John Simkin
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UK Government committee recommends public funds pulled from homeopathy
• Report concludes UK National Health Service should cease funding homeopathy
• Recommend no further clinical trials of homeopathy.
• Evidence shows homeopathy doesn’t work.
• Explanations for why homeopathy works are “scientifically implausible.”
• Committee views homeopathy as placebo.
I suspect this is more to do with the NHS cutting spending than about homeopathy. I doubt very much if the MPs said that "homeopathy doesn't work" even if it is “scientifically implausible”. The committee equates homeopathy as a placebo. That is true. That is why it works. The placebo effect points to the importance of perception and the brain's role in physical health. If people are convinced that homeopathy works, than it will.
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Adrian Scott was the film producer who is now credited with the start of "film noir" with Murder, My Sweet (1944). His film Crossfire (1947) won four Academy Awards. In the 1930s Scott had ben a member of the American Communist Party, so had Edward Dmytryk, the director of Crossfire. As Albert Maltz has pointed out: "Adrian Scott was the producer of the notable film Crossfire in 1947 and Edward Dmytryk was its director. Both of these men refused to co-operate with the HCUA. Both were held in contempt of the HUAC and went to jail. When Dmytryk emerged from his prison term he did so with a new set of principles. He suddenly saw the heavenly light, testified as a friend of the HUAC, praised its purposes and practices and denounced all who opposed it. Dmytryk immediately found work as a director, and has worked all down the years since. Adrian Scott, who came out of prison with his principles intact, could not produce a film for a studio again until 1970. He was blacklisted for 21 years."
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From Tribal Football:
Portsmouth goalkeeper David James has revealed how a mole inside the West Ham United dressing room influenced their relegation.
Discussing football's relationship with the media in his column for the Observer, James revealed: "At West Ham, the year we went down, we had a mole who kept shooting his mouth off to the press. It put everyone on edge, looking round the changing room, trying to figure out who it was.
"One afternoon we all sat together on the training field and one of the senior players stood up and made a lengthy speech about how we should root out the mole and expose him. It was moving stuff. Little did we know that he was the mole. It still makes me chuckle thinking about what a good performance he put on."
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I have added a very good 43 minute film on my page on the Un-American Activities Committee:
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I have recently updated my page on the American Communist Party. I have included an interesting government information film on how you can identify a communist.
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I have updated my pages on Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism to include some good YouTube videos. The one on the Hollywood Ten is a good example of how to make an effective propaganda film.
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Vito Marcantonio is one of the most interesting politicians in the history of the United States. The son of Italian immigrants, was born in East Harlem, New York City on 10th December, 1902. Marcantonio was a successful student and despite his poor background eventually managed to enter New York University Law School. While at university Marcantonio became involved in politics. In 1924 he joined Fiorello La Guardia in supporting Robert La Follette, who was the presidential candidate of the Progressive Party.
In 1926 Marcantonio was admitted to the bar and worked as a lawyer in New York City and served as assistant United States district attorney (1930-31). In 1933 Marcantonio played an important role in the successful election campaign of Fiorello La Guardia as mayor of New York City. Seen as La Guardia's heir apparent, Marcantonio was elected to Congress in 1934 where he represented East Harlem's 20th District.
In Congress he argued against the policy of deporting people like Emma Goldman for their left-wing views: "I do not believe in the deportation of any man or woman because of the political principles that they hold. Irrespective of what a person advocates, he or she should not be molested, because our Government has been based upon the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and freedom of thought."
Marcantonio was accused of being a secret supporter of the American Communist Party. He replied: "I disagree with the Communists. I emphatically do not agree with them, but they have a perfect right to speak out and to advocate communism. I maintain that the moment we deprive those with whom we extremely disagree of their right to freedom of speech, the next thing that will happen is that our own right of freedom of speech will be taken away from us."
An outspoken politician with left-wing views, Marcantonio was defeated in 1936 but won the seat back in 1938 as the American Labor Party candidate. A strong supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, Marcantonio held the seat for the next twelve years. In Congress he argued that the "unemployed are victims of an unjust economic and social system which has failed." Marcantonio was also a strong supporter of African American Civil Rights.
