John Simkin
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Posts posted by John Simkin
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Eugen Boissevain made his fortune by importing coffee beans from Java. He developed a reputation as a hedonist. Floyd Dell described him as "an adventurous man of business, was in private life a playboy with incredible energy, romantic zest, and imagination."
A friend, Alyse Powers, argued that Boissevain was "handsome, reckless, mettlesome as a stallion breathing the first morning air, he would laugh at himself, indeed laugh at everything, with a laugh that scattered melancholy as the wind scatters the petals of the fading poppy...He had the gift of the aristocrat and could adapt himself to all circumstances ... his blood was testy, adventurous, quixotic, and he faced life as an eagle faces its flight."
Boissevain was introduced to Inez Milholland by Max Eastman. A leading figure in the women's suffrage movement, she was associated with a group of socialists involved in the production of The Masses journal. The couple were married in July 1913.
Inez Milholland became one of the leaders of the National Women's Party. The movement's most popular orator, Milholland was in demand as a speaker at public meetings all over the country. Milholland, who suffered from pernicious anemia, and was warned by her doctor of the dangers of vigorous campaigning. However, she refused to heed this advice and on 22nd October, 1916, she collapsed in the middle of a speech in Los Angeles. She was rushed to hospital but despite repeated blood transfusions she died on 25th November, 1916.
Boissevain remained in Greenwich Village and his friend, Floyd Dell recalls how he was attending a party at the home of Dudley Field Malone and Doris Stevens, when he met Edna St Vincent Millay: "We were all playing charades at Dudley Malone's and Doris Stevens's house. Edna Millay was just back from a year in Europe. Eugene and Edna had the part of two lovers in a delicious farcical invention, at once Rabelaisian and romantic. They acted their parts wonderfully-so remarkably, indeed, that it was apparent to us all that it wasn't just acting. We were having the unusual privilege of seeing a man and a girl fall in love with each other violently and in public, and telling each other so, and doing it very beautifully."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jboissevain.htm
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I have used the work of Gil Jesus a lot. It seems that all his videos have been removed for this offence.
I could be wrong, but I think Gil Jesus might have deleted his whole "GJJDude" channel himself. He said quite a few months ago that he was in the process of moving a lot of his JFK videos over to a second channel he created at YouTube. Maybe he finished all that "moving", and decided to get rid of his first channel. I don't know.
Anyway, Gil's videos can now be found at this channel:
Thank you for that link. I also appreciate your YouTube channel. I will be adding some of them to my pages on the assassination.
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Over the last couple of years I have added YouTube videos on the JFK assassination to my pages on Spartacus. I see a lot of them have been removed for "copyright violation". I have used the work of Gil Jesus a lot. It seems that all his videos have been removed for this offence. However, people like David Von Pein, seem to have been left alone. As he seems to use the same "copyright" sources, can anyone explain what is happening?
That really is quite disturbing, John. Perhaps, if you feel so inclined, you could try "reporting" DVP's possible copyright violations and see if they remove his videos too. At least then you'll know if youtube is playing favourites or not.
I would never do that but it has made me think that it is possible that some Warren Report supporter has been reporting videos put up by conspiracy theorists.
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Over the last couple of years I have added YouTube videos on the JFK assassination to my pages on Spartacus. I see a lot of them have been removed for "copyright violation". I have used the work of Gil Jesus a lot. It seems that all his videos have been removed for this offence. However, people like David Von Pein, seem to have been left alone. As he seems to use the same "copyright" sources, can anyone explain what is happening?
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Mr. Simkin has determined that JACK WHITE HAS A BAD REPUTATION and says so on my "profile".
This is a violation of forum rules that no ad hominem attacks be made on members. This should
be removed immediately!
Jack
I have never rated any member's posts. I did not even know about the feature. Evan, do you know if it is possible to disable the rating system?
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Carl Sandburg's love poem, Paula, was not published during his lifetime, although it was written in April 1908. It was found in his papers by his daughter. His wife's name was Lilian, but apparently he called her Paula.
Woman of a million names and a thousand faces,
I looked for you over the earth and under the sky.
I sought you in passing processions
On old multitudinous highways
Where mask and phantom and life go by.
In roaming and roving, from prairie to sea,
From city to wilderness, fighting and praying,
I looked.
Dusty and wayward, I was the soldier,
Long-sentinelled, pacing the night,
Who heard your voice in the breeze nocturnal,
Who saw in the pine shadows your hair,
Who touched in the flicker of vibrant stars
Your soul!
When I saw you, I knew you as you knew me.
