[Debating the abolition of slavery in 1843. Klaus Barbies friends
in the CIA in 1983. Birth of a hero in 1913. If I Had a Hammer in
1962. U.S. meddling in Iran in 1953. The War on Poverty starts in
1964. U.S. meddling in Vietnam in 1963.]
[[link removed]]

THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, AUGUST 15 – 21  
[[link removed]]


 

xxxxxx

[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Debating the abolition of slavery in 1843. Klaus Barbie's friends
in the CIA in 1983. Birth of a hero in 1913. If I Had a Hammer in
1962. U.S. meddling in Iran in 1953. The War on Poverty starts in
1964. U.S. meddling in Vietnam in 1963. _

Abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet,

 

_AUGUST 15, 1843 (180 YEARS AGO). _In Buffalo, N.Y., some 70 delegates
from 12 states (there were 26 states at the time, 12 of which were
slave states) convene for the 5-day National Convention of Colored
Citizens. The delegates include Black abolitionist luminaries
Frederick Douglass, Samuel H. David, William Wells Brown, Charles B.
Ray, Charles L. Remond, Henry Highland Garnet and others. The meeting
tries to unite around a policy for the elimination of slavery
throughout the United States. Almost exactly half of those attending
are advocates of helping to organize an armed rebellion in the slave
states, to be forcefully assisted by the armed forces of the 14 states
that had already abolished slavery (or had begun to do so by mandating
slavery's gradual abolition). They might have been called the
If-Not-Now-When? faction. The other half of the delegates believe that
such a slave rebellion, even with the strongest possible intervention
by the non-slave states, would be suicidal and unsuccessful. Of that
the This-Is-Not-the-Moment faction felt certain, but they did not
unite around a strategic vision to compel the slave states to abolish
slavery. One of the Convention's highlights is a speech by Henry
Highland Garnet, pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in
Washington, D.C., including this: "Bretheren, arise, arise! Strike for
your lives and liberties. Now is the day and the hour. Let every slave
throughout the land do this, and the days of slavery are numbered. You
cannot be more oppressed than you have been -- your cannot suffer
greater cruelties than you have already. Rather die freemen than live
to be slaves. Remember that you are FOUR MILLIONS!" Garnet's call for
rebellion failed by one vote of being adopted as the sentiments of the
convention.
[link removed]…
[[link removed]] 

_AUGUST 16, 1983 (40 YEARS AGO)._ In early August 1983, almost
everyone in the world who paid the slightest attention to the news was
familiar with the name Klaus Barbie. He was infamous as a high Gestapo
official known as "the Butcher of Lyon," who had escaped arrest after
World War II and lived comfortably under an assumed name for more than
30 years. Most people who knew anything about him knew that in 1981
Barbie had been arrested and extradited to France, where he was
awaiting trial for crimes against humanity. But on August 16, 1983,
the world learned something completely new and shocking about him. On
that day the U.S. Department of Justice released a 241-page report
saying that immediately after World War II, Barbie had been hired by
the United States government to work for it as a spy. While Barbie was
on the U.S. payroll, the U.S. concealed him from French authorities
who were searching for him. Then the U.S. helped to smuggle Barbie to
Bolivia, where they set him up with a phony identity. But despite the
U.S.-orchestrated coverup, Barbie had been arrested and was about to
stand trial for his role in the Holocaust. The revelation that the
U.S. had hired Barbie, had concealed him from French police, and had
smuggled him out of Europe after giving him a new identity, cast a
very unflattering light on the United States' professed antagonism to
facism and to practitioners of genocide. In 1983 the U.S. finally came
clean because everything the U.S. had done to help Barbie escape
justice was about to become public information at Barbie's upcoming
trial. Of course, the belated U.S. confession implicated many U.S.
officials in a 35-year-long conspiracy to aid and abet a fugitive from
justice, but no charges were ever brought against any of those who had
helped Barbie evade prosecution for so long.
 [link removed]

