The Iron Heel

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00847CZZO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00847CZZO&linkCode=as2&tag=mediasehat-20" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAmFDoAdlSv-ghQLVOhJmayeL3nG4CeE0giQYGT5zBV0AlnCs8v1YryWf4N4jCAPrqo1WyfZ5Gy0x5SbCMqX1i3PXiSDblMJaRp0-sd_LeWebn9Tajhxn8byA9AmsUdvzuHyYK9AxrdyA/s1600/Iron-Heel.jpg" wide="250" /></a></div> The Iron Heel is the title of Jack London’s 1908 novel about a socialist revolution in the United States. While London is best known today as a writer of adventure stories about dogs, in his own time The Iron Heel established London’s identity as a literary jagoan of the international proletariat and the most famous U.S. socialist around the world.<br /> <br /> The <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=The Iron Heel>future</a> of totalitarian dictatorship and mass working-class revolt imagined in London’s novel caused such a stir among his generation of radicals that the term “Iron Heel” came into common usage as a name for strikebreaking, police brutality, government conspiracies, and other violent forms of labor discipline and political repression. But like most dystopian novels set in the “not-too-distant future,” through the years The Iron Heel has proven to be equally prophetic and problematic.<br /> <br /> Working class by background and a committed socialist since boyhood, Jack London was inspired to write The Iron Heel by the plebeian terrorism and czarist brutality of the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=The Iron Heel>Russian </a>Revolution of 1905 and the violent series of strikes that spread class conflict across the mining and mill towns of Colorado.<br /> <br /> In Colorado, a cabal of mine and mill owners—working in consort with the local government—used Pinkertons, the state militia, vigilante mobs, bombing conspiracies, and agents provocateurs, as well as the courts, police, and capitalist press, to crush the militant Western Federation of Miners and end their drive for the eight-hour day.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" style="width: 450px;"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1619492288/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1619492288&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=2WNNVJVP4NRIKYQA"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1619492288&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="The" border="0" heel="" height="1" iron="" is="" jack="" london="" of="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1619492288" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" title="" width="1" /></td> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143039717/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0143039717&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=NZ5CY54GSBZ5NC4Y"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0143039717&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="The" border="0" heel="" height="1" iron="" is="" jack="" london="" of="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0143039717" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" title="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> London extrapolated the real events from Cripple Creek, Telluride, and <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=The Iron Heel>Russia</a> to produce a speculative novel in which a ruthless capitalist “Oligarchy” gives birth to the repressive “Iron Heel,” a violent counterrevolutionary army of militia, spies, and mobs who crush all political resistance to a capitalist dictatorship.<br /> <br /> The novel presents itself as the recently discovered “Everhard Manuscript.” From its imaginary vantage point in a socialist utopia some 700 years in the future, the book’s fictional editor explains that the Everhard Manuscript has been lost for centuries and represents the best firsthand account of the origins of the Iron Heel and the start of the great class war that would last nearly 300 years.<br /> <br /> The narrative was written by Avis Everhard, the bourgeois daughter of a Berkeley university professor and the lover of the novel’s true hero, Ernest Everhard.<br /> <br /> Ernest is a proletarian philosopher and political agitator who emerges from his electoral role in the Socialist Party to become the underground leader of the “First Great Uprising.”<br /> <br /> The first half of the novel is blatantly didactic, dominated by detailed discussions of socialist politics and economics. Originally skeptical of this aggressive working-class hero, the strong-willed Avis becomes converted to socialism through her own investigation of a “tacit conspiracy” by capitalist society against an injured worker who has been tossed on the scrap heap.<br /> <br /> Upon recognizing the susila superiority of socialism, Avis becomes the lover, student, and political partner of Ernest as their world gradually collapses into civil war.<br /> <br /> During a direct confrontation between Ernest and the Oligarchy (the last moment of civil “debate” before the coming war), a man of wealth and few words stands up to the intellectually and physically superior proletarian to explain bluntly: “Our reply [to the worker’s revolution] shall be couched in terms of lead. We are in power. Nobody will deny it.<br /> <br /> By virtue of that power we shall remain in power .... We will grind you revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain.” These words mark the birth of the Iron Heel.<br /> <br /> The battle between socialism and the Iron Heel is formally joined, and the novel, which began as a slow political romance, rapidly accelerates into a chaotic adventure story. The first signs of counterrevolution appear in the form of “patriotic” mobs known as the “Black Hundreds” who rise up and destroy union halls and radical newspapers.<br /> <br /> With time, the Oligarchy grows ever bolder: engineering an economic crisis to eliminate the middle class, plotting world wars with Germany to build up the army, and provoking a “Peasants’ Revolt” of starving farmers, which the Iron Heel destroys with characteristic gore. Yet, through this maelstrom of violence, Ernest prepares to run for Congress on the socialist ticket in the 1912 election.<br /> <br /> However, he alone is pragmatic enough to know that, given what the Oligarch said to him, voting alone is not going to overthrow the Iron Heel. So he begins to shift his organizational work away from the democratic sphere of reform and into the underground world of revolutionary conspiracy.<br /> <br /> Taking up a new identity as revolutionary leader, Ernest begins the necessary work of rooting out infiltrators, establishing a network of guerrilla “Fighting Organizations,” and planning to infiltrate the Iron Heel itself.<br /> <br /> “It was bitter bloody work,” writes Avis, “but we were fighting for life and for the Revolution, and we had to fight the enemy with his own weapons.... It was warfare dark and devious, replete with intrigue and conspiracy, plot and counterplot.”<br /> <br /> When a desperate electorate sweeps Ernest and the socialists into office, the Iron Heel plots to undermine democratic rule altogether. During a fiery speech in the congressional chamber, an agent of the Iron Heel throws a bomb at Ernest’s feet, which injures the hero, but more importantly it legitimates the arrest of all socialists as terrorists.<br /> <br /> After this blow, the Iron Heel formally abolishes democracy and asserts its dictatorial rule through “labor castes, the Mercenaries, and the great hordes of secret agents and police of various sorts.”<br /> <br /> When the First Great Uprising fails with the cataclysmic destruction of the “Chicago Commune” (in a terrifying scene reminiscent of the end of Ignatius Donnelly’s Caesar’s Column), many former socialists form terrorist groups both noble and insane, taking up a desperate and undisciplined war of revenge on the Oligarchy.<br /> <br /> The manuscript cuts off in breathless anticipation of the Second Great Uprising, thoroughly planned by our heroes and set to begin when Ernest and Avis are captured and “disappeared” by the Iron Heel.<br /> <br /> As both a novel and idea, The Iron Heel played an important role in the culture of U.S. radicalism in the first half of the twentieth century. The novel was very popular with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and other revolutionary socialist circles.<br /> <br /> To these groups, The Iron Heel was used as an entertaining educational tool as well as a theoretical critique of “right-wing” or party socialists who believed that electoral politics could defeat capitalism.<br /> <br /> The “Iron Heel”—much like Orwell’s “Big Brother” for the post–World War II generation—served as a potent metaphor for the conspiracies and control mechanisms of the ruling class.<br /> <br /> For example, in 1914 the radical journalist John Kenneth Turner evoked London’s novel to explain the meaning of the Ludlow Massacre: “If the picture of blood and terror so graphically painted in Jack London’s novel, ‘The Iron Heel,’ does not become a reality in the near future it will not be the fault either of the persons in control of the industries of this country or of those in possession of the reins of government.... The evidence is unmistakable of a nation-wide conspiracy to break up organizations of labor, to discipline the workers, to suppress agitators, to outlaw strikes, to nullify the tendencies that have been working toward the establishment of a better society, and to steer the ship of capitalism in the safe harbor of an industrial feudalism” (Turner).<br /> <br /> The Iron Heel seemed to predict exactly the coming of World War I and the violent hysteria that marked the red scare of 1919–1920. For the generation that followed London, The Iron Heel contains a precise prophecy of the rise of fascism in Europe.<br /> <br /> Of course, neither fascism nor a revolutionary underground of any size appeared in the United States, leading to the novel’s unceremonious obscurity in the second half of the twentieth century.<br /> <br /> However, as the hope for social revolution passed from the industrialized First World to the decolonizing Third World, The Iron Heel found a new audience in Latin America and wherever international military conspiracies, secret police, and the rich collaborated to rule with an Iron Heel.

