Friday March 12th 2011 commenced well for me as I drove for my swim and sauna in the increasingly early dawn and the wind eased as the sun rose. I briefly called in to the supermarket for milk and then took the opportunity to buy some grey socks having recently had a clear out of the sock draw, six pairs for £5 was an excellent bargain, together with a pair of shoe laces and returned home for a good cooked breakfast, a glass of Pepsi and completing a writing for yesterday.
The intention had been to immediately write of two TV programmes and Ralph Schoenman but first there was England playing in Bangladesh and batting first. I was avoiding the news of the day because I anticipated that the West had decided to leave the plight of free Libyans to the wrath of the Gaddafi family. The West, the UK, France and to a lesser extent the USA had been carried away with the prospect of getting rid of the Gaddafi family, supporting the replacement regime and gaining additional influence on a country with oil reserves greater than Saudi Arabia.
Only in history perhaps 50 years hence will the papers reveal whether the threat of intervention was made in good faith and expectation or a panic measure in the hope that the combined action taken by the United Nations short of a no fly zone and threats by individual countries would emboldened the people in general, and more importantly the military, the airforce and others in aspects of the government to abandon the dictatorship, forcing the family to yield and attempt to negotiate a settlement for themselves.
What happened is that the Gaddafi family played a successful waiting game, avoiding further action its own people, inviting the journalists in and then having removed the cause for early intervention set about planning to re-establish control by using force against the limited force of the opposition. The opposition repeatedly called for a no fly zone and the West failed to deliver. Now we faced the prospect of the opposition being defeated and then systematically eliminated and the Dictatorship being re-established. What then? Just watch individual countries re-establish links China, Russia, and others in Africa and South America. Just watch revenge being planned on the UK and France, less so the USA. Never make threats without being prepared to see the situation through.
However it was not the situation in Libya which engaged my attention and changed my mood and how I spent the day, but the news of the biggest earthquake in Japan for perhaps a thousand years and sixth most powerful since records commenced over 100 years ago, followed by a Tsunami the picture of which flood the international news channels because of its severity and impact on an urban population. The picture masks the horror and hopelessness which must have overwhelmed those individuals who rushed to their families or their workplaces only to be confronted by the power of water travelling 500 miles per hour full of debris of buildings and vehicles bobbing about like toys in a bathtub.
So where was I when I had commenced the day, I had watched back to back two series about the USA Mafia. The Sopranos remains the series of substances because it reflects contemporary society without romanticism. This episode was best of the first series todate because it concentrated on the relationship between Tony and Carmela and their daughter, Meadow. Tony takes Meadow on three consecutive visits to colleges where she has gained admission interviews. Carmela is at home with a bout of flu.
On the second journey Meadow asks her father if he is in the Mafia as her friends at school claim he is. Tony’s instinctive reaction to deny emphasising that he is in the Waste Disposal business. Meadow persists and eventually Tony admits that he also has income from illegal gambling, not mentioning the prostitution, security shakedowns, contract corruption and various other money making ventures. However his admission is enough to satisfy his daughter until he suddenly takes off after a vehicle whose driver he sees at a service station. He contacts Christopher to make enquiries about the licence plate from friendly cops. Christopher protests because it is pouring with rain and he is required to make visits to an open street phone as the gang never use house phones because of the expectation that they will be monitored by the authorities.
When it is established that the man is a former colleague who gave up one of the gang who ended his days in prison Tony decides to deal with the situation himself rejecting Christopher’s offer to earn his spurs. Meadow queries why her father keeps using street phones rather than the one his motel room. Tony’s interest is spotted by the former colleague who disappeared after entering a witness protection programme. The man has a travel agency business as a from for drug trafficking. The man has the opportunity to shoot Tony as he returns to the motel with his daughter but hesitates and then arrange for an addict to kill Tony in exchange for continuing supplies. However Tony has decided to take matters into his own hands while his daughter is at an interview and strangles the man. Daughter notes some injuries to her father but he passes it off. The brief moment of honesty has passed. While waiting for his daughter at one interview Tony notices a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne, an alumni, that no man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true.
