7 Responses to “Kerry Slammed for Being Anti-War”

1. Nicole Says:
   February 16th, 2004 at 2:05 pm

   As much as I’ve read, Kerry did support the war back during it’s inception:

   http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0209-03.htm

2. macb Says:
   February 16th, 2004 at 7:57 pm

   I long ago concluded that it was a waste of time hoping that the media would arrive at some consistent set of rules on what is fair to cover and what not.

   While any organizations can attempt to be “Fair and Balanced” it is a goal mathematically impossible to achieve. Even CSpan which presents political events “in their entirety and without commentary” can’t present ALL events, and in their selection of what events to present, and how often to re-broadcast particular events one could imagine some bias (although I think they come pretty dang close to neutral). The other televised media don’t come close to being neutral on anything, and the print media aren’t much better. Print media however at least have the option (usually not taken) of presenting whole tables filled with actual facts, and when I (occasionally) read a newspaper I always look for such things… scanning past the words to look for actual numbers!

   The Internet of course can do so much more. Read any print media’s web site and then go looking for non-organizational information on the same topic and you are likely to find all sorts of useful things not found in the New York Times.

   Fundamental research takes time though, and you can’t serve two masters at once, getting the story out first (or even approaching first) and actually verifying the facts are mutually exclusive activities.

   I recently found a very good, and apparently bi-partisan site that pokes hole in everyone’s hype. Here, in particular is one regarding Kerry’s leadership claims:

   factcheck.org

   Back up to the root of the web site for similar debunking on the other candidates as well.

   With regard to the Fonda connection, you might have heard mention of photographs of them together. Apparently there are two (I have seen neither) one with them in a crowd, sitting in the same general area, and another with them standing on a stage (I think) together. The latter one is apparently a fake, and from what I read, the fakeness is pretty obvious. That didn’t stop some people from publishing it however. If he is the nominee, I’ll take more interest in what he SAID at the time than who he was photographed with. I give candidates a lot of credit for changing their positions on specific issues as the situation changes, but I am more concerned with candidates that seem to daily change their entire political philosophy depending on who the local audience is. If I were standing in front of two thousand mine workers I’m sure I’d say nice things about them too. That doesn’t make me presidential material.

   In the end, take everything you read with a grain of salt and do your own fact checking to the extent possible. Along the way, be sure to separate

   Entertainment
   from
   Data
   or
   Raw Data

   (Sorry if those links don’t work. Someone whould tell the Ice Cream Man not to embed so much secret data in a simple link to a Flash cartoon).

3. Aine Says:
   February 17th, 2004 at 4:41 am

   Bit by bit I am working on a blog (it seemed only natural to use a blog for this) which will be a searchable and editable list of men who were members of Skull & Bones at Yale University. Right now that project is on hold, along with a couple of other ones while I do some contract work, but eventually I’ll get back to it. What it boils down to is a place to deposit info from various sources about some of the most influential men in the U.S. (and maybe the world) now and in the past. Readers will also be able to contribute their info via the commenting feature, which is real handy for something like this. I’m also using the “keywords” feature of MovableType while building the name entries, which makes the search function of MT very accurate.

   And yes, I do consider a variety of information sources to be key. Unlike traditional journalism, I’m under no one’s deadline to break a story, giving me time to check facts and do cross-referencing. I think this is where we freelancers have an advantage.

4. macb Says:
   February 17th, 2004 at 7:30 pm

   I’ll be interested to see what you find. Seems like I ran across something like this already, but I don’t have a link. If I see it again I’ll pass it on. Does this sound familiar?: Skull and Bones, founded in England (maybe under a different name), secret mission to keep England and former colonies (particularly US) in dominant position in world politics. The thing I read wasn’t flattering, but it wasn’t something I’d be particularly upset about (unless I lived in China). The information focused on these guys working together, and in secret, in a variety of areas, mostly leading to political or financial profit for themselves of course.