The Iron Heel

The Iron Heel is the title of Jack London’s 1908 novel about a socialist revolution in the United States. While London is best known today...

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Irish Republican Army

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="At" any="" are="" army="" be="" believed="" border="0" irish="" one="" over="" republican="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ulUqwuy_4ov5yGqzrr9T29hj1StwOGbIf-G40iJNN_Wv3qDG68chAHerHo3-t5LrDY-380wIyDE26F9iaY70i2aI5F_ZBhMoEAvYfmZz2gLZrU6GxgLru_g-T8rNn6BVBFMTHqAeQgo/s1600/IRA.jpg" there="" time="" title="Irish" to="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Irish Republican Army</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> At any one time there are believed to be over 3,000 terrorist groups active in the world. Despite recent concerns, extremely few of these groups are active in the United States, but one group that has had a presence stretching back through recent decades is the Irish Republican Army (IRA). <br /> <br /> Some 40 million Americans claim Irish ancestry and when terrorism emerged out of the political and civil unrest in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, there were concerns that militant republican groups like the IRA would find among this diaspora a ready source of funding, weapons, recruits, and political support. <br /> <br /> Since then there have been frequently voiced concerns—particularly from paranoid U.K. governments—that the United States is the major source of financing and weapons for the IRA’s campaigns of violence. The media have played on such fears and a steady stream of films and novels have portrayed (usually with a sympathetic eye) Irish terrorists working, fighting, and dying for the cause on the streets of U.S. cities. But how realistic is this picture?<br /> <br /> <table align="center" style="width: 450px;"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1937981851/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1937981851&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=UPCY23I6I42SPOLC"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1937981851&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="At" any="" are="" army="" be="" believed="" border="0" height="1" irish="" one="" over="" republican="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1937981851" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" there="" time="" to="" width="1" /></td> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195177533/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0195177533&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=VTJVMZVVA57K3QN2"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0195177533&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="At" any="" are="" army="" be="" believed="" border="0" height="1" irish="" one="" over="" republican="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0195177533" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" there="" time="" to="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Certainly, there is a small degree of support among Irish Americans for the IRA, and accompanying this support have been money and weapons. However, the extent of this assistance has generally been hugely overestimated. In the Irish War of Independence fought from 1919 to 1921 more than $10 million was raised in the United States for the IRA (an impressive sum equivalent to nearly $100 million today) (Coogan). This bounty, however, contrasts starkly with the far more frugal support provided in the recent conflict. <br /> <br /> The Irish Northern Aid Committee (NORAID) raised some $600,000 in the United States in the first years of the 1970s, but by the end of the decade they were struggling to raise even $100,000 (Bishop and Mallie). Fifty years on, it was clear that support for Irish extremism had declined dramatically in the United States. It was a animo that would continue. <br /> <br /> By 1998 a detailed study into the finances of the IRA revealed that while the organization had an annual budget in the region of $10 million per annum, the vast majority of this sum was being raised within Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (Horgan and Taylor). As little as $50,000 was coming from the United States (less than 1 percent of the IRA’s annual income).<br /> <br /> In terms of weapons as well, the role of the United States has generally been overstated, but at least in the 1970s there was more genuine cause for concern on this issue. When the recent round of troubles kick-started in 1969 the IRA was desperately short of weapons. <br /> <br /> With its large Irish community and lax gun laws, the United States was the first port of call in the search to acquire arms. In 1970 five Irish Americans in Philadelphia organized a shipment of over 400 Armalite rifles (a weapon used for deer hunting in the United States), which were all successfully smuggled into Ireland. <br /> <br /> But such large shipments were rare. Most weapons from the United States were smuggled in very small batches, hidden in suitcases or concealed in freight goods. Like the Armalites, most of these weapons were hunting guns or other small-caliber items, bought legally in stores and shows throughout the United States and smuggled slowly overseas. <br /> <br /> There was precious little weaponry of serious military caliber. In an attempt to address this, IRA representatives involved themselves with organized crime elements in efforts to acquire more potent weaponry, such as M60 machine-guns and later Stinger surface-to-air missile systems (Bell). <br /> <br /> However, these isolated efforts tended to backfire for the IRA and, even before the end of the 1970s, the United States had largely become a peripheral source of weaponry (although a very limited amount of munitions smuggling has continued even into the cease-fire era).<br /> <br /> While prepared to raise funds and purchase weapons in the United States, it has always been very clear that the IRA has not been prepared to commit acts of violence in the country. In theory, they have many potential targets (e.g., the British Embassy in New York). <br /> <br /> However, the IRA has always understood that there would be a serious public and political backlash if it engaged in violence in the United States and it has strict orders in place to absolutely prohibit that from happening. <br /> <br /> With the declaration of cease-fires in the mid-1990s, support for extremist republicans has dwindled even further in the United States. The largest of the dissident groups, the Real IRA, is now believed to bring in no more than $10,000 to $15,000 per annum from the United States, and sometimes even less than this. <br /> <br /> The U.S. operations of the dissidents have also been seriously hurt by effective undercover and surveillance operations by the FBI in particular. Indeed, throughout both the 1980s and 1990s police and federal agents have proven very effective in identifying and prosecuting those involved in procuring weapons and funds for the IRA. <br /> <br /> Such losses have hastened the decline of illicit support for the movement, especially as a more moderate Irish republicanism has emerged to the fore with the advent of the ongoing peace process. At the start of the twenty-first century, it is fair to say that the level of support Irish terrorists now enjoy in the United States is extremely meager indeed.

Irish Republican Army

Irish Republican Army At any one time there are believed to be over 3,000 terrorist groups active in the world. Despite recent concerns...