Meanwhile back home the Parish priest calls to see how Carmella is and joins her for some baked ziti, wine and watching the film, The Remains of the Day. When Tony’s psychiatrist phones to rearrange an appointment, Carmela who encouraged her husband to continue with his treatment realises that the therapist is a woman and not a man as previously thought. This precipitates her to unburden her feelings about the marriage, her soul and the future of her children to the priest and there is nearly romantic exchange. The Priest becomes sick from the food and wine and stays the night on the sofa. On his return Carmela discloses that the priest stayed the night and that they were on their own because their son was on a sleep over with a friend. Tony is puzzled and annoyed at the situation while Carmela retaliates with the accusation that his therapist is female. In fact Tony has a mistress who has begun to press Tony to become is official woman after learning that a friend in a similar position is to marry her lover.
The programme is successful in communicating that behind the normality and social interactions of the family, Tony is a ruthless killer as well as the family’s middle class home and lifestyle being dependent on the earnings of crime.
Domestic issues is also the subject of the Boardwalk Empire. Nicky spends time with his main mistress Margaret and her two children. At he dinner table she tells Nucky that in view of their adult intimacy he should also feel able to confide in her about anything, especially y that troubles him and he talks about his father and the way he was treated as a child. His father lives alone in squalid house and after an accident is discovered by his police chief son and taken to hospital. Nucky rather like Tony in relation to his mother insists that the man cannot live on his own and should enter a retirement community, but the brother who decides to take him in.
Nucky calls in a friend who he admires whose wife care day and night for sickly baby, contrasting their care with that of his childhood. He tells the man he will give his father’s house to him after it has been cleared and redecorated. The man is overjoyed. When told that the home is ready he offers to take Margaret and her children to see it, and when she explains why she cannot do so, he take her boy with him only to find that his brother has taken his father to see the property. The father insults Nucky who realises that the redecoration cannot remove his bad memories of the place. He takes a can of petrol from the car and sets the property ablaze. His friend who has been invited for the inspection is horrified. Nucky gives him a large wad of notes to buy something better.
In Chicago Jimmy is having trouble with his leg from the war wound and goes to veterans hospital for help. He is asked to participate in a programme of psychological testing but quickly realises it is a government device to find ways to help better prepare men for soldering. He meets a man who has been disfigured and together they decide not to participate. Jimmy takes him back to brothel which has become his home and arranges for the one of the girls to entertain his new friend.
Meanwhile Al Capone has found out where the man who disfigured Jimmy’s girlfriend eats his food. Jimmy goes to the restaurant and engages the man in conversation telling him of a German soldier he left dying on barbed wire for days. When he leaves the man is shot in the head by his new found friend who has taken a room across from the restaurant. When a young thief is caught he asks to see someone from Atlantic City and the FBI prohibition enforcer calls to learn that the boy acted as a decoy in the murders carried out by Jimmy and AL. He names Jimmy but only know the Christian name of AL.
Before leaving Atlantic City Jimmy has accused his wife of having an affair with a local photographer. In this episode we learn hat she is having affair, with wife of the photographer.
Chalky White who Nucky gave the funeral home with its fake whisky enterprise is approached by someone offering a new deal which will cut of the middle man. He rejects this thinking it is a test of loyalty by Nucky. The emissary of Lucky Luciano is a young Meyer Lansky who went on to become a major accountant for the Mafia helping to establish the National Crime Syndicate. The New York Mafia involving Luck Luciano and Arnold Rothestein agree to set up a new bootlegging business that Chalky White declined with the D‘Alessio brothers and they devise a plan to take money from Nucky’s casino and use half the $150000 to set up the new business with the other half going to Rothestein.
These two fictional series based on the reality of American crime families throughout the past century will seem to have little to do with the events in North Africa my references in the yesterday’s writing to encountering important faces from my experience of 50 years ago appearing on Al Jazeera TV in connection to the uprisings. The first was Gene Sharp a man committed to non violent action but with an intellectual understanding of the way government’s behave and the potential power of people using passive resistance and direct action.
I also mentioned the appearance of Ralph Schoenman a mysterious figure who became private secretary to Bertrand Lord Russell and who was his effective organiser of the activities of the Committee 100 which successfully developed mass civil protest in the early 1960’s replacing the Gandhian Gene Sharp influenced Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War. Ralph, an American, is only four years older than me and therefore his rise to power and influence over Lord Russell is extraordinary. I was not invited to join the Committee 100 when it was formed while I was still serving the six months in prison as a civil offender for refusing to enter the two year requirement by the government not to engage in further direct action activities. When a number of those who had initially expressed interest found out they would be required to engage in action which was likely to lead to imprisonment, they dropped out so that the Committee became short of members to plan and take responsibility for its first major action, the proposed sit down in Parliament Square. Some 4000 people were stopped in a side street where we sat down and were left for several hours before the leadership decided to go home.
