. AMSAC had deep pursestrings, bailing out a number of black groups soon after it was founded, and sponsored Bond as well as CUNY professor John Aubrey Davis, who reported on all the proceedings to former National Student Association president and current AMSAC leader James Theodore Harris Jr, according to AMSAC's archives. A third group that attended the conference was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, who sent white AFL-CIO leader Irving Brown. AFL-CIO in turn sponsored International Ladies' Garment Workers Union member Maida Springer, one of the few black women. One thing that AAI, AMSAC, AFL-CIO, and CCF shared was an explicit commitment to anticommunism in their charters, even as some claimed apoliticality otherwise. CCF sent its future president, South African poet Ezekiel Mphaphele. Some CCF funding came from the Fairfield Foundation, a charitable organization that sent its own observer Patrick Duncan, a white member of the South African Liberal Party. Other funding came from the Ford Foundation, which sent white University of California Santa Cruz professor John A. Marcum on its own. Marcum and Brown helpfully offered to translate ad hoc between French (spoken by Lumumba) and English (spoken by Nkrumah), and the two report an unknown American helping them with all their conversations.

I note these people because they or the organizations that sponsored them were all revealed to be CIA fronts or conduits by the magazine Ramparts in 1967 (Brown's one time boss at the CIA's International Organizations Division, Thomas Braden, wrote a response entitled "I'm glad the CIA is 'immoral'"). Many of them defended themselves by saying they were unaware of where the money was coming from or that they did not know the people they reported to were compromised. As Ramparts was drawing primarily on IRS information that had been leaked as well as corroborating testimony, they did not know the full extent of their integration into the intelligence apparatus. As many of these organizations folded in the 70s and 80s after these revelations their archives were given over to universities for preservation. They were rarely perused, two notable exceptions being by Frances Stonor Saunders and Hugh Wilford in the 90s and 2000s respectively. What they revealed was not wholesale domination or complete innocence, but rather a joy that the CIA was funding them to do what they knew was the right thing combined with strident insistence to the conduits for their funding that they not be forced to do anything that would contradict with their politics. When Farmer, of Forman's Lowenstein faction at CORE and SNCC, went on an AMSAC-sponsored tour of Africa, he criticized Malcolm X's beliefs as "apartheid and… worse", then got into arguments with diplomatic staff for his criticisms of American policies towards South Africa, Portugese Africa, and most of all the Congo. He later claimed that seeing apartheid abroad helped to calcify his opinion the American government. When Brown became harshly critical of Nkrumah, Springer, his subordinate and mentee at AFL-CIO, explained decades later that the 1958 conference gave her "goosebumps" and was more significant than the fall of the Berlin Wall in her opinion.

Evidently, many of these liberals, like the more radical leftists they battled, viewed the American civil rights struggle as an anti-colonial one. So too did the CIA, given the similar manner in which they infiltrated both through the liberals. However, portrayals of the struggle in popular culture like Eyes on the Prize show nothing of the sort. They tend to show a struggle from the streets right into the Democratic Party. This pattern also befits all of the above named associated with the CIA, albeit with the ones less inclined to support whoever the current president was also ending up becoming less powerful. Typically, they emerged in academia rather than politics, ie the other glorified debate club. In contrast, the radicals tended to find themselves sidelined or shot. Forman was an early supporter of the Black Panthers along with his associate at the SNCC Stokely Carmichael, but as the group descended into factional infighting, his former comrade stuffed a pistol in his mouth and threatened to shoot, giving him a nervous breakdown. He went into academia and helped ensure his son, now a Yale Law professor, could do the same. To co-author his autobiography, "The Making of Black Revolutionaries", Forman picked Julian Bond, son of Horace Mann Bond.

‘Irving Brown was never a CIA agent’, said Cord Meyer, the head of the International Organizations Division of the CIA. ‘The very notion is laughable. He was as independent as you could get, and very strong-willed. What the CIA did was to help him finance his major projects when they were crucial to the Western cause. But in his operations he was totally on his own’.

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militantinremission · 6 years ago

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Conflicted By Cosby Narrative

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know the whole story behind Bill Cosby's behavior, or all of the details behind Andrea Constand's accusations. I personally think that Dr. Cosby is guilty of adultery, but i'm not sure of any of the other accusations. I don't mean to come off as insensitive to the [dozens of] Women that came forward against him. For me, there are too many conflicting stories to be sure what is accurate.