   On the other hand… consider that the entire graduate class of Yale and Harvard (and a few others) each year can be thought of as a secret society. The schools furnish a good education to those lucky enough to attend, but more importantly they place each graduate in a ready-to-go network, with some graduating right into positions of power within their own families companies, and others being hired on immediately by those same classmates.

   My hunch is that while there may be some “conspiracy” surrounding Skull and Bones, it is no more (or less) powerful than any of the Ivy League institutions, Oxford, some of the big national fraternal organizations, the Masons, the Catholic church, or the Presbiterians for that matter. Contacts work, and those of us who eschew such organizations place ourselves at a disadvantage in many respects. My ex-wife, who had the same mediocre credentials as I have got “lucky” working with a start-up here a number of years ago (she’s bright and a hard worker, which helped too). After striking it rich, she quit the job and got a Stanford MBA. Her next 3 jobs (none of which yielded the same success as her first “lucky” one) were all working for, or with, former classmates. Must be nice to start out as a VP, making $150k and up on a trial basis, even if your stock options don’t turn into anything.

   While it is nice to hope that the world will move more and more toward a meritocracy, I haven’t witnessed any movement in that direction in my 50+ years.

   There is a new radio program here in Washington that got it’s start after 9/11 in NYC. I’ve found it a good (I like news shows going in the background most of the day) source for relatively hard facts on foreign affairs. Guys name is John Batchelor. Almost every show either dispels some conspiracy theory, or creates a new one. Entertaining, even if you don’t buy it all. A quote from last nights show: “In war, everything is disinformation, until it’s not, including what you are hearing now.” That was followed by the revelation (to me anyway, if it’s true) that the US and Brits work together to spy on each others citizens. Since each has privacy laws protecting their citizens from their own governments. But nothing (for example) prevents the Brits from taping into our phone networks, recording phone calls and just sharing the juicy stuff with their counterparts over here. We do the same for them (according to the report).

   Anyway, 9PM-1AM EST if you’re interested. I’ve never tried the internet connection for the show, so I don’t know how reliable it is.

   John Batchelor Show

   Brian Lamb had him on CSpan a month or so ago and is apparently a big fan. Good enough recommendation for me.

5. Aine Says:
   February 17th, 2004 at 8:02 pm

   Yep, it originated in England, but the branch at Yale is/was, I believe, a separate entity. I’m not interested so much in the conspiracy theories about the organization, I’m more interested in their “social network” than anything else… likewise the Bilderbergs annual meetings.

   If you want a sneak peek at the Skull & Bones blog it’s right here. Keep in mind that this is an extremely long list of names, and I’m not even finished entering the C’s yet. Thusfar, there is little background info there, that will start getting filled in once I get all the names in there. I do have a few links in the sidebar to external sites for more info, too.