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Iran-Contra

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="Contra" border="0" dominated="" iran-contra="" issues="" linked="" of="" on="" opposite="" president="" sides="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeEWv8i1Yje8lUdMk86h1XkI-Y1VkpyzO7ZKo_8m2mywXF6rUCgSaklx_9-vxwcPWDzgkKUCWFfVS-gqHhycIZ3aS_gHeu2zWLjM4oDhRIX537gpV7w9Dyt5-sU4a09DOzQhCoYd6r0u8/s1600/Contra-hearing.jpg" that="" the="" title="Iran-Contra" together="" two="" world="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Iran-Contra hearing</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Iran-Contra linked together two issues on opposite sides of the world that dominated President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. In the Middle East, he was deeply concerned about U.S. hostages, including the CIA’s Beirut station chief, William Buckley, being held in Lebanon by <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hizbollah</a>, a fundamentalist group with links to Iran. <br /> <br /> His aim in Central America, meanwhile, was to prevent the spread of communism, particularly by supporting the Contra rebels fighting the leftist government in Nicaragua. The CIA and members of the National Security Council (NSC) staff secretly pursued these ends by effectively trading arms for hostages with Iran despite “Operation Staunch,” the administration’s arms embargo against the radical Islamic regime.<br /> <br /> Simultaneously, they also organized private and foreign financing for the Contras as well as public relations campaigns within the United States. <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ronald Reagan</a> certainly approved much of this, but it remains unclear whether he authorized a diversion of funds from the Iranian arms sales to the Contras.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" style="width: 450px;"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700619917/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0700619917&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=RPQ7VFKUROJIEGG7"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0700619917&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Contra" border="0" dominated="" height="1" iran-contra="" issues="" linked="" of="" on="" opposite="" president="" sides="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0700619917" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" that="" the="" together="" two="" width="1" world="" /></td> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393318605/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0393318605&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=SVOUHN32ILDO5C3H"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0393318605&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Contra" border="0" dominated="" height="1" iran-contra="" issues="" linked="" of="" on="" opposite="" president="" sides="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0393318605" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" that="" the="" together="" two="" width="1" world="" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> At the time of the affair, some observers (e.g., Draper) argued that it almost amounted to a coup with a small “junta” led by Ronald Reagan and including Admiral John Poindexter, the national security adviser, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, an NSC staffer, and William Casey, the head of the CIA, secretly running a foreign policy against the express wishes of Congress. <br /> <br /> However, a less apocalyptic view was subsequently established, which blamed the affair on the net result of the imperial expansion of the presidency, Reagan’s poor management, and his weak knowledge of foreign affairs (Draper; Cannon). <br /> <br /> His senior cabinet members, particularly the secretary of state, George Shultz, and the secretary of defense, Casper Weinberger, were also accused of not properly controlling policy implementation within the administration. <br /> <br /> However, after congressional hearings ended in 1988 the affair quickly faded from the public consciousness. It was not a major issue in the 1988 presidential election, despite Vice-President George Bush’s involvement, and aside from a few storms linked to the special prosecutor’s investigation it rarely hit the news after Reagan’s term ended.<br /> <br /> <b>Historical Background</b><br /> <br /> After the pro-U.S. Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, staff at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran were held hostage for over a year by the new regime of <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ayatollah Khomeini</a>. According to some commentators and historians, the crisis greatly helped Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election, and it also made him determined to secure the release of the U.S. hostages held in Beirut as the issue threatened his reelection. <br /> <br /> Others in his administration, including William Casey, Robert McFarlane, the national security adviser at the time, and Admiral Poindexter (then McFarlane’s deputy), also hoped to return Iran to its traditional role as a counterweight to Soviet influence in the Middle East. <br /> <br /> Despite Iranian involvement in terrorist acts against the “Great Satan,” culminating in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine base in Lebanon that resulted in 241 deaths, they believed that there were moderates within Khomeini’s regime who would be willing to help U.S. cold war realpolitik. The two issues combined in Iran-Contra as weapons sales were meant to promote moderates who would then secure the release of the Beirut hostages.<br /> <br /> Reagan’s Central American policies were similarly affected by the cold war as Communists had taken power in both Grenada and Nicaragua in 1979. Reagan reacted in 1981 by authorizing CIA involvement against the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, and the opposition Contras were soon built up to 5,000 men from nearly nothing. In 1982, though, Congress reacted to Reagan’s strident policies by passing the Boland Amendment, prohibiting the funding of attempts to overthrow the Sandanistas. <br /> <br /> The CIA continued to fund the Contras, however, saying it was fighting the arms flow into neighboring El Salvador, and in 1984 Reagan went further by authorizing the mining of Nicaraguan harbors. Congress angrily reacted to this clear violation of international law by passing the second Boland Amendment in June 1984, banning all direct CIA intervention.<br /> <br /> <b>The Contra Scandal</b><br /> <br /> Following the first Boland Amendment, Oliver North began to guide secret, privately funded public relations campaigns supporting the Contras and opposing congressional opponents. Meanwhile, Casey secured financial support from the apartheid government in South Africa for the Contras before deciding to target rich private citizens. <br /> <br /> North again took part and Reagan, who supported the plan, also met with big donors, including singer Pat Boone, Texas oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt, and brewer Joseph Coors. The campaign raised $10 to $20 million but more money came from foreign states. <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Saudi Arabia</a> gave $32 million after an approach from McFarlane, while Taiwan, Brunei, and South Korea also gave support.<br /> <br /> Aside from fund-raising, the Joint Congressional Committee looking into Iran-Contra showed that the NSC and the CIA had also continued to provide direct support for the Contras. A key figure was John Hull, an Indiana-born rancher based in Costa Rica, who later skipped bail to avoid charges of drug and arms trafficking. <br /> <br /> He was also indicted on charges related to the bombing of a press conference, attended by U.S. journalists, which caused eight deaths. The CIA’s involvement was revealed in October 1986 when one of its planes was shot down, but North and Poindexter argued before the Congressional Committee that it didn’t break the Boland Amendments. <br /> <br /> They differentiated between funds appropriated by Congress and unappropriated funds and said that the executive branch only needed to account to Congress for the former. This distinction represented a threat to constitutional government, however, as it cut Congress out of any role in foreign policy (Draper 1991).<br /> <br /> <b>The Iranian Scandal</b><br /> <br /> Another source of funding for the Contras was a diversion of profits from illegal arms sales to the Iranian government. McFarlane, following an approach by the director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, David Kimche, had started these sales in July 1985. <br /> <br /> Kimche said that via Manucher Ghorbanifar, an exiled Iranian merchant, he had contacted Iranian moderates who wanted to establish better relations with the United States. To show their seriousness, they would secure the release of Buckley in return for the United States authorizing a small arms sale to Iran for use in its war against Iraq. <br /> <br /> McFarlane discussed the idea with Reagan and the chief of staff, Don Regan, on 18 July while the president was in the hospital following surgery. It clearly breached the U.S. arms embargo, but Reagan approved the plan as it offered the possibility of contacting moderates and releasing the hostages.