As Gerald Meyer has pointed out: "In the House, Marcantonio distinguished himself as the major leader for civil rights legislation by sponsoring anti-lynching and anti-poll tax bills as well as the annual fight for the Fair Employment Practices Commission's appropriation. He served as de facto congressperson for Puerto Rico, insuring that it was not excluded from appropriations bills. He also submitted five bills calling for the independence of Puerto Rico (which he called "the greatest victim of United States imperialism") with an indemnity for the damage done to the island by the United States business interests which had replaced tens of thousands of small farms with sugar plantations."
Marcantonio was a fierce critic of Martin Dies and his Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that was established in 1937. The main objective of the HUAC was the investigation of un-American and subversive activities. This included looking at the possibility that the American Communist Party had infiltrated the Federal Writers Project and other New Deal projects. In 1940 Marcantonio argued: "If communism is destroyed, I do not know what some of you will do. It has become the most convenient method by which you wrap yourselves in the American flag in order to cover up some of the greasy stains on the legislative toga. You can vote against the unemployed, you can vote against the W.P.A. workers, and you can emasculate the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States; you can try to destroy the National Labor Relations Law, the Magna Carta of American labor; you can vote against the farmer; and you can do all that with a great deal of impunity, because after you have done so you do not have to explain your vote.
Marcantonio was against United States involvement in the early stages of the Second World War because he believed it was "a war between two axes, the Wall Street-Downing Street Axis versus the Rome-Tokyo-Berlin Axis, contending for empire and for exploitation of more and more people." However, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor he played an active role in the American Committee for Russian War Relief. Along with Fiorello La Guardia, Charlie Chaplin, Wendell Willkie, Orson Welles, Rockwell Kent and Pearl Buck, Marcantonio campaigned during the summer of 1942 for the opening of a second-front in Europe.
In 1944 a New York State re-districting made possible a new attempt to defeat him by removing part of his old district and adding to the new 18th Congressional District. As Harpers Magazine pointed out: "The Twentieth Congressional District no longer exists. the New York Legislature, dominated by upstate Republicans who have nothing to fear from Marcantonio, has reapportioned the state and tried to gerrymander Marcantonio out of office. In the new Eighteenth District, he will still have most of his East Harlem Spaniards and Italians but life will be complicated by the addition of vast German and Irish hordes from the adjoining Yorkville area." Despite these attempts to remove him, he carried the district by a majority of 66,390.
In 1946, the media did everything it could to defeat Marcantonio and the American Labor Party in East Harlem. Despite the smear campaign he still won by 5,500 votes. As Sidney Shallet pointed out: "What matters to them is not whether Marcantonio is red, pink, black, blue or purple, but that he is 'their' Congressman a... tireless fighter for the man on the streets of East Harlem. He is willing to live in their slums, rub elbows with the best and the worst of them, work himself to the thin end of a frazzle for them. He spends his dough on them, takes up their battles against the landlords.... On occasions... the Congressman even has carried scuttles of coal personally to heatless tenements. Anyone who wants to see him... can do so."
Richard Rovere described the work of Marcantonio after his election: "The scene in the La Guardia Club after one o'clock on Sunday looks like nothing so much as a busy day in the clinic of a great city hospital. Marcantonio and three or four secretaries sit at desks on a platform in the front of the main hall. Before them on wooden camp chairs are about a hundred constituents, many of them cradling infants in their arms... as many as four hundred may come and go in an afternoon.... They speak in Spanish, Italian, English, and various mixtures of the three. Marcantonio can always answer in kind, throwing in a little Yiddish if the need arises. Mostly their problems concern money or jobs."
Along with his colleague, Leo Isacson, Marcantonio campaigned for equality in the armed forces. When Eugene Hoffman of Mitchigan argued against this move, Marcantonio pointed out: " The doctrine that has been advanced here by the gentleman from Michigan is a doctrine of insult to the various races that compose this great nation. When he speaks of an inferior race, what is it? When he speaks of a superior race, what is it? Contemporary history has demonstrated conclusively that only Nazis, those who imposed on this world the most barbarian rule ever conceived by man or devil, were capable of talking of superior races or inferior races or of denouncing the intermingling of races."