Prior to the event I had been working at a left wing coffee bar in the basement of a Soho building which had housed the Left Wing book club and which then was responsible for the New Left Books which included Out of Apathy. For years I also believed that Parliamentary Socialism, the book by the father of the Miliband Brothers, Ralph, then at the London School of Economics was also a New Left Book, and while its content could be described as such, it was published separately by George and Unwin. One evening while clearing tables I noted Ralph Schoenman, who did not know me, soliciting pledges to participate in the demonstration arguing that no one needed to participate but he required the signatures in order for the project to continue according to the decisions of the organising executive of which I was member.
This focused my interest on him because it confirmed suspicions aroused at the meetings I had attended that the Committee was no more than a collection of anarchists, Marxists and idealists most of whom were not committed to the basics of non violent action and passive resistance. It was evident that Ralph took the view that the end justified whatever the means. For example he and others were behind the decision to use the Aldermaston March in 1961 and the commencement of the Direct Action March to Holy Loch where I was its chief Marshall and Scottish field organiser to arrange a secret demonstration at the USA Embassy. A demonstration which was not officially notified to the authorities in advance.
This was not a black and white situation. I had sympathy with Ralph at his frustration at the lack of any coherent programme of action. The meeting of the 100 demonstrated the impossibility of organising anything with such a diverse group of viewpoints and even the reduction of numbers to an executive committee further confirmed the difficulties of reaching agreement about anything so understandable final decisions were taken by a small circle which I believe included Michael Randle who had moved from the Direct Action Committee. My main contact was with Trevor Hatton.
However as events in Scotland were to reveal while numbers who travelled from London for the sea and land demonstrations at Holy Loch attracted International media attention many of those participating had no preparation let alone training in non violent action or had been made aware of the potential immediate and long term consequences. I left the Committee 100 and my position working for the Direct Action Committee because I thought the behaviour of Ralph and also Pat Arrowsmith in particular was irresponsible, putting the integrity of the projects and movement at risk. I wrote to Lord Russell about my concerns and received a letter from his wife saying her husband had confidence in Ralph and that my letter had upset her husband.
I must confess that from time to time I suspected that the ease at which Schoenman had moved to the UK from University and became Russell’s organiser and action man was odd and suggested some form of placement. Bernard Levin wrote at the time that he felt Schoenman as responsible for Russell becoming anti American and sympathetic towards Communist leaning groups. In 1963 Schoenman gained entry to China on behalf of Russell to attempt a solution to the conflict which had arisen with India. The consequence was a travel restriction imposed by the USA government that his passport was only valid for a return to the USA. He was subsequently involved in the Russell Tribunal which attempted to involved major USA news networks in visits to North Vietnam and Cambodia 1966-1967. He was deported from Bolivia to the USA in 1967 and from the UK back to the USA in 1968, The following year Russell repudiated his relationship and had him removed from the Board of Peace Foundation
In 1975 Ronald W Clark published his life of Bertrand Russell, and I acquired a signed copy and was delighted to find that the work included the then Private Memorandum concerning Schoenman which Russell. The memorandum is ten pages in length, an indication of the impact which Ralph had on Russell over the nine years of their association. Russell describes him as being impetuous aggressive and entirely undisciplined which might well make him a dangerous young man. Schoenman made contact with Russell by going to see him at his home in Wales. He also admits that it was sometime before he appreciated the extent to which Schoenman was incapable of imparting reliable information. His reports of people’s reactions and observations were very often excessively misleadingly incorrect. In fairness he also listed his positive qualities. However while the memo includes letters advising him of concerns about Ralph during the latter part of their association there is no mention of mine to him, written then by someone who was a Member of the Committee and had been to prison for six months. What the Memorandum reveals was Russell considerable responsibility for having given Ralph the funding and the power to globe trot the world on Russell’s behalf. And Ralph ? According to Wikipedia he formed his own Peace Foundation as the American Foundation. He became involved in Iran and was expelled by the Provisional Revolutionary Government in March 1979. He produced the Hidden History of Zionism in 1988 and Iraq and Kuwait: A History Suppressed. Since the millennium he has been working to expose the way the capitalist system “ is addicted to permanent war.” This was his theme when interviewed on Al Jazeera. The world needs to have people like Gene Sharp and Ralph doing their thing as long as neither are put in the position to control the lives of everyone else. Alas I have become wedded to the real politic.