6. Lisa Karens Says:
   March 19th, 2004 at 11:34 pm

   Not content with spreading her poison within the home ranks, Fonda began soliciting returned Vietnam veterans to speak publicly about alleged atrocities committed by American soldiers against Vietnamese women and children. The broadcasts were coordinated with North Vietnamese officials in Canada.Fonda was the major financial support to one of the most damaging pro-Hanoi groups called Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), which was led for a time by Robert Muller, a Vietnam veteran who had been shot in the spine. VVAW, at its peak membership, mustered about 7,000, some of whom had been indoctrinated in the “Coffee Houses.” That organization was later led by Vietnam vet John Kerry, now a U.S. senator and former co-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. In 1972, Fonda took her pro-communist radicalism to North Vietnam. She visited that country’s Russian built anti-aircraft emplacements and cheered the spirits of its communist gunners by wearing a gunners steel helmet and peeping through the gun sight, “looking for one of those blue eyed murderers.”At a time when 50,000 U.S. servicemen had already died on the battlefields of Vietnam, Fonda sided with the communists, making radio broadcasts from Hanoi designed to break the morale of U.S. fighting forces while encouraging the North Vietnamese to fight harder and kill more Americans. Fonda’s Hanoi radio broadcasts and propaganda films were especially painful and damaging to American servicemen held as prisoners of war by the Hanoi Reds. Communist interrogators used the Fonda recordings, along with starvation and torture in attempting to brainwash American POWs into becoming turncoats.Upon returning to the United States, Fonda told the world press that U.S. prisoners of war were being well treated and not tortured. Her outrageous claims were later exposed when American POWs were finally freed and told of years of agonizing tortures and inhuman treatment. Fonda responded, not with an apology, but with an accusation calling our returned POWs “liars and hypocrites.” Fonda’s actions stirred up a firestorm in America, prompting nationwide demands that she be tried for treason.David Hoffman, a former POW who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1971, said that he had been tortured because of Fonda’s visit to Hanoi. “The torture resulted in a permanent injury that plagues me to this day,” says Hoffman, who suffers a disfigured arm inflicted by brutal communist guards at the POW camp known as the “Zoo.”When Jane Fonda turned up, she asked that some of us come out and talk with her,” he recalled bitterly. “No one wanted to. The guards got very upset, because they sensed the propaganda value of a famous American war protestor proving how well they were treating us.A couple of guards came to my cell and ordered me out. I resisted, and they got violently angry. My arm had been broken when I was shot down, and the Vietnamese broke it a second time. It had not healed well, and they knew it caused me great pain. “They twisted it. Excruciating pain ripped through my body.”Still I resisted and they got more violent, hitting me and shouting, ‘You must go!’ I knew there was a limit to which I could push them before they might actually kill me.”I was dragged out to see Fonda. I decided to play the role. I knew if I didn’t, not only would I suffer - but the other guys would be tortured or beaten or worse. “When I saw Fonda and heard her antiwar rhetoric, I was almost sick to my stomach. She called us criminals and murderers.”What she did was a slap in the face to every American. It was wrong, ill-advised and stupid. But it was her right. Unfortunately, it was not my right to refuse to be seen with her.There is no way I will ever forget what she did to me. I have the reminder here - in an arm that can never be normal again.In late January, 1973, Fonda divorced her husband and three days later married pro-communist radical leader Tom Hayden, who had founded the revolutionary Students For Democratic Society in 1962 and was a defendant in the conspiracy trial of the “Chicago Seven.” Fonda later recalled “I told them my story - why I was antiwar and why I had gone to Vietnam.”Fonda appeared on TV with Barbara Walters and apologized saying: “I’m very sorry for some of what I did…I’d like to say something not just to the veterans in Waterbury but to the men in Vietnam who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of the things I said or did. I feel I owe them an apology…There were times when I was thoughtless and careless…I’m very sorry that I hurt them.”The vets said “no apology will ever erase the pictures of Jane Fonda in giggly bliss, laughing and clapping her hands, as she mounted the gunner’s seat of a communist Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.December of 1991, Hanoi Jane, the once fiery communist activist, who advocated violent revolution to overthrow America’s democracy and the free enterprise system, married billionaire Ted Turner,veteran summed it up: “It is a shame that some of those who fought so well for America can be treated as ‘forgotten ghosts’ and left to rot as POWs in Hanoi’s prisons, while those like Fonda, who so passionately supported our enemy and condemned our system of government, are now overwhelmingly blessed by its wealth.” read it : http://www.usvetdsp.com/story8.htm

7. Bruce Johnson Says:
   March 28th, 2004 at 9:41 pm

   If you’re interested in ‘Skull and Bones’, you’ll find these links extremely useful:
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/bushkery.htm
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/BUSHSKUL.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/MORSKULL.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/SKULLSEC.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/BONESMEN.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/SECEST.HTM”
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/kemp.htm
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/WHOSWHO.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/TRAGEDY.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/TRUEBUSH.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/BUSHLOVE.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/IMDECEPT.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/RICHRULE.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/BUSHGROV.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/BUSHSAUD.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/BUSHMIAS.HTM
   http://www.survivalistskills.com/YALEBONE.HTM

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