Marcantonio joined forces with Emanuel Celler to argue against the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency. "With all of the vast powers that are given this agency under the guise of research and study, you are subjecting labor unions and business firms to the will of the military. You are opening the door for the placing of these intelligence agents, supposed to deal with security pertaining to foreign as well as internal affairs, in the midst of labor organizations... I am sure if it were not for the cold war hysteria, very few Members of the Congress would vote for that provision. Certainly the majority would not vote to suspend the rules so that you must take this bill as it is without any opportunity for amendment, despite its serious implications against the security of the liberties of the American people."
On the morning of 20th July, 1948, Eugene Dennis, the general secretary of the American Communist Party and eleven other party leaders, including John Gates, William Z. Foster, Benjamin Davis, Robert G. Thompson, Gus Hall, Benjamin Davis, Henry M. Winston, and Gil Green were arrested and charged under the Alien Registration Act. This law, passed by Congress in 1940, made it illegal for anyone in the United States "to advocate, abet, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the government".
Vito Marcantonio decided to help with their political defence. During this period of McCarthyism, this was political suicide. As one political commentator pointed out: "Marcantonio's opposition in the 81st Congress to both major parties on such fundamental issues as foreign policy, labor relations and civil liberties had become so outstanding that extraordinary measures were taken to prevent his reelection. A three party coalition of the Democratic, Republican and Liberal parties, supported by every major newspaper in New York City, backed a single candidate against him." The New York Times ran a series of editorials on three successive days urging his defeat. Even so, Marcantonio still won over 40% of the votes in the 18th congressional district.
After his defeat he maintained his two neighborhood offices so the people of East Harlem could still visit him to gain help with their problems. Marcantonio remained one of the strongest opponents of Joe McCarthy and the Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was legal counsel of civil rights activist, William Du Bois.
Marcantonio was also opposed to the Korean War: "Tragically, after 27 months of killing in Korea, with 119,000 American casualties, some of us accept the Korean conflict as we do the flowing of the Hudson River. After 14 months of talk at Panmunjom some have come to feel that this so-called police action or little war is something with which we can live. They have forgotten that war in our time is like cancer if it is not stopped it spreads. If this Korean war is not stopped now, it too will spread... The resolving of every other issue, civil rights, labor, civil liberties, agriculture, the economic well-being of the American people, depends on cease fire in Korea."
In 1952 Presidential Election Marcantonio supported Vincent Hallinan, the leader of the Progressive Party. "A vote for the Progressive Party in 1952... is a vote as valuable as that cast for the Liberty Party in 1840 against slavery, and for the Free Soil Party in 1848 and 1852 against extension of slavery. It is a vote similar to the one that made up the one million votes for Eugene V. Debs in 1920, which in turn led to the four million votes for LaFollette in 1924 and for victory for Roosevelt in 1932. Great causes were never won by sacrificing a real fight and substituting for it the seeming lesser evil."
In 1953 Marcantonio decided to resign from the American Labor Party and to campaign for his old seat as an independent: "I shall continue to strive as an independent for the things for which I have striven so hard. I shall continue to do so as an independent endeavoring for the political realignment which is inevitable. It is as inevitable as the failure of the Republican and Democrat foreign policy and the economy that is based upon it." It was believed that he had a good chance of success. However, at the age of 51, he died of a heart attack on 9th August, 1954. Probably the most left-wing person to hold a seat in Congress, over 20,000 people attended Marcantonio's funeral in New York City.
Given what we know about how the CIA have used drugs to cause opponents to have heart attacks, is it possible that Vito Marcantonio was murdered?
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Thank you for your comments. Maybe we can turn this thread into tributes to our parents. After all, they are the biggest influence on us as people.