The intention had been to immediately write of two TV programmes and Ralph Schoenman but first there was England playing in Bangladesh and batting first. I was avoiding the news of the day because I anticipated that the West had decided to leave the plight of free Libyans to the wrath of the Gaddafi family. The West, the UK, France and to a lesser extent the USA had been carried away with the prospect of getting rid of the Gaddafi family, supporting the replacement regime and gaining additional influence on a country with oil reserves greater than Saudi Arabia.
Only in history perhaps 50 years hence will the papers reveal whether the threat of intervention was made in good faith and expectation or a panic measure in the hope that the combined action taken by the United Nations short of a no fly zone and threats by individual countries would emboldened the people in general, and more importantly the military, the airforce and others in aspects of the government to abandon the dictatorship, forcing the family to yield and attempt to negotiate a settlement for themselves.
What happened is that the Gaddafi family played a successful waiting game, avoiding further action its own people, inviting the journalists in and then having removed the cause for early intervention set about planning to re-establish control by using force against the limited force of the opposition. The opposition repeatedly called for a no fly zone and the West failed to deliver. Now we faced the prospect of the opposition being defeated and then systematically eliminated and the Dictatorship being re-established. What then? Just watch individual countries re-establish links China, Russia, and others in Africa and South America. Just watch revenge being planned on the UK and France, less so the USA. Never make threats without being prepared to see the situation through.
However it was not the situation in Libya which engaged my attention and changed my mood and how I spent the day, but the news of the biggest earthquake in Japan for perhaps a thousand years and sixth most powerful since records commenced over 100 years ago, followed by a Tsunami the picture of which flood the international news channels because of its severity and impact on an urban population. The picture masks the horror and hopelessness which must have overwhelmed those individuals who rushed to their families or their workplaces only to be confronted by the power of water travelling 500 miles per hour full of debris of buildings and vehicles bobbing about like toys in a bathtub.
So where was I when I had commenced the day, I had watched back to back two series about the USA Mafia. The Sopranos remains the series of substances because it reflects contemporary society without romanticism. This episode was best of the first series todate because it concentrated on the relationship between Tony and Carmela and their daughter, Meadow. Tony takes Meadow on three consecutive visits to colleges where she has gained admission interviews. Carmela is at home with a bout of flu.
On the second journey Meadow asks her father if he is in the Mafia as her friends at school claim he is. Tony’s instinctive reaction to deny emphasising that he is in the Waste Disposal business. Meadow persists and eventually Tony admits that he also has income from illegal gambling, not mentioning the prostitution, security shakedowns, contract corruption and various other money making ventures. However his admission is enough to satisfy his daughter until he suddenly takes off after a vehicle whose driver he sees at a service station. He contacts Christopher to make enquiries about the licence plate from friendly cops. Christopher protests because it is pouring with rain and he is required to make visits to an open street phone as the gang never use house phones because of the expectation that they will be monitored by the authorities.
When it is established that the man is a former colleague who gave up one of the gang who ended his days in prison Tony decides to deal with the situation himself rejecting Christopher’s offer to earn his spurs. Meadow queries why her father keeps using street phones rather than the one his motel room. Tony’s interest is spotted by the former colleague who disappeared after entering a witness protection programme. The man has a travel agency business as a from for drug trafficking. The man has the opportunity to shoot Tony as he returns to the motel with his daughter but hesitates and then arrange for an addict to kill Tony in exchange for continuing supplies. However Tony has decided to take matters into his own hands while his daughter is at an interview and strangles the man. Daughter notes some injuries to her father but he passes it off. The brief moment of honesty has passed. While waiting for his daughter at one interview Tony notices a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne, an alumni, that no man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true.
Meanwhile back home the Parish priest calls to see how Carmella is and joins her for some baked ziti, wine and watching the film, The Remains of the Day. When Tony’s psychiatrist phones to rearrange an appointment, Carmela who encouraged her husband to continue with his treatment realises that the therapist is a woman and not a man as previously thought. This precipitates her to unburden her feelings about the marriage, her soul and the future of her children to the priest and there is nearly romantic exchange. The Priest becomes sick from the food and wine and stays the night on the sofa. On his return Carmela discloses that the priest stayed the night and that they were on their own because their son was on a sleep over with a friend. Tony is puzzled and annoyed at the situation while Carmela retaliates with the accusation that his therapist is female. In fact Tony has a mistress who has begun to press Tony to become is official woman after learning that a friend in a similar position is to marry her lover.