<br /> <br /> On 6 August, McFarlane presented a deal worked out by Ghorbanifar to Reagan, Bush, George Shultz, and Casper Weinberger. Shultz and Weinberger opposed the plan, which involved 100 TOW missiles being exchanged for a number of releases, but Reagan was noncommittal. <br /> <br /> McFarlane later claimed that the president subsequently approved it and Reagan confirmed this to the Tower Board, which he established to investigate the affair. However, the president later told the board that he hadn’t approved it, before finally saying that he couldn’t remember. The board and Congress both eventually concluded that Reagan had approved the plan.<br /> <br /> On 20 August, Israel shipped 96 missiles to Iran, which the United States replaced, but no hostages were released. Yet when the Iranians asked for 400 more missiles Reagan quickly agreed, so Israel shipped 408 more missiles to Iran on 14 September with the United States again replacing them. The following day a U.S. hostage, the Reverend Benjamin Weir, was released in Beirut. <br /> <br /> However, as this didn’t meet the terms of the original deal, the Iranians’ next order was met with some skepticism. For instance, Michael Ledeen, a pro-Israeli historian who had acted as a conduit with Israel, argued that the plan should be abandoned, but McFarlane carried on and dropped Ledeen in favor of Oliver North. More Israeli missiles were soon on the way to Portugal en route to Iran, but despite lying to the State Department, North couldn’t get Portuguese approval so the flight was turned back. <br /> <br /> Instead, a CIA front airline made a delivery, but the Iranians were subsequently refunded $8 million of their $11 million payment as the missiles they received couldn’t hit high-flying reconnaissance planes. Another $1 million was diverted by North into “The Enterprise,” a web of secret bank accounts run by ex-U.S. Air Force major general Richard Secord, which funneled funds to the Contras.<br /> <br /> On 5 December, Reagan signed a “finding” retrospectively authorizing all that the CIA had done and ordering Casey not to brief Congress about the operation. Poindexter, the new national security adviser (McFarlane had resigned on 2 December), kept it in his office safe and destroyed it once the scandal became public, as it explicitly described the affair as an arms trade for hostages. <br /> <br /> This would have greatly embarrassed Reagan, as he always maintained that he wasn’t dealing with the kidnappers but only with people who could influence them. This distinction was difficult to maintain, however, as the hostage-takers were clearly greatly influenced by Iran, their main sponsor, even if they were not actually under its direction.<br /> <br /> Reagan signed two more “findings” in January 1986 authorizing direct CIA arms sales to Iran, which William Casey and North quickly acted upon. Reagan overrode Casey’s and Weinberger’s reservations and approved the transfer of 3,504 TOWs to Iran in January 1986. <br /> <br /> Weinberger had put up some bureaucratic obstacles but Reagan’s support ensured the plan’s implementation, although only 1,500 missiles were sent before the scandal was revealed. Secord acted as the CIA liaison with the Defense Department and he creamed off millions of dollars for the Contras (as well as a commission for himself) as North was vastly overcharging the Iranians. <br /> <br /> The new deliveries again failed to lead to hostage releases, revealing the futility of the plan. As the missiles were sent before releases, the kidnappers had no incentive for releasing hostages. Indeed, the plan really provided an incentive for kidnapping more Americans as the U.S. government was always willing to pay the “ransom.” <br /> <br /> But, as North argued during the affair, if the United States had broken off the deal, it could have incited even more hostage-taking (or worse) from the terrorists. By the end of the affair, three Americans had been released, but another three hostages had replaced them.<br /> <br /> The plan eventually became public when a Lebanese magazine revealed in November 1986 that McFarlane and North had visited Iran in May 1986 to discuss the arms deals. They had flown to Iran using fake passports with another NSC staffer and CIA personnel on a plane carrying Hawk missile spares. The mission was meant to speed up hostage releases, with more Hawks waiting to be flown out offered as an incentive. <br /> <br /> However, the Iranians treated the Americans badly, keeping them waiting and only sending low-level negotiators. The two sides also failed to agree on whether the arms should be delivered before or after the hostage releases. However, a compromise was eventually reached, which meant that the United States kept up a steady supply of sales until the scheme was revealed.<br /> <br /> <b>The Investigations</b><br /> <br /> Once the scandal became public, Reagan appointed an investigatory commission consisting of former secretary of state Edmund Muskie, Ford’s national security adviser Brett Scrowcroft, and former Republican senator John Tower, who was the chairman. The Tower Board investigated the whole affair and revealed many of the shortcomings of Reagan’s lackluster control of foreign policy. It also revealed Reagan’s inability to recall much about the affair, even when presented with clear evidence of his involvement in it.<br /> <br /> The Tower Board carried out its investigation in private, so it was overshadowed by the public congressional hearings even though it revealed considerably more. It was a Tower Board aide who found hundreds of vital documents still recorded on computers, which North thought had all been destroyed. These records provided the key to unraveling the scandal as North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, had had a “shredding party” to get rid of as many paper documents as possible. <br /> <br /> Yet, much of the plan was carried out without written records anyway. Poindexter had imposed an iron curtain of secrecy on the plan, discouraging North from putting anything on paper and compartmentalizing the plan so only a very few people knew everything. <br /> <br /> He told the Congressional Committee that he had lied to Congress and implemented the plan without approaching Reagan as he knew what the president wanted to do. The president thus had “plausible deniability” against any inquiries; “the buck stops here,” Poindexter concluded.<br /> <br /> The congressional hearings, held from 5 May to 3 August 1987, garnered much public attention, especially the appearance of Oliver North. He created a striking image dressed in his medal-covered marine uniform, which he had never worn while working in the NSC. Throughout his appearance, North argued that he had acted as a patriot, defending the United States from communism. <br /> <br /> He won a great deal of public support, despite admitting to a series of illegal acts culminating in a plan to use the Iranian money to finance a new body similar to the CIA but outside of all constitutional restraints. He said Poindexter and Casey shared his aim, but Casey never faced the Congressional Committee as he had a cerebral hemorrhage on the morning he was due to testify. He died in a hospital a few months later, leaving many questions about the CIA’s role in the affair unanswered.<br /> <br /> <b>After the Hearings</b><br /> <br /> Once the hearings were completed, the scandal all but died. It was not a major issue during the 1988 presidential election, for instance, which Bush won despite suspicions about his involvement. The special prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, continued to investigate and successfully prosecuted North and Poindexter on a number of charges. However, both had their convictions overturned by the court of appeals because of the immunity they had been given for their congressional testimony. <br /> <br /> <br /> Others, including McFarlane, Secord, Alan Fiers of the CIA, and Elliot Abrams, a former assistant secretary of state, pleaded guilty to a number of minor criminal offences, generally involving lying to Congress, but no one went to jail. Casper Weinberger was also indicted on five felony counts in June 1992, but the president pardoned him and five others six months later.<br /> <br /> The pardons all but ended Walsh’s investigations, and Bush was thus accused of having acted to spare himself embarrassing court appearances and even prosecution. The public, though, was not really interested as the scandal seemed to be a historical nonevent. <br /> <br /> A number of factors contributed to this view, but it was primarily because the scandal suffered from comparisons to <a href=" " target="_blank">Watergate</a>. For instance, the Joint Congressional Committee hearings were considered to be less dramatic than the Watergate ones as there were no revelations to match those of John Dean. The consequences were also less dramatic, as Reagan did not have to resign as Nixon had. <br /> <br /> It was never conclusively proven that he had approved the diversion, and the lack of a “smoking gun” meant he escaped impeachment. After leaving the White House, Reagan also quickly became a historical figure, as he withdrew from politics and made few public appearances. <br /> <br /> In 1994, he also announced that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which further shielded him against public investigation. (In the same year, North unsuccessfully fought a Senate race in Virginia for the Republicans.) Bush also received little attention once he left office, as his single term was not seen as being historically noteworthy and the public’s appetite for scandal was soon being satisfied by his successor, <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bill Clinton</a>.