We had known far back in the eons
When hills were dust and the sea a mist.
And toil is a trifle and struggle a glory
With You, and ruin and death but fancies,
Woman of a million names and a thousand faces.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jsandburg.htm
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To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire -
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.
Edgar Lee Masters
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In the early years of the 20th century, a group of socialists in New York City advocated free-love. This included Peggy Baird, a promising young artist. She was very promiscuous and had a series of affairs with several artists including Orrick Johns and Eugene O'Neill.
In 1917, Michael Gold, introduced her to Dorothy Day, a fellow journalist at the New York Call. The two women became close friends. Jim Forest, the author of Love is the Measure (1986), points out: "Peggy was an artist who lived in a large, wildly unkempt room and who was baffled at Dorothy's seeming immunity to sexual temptation." Peggy told Day that sex was "a barrier that kept men and women from fully understanding each other, and thus a barrier to be broken down".
In 1919 Peggy Baird married Malcolm Cowley, who wrote poetry and book reviews for The Dial and the New York Evening Post. They went to live in Greenwich Village where he became close friends with the poet Hart Crane. Despite the fact that Hart was a well-known homosexual, Peggy seduced him. In 1931 she went to live with Crane in Mexico. This ended in tragedy when Crane committed suicide by jumping from the ship Orizaba on the way back to New York City on 27th April 1932.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jbaird.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Joneill.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcowleyM.htm
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Message from a friend:
I received a call from a 'representative' of BT, informing me that he was disconnecting me because of an unpaid bill. He demanded payment immediately of £31.00, or it would be £118 to re-connect at a later date.
The guy wasn't even fazed when I told him I was with Virgin Media, allegedly VM have to pay BT a percentage for line rental! I asked the guy's name - the very 'English' John Peacock with a very 'African' accent - & phone number - 0800 0800 152 0800 0800 152. Obviously the fella realized I didn’t believe his story, so offered to demonstrate that he was from BT. I asked how & he told me to hang up & try phoning someone - he would disconnect my phone to prevent this.
AND HE DID!!
My phone was dead - no engaged tone, nothing - until he phoned me again. Very pleased with himself, he asked if that was enough proof that he was with BT. I asked how the payment was to be made & he said credit card, there & then.
I said that I didn't know how he'd done it, but I had absolutely no intention of paying him, I didn't believe his name or that he worked for BT. He hung up.
I Did 1471 & phoned his fictitious 0800 number – not recognised. I phoned the police to let them know, I wasn't the first! It's only just started apparently but it is escalating. Their advice was to let as many people know by word of mouth of this scam. The fact that the phone does go off would probably convince some people it's real, so please let as many friends & family aware of this.
This is good but not that clever. He gave the wrong number - it should have been 0800 800152 0800 800152 which takes you through to BT Business. The cutting off of the line is very simple he stays on the line with the mute button on and you can't dial out - but he can hear you trying. (This is because the person who initiates a call is the one to terminate it). When you stop trying he cuts off and immediately calls back. You could almost be convinced! The sad thing is that it is so simple that it will certainly fool the elderly and vulnerable. Obviously, if this scam is real, once they have your credit/debit card details, there is nothing to stop them cleaning out your account.
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Edward Wyllis Scripps was a journalist who worked on the Detroit Times as a young man. He was a socialist and became frustrated when his stories were not published. In 1878 he joined with his half-brother, James Edmund Scripps (1854-1926) to establish Cleveland Penny Press. This newspaper was highly successful and by 1887 he also owned newspapers in St. Louis and Cincinnati.
Scripps' newspapers were aimed at a mass audience, what he called the "95 per cent". They were low-priced and tended to support progressive causes and the trade union movement. He once wrote: "I have only one principle, and that is represented by an effort to make it harder for the rich to grow richer and easier for the poor to keep from growing poorer."
In one interview Scripps claimed that he viewed his newspapers as "the only schoolroom the working people had". He added "I am the advocate of that large majority of people who are not so rich in worldly goods and native intelligence as to make them equal, man for man, in the struggle with individuals of the wealthier and more intellectual class".
In 1894 Scripps joined with his half-brother, George Scripps and Milton Alexander McRae, to form the Scripps-McRae League of Newspapers. Scripps now had a controlling interest in 34 newspapers in 15 different states.
Scripps founded the Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1902. This was the first syndicate to supply feature stories, illustrations and cartoons to newspapers. Five years later Scripps joined with others to form the news service, United Press.