The programme is successful in communicating that behind the normality and social interactions of the family, Tony is a ruthless killer as well as the family’s middle class home and lifestyle being dependent on the earnings of crime.
Domestic issues is also the subject of the Boardwalk Empire. Nicky spends time with his main mistress Margaret and her two children. At he dinner table she tells Nucky that in view of their adult intimacy he should also feel able to confide in her about anything, especially y that troubles him and he talks about his father and the way he was treated as a child. His father lives alone in squalid house and after an accident is discovered by his police chief son and taken to hospital. Nucky rather like Tony in relation to his mother insists that the man cannot live on his own and should enter a retirement community, but the brother who decides to take him in.
Nucky calls in a friend who he admires whose wife care day and night for sickly baby, contrasting their care with that of his childhood. He tells the man he will give his father’s house to him after it has been cleared and redecorated. The man is overjoyed. When told that the home is ready he offers to take Margaret and her children to see it, and when she explains why she cannot do so, he take her boy with him only to find that his brother has taken his father to see the property. The father insults Nucky who realises that the redecoration cannot remove his bad memories of the place. He takes a can of petrol from the car and sets the property ablaze. His friend who has been invited for the inspection is horrified. Nucky gives him a large wad of notes to buy something better.
In Chicago Jimmy is having trouble with his leg from the war wound and goes to veterans hospital for help. He is asked to participate in a programme of psychological testing but quickly realises it is a government device to find ways to help better prepare men for soldering. He meets a man who has been disfigured and together they decide not to participate. Jimmy takes him back to brothel which has become his home and arranges for the one of the girls to entertain his new friend.
Meanwhile Al Capone has found out where the man who disfigured Jimmy’s girlfriend eats his food. Jimmy goes to the restaurant and engages the man in conversation telling him of a German soldier he left dying on barbed wire for days. When he leaves the man is shot in the head by his new found friend who has taken a room across from the restaurant. When a young thief is caught he asks to see someone from Atlantic City and the FBI prohibition enforcer calls to learn that the boy acted as a decoy in the murders carried out by Jimmy and AL. He names Jimmy but only know the Christian name of AL.
Before leaving Atlantic City Jimmy has accused his wife of having an affair with a local photographer. In this episode we learn hat she is having affair, with wife of the photographer.
Chalky White who Nucky gave the funeral home with its fake whisky enterprise is approached by someone offering a new deal which will cut of the middle man. He rejects this thinking it is a test of loyalty by Nucky. The emissary of Lucky Luciano is a young Meyer Lansky who went on to become a major accountant for the Mafia helping to establish the National Crime Syndicate. The New York Mafia involving Luck Luciano and Arnold Rothestein agree to set up a new bootlegging business that Chalky White declined with the D‘Alessio brothers and they devise a plan to take money from Nucky’s casino and use half the $150000 to set up the new business with the other half going to Rothestein.
These two fictional series based on the reality of American crime families throughout the past century will seem to have little to do with the events in North Africa my references in the yesterday’s writing to encountering important faces from my experience of 50 years ago appearing on Al Jazeera TV in connection to the uprisings. The first was Gene Sharp a man committed to non violent action but with an intellectual understanding of the way government’s behave and the potential power of people using passive resistance and direct action.
I also mentioned the appearance of Ralph Schoenman a mysterious figure who became private secretary to Bertrand Lord Russell and who was his effective organiser of the activities of the Committee 100 which successfully developed mass civil protest in the early 1960’s replacing the Gandhian Gene Sharp influenced Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War. Ralph, an American, is only four years older than me and therefore his rise to power and influence over Lord Russell is extraordinary. I was not invited to join the Committee 100 when it was formed while I was still serving the six months in prison as a civil offender for refusing to enter the two year requirement by the government not to engage in further direct action activities. When a number of those who had initially expressed interest found out they would be required to engage in action which was likely to lead to imprisonment, they dropped out so that the Committee became short of members to plan and take responsibility for its first major action, the proposed sit down in Parliament Square. Some 4000 people were stopped in a side street where we sat down and were left for several hours before the leadership decided to go home.