Iran-Contra

Iran-Contra hearing Iran-Contra linked together two issues on opposite sides of the world that dominated President Ronald Reagan’s fore...

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Income Tax and the Internal Revenue Service

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="Income" and="" border="0" income="" internal="" revenue="" service="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd5pLNN0oQcuMkylG_y8cQVlx48-AaEexVOVC5N6m4j8YkVx7gO-dy1ZQ97lNoxzYBaxC-yEtRURsuxV3V9sXUneXdS2BbiIXZmLFB2a8SQa23wLew6lX0_3OM4T2PZb5xzh9NyA-oTDs/s1600/income-tax.jpg" tax="" the="" title="Income" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Income Tax and the Internal Revenue Service</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Americans have always hated taxes, and although the British less so, there has nevertheless in both countries been a strong resistance to government taxation, combined with demands that any duties be carefully monitored and controlled. <br /> <br /> Taxation, of course, lay at the root of the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">American Revolution</a>, and some “neo-Confederates” still maintain that the tariff, not slavery, was the cause of the Civil War. No tax, however, has been more controversial or provided more fodder for conspiracy theories than the United States Federal Income Tax.<br /> <br /> Employed briefly during the Civil War, then eliminated, the income tax made a resurgence in the late 1800s under Populist and other “reform” groups who feared wide disparities in wealth. Henry George’s Progress and Poverty (1879) argued for a “single tax,” and although that was more of a “land tax,” George’s anjuran raised the argument that everyone should pay some taxes. In 1894, Congress passed a 2 percent tax on all incomes over $4,000, injecting “class envy” into the taxation process.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" style="width: 450px;"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071836667/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0071836667&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=MCDVUWGBT7PN4QFT"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0071836667&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Income" and="" border="0" height="1" income="" internal="" revenue="" service="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0071836667" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" tax="" the="" width="1" /></td> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060533455/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0060533455&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=4KON3J3LHCVGABF2"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0060533455&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Income" and="" border="0" height="1" income="" internal="" revenue="" service="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0060533455" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" tax="" the="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> The United States Supreme Court ruled all income tax unconstitutional the following year, but that hardly dimmed the Progressive fervor for “reform” of the wealth structure. At the same time, discontent with tariffs—the country’s major source of revenue, replacing land sales in the late 1800s—rose to such a degree that Congress revisited the notion of income taxes. <br /> <br /> Tariffs had always been problematic, as they pitted one section of the country against another, but the income tax offered, in theory, a way to make all “equally” bear their share of the nation’s financial necessities.<br /> <br /> From the outset, the income tax was “sold” to the public and legislators on the grounds that it would “equalize” the tax burdens borne by the various classes. Indeed, the merits of the tax never involved funding the nation’s activities, but advocates always placed it in the context of egalitarianism and redistribution of wealth. Supporters discovered two central tactics that made the tax even more popular: keep it small (at first) and simple (at first).<br /> <br /> However, enacting any income tax required a constitutional amendment, and the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in 1913 to enable Congress to tax incomes. Early proposals were aimed mainly at “the rich,” with anyone earning less than $3,000 exempt, and those earning $20,000 to $50,000 paying only 2 percent. <br /> <br /> The “superrich” (i.e., those with incomes over $500,000) paid only 7 percent, and most Americans, with incomes between $3,000 and $20,000, paid between 0.5 and 1 percent. Moreover, the entire tax form consisted of a single page. The combination of placing the burden on the “rich” and keeping the form simple dramatically reduced (but did not eliminate) opposition to the tax.<br /> <br /> Following passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 as a means to escape the constitutional prohibition on income taxes (which the United States Supreme Court had upheld in 1894), the United States enacted the first permanent, nationwide income tax. At that time, Congress established the Bureau of Internal Revenue then, in 1953 following a federal reorganization, it became the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).<br /> <br /> Many continued to resist, though, claiming the tax was unconstitutional. The most famous “tax protestor” is perhaps Irwin Schiff, whose book, How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes (1982), became a bestseller. Schiff claimed that no one was required by law to sign tax forms, thus no one ever had to pay taxes. <br /> <br /> In 1983, the federal government changed the language of the code to address Schiff’s claims, although none were ever upheld in court. Schiff also claimed that people could “refuse” to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).<br /> <br /> The federal income tax grew quite onerous in World War I, with rates surging to 25 percemt on the lowest tier of payers and 77 percent on the “superrich.” Not surprisingly, tax revenues fell, and when he became secretary of the treasury, Andrew Mellon decided to find out why, investigating the relationship between rates and revenue. <br /> <br /> Even though it would not be named the “Laffer Curve” for another fifty years, Mellon discovered the essence of the axiom that at some point lowering taxes actually produces more revenue. He convinced President Warren Harding and Congress to slash tax rates, setting off a boom known as the Roaring Twenties that only ended with the stock market crash in 1929.<br /> <br /> Conspiracy theories associated with the income tax include the position that the Sixteenth Amendment was never actually ratified; that taxation is a “front” for support of an international monetary fund in the form of billions of dollars of loans to world banks; and that wages and salaries are the chief source of income for most people, but that it is “not income.”<br /> <br /> The IRS, despite several congressional reforms, is still viewed as a font of abuse, partly due to the structure of laws under which it operates. Among some of the abuses documented in Michael Minns’s book, How to Survive the IRS: My Battles against Goliath (2001), were:<br /> <ol> <li>Te IRS destroyed legitimate businesses by circulating word during its “investigation” that the company was involved in criminal activity.</li> <li>roceedings against people who have no money, or ability to pay, as mere “test cases” to send “messages” to “bigger fish.”</li> <li>Tax preparers sent to jail for forms they had not prepared or even seen.</li> <li>Arbitrary and political uses of the audit function to silence critics of an administration, or to intimidate proponents of IRS reform. Worse, the IRS “never had to say it was sorry,” in that it was virtually immune from civil suits for wrongful prosecution, nonpayment, or seizure of property.</li> </ol> In addition to these abuses, the IRS conducts its legal proceedings in “tax court,” which lacks most of the protections of civil or criminal trials, making it easier for the IRS to gain a conviction.<br /> <br /> Abuses such as these led to the reforms of 1998, which had been based on congressional hearings in which dozens of citizens told horror stories about bankruptcy brought on by wrongful IRS actions, or wrongful incarceration for “nonpayment” of taxes. <br /> <br /> The hearings had to provide anonymity to several witnesses from the IRS out of fear that they would be intimidated or punished at work. Nevertheless, the truth came out, and Congress responded, if not enthusiastically.<br /> <br /> The resulting reforms, known as the “taxpayers’ Bill of Rights” or the IRS Restructuring Act,<br /> <ol> <li>Curbed the IRS’s ability to invoke liens, levies, and seizures of property or income during litigation or investigation,</li> <li>Limited the IRS’s ability to attach wages or seize property of a spouse, and</li> <li>Allowed civil damages against the IRS for negligence in collections or unlawful collections.</li> </ol> In addition, the reform provided stronger powers to the citizens’ ombudsman office, strengthened the legal position of individuals locked in battles with the IRS, and in a general sense opened some window of liability to the IRS for abuses against individuals and businesses.<br /> <br /> Another area of controversy surrounding the collection of income taxes arose during Prohibition, when “revenooers” sought to close down “speakeasies” on the grounds that they were avoiding taxes. Soon, IRS agents became involved in other Treasury Department activities, such as gun control and tobacco oversight, through the connection to taxation. As is well known, Chicago gangster Al Capone, who was doubtless guilty of multiple murders and general mayhem, was finally arrested and jailed on income tax evasion.<br /> <br /> Another element related to IRS conspiracy theories involves the attacks by the agency on tax-exempt churches. During the Clinton administration at least eight churches were targeted for proceedings because they allegedly broke federal tax law. However, most of the churches punished were critical of Clinton, while no audits were conducted of so-called “black” churches that routinely invited Clinton to services for what were, essentially, campaign talks. <br /> <br /> But perhaps the largest and most publicized IRS/ church battle involved the Church of Scientology, which won tax-exempt status in 1993 after twenty-five years of “war” between the Church and the IRS. As part of the agreement, the Church had to pay $12.5 million to the IRS.<br /> <br /> This marked a victory of sorts against government, but only by an organization whose power is likewise feared by many conspiracy theorists. The Church of Scientology, founded by L. Ron Hubbard, had employed an aggressive campaign of suing the IRS and individual agents for millions, repeating a formula the Church had used against critics who claimed it was a “cult.” <br /> <br /> Perhaps of interest also was the timing of the end of the suit against the IRS, not long after Bill Clinton took office, thanks in large part to the support of Hollywood elites such as John Travolta, many of whom are Scientologists.<br /> <br /> More recent troubling aspects about the IRS and the income tax for the conspiracy-minded include claims that a massive abuse of the IRS by the Clinton administration occurred in which the IRS audited more than two dozen conservative organizations during Clinton’s second term. <br /> <br /> Not only were organizations audited, but numerous individuals who became prominent critics of Clinton, including Paula Jones, Billy Dale, Texe Marrs, David Horowitz, George Putnam, and Linda Tripp, as well as women who had gone public with their affairs with Bill Clinton, such as Elizabeth Ward Gracen. In May 1997, Landmark Legal Foundation began legal proceedings to obtain documents from the IRS to determine if the audits had been politically motivated. <br /> <br /> After much legal wrangling, two years later Landmark found evidence that the IRS had indeed audited the Western Journalism Center (a group critical of Clinton) after the Clinton White House forwarded a “complaint” about WJC. The WJC audit was only one of many brought against magazines and journalists (including The American Spectator and WorldNetDaily.Com editor Joseph Farah).<br /> <br /> One could take conspiracies involving the income tax and the IRS in virtually any direction, from its role as a conduit for funding “one-world government” to its “illegal” status. The wonder about income tax theories is not that there are so many, but that there aren’t even more.

Income Tax and the Internal Revenue Service

Income Tax and the Internal Revenue Service Americans have always hated taxes, and although the British less so, there has nevertheless...