On _AUGUST 17, 1913 (110 YEARS AGO),_ Mark Felt was born in Twin
Falls, Idaho. Felt joined the FBI in 1942 and rose to the position of
second-in-command after 32 years. During all that time, Felt had never
rocked the FBI boat, but then the Watergate burglars were caught in
the act. Soon after the failed burglary, the Nixon White House began
putting heavy pressure on the FBI to play dumb. Loyal FBI employee
that he was, Felt didn't want to play dumb, neither did he want to
publically blow the whistle. So he became Deep Throat, secretly giving
the Washington Post enough information to prevent the White House from
successfully burying the truth about the burglary and covering up one
of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history.  No one will ever
know for certain whether Nixon would have been forced to resign had it
not been for the truthful leaks from Mark Felt, but it seems very
likely that his disclosures were essential to preventing the success
of another Nixon dirty trick. I, for one, believe he acted heroically,
despite his feet of clay, when the republic was in great peril.
[link removed]-…
[[link removed]]

_AUGUST 18, 1962._ Peter, Paul & Mary release their first hit "If I
Had a Hammer," which later wins 2 Grammys: Best Folk Recording and
Best Performance by a Vocal Group
[link removed]

_AUGUST 19, 1953 (70 YEARS AGO). _The Iranian government led by Prime
Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh is overthrown by a coup that was secretly
organized and bankrolled by the U.S. and the U.K. Mossaddegh was
immensely popular, which is why he had been appointed prime minister
by the Shah of Iran, and he was only a radical to the extent that he
knew a sovereign nation had the right to control its natural
resources. Iran was one of the world's major crude oil producers.
Mosaddegh had done what every patriotic Iranian wanted him to do,
nationalize Iran's oil producing companies, most of which were owned
by capitalists in the U.K. In the eyes of the Eisenhower
administration, Mosaddegh's non-communist nationalism was
unacceptable, so the CIA and MI6 collaborated on removing him from
power and cancelling the oil nationalization. Under the thumb of the
U.S. and the U.K., Iran had a series of authoritarian, anti-democratic
governments until the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which is why the
revolutionaries considered the U.S. to be the Great Satan when they
came to power.
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]

_AUGUST 20, 1964._  President Lyndon Johnson signs the Economic
Opportunity Act of 1964, the keystone legislation in the War on
Poverty. Despite decades of propaganda to the contrary, the War on
Poverty was a great success until Republicans in Congress and the
White House deemed it, falsely, to have been a failure and called it
off. In fact, the War on Poverty was largely responsible for reducing
the number of impoverished people in the U.S. by 46 percent over ten
years, a completely unprecedented shift in the distribution of income
in the U.S. After the War on Poverty was called off in the early
1970s, the poverty rate began to climb, and then it stabilized at
around 15 percent. [link removed]

On _AUGUST 21, 1963 (60 YEARS AGO)_, South Vietnam is governed by a
pro-U.S. clique that is almost totally alienated from South Vietnam's
population.  All high government officials are Catholic and educated
in the U.S. or Europe when 80 percent of the population is Buddhist
and has never been outside Vietnam. The government is wholly dependent
on the millions of dollars it receives from the U.S. Treasury, and on
more than fourteen thousand U.S. military personnel tasked with
training and equipping and paying South Vietnam's army and police. The
tension between the government and the populace comes to a head on
August 21, when hundreds of South Vietnamese soldiers and police use
their U.S.-supplied equipment to stage coordinated night-time raids on
Buddhist pagodas throughout the country, beating and arresting
thousands and killing hundreds (no reliable tally of the deadly
violence exists). The officials loot and heavily vandalize the
temples, destroying many them. The coordinated attacks on the temples
are conceived and directed by the South Vietnamese president and his
brother who is head of the police and the special forces. To a very
great extent the U.S. officials in South Vietnam are surprised by the
events of August 21, even though the U.S. has made the attacks
possible by having armed and trained the attackers. In response to the
attacks, the State Department quickly decides that the South
Vietnamese government is too corrupt and antagonistic to the majority
of the population. As a result, the State Department authorizes the
U.S.Embassy and the CIA in Saigon to arrange for the South Vietnamese
president and his brother to be removed from power and replaced with
South Vietnamese who are not so far removed from the population. When
the coup was carried out by the South Vietnamese Army on November 2,
the coup-makers execute both the president and his brother.
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]