God Bless.
Bump.
BUMP
Excellent post, Gerry. Thanks for the heads up.
Please bump others.
Clark also represented PLO leaders in a suit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the elderly vacationer who was shot and thrown overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise-ship by renegade Palestinian terrorists in 1986.
Another Clark client was Karl Linnas, an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard in Estonia (where he had overseen the murder of some 12,000 resistence fighters and Jews), who was being deported from the US to the USSR to face war crimes charges. Clark again lost the case, but again went to bat for his client in the public arena, questioning the need to prosecute Nazis "forty years after some god-awful crime they're alleged to have committed."
The Devil's Pact
In August 1990, two months after his return from the LaRouche conference in Copenhagen, with US troops mobilizing to Saudi Arabia, Clark accepted an invitation to lead the National Coalition to Stop US Intervention in the Middle East. This invitation had been extended by members of an orthodox Stalinist sect, the Workers World Party (WWP). Clark had finally found a new home. The Clark-WWP alliance has lasted to this day. A brief look at the doctrinaire sect's history: WWP is the brainchild of Sam Marcy, intellectual guru at the party's helm until his death in 1998. In 1956, Marcy led the faction in the Socialist Workers Party that supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary, attacking the popular uprising and general strike there as "counter-revolutionary." In 1959, the Marcy clique broke from the Trotskyist SWP to found the more Stalinist WWP. The new group wasted little time in cheering on the brutal Chinese repression of the indigenous culture in Tibet that year (which sent the Dalai Lama and 80,000 refugees fleeing into exile).
Vying with SWP and other parties for top dog position on the radical left, WWP always maintained a front group to suck in neophytes. During the Vietnam era this was Youth Against War & Fascism (YAWF). In the Reagan-Bush era it was People's Anti-War Mobilization (PAM)--which would be the operative group in the National Coalition in 1990.
With glasnost, WWP supported the Kremlin hard-liners who resisted Gorbachev's reforms and disarmament moves. Insisting that China remained a "workers state," WWP supported Deng Xiaoping in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, again attacking the protesting students and workers as "counter-revolutionaries." In 1991, WWP supported the KGB coup against Gorbachev.
Yet WWP also wooed the Democratic party, supporting Jesse Jackson's presidential bid in 1984. In New York, WWP made alliances with the left wing of the Democrats to establish a foothold in key trade unions.
WWP cadre Gavriella Gemma became a secretary in Clark's New York law office in 1977. In his New Republic piece, Judis suggests that Clark fell under her spell and was won over to the WWP. When David McReynolds of the War Resisters League met with Clark in 1990 to warn him that WWP was "using him," Clark refused to listen, constantly referring to what "Gavriella said."
With Clark as the figurehead and PAM/WWP at the helm, the National Coalition provoked a split in the movement against Operation Desert Storm through its refusal to condemn Saddam Hussein or Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The other established anti-war groups (War Resisters League, CISPES, SANE/Freeze, National Organization for Women, etc.) formed the rival National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East, which condemned both Bush and Saddam. Soft-peddling their pro-Saddam line, WWP's National Coalition won endorsements from celebrities like Spike Lee and Casey Kasem, sucking in numbers even after the split. The two groups held separate marches on Washington in January 1991, allowing the media to portray a divided movement.
In November 1990, Clark flew to Baghdad to meet with Saddam, who allowed him to return with a few hostages. In February, with the bombs falling, Clark was in Basra, Iraq's southern port, witnessing the destruction. But his consistent failure to complain about Saddam's regime made it clear he was there at its invitation.
With Clark's name-recognition and homespun, avuncular image, WWP had the opportunity to form a new front group to win over naive liberals. This was the International Action Center (IAC), which remains the top vehicle for Clark's ego and WWP's play for hegemony over the fragmented remnants of the left.
IAC/WWP's politics went from bad to worse as Yugoslavia descended into chaos. It soon became obvious that Clark's legal work now closely followed the WWP line. In 1992, Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, was served with federal subpoenas when he touched down in New York for UN meetings. The National Organization for Women and the Center for Constitutional Rights, acting on behalf of Bosnian refugee women, were charging him with ordering mass rape and war crimes. Clark, of course, immediately came forward to represent Karadzic. Clark also made junkets to Serb-occupied Bosnia to schmooze with Karadzic (as did various Russian neo-fascists like Vladimir Zhirinovsky).
The "Red-Brown Alliance" was seen on the streets of New York during the 1999 NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia, when Clark led rallies which brought WWP communists together with right-wing nationalists and Orthodox priests from the Serb immigrant community. Serbian flags were proudly waved at these New York rallies, while meetings at IAC's 14th Street offices degenerated into mass chants of "Serbia! Serbia! Serbia!" This at a time when Serbian police and paramilitaries were forcing 800,000 Albanian refugees to flee their homes in Kosovo at gunpoint. Again, WRL and other anti-war groups broke away to form their own coalition that rejected both NATO's bombing and Serbian aggression against the Kosovo Albanians. But this time it was only IAC/WWP which held a national rally in DC.
In October 1999, Clark met with Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, and said everything the dictator wanted to hear. Milosevic, by then facing war crimes charges before the UN tribunal, called his guest "brave, objective, and moral."