I feel the need to say that Black America has developed a [substantiated] group paranoia over the Centuries. Out of this paranoia, come Our Urban Legends. Among the most popular, is the belief that a White Woman's word can get a Black Man killed- no questions asked. Carolyn Bryant Donham's accusation of Emmit Till is the classic example. The current trend of White Women calling in false reports, opens the door to more tragedies like the 'Scottsboro Boys' & the 'Central Park 5'

Another popular Urban Legend, is the assumption that Bill Cosby is being targeted, because he wanted to buy the NBC Network. The N.Y. Times broke the Story in 1992, but buzz about Cosby's intentions go back to the Late 80's. Then NBC Owner, General Electric downplayed Dr. Cosby's intentions, & said the network wasn't for sale. It didn't matter, because a New Age was dawning.

At the time, Reginald Lewis acquired Beatrice Foods Inc, becoming the first Black Billionaire in America. Ron Brown, was named Bill Clinton's Secretary of Commerce; the first Black American to hold the position, Post Reconstruction. Across the board, Black Men & Women were beginning to make their presence known in their respective Industry.

Sadly, Ron Brown died [mysteriously] in a plane crash, in Eastern Europe; en route to a European Economic Summit in Croatia. Reginald Lewis fell ill & died from Cancer, not too long after making history. They were taken in the Prime of their lives, but both became role models for the Next Generation of Black Entrepreneurs.

I never heard a formal announcement, but again, rumors about Cosby's intentions go back to the 1980s. A Wilhelmina Model reported in 2014 that back in 1982, her Photographer set up an appointment for her to meet w/ a Casting Agent about a film project. She says two Men- an Asian Man in his 50s, & a White Man in his 30s met w/ her, & offered first $5K, then $10K Cash to work w/ Bill Cosby.

She requested a meeting w/ Dr. Cosby, to go over the script, but was told it wasn't necessary. This was a Spontaneous Casting Call... According to the 'script', she was suppose to meet Dr. Cosby, & try to seduce him. She was supposed to record the 'audition', to determine her success & credibility. If she could deliver seductive photos of Dr. Cosby, along w/ some of his sperm(?), she would get an additional $5K.

She says that she was uneasy about the 'Project', so she excused herself, & never returned. In her FYM Article, she goes on to say that she believed the two men were paying her to discredit Bill Cosby, & is "100% convinced that all of the women coming foward have been paid off to discredit Bill Cosby as well". The implication was that Dr. Cosby was getting too big (for his britches); he was grasping beyond his reach. He was empowering People of Color!

Black America took the (Russian Mob related) murder of Ennis Cosby as a message for Bill to back up... Along that vein, it was assumed that Michael Jackson was targeted for his interest in Sony Music; as well as acquiring the Publishing Rights of Rock & Roll Hall of Famers like Little Richard, & The Beatles. Prince was similarly targeted for winning Ownership of His Song Masters from Warner Music.

The Criminal Case of Andrea Constand against Bill Cosby is one of legal precedence. Ms. Constand alleges that Dr. Cosby raped her in January, 2004, but she didn't come forward until 2005. The D.A. admitted there wasn't enough evidence to bring criminal charges against Cosby, so Constand took him to Civil Court. In that Civil Trial, Dr. Cosby agreed to a ($3.4M) settlement, but was required to give a sworn deposition.

He was assured by the Montgomery County D.A.'s Office that his statement would be sealed, to protect him from possible self incrimination @ a future date. Oddly, Cosby's Defense did not request Immunity; maybe They thought it was implied, when the D.A.'s Office sealed the deposition. In the end, Dr. Cosby complied, & Ms. Constand was paid.

The precedent set in this last Cosby Trial, centers on the fact that the current Montgomery County D.A. overturned the decision made by that same Office to seal Dr. Cosby's Civil Trial Deposition. Did the D.A. know that Cosby did not have a formal Grant of Immunity; just an assurance from the D.A.'s Office, under the previous D.A.?