Throughout his career Scripps found that advertisers continually put him under pressure to drop his radical causes. In 1911 he decided to publish a newspaper that was completely free of advertising. The tabloid-sized newspaper was called the Day Book, and at a penny a copy, it aimed for a working-class market, crusading for higher wages, more unions, safer factories, lower streetcar fares, and women’s right to vote. It also tackled the important stories ignored by most other dailies. According to Duane C. S. Stoltzfus, the author of Freedom from Advertising: "The Day Book served as an important ally of workers, a keen watchdog on advertisers, and it redefined news by providing an example of a paper that treated its readers first as citizens with rights rather than simply as consumers."
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No I am not.
But why did you let certain people back on who do?
I won't name names but his initials are DVP.
I am an old-fashioned liberal who believes in free speech. It is something that has got me into trouble with a lot of JFK researchers who do not share my ideals.
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"Mr. Carroll is the Spartacus version of Walter Sheridan." - Jim DiEugenio
Sheridan was supposed to be inquiring about the JFK case for RFK and NBC.
He never did any of that. He wasn't really interested. WHat he was interested in was a.) muddying the waters, and b.) doing a hatchet job on Garrison.
If Carroll does not believe that Oswald was some kind of intelligence operative then he is even worse than I thought.
Are you saying that I am muddying the waters?
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A brief but interesting Fletcher Prouty/Daniel Schorr anecdote that appeared in Time magazine in 1975.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913342-1,00.html
Thank you for that. I was not aware of this story. Fletcher Prouty was not the only one who thought Butterfield was a CIA spy. H. R. Haldeman, who knew Butterfield from university, also thought he was a CIA plant.
It has to be remembered that it was Butterfield who brought Nixon down. This is highly significant if you believe that it was the CIA that ousted Nixon from power. Butterfield was drawn into the Watergate Scandal after Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had interviewed Hugh Sloan. During the interview Sloan admitted that Butterfield had been in charge of "internal security". Woodward passed this information to a member of the Senate Committee headed by Sam Ervin.
On 25th June, 1973, John Dean testified that at a meeting with Richard Nixon on 15th April, the president had remarked that he had probably been foolish to have discussed his attempts to get clemency for E. Howard Hunt with Charles Colson. Dean concluded from this that Nixon's office might be bugged.
After a phone-call from Deep Throat, Woodward suggested to his friend from the Senate Committee that they should interview Butterfield. On Friday, 13th July, Butterfield appeared before the committee and was asked about if he knew whether Nixon was recording meetings he was having in the White House. Butterfield admitted details of the tape system which monitored Nixon's conversations. Butterfield also said that he knew "it was probably the one thing that the President would not want revealed". This information did indeed interest Archibald Cox and Sam Ervin demand that Richard Nixon hand over the White House tapes. Nixon refused and so Cox appealed to the Supreme Court. From this point on, Nixon was fighting a losing battle.
Another interesting point about Butterfield was that while working for the Defense Department in the 1960s he was project officer for the General Dynamics F-111. This was the project that JFK was trying to clean-up at the time of his assassination.
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Two extracts from H. R. Haldeman's, The Ends of Power (1978):
(1)
I was puzzled when he (Nixon) told me, "Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans is tied to the Bay, of Pigs."
After a pause I said, "The Bay of Pigs? What does that have to do with this?"
But Nixon merely said, "Ehrlichman will know what I mean," and dropped the subject.
After our staff meeting the next morning I accompanied Ehrlichman to his office and gave him the President's message. Ehrlichman's eyebrows arched, and he smiled. "Our brothers from Langley? He's suggesting I twist or break a few arms?"
'I don't know. All he told me was "Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs".'
Ehrlichman leaned back in his chair, tapping a pencil on the edge of his desk. "All right," he said, "message accepted."
"What are you going to do about it?"
"Zero," said Ehrlichman. "I want to stay out of this one."
He was referring to an unspoken feud between C.I.A. Director Richard Helms and Nixon.. The two were polar opposites in background: Helms, the aloof, aristocratic, Eastern elitist; Nixon the poor boy (he never let you forget it) from a small California town. Ehrlichman had found, himself in the middle of this feud as far back as 1969, immediately after Nixon assumed office. Nixon had called Ehrlichman into his office and said he wanted all the facts and documents the CIA had on the Bay of Pigs, a complete report on the whole project.
About six months after that 1969 conversation, Ehrlichman had stopped in my office. "Those bastards in Langley are holding back something. They just dig in their heels and say the President can't have it. Period. Imagine that! The Commander-in-Chief wants to see a document relating to a military operation, and the spooks say he can't have it."