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Internet

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" alt="The" and="" are="" border="0" conspiracy="" heaven="" in="" internet="" made="" match="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7zQ3nm9klQdN_rDVGN-VPZF4EC5ZjQZIal_2NjOM_er_1hxr9rThNLfulKpQCWBc3tMqiEyge_W0kTC5LcjUz-vaM7hsUuL65r28nIIbVvBZ-YFDoZNe0DRRxM1uH4R26sXE79C_ADA4/s1600/internet.jpg" theories="" title="Internet" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Internet</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> The Internet and conspiracy theories are a match made in heaven. With its ability to link seemingly unrelated information, the Internet has become the new home for amateur and professional conspiracy theorists, who spread their messages by the millions through all channels and networks. Having itself emerged from underneath a shroud of secrecy, the Internet has not only revolutionized the ways in which we communicate, it has also transformed the nature of conspiracy culture.<br /> <br /> <b>Historical Origins of the Internet</b><br /> <br /> The Internet itself began amidst a quasi-conspiracy. Its origin lay in the paranoia and fear that was widespread in the late 1950s in the United States because the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Soviet Union</a> had gained a lead in the space race, having launched several of its Sputnik satellites. To overcome this technological lag, the U.S. government began investing large sums of money in military technology—the beginnings of the military industrial complex.<br /> <br /> One immediate result was the founding of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a branch of the U.S. Defense Department, in 1958. This agency had the task of creating and sustaining U.S. technological supremacy in the field of military applications throughout the world. Part of this task was developing a communication network that could withstand severe attacks and resulting outages by means of the dynamic rerouting of messages. Somewhat by chance, a research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) simultaneously began working with the idea of connecting two computers over a vast geographical space, thus creating a network.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KHDE212/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=dc58fc43e052c302872112c7a0549016" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B01KHDE212&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="The" and="" are="" border="0" conspiracy="" heaven="" height="1" in="" internet="" made="" match="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=B01KHDE212" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" theories="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1511654945/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1511654945&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=HPHVQYP5G7ATE2NQ"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1511654945&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="The" and="" are="" border="0" conspiracy="" heaven="" height="1" in="" internet="" made="" match="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1511654945" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" theories="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> By the mid-1960s these initial tests had come to fruition and when DARPA hired MIT researcher Lawrence Roberts in 1966, the Internet—or “ARPAnet” as it was then called—was born. Initially, this project remained a secret feasibility study under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State. But its rapid growth among universities and research institutions with defense contracts made keeping it undercover unfeasible. In 1972 it was made public at an international computer conference.<br /> <br /> Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s ARPAnet remained largely in the public domain, but access to these super computer networks was restricted to institutions of higher education and research. In the mid-1980s, however, this changed. The National Science Foundation (NSF) created the NSFnet to link five supercomputer centers, and this, coupled with the implementation of a new set of communication protocols called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Program/Internet Protocol), soon supplanted the ARPAnet as the backbone of the Internet. In 1995, however, the NSF decommissioned the NSFnet and responsibility for the Internet was assumed by the private sector. <br /> <br /> Fueled by the increasing popularity of personal computers and the World Wide Web, which was introduced in 1991, the Internet saw explosive growth beginning in 1993, thereafter becoming a significant factor in the stock market and commerce during the second half of the decade. But why has the Internet become a haven for conspiracy theorists and their kin and how has this medium changed conspiracy culture in the process?<br /> <br /> <b>Connections between Conspiracy Theory and the Internet</b><br /> <br /> With the advent of the Internet as a commercially successful medium in the mid-1990s, conspiracy theories immediately found a new home. For those who could afford it, the Internet offered the possibility of exchanging information of any kind at speeds and in quantities hitherto unimaginable. <br /> <br /> New modes of correspondence that greatly facilitate communication across temporal and spatial barriers have emerged in cyberspace: e-mail, mailing lists, newsgroups, Internet relay chat, electronic conferencing, and multi-user dimensions (MUDs). <br /> <br /> Often relegated to the political and social fringes and often ridiculed or debunked by the mainstream conservative press, conspiracy theorists now discovered that the Net was a perfect vehicle to transport and spread their thoughts.<br /> <br /> Besides the speed and the quantity of information being exchanged, the novelty is that the information is to a great extent uncensored. The Internet does not discriminate between truth and fiction, and completely ludicrous information is placed alongside scientific contributions. <br /> <br /> The possibility for an Internet user to remain anonymous is similarly important in this respect, since it allows for completely depersonalized information exchange, where no susila justification or fear of being reproached for what is written is needed. <br /> <br /> The Internet thus has become a new virtual reality where the lines between factual truths and utter lies have become completely blurred. It is precisely this space where conspiracy theorists found fertile ground for their beliefs and interpretations.<br /> <br /> One of the outstanding features of conspiracy theories is their ability to connect seemingly disparate events, groups, or individuals into a grand scheme or plot. In a similar fashion the Internet enables associations through so-called links, which are hypertext connections between two pieces of information or data. One website may have as many as several hundred links to other websites. The name itself—web—is no coincidence. <br /> <br /> A second significant correlation between the Internet and conspiracy theories is the ability of online search engines to combine any number of words and to display the results accordingly. Thus the conspiracy theorists’ inclination to combine disparate events, people, and places can infinitely and instantly be satisfied. <br /> <br /> Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, authors of 70 Greatest Conspiracy Theories of All Time and creators of the conspire.com website, note: “If ever there was a mass medium that mirrored the psychotropic device of the conspiracy theory, the World Wide Web is it. <br /> <br /> With its vertiginous array of endless connections—hyperlinks for the hyperattuned—the Web fits the paranoid mindset as snugly as a virus locks into a human receptor cell” (qtd. in Pence). Likewise it has been suggested that the Internet was not just made for conspiracy theory: “it is a conspiracy theory” (Stewart qtd. in Marcus, 18). <br /> <br /> A simpulan reason why the Internet is a haven for conspiracy-minded people is that it gives individuals the option to remain anonymous, hidden, or unknown. This, of course, is paramount for the conspiracy theorist prototype since his activities in disclosing secret evils must themselves always remain clandestine in order to succeed. <br /> <br /> The possibility to produce conspiratorial interpretations while one’s identity—including name, age, gender, religion, political affiliation, occupation, marital status, etc.—remains concealed thus is an essential reason why the Internet has become a catalyst for the creation of conspiracy theories. <br /> <br /> This anonymity promotes in the user a readiness to experiment and a willingness to go beyond the barriers of common sense and logical cognition. It is these reasons that lead us to understand why the conspiracy culture has undergone and continues to undergo a significant paradigmatic shift.<br /> <br /> The Internet has made conspiracy theories and the people who hatch them ubiquitous, socially acceptable, and in some cases even legendary. The World Wide Web has become a venue where people can express and share their fears about politics, the government, space invaders, secret organizations and the like, while coming to terms with their daily lives. <br /> <br /> In a world where the Federal Bureau of Investigation monitors e-mails and phone calls with a software called “DSC1000” (formerly “Carnivore”), the National Security Agency spies on foreign countries’ economic activity using a secret aktivitas called “Echelon,” and NASA—in a post–September 11 paranoia of its own—just offered a well-known airline company the use of a machine that can read the minds of passengers before they board a plane, these individual fears are certainly more than warranted. <br /> <br /> The Internet has become an arena for a new form of political discourse, one that is unmediated, liberalizing, almost anarchic. An abundance of cybercommunities has sprung up that discusses, shares, and interprets information on a constant basis. Conspiracy newsgroups are some of the most highly visited forums on the Net.<br /> <br /> This new form of communication also connects many people that previously had no possibility of corresponding even though they shared a broad interest in a certain topic. It is this almost ritual sharing of information in the online forums by a regular group of participants that constitutes an online community. These individuals are not necessarily detached from the real world, as some skeptics fear. <br /> <br /> Rather, they might be seen as trying to come to terms with real-world events in a venue that connects like-minded persons who are well aware that their community is based in a textual world. Because participants come and go as they please and major topics of interest change frequently, the community can be described as amorphous and possibly ephemeral since these newsgroup communities undergo a process of continuous membership evolution. <br /> <br /> For some social theorists, then, these forms of communication and community promise to open new opportunities of social and political interaction and in turn possibly create a new form of participatory democracy hitherto unknown.<br /> <br /> Conspiracy theories, in most cases, are interpretations of real events. They can thus be understood as versions—multiple and multiplying accounts—of reality. Cyberspace, too, has been described as a version of reality: virtual reality. <br /> <br /> It is precisely this notion of another reality behind or beyond reality that constitutes the fundamental temptation of cyberspace and conspiracy theories. This is why there is no doubting that the Internet has propelled the spread of conspiracy theories to an extent we can scarcely grasp, and many have lamented this tendency. <br /> <br /> It is the weblike structure of the Internet itself that makes it beneficial for interpretations of every shape, size, and ideological orientation. The theories are free to roam, grow, mutate, spread, and also disappear in this virtual realm.<br /> <br /> Some commentators, however, have expressed the hope that where conspiracy theory meets the Internet there will arise a new and more benign understanding of these interpretative methods. If such theories are understood as the outcries of those who feel left out politically, socially, or otherwise on the one hand and, on the other, as the upholding of a liberal individualism some people fear they are losing, then the Internet could be seen to serve as an instrument of democracy and as a voice of representation for those who previously had none.