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You can find out more about these brave men here:
James Peck
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USApeckJ.htm
Igal Roodenko
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAroodenko.htm
Joseph Felmet
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfelmet.htm
George Houser
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhouser.htm
Bayard Rustin
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In early 1947, the Congress on Racial Equality announced plans to send eight white and eight black men into the Deep South to test the Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in interstate travel unconstitutional. organized by George Houser and Bayard Rustin, the Journey of Reconciliation was to be a two week pilgrimage through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Although Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) was against this kind of direct action, he volunteered the service of its southern attorneys during the campaign. Thurgood Marshall, head of the NAACP's legal department, was strongly against the Journey of Reconciliation and warned that a "disobedience movement on the part of Negroes and their white allies, if employed in the South, would result in wholesale slaughter with no good achieved."
The Journey of Reconciliation began on 9th April, 1947. The team included Igal Roodenko, George Houser, Bayard Rustin, James Peck, Joseph Felmet, Nathan Wright, Conrad Lynn, Wallace Nelson, Andrew Johnson, Eugene Stanley, Dennis Banks, William Worthy, Louis Adams, Worth Randle and Homer Jack.
James Peck was arrested with Bayard Rustin and Andrew Johnson in Durham. After being released he was arrested once again in Asheville and charged with breaking local Jim Crow laws. In Chapel Hill Peck and four other members of the team was dragged off the bus and physically assaulted before being taken into custody by the local police.
Members of the Journey of Reconciliation team were arrested several times. In North Carolina, two of the African Americans, Bayard Rustin and Andrew Johnson, were found guilty of violating the state's Jim Crow bus statute and were sentenced to thirty days on a chain gang. However, Judge Henry Whitfield made it clear he found that behaviour of the white men even more objectionable. He told Igal Roodenko and Joseph Felmet: "It's about time you Jews from New York learned that you can't come down her bringing your niggers with you to upset the customs of the South. Just to teach you a lesson, I gave your black boys thirty days, and I give you ninety."
The Journey of Reconciliation achieved a great deal of publicity and was the start of a long campaign of direct action by the Congress of Racial Equality. In February 1948 the Council Against Intolerance in America gave George Houser and Bayard Rustin the Thomas Jefferson Award for the Advancement of Democracy for their attempts to bring an end to segregation in interstate travel.
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I have just updated my page on Abraham Muste:
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My mum died last week. She was 95 years old and was desperate to go. The last few years have been very difficult for her. Several times she told her children they she had enough and wanted to die. Mum said that she should have died just after her ninetieth birthday party. Several people made speeches at her party paying tribute to her life. Mum said afterwards that it was like attending her own funeral. Before that I had sent her a long letter explaining why she had been such a great mother. I know we usually say these things in conversation but it is important to put in into print. I would urge everyone who enjoys a good relationship with their parents to write to them explaining your thoughts about them.
Everybody liked my mum. One of her great features was that she never made value-judgements about other people. I cannot remember her ever criticising anything I ever did. That is not to say that she did not influence my behaviour. Such was the loving bond that she created, that I was very keen to please her. The same goes for my brother and sister. She used to proudly boast that none of her children had caused her any problems. She was the main reason for that situation.
My mum was in many ways very different from her children. Although she was an intelligent woman, she was not well-educated. When she was a child, her mother, who had been a domestic servant before her marriage, told her that girls did not read books. Mum admitted that she did as she was told and never read a book in her life.
My dad, like my mum, left school at fourteen and after serving in the British Army during the war, could only find unskilled factory work. However, he was a reader of books. I can still see him walking down the street carrying a pile of library books (he used my mother’s tickets as well as his own) that had been tied together by an old belt.
I also remember having to keep quiet while he sat in his chair reading his library books. My mum was the one person who did not keep to this rule. I can still see my dad putting his book down and telling my mum that she had five minutes to say what she needed to say before he went back to his secret world. This usually resulted in my mum forgetting what she had wanted to say and retreating back into the kitchen.
My dad was killed when I was eleven. This was before I had developed a love of books. Later I asked my mum what books my dad read. Unfortunately, she had no idea, nor did my aunts and uncles. It was really his secret world.