"What is it?"
"I don't know, but from the way they're protecting it, it must be pure dynamite."
I was angry at the idea that Helms would tell the President he couldn't see something. I said, "Well, you remind Helms who's President. He's not. In fact, Helms can damn well find himself out of a job in a hurry."
That's what I thought! Helms was never fired, at least for four years. But then Ehrlichman had said, "Rest assured. The point will be made. In fact, Helms is on his way over here right now. The President is going to give him a direct order to turn over that document to me."
Helms did show up that afternoon and saw the President for a long secret conversation. When Helms left, Ehrlichman returned to the Oval Office. The next thing I knew Ehrlichman appeared in my office, dropped into a chair, and just stared at me. He was more furious than I had ever seen him; absolutely speechless, a rare phenomenon for our White House phrase-makers. I said, "What happened?"
"This is what happened," Ehrlichman said. "The Mad Monk (Nixon) has just told me I am now to forget all about that CIA document. In fact, I am to cease and desist from trying to obtain it."
When Senator Howard Baker of the Evrin Committee later looked into the Nixon-Helms relationship, he summed it up. "Nixon and Helms have so much on each other, neither of them can breathe."
Apparently Nixon knew more about the genesis of the Cuban invasion that led to the Bay of Pigs than almost anyone. Recently, the man who was President of Costa Rica at the time - dealing with Nixon while the invasion was being prepared - stated that Nixon was the man who originated the Cuban invasion. If this was true, Nixon never told it to me.
In 1972 I did know that Nixon disliked the CIA Allen Dulles, the CIA Director in 1960, had briefed Jack Kennedy about the forthcoming Cuban invasion before a Kennedy-Nixon debate. Kennedy used this top secret information in the debate, thereby placing Nixon on the spot. Nixon felt he had to lie and even deny such an invasion was in the works to protect the men who were training in secret. Dulles later denied briefing Kennedy. This betrayal, added to Nixon's long-held feeling that the agency was not adequately competent, led to his distrust and dislike.
And now that antipathy was to emerge again on June 23, 1972, when Nixon would once again confront and pressure the CIA.
This time the CIA was ready. In fact, it was more than ready. It was ahead of the game by months. Nixon would walk into what I now believe was a trap.
(2)
Years later, former C.B.S. correspondent Dan Schorr called me. He was seeking information concerning the F.B.I. investigation Nixon had mounted against him in August, 1971.
Schorr later sent me his fascinating book Clearing the Air. In it I was interested to find that evidence he had gleaned while investigating the C.I.A. finally cleared up for me the mystery of the Bay of Pigs connection in those dealings between Nixon and Helms. "It's intriguing when I put Schorr's facts together with mine. It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination."
(Interestingly, an investigation of the Kennedy assassination was a project I suggested when I first entered the White House. I had always been intrigued with the conflicting theories of the assassination. Now I felt we would be in a position to get all the facts. But Nixon turned me down.
According to Schorr, as an outgrowth of the Bay of Pigs, the CIA made several attempts on Fidel Castro's life. The Deputy Director of Plans at the CIA at the time was a man named Richard Helms.
Unfortunately, Castro knew of the assassination attempts all the time. On September 7, 1963, a few months before John Kennedy was assassinated, Castro made a speech in which he was quoted, 'Let Kennedy and his brother Robert take care of themselves, since they, too, can be the victims of an attempt which will cause their death.'
After Kennedy was killed, the CIA launched a fantastic cover-up. Many of the facts about Oswald unavoidably pointed to a Cuban connection.
1. Oswald had been arrested in New Orleans in August, 1963, while distributing pro-Castro pamphlets.
2. On a New Orleans radio programme he extolled Cuba and defended Castro.
3. Less than two months before the assassination Oswald visited the Cuban consulate in Mexico City and tried to obtain a visa.
In a chilling parallel to their cover-up at Watergate, the CIA literally erased any connection between. Kennedy's assassination and the CIA. No mention of the Castro assassination attempt was made to the Warren Commission by CIA representatives. In fact, Counter-intelligence Chief James Angleton of the CIA called Bill Sullivan of the FBI and rehearsed the questions and answers they would give to the Warren Commission investigators, such as these samples:
Q. Was Oswald an agent of the C.I.A.
A. No.
Q. Does the CIA have any evidence showing that a conspiracy existed to assassinate Kennedy?
A. No.
And here's what I find most interesting: Bill Sullivan, the FBI man that the CIA called at the time, was Nixon's highest-ranking loyal friend at the FBI (in the Watergate crisis, he would risk J. Edgar Hoover's anger by taking the 1969 FBI wiretap transcripts ordered by Nixon and delivering them to, Robert Mardian, a Mitchell crony, for safekeeping).