Internet

Internet The Internet and conspiracy theories are a match made in heaven. With its ability to link seemingly unrelated information, the...

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Industrial Workers of the World

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="has" border="0" equal="" in="" industrial="" its="" no="" of="" revolutionary="" spirit="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpcWG8y251hbbf_3kX0zhsFfwMgsz8fbtX6iqeEkvWS64EG0nNp0WnWsjkW0sbP3THQJWGTJoqF2r5Vho4jeym9ejiYsjCwKEGtFxyaE2IR8z4BHuCeD4UubWSQ1netndUGd5oz46cf9I/s1600/iww.gif" the="" title="Industrial" workers="" world="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Industrial Workers of the World</td></tr> </tbody></table> In the history of U.S. labor, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) has no equal in its revolutionary spirit, its vibrant proletarian and egalitarian culture, and its commitment to fighting the class struggle. Between its founding by working-class militants in 1905 and its mass persecution after World War I, the IWW engaged in hundreds of spectacular strikes from the timberlands of the Pacific Northwest to the textile mills of New England. <br /> <br /> For over a decade, the IWW was the most feared labor union in the country, making it the target of an extraordinary level of repression from Pinkertons, vigilantes, police, and militias, or what the Wobblies simply called the “Iron Heel.” “There can be no peace,” states the IWW’s founding document, “so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life” (Kornbluh). <br /> <br /> Attacked by employers, demonized by political leaders, and depicted in the capitalist press as bomb-throwing and un-American aliens, the IWW may have been the most conspired against and conspiratorially minded U.S. social movement of the early twentieth century.<br /> <br /> There are many reasons why the U.S. ruling classes saw the IWW as such a threat. Broadly syndicalist and socialist in ideology, the IWW was dedicated to building “One Big Union” of all working people who would use the revolutionary “General Strike” to overthrow capitalism and abolish the wage system. The IWW built its membership out of workers that most unions believed were unorganizable, including itinerant workers, tramps and hoboes, lumberjacks, miners, harvest workers, and factory women.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0717803961/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=d30d8c64bec5e6798dac8bd48f823445" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0717803961&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="has" border="0" equal="" height="1" in="" industrial="" its="" no="" of="" revolutionary="" spirit="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=0717803961" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" width="1" workers="" world="" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1844675254/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1844675254&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=LNZGYIGAM3SUXJPJ"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1844675254&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="has" border="0" equal="" height="1" in="" industrial="" its="" no="" of="" revolutionary="" spirit="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1844675254" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" width="1" workers="" world="" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Unique among U.S. unions at the time, the IWW proudly organized men, women, and even children of every race, nation, and language without prejudice. The IWW imagined itself as the “fighting organization of the working class,” and resolutely refused to build permanent union structures that could become coopted or bureaucratic and thereby lose its revolutionary spirit. <br /> <br /> Instead, the Wobblies offered their organizational talents during strikes and taught workers how to organize, make demands, and win concessions for themselves. The Wobblies wrote songs and poems of agitation, including the labor classic “Solidarity Forever.” Their many newspapers were filled with political cartoons and published in dozens of languages. <br /> <br /> IWW printing houses were famous for producing inflammatory pamphlets on sabotage and revolutionary strategy, as well as thousands of stickers and buttons known as “silent agitators” emblazoned with slogans like “Joint the IWW and Fire Your Boss,” “Labor Is Entitled to All it Creates,” “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All,” and “Bum Work for Bum Pay.” <br /> <br /> The Wobblies also produced some of the most charismatic and committed leaders in the history of the U.S. Left, including the giant, one-eyed William “Big Bill” Haywood, the “Rebel Girl” Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, Eugene V. Debs, and Ralph Chaplin. <br /> <br /> In short, the IWW inculcated the fiercest radicalism in sectors of the industrial working class that were once the most exploited and degraded in the country, thereby posing a direct threat to the profits of some of the country’s richest and most corrupt corporations.<br /> <br /> Choosing to make its stand exclusively on the economic front, the IWW generally saw elections as futile and political institutions as coconspirators with capitalism. Wobbly leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn argued that the state was simply “the slugging committee of the ruling class” and not a real democracy (Dubofsky). <br /> <br /> “No Socialist can be a law abiding citizen,” proclaimed “Big Bill” Haywood, commenting on the capitalist nature of the United States; “when we come together and are of a common mind, and the purpose of our minds is to overthrow the capitalist system, we become conspirators then against the United States government” (Preston). <br /> <br /> Though Haywood was being critical of the biases of state power with this statement, most political and industrial elites did see the IWW as a subversive “conspiracy” that was out to undermine property, decency, and law and order.<br /> <br /> Where the government, business, and press used violence to eradicate the Wobbly “conspiracy,” the IWW defended itself with accusations of a “frameup,” sparking an ongoing rhetorical, legal, and political class struggle over the meaning of “conspiracy.” Committed to nonviolent direct-action protest, Wobbly civil-disobedience often generated violence in return. <br /> <br /> During major strikes and confrontations, Wobbly leaders were repeatedly arrested and charged with the crime of “conspiracy.” The first major trial began in 1906 when Big Bill Haywood and two others leaders of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) were tried in Idaho for conspiracy in the murder of the former governor. <br /> <br /> Under the direction of infamous Pinkerton James McParlain, Big Bill and his comrades were kidnapped in Colorado and illegally extradited to Idaho to stand trial for their lives. A massive publicity campaign eventually “broke the conspiracy” and Haywood was acquitted. <br /> <br /> During the IWW’s “free-speech campaigns” in Spokane, Fresno, San Diego, and elsewhere, Wobbly activists were met with mass arrests, police brutality, and vigilante violence to prevent their constitutional right to hold open-air meetings. During the Lawrence, Massachusetts, “Bread and Roses” strike of 1912, textile mill owners were put on trial for planting a bomb that they intended to blame on the IWW. <br /> <br /> In 1915, Wobbly songwriter Joe Hill was executed in Utah in what many believe was a conspiracy to frame a poetic voice of proletarian revolution. More so than any other union in the United States, Wobbly history is full of such examples.<br /> <br /> When the United States began to “prepare” for its entry into <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World War I</a>, the repression of the IWW intensified. Teddy Roosevelt attacked the IWW as disloyal and pro-German, claiming that “every district where the IWW starts rioting should be placed under martial law and cleaned up by military methods” (Dubofsky). Congressmen and business leaders denounced the IWW as “Imperial William’s Warriors” or the “I Won’t Work” and passed new antisedition laws to quash dissent during wartime. <br /> <br /> Although the IWW membership was split over support for the war, its newspapers and magazines were banned from the mail and hundreds of Wobblies were persecuted for leading strikes, making speeches, or carrying membership cards. Frank Little, a militant Wobbly leader and opponent of U.S. involvement in World War I, was lynched during a strike in Butte, Montana, by a gang of masked vigilantes who were most likely hired by the copper-mine owners.<br /> <br /> Beginning in 1917, the Justice Department unleashed its newly constituted federal police powers against the national leadership of the IWW, leading to the arrests of over 2,000 Wobblies on charges of conspiring to obstruct the war effort. Most were convicted of violating wartime antisedition laws (well after the war was over), and sentenced to long prison terms. <br /> <br /> Many years later, one of the indicted Wobbly leaders from Chicago had this to say about the trial: “After we had heard the case for the prosecution we became certain that a real charge of conspiracy had been proven—but not against us. We were sure that the real conspirators were the ones who were trying the alleged conspirators. The government itself had planned the conspiracy, and we were its victims” (Brazier).<br /> <br /> During the postwar red scare, one incident in particular marked the violent end of the IWW. On Armistice Day 1919, in the lumber town of Centralia, Washington, several community leaders and members of the American Legion carried out a bloody attack on the local IWW hall. Determined to defend themselves against the mob’s assault, the Wobblies engaged the Legionnaires in a fierce gun battle that left several men on both sides dead. <br /> <br /> One Wobbly, Wesley Everest, who was captured in his World War I soldier’s uniform, was later dragged from his prison cell under cover of night and lynched by a mob. This event is widely known in Wobbly literature as the “Centralia Conspiracy.”