The case against Radovan Karadzic languished since the UN launched war crimes charges against him, forcing him into hiding in Serbia. Clark, meanwhile, represented a Rwandan Hutu militiaman fighting his extradition from the US back to Rwanda to face genocide charges. The WWP line simultaneously (and predictably) tilted to the genocidal Hutu militias as the UN wrote up war crime charges against their leaders for ordering the slaughter of half a million Tutsi civilians in 1994.
Anti-war march OK, raises security doubts
By Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The permits were issued Friday to the International Action Center — just hours after President Bush declared war on terrorists in a nationwide broadcast — and caught some law enforcement officials off guard
... The action center, which bankrolled a group that was part of last year's raucous and at times violent IMF-World Bank meeting in the District, said it decided to turn a protest of international banking into an anti-war demonstration, after this year's IMF meeting here was cancelled for security reasons.
If the protesters show up in the numbers written on the city permit application — at least 5,000 people from the International Action Center (IAC), and up to 3,000 people from the Green Party — they will be met by "a big contingent of trained officers," said D.C. police spokesman Sgt. Joe Gentile.
Sarah Sloan, a staff coordinator employed by the Action Center, said the IAC has enough money to stage a peace march and rally for at least 10,000 protesters.
She said the organization, which claims former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark on its list of supporters, is "adequately" funded. It also retains several pro bono lawyers in the District who obtained the permits and who would help the Action Center fight in court to keep them if police agencies try to void them on grounds of national security.
"In light of the recent attacks, and the cancellation of the IMF meetings, we thought it important to refocus our protest and deal with the backlash against Arab-Americans, and this so-called war — nothing more than a bombing expedition that will kill tens of thousands of civilians," Miss Sloan said.
Miss Sloan said the Action Center's newly funded anti-war organization will continue to the District as planned, saying the organization's attorneys had assured its members that their protest and march is lawful.
"With our attorneys from the Partnership for Civil Justice, we received the permits and we will gather at the park from 11 a.m. to 12 noon, then march to the Capitol and hold another rally until 6 p.m.," Miss Sloan said.
UPDATE ON PERMITS FOR SEPT. 29 MASS MARCH IN WASHINGTON D.C. -
ALL PERMITS OBTAINED FOR SEPT. 29 MARCH & RALLY /ASSEMBLY LOCATION CHANGED
9/26/01--The national march on September 29 in Washington DC in opposition to war and racism will assemble for a rally at Freedom Plaza – 14th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The rally will be followed by a march to the Justice Department, the Navy Memorial (both located on Pennsylvania Avenue) and conclude with a rally in Upper Senate Park across from the Capitol building.
The change in the assembly site from Lafayette Park in front of the White House to Freedom Plaza at 14th and Pennsylvania prevents an eleventh-hour effort by the Bush administration to disrupt the demonstration. The Bush administration used the Secret Service to announce a ban on demonstrators using Lafayette Park for peace and anti-war protests during the next thirty days. The International A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) obtained all of the necessary permits last Wednesday for a rally at Lafayette Park and on the sidewalk in front of the White House, which would be followed by a march down Pennsylvania Ave. and concluding at the Capitol.
The Secret Service and the National Parks Service notified I-A.N.S.W.E.R. late today, Tuesday, September 25, that they were revoking the permits in Lafayette Park and the Ellipse. The Secret Service is unconstitutionally using the pretext of security for political purposes, just as Richard Nixon tried to use the Secret Service to bar demonstrations in front of the White House during the Vietnam War.
One of our main messages to anti-war activists right now is this: Our mass anti-war mobilization on the 29th in the DC has not been stopped. Thousands of people will take Freedom Plaza on Sept. 29th, and this will allow the mass organizing for Sept. 29 to go on unimpeded and without uncertainty in these last critical days before the demonstration.
The Sept. 29 march and rally has gained great support from across the country. Thousands of people are coming from as far away as California, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Maine and everywhere in between, including thousands from New York City.
P.S. The ban on demonstrations by Secret Service is for a 30-day period and the language of the banning order would allow the Secret Service unfettered discretion in renewing the ban on demonstrations for months and years to come. The I-A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition will carry out a legal challenge in the near future to the Secret-Service-imposed ban on demonstrations at Lafayette Park and the White House sidewalk.
DC BUS DROP OFF AND PICK UP INFORMATION
These locations may change, based on further discussion with the police, so please check website before leaving for DC.
Gathering Site and Bus Drop Off Location:
Freedom Plaza -- 14th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. NW.
End Rally and Bus Pick Up : Upper Senate Park across from the Capitol building. Constitution and New Jersey
International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: iacenter@action-mail.org
En Espanol: el_iac@yahoo.com
web: http://www.iacenter.org
CHECK OUT SITE http://www.mumia2000.org
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
ALERT! DC TO BE INFILTRATED ON SATURDAY WITH ANTI PEACE FACSISTS.
It's been years since I paid attention to Ramsey Clark, but after readng this, I took a quick peek on other sites having to do with him.
He was the legal advisor to Lori Berenson's parents... you know, the girl who was convicted of aiding and abetting terrorists in S. Amaerica.
In Dec. 2000 he gave a speech to the IAC regarding "Plan Columbia," which I never heard of before and don't care much about, but he said this, at least in his first draft of the speech:
"And we catch a random bomb once in a while in Dar es Salaam or Nairobi or the World Trade Center, and go berserk. But it was our mischief."
Speech by Ramsey Clark at IAC Event on Plan Colombia
I was young when he was AG for LBJ, but I remember my father getting livid every time the man talked. Now I see why.. thanks for filling in the blanks.