It's possible that Nixon learned from Sullivan something about the earlier CIA cover-up by Helms. And when Nixon said, 'It's likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs' he might have been reminding Helms, not so gently, of the cover-up of the CIA assassination attempts on the hero of the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro - a CIA operation that may have triggered the Kennedy tragedy and which Helms desperately wanted to hide.
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In 1979, Daniel Schorr was asked by Ted Turner to help create the Cable News Network. Schorr wrote his own contract, which specified that he should not be asked to do anything that contradicted his sense of ethical journalism. He serving in Washington as its senior correspondent until 1985, when he left in a dispute over an effort to limit his editorial independence.
Schorr found work at National Public Radio, contributing regularly to All Things Considered, Weekend Edition Saturday, and Weekend Edition Sunday. He told USA Today: "I have breathed the breath of freedom. Nobody ever told me here what not to do."
There was a man who suffered a lifetime at the hands of Operation Mockingbird.
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Has anyone read Kathryn Olmsted's Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11? I was impressed with her previous book, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (1996). This is what Amazon say about the book:
Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii--or 3,000 civilians in New York. In their zeal to cover up their crimes, they killed witnesses, faked evidence, and stole into secure offices to snatch incriminating documents from the files. Although the paranoid style has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies, Kathryn Olmsted shows that it is only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories have become central to American politics. While Americans had worried about bankers, Jews, and Catholics for decades, Olmsted sees World War I as a critical turning point for conspiracy theories. As the federal government expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself--the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Perhaps more important, Olmsted examines why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies by government officials--such as the infamous Northwoods plan--have fueled our paranoia about the government. She analyzes Pearl Harbor, Cold War and anticommunist plots, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11. Along the way, she introduces readers to a lively cast of characters, from the Nobel prize-winning scientist who became a leading conspiracist to a housewife who believed she could unlock the secrets of the JFK assassination. Polls show that thirty-six percent of Americans think that George W. Bush knew in advance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Real Enemies, an engaging work on a timely, important topic, sheds light on such theories, revealing how the rampant fear of conspiracy at once invigorates and undermines American democracy.
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You can find out more about Thomas Perronet Thompson here:
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Most textbooks incorrectly state the William Wilberforce campaigned against slavery. He did not. In fact, he was in favour of slavery. Let me explain.
In 1784 Wilberforce became converted to Evangelical Christianity. He joined the Clapham Set, a group of evangelical members of the Anglican Church, centered around Henry Venn, rector of Clapham Church in London. As a result of this conversion, Wilberforce became interested in social reform and was eventually approached by Lady Middleton, the wife of Charles Middleton, to use his power as an MP to bring an end to the slave trade.
Society of Friends in Britain had been campaigning against the slave trade for many years. They had presented a petition to Parliament in 1783 and in 1787 had helped form the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Of the twelve members on the committee nine were Quakers. As a member of the evangelical movement, Wilberforce was sympathetic to Mrs. Middleton's request. In his letter of reply, Wilberforce wrote: "I feel the great importance of the subject and I think myself unequal to the task allotted to me." Despite these doubts, Wilberforce agreed to Mrs. Middleton's request, but soon afterwards, he became very ill and it was not until 12th May, 1789, that he made his first speech against the slave trade.
Wilberforce, along with Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, was now seen as one of the leaders of the anti-slave trade movement. Most of Wilberforce's Tory colleagues in the House of Commons were opposed to any restrictions on the slave trade and at first he had to rely on the support of Whigs such as Charles Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Grenville and Henry Brougham. When William Wilberforce presented his first bill to abolish the slave trade in 1791 it was easily defeated by 163 votes to 88.
Wilberforce refused to be beaten and in 1805 the House of Commons passed a bill to that made it unlawful for any British subject to transport slaves. However, the bill never became law as the measure was blocked by the House of Lords.
In February 1806, Lord Grenville formed a Whig administration. Grenville and his Foreign Secretary, Charles Fox, were strong opponents of the slave trade. Fox and Wilberforce led the campaign in the House of Commons, whereas Grenville, had the task of persuading the House of Lords to accept the measure.
Greenville made a passionate speech where he argued that the trade was "contrary to the principles of justice, humanity and sound policy" and criticised fellow members for "not having abolished the trade long ago". When the vote was taken the Abolition of the Slave Trade bill was passed in the House of Lords by 41 votes to 20. In the House of Commons it was carried by 114 to 15 and it become law on 25th March, 1807.
