An Open Letter from mainly Leftist) Intellectuals on US/Russian Relations

That;s what I think too. I suppose you've seen the link I posted about anti-government demonstrations in Vietnam?

 

No I didnt see it

 

Look here.

I stupidly called in "Good News" so of course no one looked at it.

I should have called it "Rape, Murder, Shocking videos, viewer discretion advised."

 

I know that the FBI infiltrated the SWP leadership.
Do you have source documenting that the CIA or FBI took over the CPUSA?

 

1. NK launches another missile.
2. Trump orders conventional bombing of NK.
3. NK starts shelling Seoul.
4. Bombing of NK continues.
5 Shelling of Seoul continues until Seoul is flattened, or until the World begs Trump to nuke NK.
6. NK, or what is left of it surrenders and is occupied by China, Russia, The US, and SK.
7. Trump Towers emerge from the ashes.

 

Those who criticize without offering suggestions for solution are simply complainers and whiners.

 

Thanks for the corrections.

 

Wrong. That's capitalist propaganda. Read Doug's post - http://www.politicalforum.com/index...-us-russian-relations.537484/#post-1069355062

 

Sorry. It was the FBI in the case of CPUSA too. Read Doug's post - http://www.politicalforum.com/index...-us-russian-relations.537484/#post-1069355062

 

So much for intellectuals. What a shallow, broad, assortment of random items to put in a letter about the current US, Russian relationship... and just look at all of those names with big titles.

Just mouth off a bunch of problems, no answers and sign it. Idiot letter. And idiots signed it.

I'd say a quarter of our forum could have written a better letter.

 

I didn't expect this from any American publication, and was pleasantly surprised. It's time for a little sanity, and let the paranoids drown themselves with their own delusions.

 

Oh like you for instance?

Cohen is the foremost authority on Russia, and Chomsky is considered one of the most brilliant men in the US. Now what were you saying?

 

Sometimes trump needs to be informed that the sky is blue.

The point of the letter is to appeal to our elected officials to begin giving the slightest **** about the potential for war with Russia and start taking steps to ameleorate the chances of us completely annihilating each other.

I don’t know why you guys get all hung up over the fact that they didn’t lay out a plan to do so. It’s the job of our leaders to come up with a plan to avoid the certain doom that is nuclear war. It’s also their job to be aware of the looming threat but they all seem to not care.

 

I agree that there are lots of people who interpret everything trump says and does in the worst possible light. Comes with the territory of being President, as you pointed out. Clinton, Bush, Obama sure didn't get "free rides" from any number of sources.

Its not a right or left thing when it comes to the FBI and CIA and the rule of law. Its an american thing. I find it amusing you view the entire justice system from partisan eyes as if the system should be a tool of either party.

American foreign policy CREATED the AMERICAN WORLD ORDER. It didn't become the most powerful, richest nation in human history by just being a nice guy with a fat wallet. So what do you suggest know? Try and get everyone singing kumbyah?

Confronting PUtin's nefarious and imperialistic efforts is the ROLE of the US President. Not kissing dictator arse.
And trump just did it in front of the world, in the most cowardly and banal appeasement of a proven enemy of the United States.

Haven't had the debate? The american people only have a say in foreign policy once every four years. Trump doesn't debate and he doesn't take advice and he doesn't study the situation or evaluate options. He flies by the seat of his pants and his "gut". Lord knows he can't get his facts straight.

America is GREAT. It got GREAT by creating the current WORLD ORDER. It stays great by the GREATNESS of its people and leadership. Not looking so good these days.

 

The division of labor between the FBI and the CIA was that the FBI did domestic, and the CIA foreign.

The FBI had people in both the CPUSA and in the SWP. But they didn't control the policies of these groups. So far as I know, since neither of these groups were violent, or could be provoked to violence, the infiltrators just took notes.

I had a fair amount of personal experience with infiltrators in the radical leftist groups I was a member of. Some of them were provocateurs -- trying to get us to do something violent -- others just sat there. In hindsight, it was pretty obvious who the infiltrators were -- they weren't very political. In two cases (in New Orleans and Los Angeles) they were police academy trainees. One -- in Chicago -- was clinically insane. He actually had suffered brain damage and had a metal plate in his skull. I won't give his real name, but behind his back (before he was revealed as an agent) we called him "Steve Starkraving". I don't think any of my people were FBI -- they were local, and in the case of our New Orleans group, state police.

I'm sure that both leftwing and rightwing groups, if they sound scary, are infiltrated. Not much you can do about it -- just stay legal. If some guy starts doing the macho bit -- "when are we going to turn words into action? I know where we can get some dynamite..." -- you can be pretty sure he's a cop, or, more likely, a petty criminal on the police payroll. The Black Panthers were suckers for such people.

But they don't really influence policy. In serious groups like the CP and SWP, you had to know a lot in order to have any influence. You had to be able to quote Marx and Lenin, and Trotsky or Stalin depending on the group, or Mao. Most cops and informers couldn't do that.

The actual policy of the CP, by the way, was pretty much just doing what the liberals of the day paid lip service to: fighting for Black rights, organizing unions, demonstrating for various welfare state policies. Similarly, the SWP in its heyday (late 60s, early 70s) simply provided the organizational nous for the anti-war movement: they advocated building a broad, single-issue movement around the demand that the US get out of Vietnam. They were hated by all the more radical groups who wanted to tie the war to capitalism.