Prior to the event I had been working at a left wing coffee bar in the basement of a Soho building which had housed the Left Wing book club and which then was responsible for the New Left Books which included Out of Apathy. For years I also believed that Parliamentary Socialism, the book by the father of the Miliband Brothers, Ralph, then at the London School of Economics was also a New Left Book, and while its content could be described as such, it was published separately by George and Unwin. One evening while clearing tables I noted Ralph Schoenman, who did not know me, soliciting pledges to participate in the demonstration arguing that no one needed to participate but he required the signatures in order for the project to continue according to the decisions of the organising executive of which I was member.
This focused my interest on him because it confirmed suspicions aroused at the meetings I had attended that the Committee was no more than a collection of anarchists, Marxists and idealists most of whom were not committed to the basics of non violent action and passive resistance. It was evident that Ralph took the view that the end justified whatever the means. For example he and others were behind the decision to use the Aldermaston March in 1961 and the commencement of the Direct Action March to Holy Loch where I was its chief Marshall and Scottish field organiser to arrange a secret demonstration at the USA Embassy. A demonstration which was not officially notified to the authorities in advance.
This was not a black and white situation. I had sympathy with Ralph at his frustration at the lack of any coherent programme of action. The meeting of the 100 demonstrated the impossibility of organising anything with such a diverse group of viewpoints and even the reduction of numbers to an executive committee further confirmed the difficulties of reaching agreement about anything so understandable final decisions were taken by a small circle which I believe included Michael Randle who had moved from the Direct Action Committee. My main contact was with Trevor Hatton.
However as events in Scotland were to reveal while numbers who travelled from London for the sea and land demonstrations at Holy Loch attracted International media attention many of those participating had no preparation let alone training in non violent action or had been made aware of the potential immediate and long term consequences. I left the Committee 100 and my position working for the Direct Action Committee because I thought the behaviour of Ralph and also Pat Arrowsmith in particular was irresponsible, putting the integrity of the projects and movement at risk. I wrote to Lord Russell about my concerns and received a letter from his wife saying her husband had confidence in Ralph and that my letter had upset her husband.
I must confess that from time to time I suspected that the ease at which Schoenman had moved to the UK from University and became Russell’s organiser and action man was odd and suggested some form of placement. Bernard Levin wrote at the time that he felt Schoenman as responsible for Russell becoming anti American and sympathetic towards Communist leaning groups. In 1963 Schoenman gained entry to China on behalf of Russell to attempt a solution to the conflict which had arisen with India. The consequence was a travel restriction imposed by the USA government that his passport was only valid for a return to the USA. He was subsequently involved in the Russell Tribunal which attempted to involved major USA news networks in visits to North Vietnam and Cambodia 1966-1967. He was deported from Bolivia to the USA in 1967 and from the UK back to the USA in 1968, The following year Russell repudiated his relationship and had him removed from the Board of Peace Foundation
In 1975 Ronald W Clark published his life of Bertrand Russell, and I acquired a signed copy and was delighted to find that the work included the then Private Memorandum concerning Schoenman which Russell. The memorandum is ten pages in length, an indication of the impact which Ralph had on Russell over the nine years of their association. Russell describes him as being impetuous aggressive and entirely undisciplined which might well make him a dangerous young man. Schoenman made contact with Russell by going to see him at his home in Wales. He also admits that it was sometime before he appreciated the extent to which Schoenman was incapable of imparting reliable information. His reports of people’s reactions and observations were very often excessively misleadingly incorrect. In fairness he also listed his positive qualities. However while the memo includes letters advising him of concerns about Ralph during the latter part of their association there is no mention of mine to him, written then by someone who was a Member of the Committee and had been to prison for six months. What the Memorandum reveals was Russell considerable responsibility for having given Ralph the funding and the power to globe trot the world on Russell’s behalf. And Ralph ? According to Wikipedia he formed his own Peace Foundation as the American Foundation. He became involved in Iran and was expelled by the Provisional Revolutionary Government in March 1979. He produced the Hidden History of Zionism in 1988 and Iraq and Kuwait: A History Suppressed. Since the millennium he has been working to expose the way the capitalist system “ is addicted to permanent war.” This was his theme when interviewed on Al Jazeera. The world needs to have people like Gene Sharp and Ralph doing their thing as long as neither are put in the position to control the lives of everyone else. Alas I have become wedded to the real politic.
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