British captains who were caught continuing the trade were fined £100 for every slave found on board. However, this law did not stop the British slave trade. If slave-ships were in danger of being captured by the British navy, captains often reduced the fines they had to pay by ordering the slaves to be thrown into the sea.
Some people involved in the anti-slave trade campaign such as Thomas Fowell Buxton, argued that the only way to end the suffering of the slaves was to make slavery illegal. Wilberforce disagreed, he believed that at this time slaves were not ready to be granted their freedom. He pointed out in a pamphlet that he wrote in 1807 that: "It would be wrong to emancipate (the slaves). To grant freedom to them immediately, would be to insure not only their masters' ruin, but their own. They must (first) be trained and educated for freedom."
In 1823 Thomas Fowell Buxton formed the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. Buxton eventually persuaded Wilberforce to join his campaign but as he had retired from the House of Commons in 1825, he did not play an important part in persuading Parliament to bring an end to slavery.
In 2010 the historian Stephen Tomkins discovered documents that suggested Wilberforce allowed the abolitionist colony of Sierra Leone, which the Clapham Set managed, to use slave labour and buy and sell slaves. "After abolition, the British navy patrolled the Atlantic seizing slave ships. The crew were arrested, but what to do with the African captives? With the knowledge and consent of Wilberforce and friends, they were taken to Sierra Leone and put to slave labour in Freetown."
When the Governor of Sierra Leone, Thomas Perronet Thompson, complained that "these apprenticeships have after 16 years successful struggle at last introduced actual slavery into the colony". According to Stephen Tomkins: "He (Perronet Thompson) single-handedly abolished apprenticeship and freed the slaves. He filed scandalised reports to the colonial office. Wilberforce told him he was being rash and hasty, and he and his colleagues voted unanimously for his dismissal. Wilberforce advised him to go quietly for the sake of his career."
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Another candidate is Theodore Dreiser. Since his early days of journalism Dreiser "began to observe a certain type of crime in the United States that proved very common. It seemed to spring from the fact that almost every young person was possessed of an ingrown ambition to be somebody financially and socially." Dreiser described this as a form of disease. He added that he observed "many forms of murder for money...the young ambitious lover of some poorer girl... for a more attractive girl with money or position...it was not always possible to drop the first girl. What usually stood in the way was pregnancy."
This information inspired Dreiser's greatest novel, An American Tragedy (1925). The book was based on the Chester Gillette and Grace Brown murder case. One critic pointed out that the novel is a "story of a man struggling against social, economic, and environmental forces - as well as forces within himself - that slowly drown him in a tide of misfortune." It has been argued that the novel was an example of naturalism, an extreme form of realism, that had been inspired in part by the scientific determinism of Charles Darwin and the economic determinism of Karl Marx.
Thomas P. Riggio commented: "Although the novel was a critical and commercial success (in fact, Dreiser's only best-seller), he was not yet finished battling such literary vice crusaders as the Watch and Ward Society. The novel was banned in Boston, where the sale of the book led to a trial and an appeal that dragged on in the courts for years. This, however, was now an isolated instance. Dreiser seemed finally to have won over even his most severe critics, many of whom were now applauding the book as the Great American Novel."
Dreiser become involved in several campaigns against injustice. This included the lynching of Frank Little, one of the leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Sacco and Vanzetti Case, the deportation of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Mollie Steimer, the false conviction of the trade union leader, Tom Mooney, who spent twenty-two years in prison for a crime he did not commit and the Scottsboro Case.
In 1928 Dreiser wrote: "On thinking back over the books I have written, I can only say this has been my vision of life - life with its romance and cruelty, its pity and terror, its joys and anxiety, its peace and conflict. You may not like my vision but it is the only one that I have seen and felt, therefore, it is the only one I can give you." Dreiser, a socialist, wrote several non-fiction books on political issues. This included Dreiser Looks at Russia (1928) and Tragic America (1931).
Malcolm Cowley recalls that he attended a meeting in April 1931 that was addressed by Dreiser: "Dreiser stood behind a table and rapped on it with his knuckles. He unfolded a very large, very white linen handkerchief and began drawing it first through his left hand, then through his right hand, as if for reassurance of his worldly success. He mumbled something we couldn't catch and then launched into a prepared statement. Things were in a terrible state, he said, and what were we going to do about it? Nobody knew how many millions were unemployed, starving, hiding in their holes. The situation among the coal miners in Western Pennsylvania and in Harlan County, Kentucky, was a disgrace. The politicians from Hoover down and the big financiers had no idea of what was going on." Dreiser then went onto argue that "the time is ripe for American intellectuals to render some service to the American worker."