And ... how tedious it must all have been for any intelligent FBI plant. Endless meetings, endless discussion. Just think -- you join the FBI in order to take down mobsters ... and you end up spending 20 hours a week discussing how to increase sales of the Party newspaper, or preparing a talk on Marx's position on the 1848 revolutions in Europe. Poor guys!

 

Americans against russians? It isn't about that at all. That is what some want it to be over. But you stand on a huge mound of hypocrisy, and that negates your argument.

When and if russia hacks our election, changes votes, then and only then do you have some ground to stand on with no hypocrisy involved.

But to hold them up as war mongers, as interfering in our election when we are doing the same doesn't hold water and your cup has no bottom in it. So that is why you have wet pants and cannot discern as to why that is. The problem lies with your mind and minds like yours.

 

Oh please. More fallacious bullshit.

Fascinating that after all that republican flag waving, it seems the right has lost their appetite for defending their own friggin nation from a military attack on its most sacred institutions by a foreign adversary. Nah, just bend over and take it, while you construct bullshit irrelevant fallacies.

Well at least you are true to form. I recall your stances on Syria and Obama's red line when you were jumping up and down about doing something. Funny how warmongering is a partisan thing with you. I also noticed there weren't many righties rushing to sign up to fight either.

Substance over bullshit. You should try it sometime.

 

But the Democratic Party wants thermonuclear war with Russia. Their 2016 candidate ran on promising it.

 

So what was the purpose of this letter? Some people seem to have missed it. Here...

It must have flew right over the heads of the butt hurt hillary people and neocons in both parties. This russian deal has been used for nothing more than politics and these serious lefties see and understand that just as I do, another serious lefty. The ones that do not are a clear and present danger, and as irresponsible as any partisan can ever be.

 

What military attack by Russia? You mean the one in Donbas that sent General Breedlove to the loony bin for seeing non existent tanks and men, or the one in Crimea where the Russians were there under a treaty? Stop making up stuff!

Why? Doesn't Russia have one, and China, and Pakistan, and India, and France, and Britain, and Israel, and who knows who else? If he feels it will keep him from suffering the same fate as Ghadaffi, then doesn't he have a right to defend himself and his country?

 

And the id**** on the forum as well.

 

Not sure what you mean by the first sentence above.
As for Putin, and whether he's our enemy, etc. This is just the sort of debate we ought to have, although in another thread.

However, let me put one question to you ... you don't need to answer right away.

Richard Nixon was deeply hated by the Left and liberals of his time. Far more competent and intelligent than Trump, he was the Evil One of his day. If anyone doesn't know much about Nixon, read about the woman he defeated for his California senate seat in 1950, Helen Gahagan Douglas. I'm not a liberal, but I think she was a very admirable lady, and that Nixon was pond scum. BUT .... he was a smart guy.

After it became clear that we had been defeated in Vietnam, he sat down and took a hard look at the international scene. And then turned American foreign policy upside down, by completely reversing our attitude to Red China. If you didn't live through the fifties and sixties, you cannot imagine how utterly and totally Communist China under Mao Tse Tung was perceived in the US -- it would make Russia under Putin today look like a naughty boy caught stealing apples from the orchard. Nixon saw through all this, and changed our policy towards them completely.

Now ... was he right or wrong? It seems to me that if you had been around at the time, you would have denounced him for kissing the ass of a bloody dictator, etc etc.

I say we have to look at Putin as Nixon looked at Mao.

 

Oh yes we were the nice guy with the fat wallet. We became wealthy by entering a war we didn't need to enter, fought a tyranny that wanted to control the world, and later rebuilt the nations with our Marshall Plan. John Kennedy even started the Peace Corp to help nations develop themselves - but all that has changed.

Now we manipulate and kill instead of helping others, which means we are now the tyranny and must be stopped. Hopefully it will be through common sense, and not by war.

Nefarious and imperialistic in which way? Oh that's right, it's what our media tells you.

Proven enemy for not bowing to our demands and doing what is best for the Russian people? Isn't that like saying if someone puts their family's welfare before that of their neighbors, it makes them their enemy?

 

We're living in extraordinary times. The world is changing fast, and is harder to comprehend even than the world Mr Schrödinger tried to make sense of.

With respect to foreign policy, the old Left (peacenik doves) and Right ( manly hawks) division is obsolete.

The signatories of this letter, I suspect, are worried that hatred of Donald Trump is making some people on the Left turn into reflexive Russophobes, and they want to throw up a marker against this. Of course they don't have a detailed 'Alternative Foreign Policy' worked out. They just don't want to see domestic American political squabbles push us into a nuclear catastrophe.

 

I was a young adult in the Nixon years. And that is irrelevant to the current situation entirely although I can understand trying to reach back for something that approximates a parallel.

I commended his efforts to open up relations with China, especially considering the contemporary circumstances. It was a brave and bold move.

Trump on the other hand is appeasing a proven adversary of the United States. I sat in stunned silence as he stood next to Putin and watched him throw his entire intelligence community under the bus. He engaged in partisan domestic politicking standing next to PUtin. He propagated more conspiracy theories about CLINTON! TWo years on and he can't stop fighting the election that got him the office. He's a flat out liar. He is a master of bullshit. The depth of his ignorance is staggering. His lack of morals and ethics are indicators of his pathetic character. He is derelict in his duty to protect the United States.

And lastly he accepted Putin's "i didn't do it" over his own people. Trump's America - appease enemies, attack allies.

What a puny human and even punier american leader.