Industrial Workers of the World

Industrial Workers of the World In the history of U.S. labor, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) has no equal in its ...

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The Illuminatus! Trilogy

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" alt="is" by="" classic="" coauthored="" cult="" robert="" shea="" the="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Illuminatus! Trilogy</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> The Illuminatus! Trilogy, “a fairy tale for paranoids,” is a cult classic coauthored by Robert Shea (1933–994) and Robert Anton Wilson (1938–), former editors of Playboy magazine. Intrigue—and lots of sex, drugs, and rock and roll—characterize this psychedelic epic that defies paraphrase. <br /> <br /> Thirteen years after its 1975 publication, the 800-page trilogy was the best-selling trade science-fiction paperback in the United States. The novel won the 1986 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award and was adapted into a ten-hour rock opera at London’s National Theatre.<br /> <br /> <b>Structure of the Novel </b><br /> <br /> The form and the content of this novel focus on an ancient struggle between anarchy and authority. The <a href=" " target="_blank">Illuminati</a>, a secret society formed on 1 May 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, turns out to be a much older organization, 30,000 years old, originating in Atlantis.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0440539811/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0440539811&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=YIMRT7WMPL5TFY37"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0440539811&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="is" by="" classic="" coauthored="" cult="" robert="" shea="" the="" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/044050306X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=044050306X&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=KFQPT4PUEMA3U37T"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=044050306X&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="is" by="" classic="" coauthored="" cult="" robert="" shea="" the="" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> While the Illuminati embodies authoritarian forces linked to a one-world government, readers learn in one of many twists in the novel that this is a false identification; the true Illuminati—known only as A(A(—employs a totally different, laissezfaire (and Taoist) agenda.<br /> <br /> The authors employ a conscious <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">strategy</a> of jumbling time and switching points of view with such frequency as to disorient the reader. While these nonlinear techniques are part of a satire on modernism in the novel, they have much deeper significance, enacting anarchy on the level of narrative. These techniques create a certain vicariousness, with the reader’s disorientation mirroring the initiation rites, mind-altering drugs, secret rituals, and webs of deception that make up much of the story line. <br /> <br /> The Illuminatus! Trilogy is heavily influenced by the Principia Discordia (1965), a religious treatise on the worship of chaos, by Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley (the latter a companion of Lee Harvey Oswald during his time in the marines). H. P. Lovecraft appears in the novel as a writer murdered by the Illuminati for revealing the existence of extraterrestrial “soul eaters” known as the lloigor.<br /> <br /> <b>The Plot</b><br /> <br /> The plot revolves around the decision of the Illuminati to “immanentize the Eschaton”—to annihilate the world in order to release enough consciousness energy to give Illuminati members transcendental illumination or immortality and to placate the lloigors. <br /> <br /> The Illuminati stage three attempts at mass destruction: a nuclear world war over the island of Fernando Poo, the release of a plague known as Anthrax Leprosy Pi, and the resurrection of Hitler’s lost legion placed under a biomystical protective field under Lake Totenkopf in Ingolstadt, Bavaria.<br /> <br /> The story begins with a New York City bombing in the office of a small, left-wing magazine Confrontation and the disappearance of its coeditor Joseph Malik, who had been researching the Illuminati. Saul Goodman, investigating the case, is captured by the Illuminati but rescued by Malik, who turns out to be working with John Dillinger and characters Simon Moon, Padre Pederastia, and Miss Mao for the Justified Ancients of Mummu (JAMs), a discordian group fighting the Illuminati. <br /> <br /> Joining the JAMs in opposition to the Illuminati, Goodman—as part of his enlightenment—learns to perceive fnords, words people are brainwashed not to see, which are inserted in texts to manipulate negative responses.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, George Dorn, a journalist for Confrontation, who is investigating a right-wing assassination ring, is imprisoned in Mad Dog, Texas, where he meets Harry Coin, one of several candidates for <a href=" " target="_blank">the assassination of John F. Kennedy</a> (the real assassin, it turns out, is Harold Canvera, an obscure individual with apolitical motives). <br /> <br /> Dorn is rescued by members of the Legion of Dynamic Discord (LDD), another anarchic <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">organization</a> fighting the Illuminati. Hagbard Celine, a charismatic billionaire, heads the LDD; Celine, however, turns out to be one of five leaders of the Illuminati. <br /> <br /> Joining the LDD, Dorn visits the ruins of Atlantis, travels the underground Sea of <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B0051XUP1K" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="1a8781aa1c2958e8d746df20e627689b" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Valusia" href=" " target="_blank">Marilyn Monroe</a>, who has reached transcendental illumination and can incarnate Eris, the goddess of discord.<br /> <br /> The novel moves toward a very literal climax since Eris incarnates herself through the energy released in an explosive mass of orgasms during Woodstock Europa, a rock concert held 1 May 1976. In an apocalyptic parody, the goddess of discord, with assistance from porpoises and many of the major characters in the story, thwarts the Illuminati’s resurrection of Hitler’s lost legion. <br /> <br /> Meanwhile, in the <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1249160073" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="89ee21ee582a7e0b8623740863f2b818" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Lehman Caves" href="http://www.amazon.com/Lehman-Caves-Its-Human-History/dp/1249160073/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=89ee21ee582a7e0b8623740863f2b818&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_2228916" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lehman Caves</a><img a="" alt="is" by="" classic="" coauthored="" cult="" robert="" shea="" the="" /> outside Las Vegas, Saul Goodman contains the threat from Anthrax Leprosy Pi, when he finds Carmel, a pimp who is the most important man in the world since he’s the only carrier of the disease. Near the close of the novel, readers encounter the Leviathan, an enormous single-celled sea creature (the true pyramid with the eye) who communicates telepathically with FUCKUP, Celine’s computer.<br /> <br /> Thus, starting out as a detective story, the novel becomes science fiction, and finally a love story between a super computer and a sea monster.<br /> <br /> <b>Conspiracies in the Novel</b><br /> <br /> The novel refers to many of the major conspiracy theories circulating in post-Watergate America, and it depicts many militant left-wing organizations of the 1960s. The novel also invents conspiracy theories of its own, such as the Washington-Weishaupt theory, in which Adam Weishaupt replaces George Washington on the eve of the formation of the United States.<br /> <br /> Summing up their novel, the authors state, “This book, being part of the only serious conspiracy it describes—that is, part of <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B000MCH5GS" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="4d1d3de94061f6ef4aeb878f840bd908" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Operation Mindfuck" href="http://www.amazon.com/OPERATION-MINDFUCK/dp/B000MCH5GS/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=4d1d3de94061f6ef4aeb878f840bd908&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_4706935" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Operation Mindfuck</a><img a="" alt="is" by="" classic="" coauthored="" cult="" robert="" shea="" the="" />— has programmed the reader in ways that he or she will not understand for a period of months (or perhaps years).” In other words, the reading is not just a description of conspiracy—it is a conspiracy. <br /> <br /> Operation Mindfuck in the novel is anarchic, a discordian strategy. So how, without contradiction, can these authors kegiatan readers to be anarchists? The answer lies in the form of programming, whose goal, like that of a computer virus, is to disrupt a system. <br /> <br /> Politically speaking, disruption is revolution when the objective is to overthrow a form of government or way of life. In this way the effect of reading the novel compares with a political act involving the subversion of cherished norms in the West—logical consistency, the sequence of time, the social order, and, of course, objective “reality.”

The Illuminatus! Trilogy

The Illuminatus! Trilogy The Illuminatus! Trilogy, “a fairy tale for paranoids,” is a cult classic coauthored by Robert Shea (1933–994)...

Read more »