During the Great Depression Dreiser wrote: "I feel that the immense gulf between wealth and poverty in America and throughout the world should be narrowed. I feel the government should effect the welfare of all the people - not that of a given class." He became a member of the League of American Writers and was an active supporter of the Popular Front government during the Spanish Civil War. As Thomas P. Riggio pointed out: "Dreiser wrote little fiction in the 1930s. He devoted much of himself to political activities. A partial list provides an idea of the range of his social interests: he fought for a fair trial for the Scottsboro Boys, young African Americans unfairly accused of rape in Alabama; he contributed considerable time to the broadly-based political and literary reforms sponsored by the American Writer's League; he spoke out against American imperialism abroad; he attacked the abuses of the financial corporations; he went to Kentucky's Harlan coal mines, as chairman of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, to publicize the wrongs suffered by the striking miners; he investigated the plight of tobacco farmers who were cheated by the large tobacco companies; he spoke on behalf of several antifascist organizations and attended an international peace conference in Paris; he became an advocate in America for aid to the victims of the Spanish Civil War."
Dreiser published America is Worth Saving (1941). Theodore Dreiser joined the American Communist Party in July 1945. He summed up his reasons for his decision: "Belief in the greatness and dignity of Man has been the guiding principle of my life and work. The logic of my life and work leads me therefore to apply for membership in the Community Party."
Theodore Dreiser died on 28th December 1945. Henry L. Mencken, who had been a great supporter of Dreiser during his lifetime argued: "No other American of his generation left so wide and handsome a mark upon the national letters. American writing, before and after his time, differed almost as much as biology before and after Darwin. He was a man of large originality, of profound feeling, and of unshakable courage. All of us who write are better off because he lived, worked, and hoped."
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Maybe you could invite Mr Swearingen to join? There may be some matters upon which he would like to comment.
I have invited him to become a member this morning.
After initially accepting, he seems to have changed his mind.
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Another candidate is Frank Norris. He was born in Chicago in 1870. After studying at San Francisco University (1890-94) Norris travelled to South Africa where he attempted to establish himself as a travel writer. He wrote about the Boer War for the San Francisco Chronicle but was deported from the country after being captured by the Boer Army.
Norris continued to work as a journalist and reported the Spanish-American War for McClure's Magazine. This was followed by a couple of novels, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899) and A Man's Woman (1900). Norris, who had been greatly influenced by the work of Emile Zola, also began work on a trilogy, The Epic of Wheat. The first book, The Octopus (1901), described the struggle between farming and railroad interests in California. In August 1902, Everybody's Magazine published an article by Norris, A Deal in Wheat, exposing corrupt business dealings in agriculture.
William Dean Howells was a great supporter of the work of Frank Norris: "What Norris did, not merely what he dreamed of doing, was of vaster frame, and inclusive of imaginative intentions far beyond those of the only immediate contemporary to be matched with him, while it was of as fine and firm an intellectual quality, and of as intense and fusing an emotionality. In several times and places, it has been my rare pleasure to bear witness to the excellence of what Norris had done, and the richness of his promise. The vitality of his work was so abundant, the pulse of health was so full and strong in it, that it is incredible it should not be persistent still."
Frank Norris died of peritonitis following an appendix operation on 25th October, 1902. He was only 32. He is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. The second book in the trilogy, The Pitt, about the manipulation of the wheat market, was published posthumously in 1903. The third part, The Wolf, was never written.
Also published posthumously was The Responsibility of the Novelist (1903). The book argues for naturalistic writing based on actual experience and observation. This book, and his novels, influenced a generation of writers including Upton Sinclair, who argued: "Frank Norris had a great influence upon me because I read The Octopus when I was young and knew very little about what was happening in America. He showed me a new world, and he also showed me that it could be put in a novel."