This D.A. ran on the promise that he would put Dr. Cosby back on Trial. A Jury already declared a Mistrial on these Charges last Year, but the D.A. says Constand deserves a verdict. This is on top of the Civil Trial that ended more than 10yrs earlier. On top of everything else, Cosby accusers forget that Andrea Constand already settled her Case & collected her money.

The more one looks @ this 'Criminal Case', the more one may ask: Why are We here? The D.A. was successful in painting Dr. Cosby as someone w/ a proclivity for adultery- a serial adulterer. Labelling an Octogenarian a 'Violent Sexual Predator', is overkill. The label is obviously meant to smash the 'America's Dad' image. Cosby's deposition says that he acquired drugs to give to women he sought for sex, but is accused of slipping Women drugs; quaaludes in particular.

Problem is, none of the accusations can be substantiated. There is only one account, & then, the young lady requested it. Beverly Johnson's account was spotlighted by Media. She says her incident w/ Cosby occurred while they were rehearsing lines. For some unknown reason, Beverly not only returned to the Set; she finished rehearsal, then shot the episode, all after her alleged violation.

In an interview following David Bowie's death, Iman said she couldn't believe Beverly Johnson's account. She went on to say back then, news like that would've spread through the Modelling World like wildfire. Bill would be untouchable. The implication was that he was a serial dater, not someone slipping Women quaaludes. If Beverly's account were true, no one would want to be left alone w/ him. In the Case of Andrea Constand, she was given a benadryl for an allergic reaction. Hardly a date rape drug. According to Dr. Cosby's (sealed) deposition, they were drinking cognac; perhaps that is the culprit.

In any case, Ms. Constand made contact w/ Dr. Cosby on 19 different occasions, following the alleged rape. In her written statement, Camille Cosby accused the D.A. of ethics violations, including producing a witness (Andrea Constand) that perjured herself. She continues, "Moreover, Bill Cosby's Defense team introduced the testimony of a witness [Margot Jackson] who confirmed that the district attorney's witness admitted that she had not been sexually assaulted, but that she could say she was and get money... which is exactly what she did."

Others point to a Kinder Morgan connection to Dr. Cosby, in Shelburne Falls, Ma. Kinder Morgan, is The 3rd largest Energy Company in North America, worth approximately $125B. They are the largest Energy Infrastructure Company in North America; responsible for 80,000 miles of pipeline & 180 Terminals. The Energy Company's Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company wants to construct a $341M Natural Gas Pipeline through Shelbourne Falls, as part of a $3.75B Northeast Pipeline Extension Project. The Cosbys have been against the Project; since being notified in 2013, of The Company's intention to survey their land.

The Cosbys own hundreds of acres of Protected Land in Shelbourne Falls. They were concerned that the proposed Project "shows disrespect for humans, flora, & fauna." They were also "astounded" that all six New England Governors support the Project. Camille Cosby wrote an op- ed, in March 2014 that questions the motives of a Company beholden to shareholders, more than Nature. She & Dr. Cosby later joined protesters against the Pipeline in July, 2014. Conspiracy Theorists believe that the Cosby Family angered people @ Kinder Morgan; to the point that They wanted to assassinate his Character & his Legacy.

Fast forward to Oct. 17, 2014- Comedian Hannibal Burress accuses Bill Cosby of Rape during his Stand up routine. The floodgates opened! By mid November, Women like Janice Dickenson were accusing Cosby of [graphic] past Rape acts. Around this time, The Washington Post was asking: If Bill Cosby was accused of rape 8yrs ago, why is the story going viral now? A rumor circulates soon after, that P.R. Man Rick Berman, aka, "Dr. Evil" was contracted by Kinder Morgan to take down Dr. Cosby. A tape later surfaces, where Berman brags how he can take down Celebrities for Clients w/o having actions traced back to him.

All things being said & done, i'm conflicted by Cosby. No question he is more than just a very gifted Writer & Actor. But he clearly has another side. Black America was hard pressed for Role Models on TV; Cosby, like O.J. fit a model that appealed to Both Americas. In the end, Cosby believed his own hype. He mistook The 'Cos' for 'Heathcliff Huxtable'. I guess it must be something like Undercover Cops staying 'Under' too long(?). He played a straight shooter so long, that he forgot he wasn't squeaky clean. Now Cosby has to deal w/ a new image & label- Violent Sexual Predator.