My mum had a tough life. Her parents were poor. As the eldest child she was expected to take care of the younger children. When she found a boyfriend, she was told she had to be back home by 10. As a result, she never saw the end of a film at the cinema. The Second World War was declared while she was on honeymoon. My dad was called-up into the army and mum worked in an armaments factory in the East End of London and she saw some terrible sights during the Blitz. My dad survived the war but his experiences left him with deep depressions. His physical injuries meant that he lost the trade he loved and was forced to take low-paid, unskilled work. Her hard life was made even worse when he died when she was 42.
Mum never asked questions about your school work. She just assumed that like her we would leave school at the earliest opportunity. This we did, although all three of us returned to education later in life. I remember on one occasion she asked me with a very confused look on her face: “Why have you gone back to school.” Both my brother and I became teachers. Several years later a newly qualified teacher was given use of a council house next to my mum’s house. She proudly told him that both her sons were teachers. He asked her what we taught. With some embarrassment she admitted that she did not know. This incident reflected the cultural gap between my mum and her children. I cannot remember once in my life asking my mother for advice. I am sure my brother and sister would tell the same story. However, that does not matter, because we had each other. But what she did give us was unconditional love. Once you have that, anything is possible.
Mum’s only hobby was talking. The only demand she ever really made of you was to listen to her talk about what was important to her. She told stories. She never really discussed issues. One of the consequences of her lack of education was that she found it difficult to look at problems in an analytical way. Without the support of her children, especially her daughter, she would have found life very difficult.
Mum did not really enjoy her last few years. She had spent her life looking after others. She saw that as her role in life. Mum disliked intensely the idea that she could no longer do that. She hated being dependent on others. Three months ago she took to her bed and tried to will herself to die. Mum stopped taking all her medication, insisting that she was no longer a diabetic. She also asked the doctor for an injection to put her out of her misery. It is a shame that the end of so many people takes the form. This is the flip-side of medical progress.
In those last few months mum developed a belief in God. It was important to her that she saw again her two husbands and Judith, my wife. My sister, who used to be a nurse, says this is not unusual when people are dying.
When my mum was in her seventies I spent several days with her taping her life-story. A few years ago I returned and filmed the interviews. It will probably be sometime before I am brave enough to watch and listen to these tapes.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWsimkin.htm
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Message from Gary Mack:
I'm confused. It's apparently OK for Oliver Stone to distort JFK history, but not Joel Surnow?
Gary Mack
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There's only one tiny flaw in this, Santander are not in a financial crisis, in fact, they appear to have done very well out of the recent mess.
You are far too generous in your assessment. There seems to be several flawed arguments in the article.
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I have noticed recently that by carrying out searches for books at Amazon you are given the titles of reactionary books that are linked to that subject. For example, I have just carried out a search for "Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism" by James G. Ryan. It came up with:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?u...p;x=21&y=15
The top book for this search is not "Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism" but "Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley" by Kathryn S. Olmsted. The book that I was looking for only comes 6th in the list. Other books in the list are right-wing attacks on the American left with an emphasis on Soviet spies. Yet, Earl Browder was expelled by the American Communist Party for trying to make it independent of Soviet influence. Browder, was trying to develop a party that was like the British Labour Party (it had just had a landslide victory in the 1945 General Election).
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I have just tried to visit the Fort Benning website.
I got the following message:
"The security certificate presented by this website was not issued by a trusted certificate authority."
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Some videos on the case:
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On 25th March, 1931, Victoria Price (19) and Ruby Bates (17) claimed they were gang-raped by 12 black men on a Memphis bound train. Nine black youths on the train were arrested and charged with the crime. Twelve days later the trial of Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Ozzie Powell, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams and Willie Roberson took place at Scottsboro, Alabama. Their defence attorney was an alcoholic, who was drunk throughout the trial. The prosecutor on the other hand, told the jury, "Guilty or not, let's get rid of these niggers". After three days all nine men were found guilty: eight, including two aged 14, were sentenced to death and the youngest man, who was only thirteen, was given life imprisonment.