Floyd Dell was another writer who was converted to socialism by Norris' books: "Frank Norris's novel, The Octopus stirred my mind. And that spring, down in a small park near my home, I heard a man make a Socialist speech to a small and indifferent crowd. Afterwards I talked to him; he was a street-sweeper.... And my long-slumbering Socialism woke up." Other writers who claimed that they were deeply influenced by the work of Norris include David Graham Phillips, Theodore Dreiser, Charles Edward Russell and Sinclair Lewis.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jnorris.htm
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Frank Norris died at the age of 32. He was already recognized as the best author of his generation and was a tremendous influence on young novelists at the beginning of the 20th century. His book, "The Responsibility of the Novelist" was published after his death. It includes the following:
It is not here a question of the "unarrived," the "unpublished"; these are the care-free irresponsibles whose hours are halcyon and whose endeavours have all the lure, all the recklessness of adventure. They are not recognized; they have made no standards for themselves, and if they play the saltimbanque and the charlatan nobody cares and nobody (except themselves) is affected.
But the writers in question are the successful ones who have made a public and to whom some ten, twenty or a hundred thousand people are pleased to listen. You may believe if you choose that the novelist, of all workers, is independent that he can write what he pleases, and that certainly, certainly he should never "write down to his readers" that he should never consult them at all.
On the contrary, I believe it can be proved that the successful novelist should be more than all others limited in the nature and character of his work more than all others he should be careful of what he says; more than all others he should defer to his audience; more than all others more even than the minister and the editor he should feel "his public" and watch his every word, testing carefully his every utterance, weighing with the most relentless precision his every statement; in a word, possess a sense of his responsibilities.
For the novel is the great expression of modern life. Each form of art has had its turn at reflecting and expressing its contemporaneous thought. Time was when the world looked to the architects of the castles and great cathedrals to truly reflect and embody its ideals. And the architects serious, earnest men produced such "expressions of contemporaneous thought" as the Castle of Coucy and the Church of Notre Dame. Then with other times came other customs, and the painters had their day.
The men of the Renaissance trusted Angelo and Da Vinci and Velasquez to speak for them, and trusted not in vain. Next came the age of drama. Shakespeare and Marlowe found the value of x for the life and the times in which they lived. Later on contemporary life had been so modified that neither painting, architecture nor drama was the best vehicle of expression, the day of the longer poems arrived, and Pope and Dryden spoke for their fellows...
Today is the day of the novel. In no other day and by no other vehicle is contemporaneous life so adequately expressed; and the critics of the twenty-second century, reviewing our times, striving to reconstruct our civilization, will look not to the painters, not to the architects nor dramatists, but to the novelists to find our idiosyncrasy.
I think this is true. I think if the matter could in any way be statisticized, the figures would bear out the assumption. There is no doubt the novel will in time "go out" of popular favour as irrevocably as the long poem has gone, and for the reason that it is no longer the right mode of expression.
It is interesting to speculate upon what will take its place. Certainly the coming civilization will revert to no former means of expressing its thought or its ideals. Possibly music will be the interpreter of the life of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries...
This, however, is parenthetical and beside the mark. Remains the fact that today is the day of the novel. By this one does not mean that the novel is merely popular. If the novel was not something more than a simple diversion, a means of whiling away a dull evening, a long railway journey, it would not, believe me, remain in favour another day.
If the novel, then, is popular, it is popular with a reason, a vital, inherent reason ; that is to say, it is essential. Essential to resume once more the proposition because it expresses modern life better than architecture, better than painting, better than poetry, better than music. It is as necessary to the civilization of the twentieth century as the violin is necessary to Kubelik, as the piano is necessary to Paderewski, as the plane is necessary to the carpenter, the sledge to the blacksmith, the chisel to the mason. It is an instrument, a tool, a weapon, a vehicle. It is that thing which, in the hand of man, makes him civilized and no longer savage, because it gives him a power of durable, permanent expression. So much for the novel the instrument...
How necessary it becomes, then, for those who, by the simple art of writing, can invade the heart's heart of thousands, whose novels are received with such measureless earnestness how necessary it becomes for those who wield such power to use it rightfully. Is it not expedient to act fairly? Is it not in Heaven's
name essential that the People hear, not a lie, but the Truth?
If the novel were not one of the most important factors of modern life ; if it were not the completest expression of our civilization; if its influence were not greater than all the pulpits, than all the newspapers between the oceans, it would not be so important that its message should be true.
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I Need a crash course in James Fetzer. What, precisely, is he view on the Zapruder film. Now I've read Murder in Dealy Plaza, but was so baffled buy his suggestions I thought I'd ask some other possible readers if they subscribe to his theories. Not trying to start a Flame, its just my head can't get around aspects of the film that he suggest are a forgery. Any help?
I suggest you engage in a debate with Jim. It will not take him to insult you and you can then become a confirmed non-believer.
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A good visual version by Dee Dee Bridgewater:
Thanks John Simkin
in JFK Assassination Debate
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I have not yet been told why it went down.