Talking Heads let it roll off their tongues w/a frightening ease. It's like 'The Powers That Be' couldn't wait to push that narrative of Cosby. Sen. Lindsey Graham, on @ least two occasions, used Cosby as a reference for 'The' Sexual Predator, in his defense of Brett Kavanaugh... That opens the door to an interesting comparison- Bill Cosby & Brett Kavanaugh measure up pretty well. Kavanaugh was quick to tout his Academic Standing & Community Service- his pedigree, when pressed on his demeanor @ Social Events.

Cosby could have done the same. He could have touted his academic proficiency, Humanitarian Awards, or the Tens of Millions of dollars donated to Charity; particularly, Historical Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) over the years. There is also the number of Jobs that he created for his TV Shows & Concerts...

Ironically, a 'Gang' of Old Conservative White Men stepped in to rescue Kavanaugh, when he faltered. They employed [coded] wordplay in their language, to assure him that all of the brouhaha was moot; he WILL be confirmed. Meanwhile, the same 'Gang' that once lauded Cosby, abandoned him; almost from the beginning.

Phylicia Rashad appears correct in saying this whole thing is about Legacy. The Cosby Show was an inspiration to Black America. The Black 'Professional Class' flourished during the time that the Show aired. Young Men & Women were attending College & Post Grad Programs in larger numbers. Taking the Show off the air was detrimental, not just to Dr. Cosby, but to the overall Image Hollywood portrays of the Black Community.

Actor Geoffrey Owens, is a causality of the conspiracy to discredit Bill Cosby. He admitted that taking 'The Cosby Show' out of syndication, was a factor in his decision to work @ Trader Joes. Dr. Cosby shared syndication royalties w/ his Cast & Crew, so Geoffrey may not be alone. Meanwhile, admitted child molester, Stephen Collins can enjoy collecting syndication royalties, from Networks that still air '7th Heaven'.

Dwelling on America's double standard Culture can be mind boggling. 81Yr Old Bill Cosby is led out of court in leg chains, facing a 3yr- 10yr Prison Term. He is expected to serve @ least 3yrs, but taking his age & health into account, i'm not very confident that he will survive the Experience. Meanwhile, GOP Conservatives- male & female, are arguing on behalf of Brett Kavanaugh; that speaking up after 30+ Yrs is not fair, unless the account can be substantiated. Dr. Ford comes across as credible, but...

When Autumn Jackson appeared in the mid 90s, claiming to be Cosby's daughter, she referred to a tryst that Cosby had w/ her mother in 1974- Why didn't these Women speak up then? From recent interviews, I understand that many were intimidated by his image & stature, but Cosby's fidelity was being questioned. Dozens of Women coming forward would have gained momentum.

Why is Autumn's mother, Shawn Thompson- Upshaw among the Women accusing Cosby of drugging & raping them? That wasn't her story 20yrs ago. Autumn & her partners in Crime (Jose Medina, Boris [Schmulevich] Sabas) were Tried & Sentenced for Extortion ($40M) in 1997. In that Trial, Cosby was a Witness for the Prosecution. In his testimony, Dr. Cosby revealed that he & Ms. Thompson did in fact have a brief affair.

He also admitted that he gave Ms. Thompson $100,000 over the years as 'hush money,' plus he gave her money for Autumn's Education & well being. Does Ms. Thompson- Upshaw think she has a legitimate argument 20yrs later? It's interesting how We are expected to forgive the 'trespasses' of America's Historical figures, but Bill Cosby is tossed out w/ the trash. How does this work? The 'Cos' was part of Hugh Hefner's Playboy crowd. He was a regular @ the Playboy Mansion, & talked about it in his Stand Up routine.

America celebrated Hef's polyamorous lifestyle, even after getting married. Charlie Sheen can be the irreverent Bad Boy, to the point of becoming HIV Positive. Cosby is basically the prototype of Tiger Woods, but he gets singled out for punishment. Meanwhile, Tiger (I'm not Black) Woods gets a second chance. He is currently being toasted by the same people that criticized him 5yrs earlier. R. Kelly is free to do Lord only knows what (w/ Young Black Women), but Society is satisfied w/ locking up a Legally Blind 81yr old in failing health, & calling him a Violent Sexual Predator... But it's not about Legacy though.

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