Two famous writers, Theodore Dreiser and Lincoln Steffens, publicized the case by writing articles on how the men had been falsely convicted. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and the American Communist Party both became involved in the campaign and Clarence Darrow, America's leading criminal lawyer, took up the case. In November, 1932, the United States Supreme Court ordered a second trial on the grounds that the men had been inadequately defended in court.
Although Ruby Bates testified at the second trial that the rape story had been invented by Victoria Price and the crime had not taken place, the men were once again found guilty. A third trial ended with the same result but a fourth in January, 1936, resulted in four of the men being acquitted. Four more were released in the 1940s but the last prisoner, Andy Wright, had to wait until 9th June, 1950, before achieving his freedom. This was nineteen years and two months after his arrest in Alabama.
The nine men were finally pardoned in October, 1976. Only one of the men, Clarence Norris, who had spent 15 years in prison for the crime, was still alive. He commented when he heard the news: "I only wish the other eight boys could be here today. Their lives were ruined by this thing, too." In April 1977 the Alabama House Judiciary Committee rejected a proposal to pay Norris $10,000 in compensation for his time spent in prison.
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I especially recommend the two-part documentary, Blackmailing the President.
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I am just updating my page on J. Edgar Hoover. We know he was very involved in the cover-up of the assassination. Does anyone have information that suggests he was involved in the assassination?
I have added a couple of good YouTube videos on Hoover here:
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Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed that his decision to remain neutral during the Spanish Civil War was his biggest mistake in the field of foreign policy.
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Helena Normanton is one of the most important women in history but there is very little on her on the web. Some facts about her:
Born in 1882, her father was killed when she was only four years old. Her mother, Jane Normanton, moved to Brighton with her two young daughters. She ran a small grocery shop and also turned her family home at 4 Clifton Place into a boarding house.
In 1918 Normanton applied to be admitted to the Middle Temple. When this application was rejected because she was a woman, she took the case to the House of Lords. However, before the case could be heard, Parliament passed the Disqualification (Removal) Bill. Normanton immediately applied again and therefore became the first woman admitted as a student to the bar. After passing her exams she was called to the bar on 17th November 1922, a few months after Ivy Williams, had become the first woman to do so (but she did not practise).
In 1924 she became the first married British woman to be issued a passport in her maiden name. Later that year she became the first female counsel in a case at the Old Bailey. The following year she became the first woman to conduct a case in the United States, that established American women's right to retain their maiden names.
In 1938 Normanton was co-founder with Vera Brittain, Edith Summerskill and Helen Nutting of the Married Women's Association. The organisation sought equal relationships between men and women in marriage.
In 1948 she became the first woman to lead the prosecution in a murder trial, and the following year became one of the first two women to be appointed King's Counsel.
Normanton was a pacifist and was a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Helena Normanton died on 14th October, 1957, and is buried at St Wulfran's Churchyard in Ovingdean.
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Amid additional allegations of plagiarism, journalist and South Beach resident Gerald Posner announced via his blog and Twitter that he has resigned from The Daily Beast, the year-old Internet news publication co-founded by Tina Brown.
Posner wrote that his boss, Daily Beast Executive Editor Edward Felsenthal, called him on Wednesday to say an internal investigation had "uncovered more instances'' of "apparent plagiarism.''
"I instantly offered my resignation and Edward accepted,'' Posner posted on his blog -- geraldpos ner.blogspot.com. Posner is The Daily Beast'schief investigative journalist.
Jack Shafer, a writer for Slate.com, reported last week that Posner had lifted five sentences from a Miami Herald article about the battle over the late Ben Novack Jr.'s estate.
On Monday, Shafer reported more instances of plagiarism by Posner from a Miami Herald blog, a Miami Herald editorial, Texas Lawyer magazine and a healthcare journalism blog.
This is not the first time Posner has been found guilty of plagiarism. He lifted great chunks of the Warren Report for "Case Closed".
Voodoo History - Conspiracy Theories
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
After reading the reviews, I object to spending good money on Aaronovitch's book, however, I have ordered it via my library and will be willing to discuss it when it arrives.