when JFK, RFK, King, Lennon, & Wellstone died, I cried

[mopaul]

but i can't dredge up one bitter tear for the dearly departed saint ronald reagan.

and it was the people who controlled reagan, who arranged the murders of JFK, RFK, King, and thousands of innocents in Central America. the same people, who are now running america.

ronald reagan and his family whom i am supposed to respect now that he's dead, somehow avoided all the horror and carnage and loss and ruination. i CANNOT dredge up one bitter tear for them. call me a freeper.

if a great man dies, it will effect me, it has many times. when a nazi scumbag disgrace to america dies, it delights me.

[OpSomBlood]

1. I will acknowledge but I will not mourn.

n/t

[greatauntoftriplets]

2. I just learned that my uncle died....

and that has made me cry. He was 97, ill, and had lived his life. Nevertheless, he was a great man.

[mopaul]

3. 97....sorry to hear it

many great men have died, and they get no grandiose tribute. i bet he's the kinda guy who deserves it though.

none of us will ever be president, and get called a hero when we die, but we all do many heroic things that go unlauded. just getting to be 97 is pretty damned heroic.

[greatauntoftriplets]

5. And married to the same woman for more than 70 years....

until she died just over three years ago. Thanks, mopaul.

[H2O Man]

4. To: greatauntoftriplets

I am sorry that your uncle died. I'm glad that he had a full life, but that does not make the loss any less painful.

In terms of the late Ronald Reagan, I am reminded -- and I hope greatauntoftriplets will comment on this -- of when one of the English "landlords" who oppressed Ireland died. The common folk would not be sad. In fact, most would rejoice. And I think that's by and large what we are seeing on DU in the last 36 hours.

Yet true civilization comes only when we as a people are able to move beyond the emotions that we feel, and to adhere to certain principles. I, too, cried at the deaths of JFK, MKL, RFK, Malcolm X, and John Lennon .... in fact, their lives and deaths still move me. And I feel no sadness - in fact, no emtion - about the passing of RR. But I suspect that people finding pleasure in another person's agony will serve as a road-block to true civilization.

[greatauntoftriplets]

6. Thanks for the wishes.

I agree with you analogy to the death of Irish landlords. Often, it would take time for the information to get to the Irish people, since so many of the landlords never set foot in Ireland and lived in London or on their great English estates.

I skimmed the front section of the Chicago Tribune today, no real news in there.

[mopaul]

7. I know you don't mean to call me uncivilized, but i take your point

and also your point about the serfs rejoicing about the death of a lord. good analogy. maybe that's what's happening with me.

[H2O Man]

9. That's right.

I am not at all implying that you, or the majority of DUers, are "uncivilized." I will say that Mr. Reagan defines "uncivilized" for this conversation. I also recall Malcom's classic talk about the "house negroes and the field negroes." When "the master" got sick, the house negroes would be concerned. The field negroes would pray he died. Malcolm understood the passions of the masses.

I am not opposed to a single word you have said about this subject. Our side needs to vent. But I am hoping that people listen closely to each other. "When passions drive, let reason hold the reins."- Ben Franklin.

[mopaul]

11. we are on the same team

i read a lot of x's stuff in college in the late 60's, and some of my rage comes from the truths he exposed. his words were bitter pills to a white kid, but i related exactly. you can't deny he cut through the english language and the way the white man has structured it to hide the truth.

today, lies are being told about the wonderful reagan, and a few truths will slip through as well.

[H2O Man]

12. This might sound strange....

but I like to think about "what if" Malcolm were here today: oh, what I'd give to see him debate a turd like Sean Hannity, or that loud-mouthed know-it-all Bill O'Reilly!!!!! I'm not the first to say this, but Malcolm WAS all about America, in one of the purest senses that any leader has been. Years ago, I bought six albums of hs speeches. I like to read the books, bu I love to hear him speak!

[seemslikeadream]

8. Gimme Some Truth The John Lennon FBI Files

Gimme Some Truth The John Lennon FBI Files


The CIA released one of its Lennon documents in September 1984-a teletype dated February 8, 1972, reporting on Lennon's plan for a "caravan of entertainers who will follow U.S. primaries and raise funds for local radical groups along the way" (see p. 157). About half of it was blacked out under the national security exemption, but one word in the heading was released: "MHCHAOS."

Rosenbaum and Marmalefsky agreed that the word rang a bell, and since I was the historian, I was dispatched to the UCLA Research Library reference room. The news indices there were clear: "MHCHAOS" was a secret, illegal CIA program of surveillance of domestic political dissent, a violation of the CIA charter that had been revealed in 1976. "MH" was a CIA code indicating worldwide area of operations. The CHAOS program had been launched in August 1967, under Director Richard Helms, by James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's chief of counterintelligence, and headed by Richard Ober, a counterintelligence specialist in the Directorate of Plans, Harvard '43. Ober's tasks had already included developing CIA strategy to respond to the revelation by Ramparts magazine in February 1967 that the CIA had been secretly funding the National Student Association for fifteen years. Under the CHAOS operation, the investigation of Ramparts was expanded to cover the entire underground press and given "highest priority." To keep the illegal activity from being leaked by CIA employees, the operation was housed in the basement of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in specially shielded vaults that blocked electronic eavesdropping.

The CIA sent Operation CHAOS domestic intelligence reports on political dissent first to President Johnson and later to Nixon, as well as to Henry Kissinger and John Dean, counsel to the president. Under Nixon, the CHAOS program was expanded to sixty agents, who, according to Angus MacKenzie, "became the Nixon administration's primary source of intelligence about the antiwar leadership."17

CIA Operation CHAOS was revealed in 1976 by Representative Bella Abzug's House Subcommittee on Government Information and Individual Rights. The CIA director at the time was George Bush, who conceded in congressional testimony that "the operation in practice resulted in some improper accumulation of material on legitimate domestic activities." He defended the agency, declaring that "only a very small fraction of reporting on the activities of American citizens in the US was done by the CIA." Abzug proposed that individuals who had been targets of Operation CHAOS be notified by the CIA and given a chance to review their dossiers. Bush replied that notification was unworkable and proposed instead that the CIA "destroy . . . all the information which was improperly collected under the so-called CHAOS program." Because of congressional insistence, Bush agreed that the FOIA would make Operation CHAOS files available under the Act.18 Thus the appearance of the CHAOS memo here (see p. 157).

more
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8721/8721.ch01.html

[Seabiscuit]

10. Agreed

I'm just thankful Nancy "pulled the plug" on that gasbag at the worst possible time for W., stealing W.'s thunder ("blunder") during his European tour. Thank you, Nancy, for not doing so in October, on the eve of the elections. Had that happened, we'd be subjected to a right-wing media blitz about Ronnie Rayguns for a month, distracting the nation from the host of sins committed by Bushco.

By the time the Democratic National Convention rolls around, people will be asking: "Ronnie who?"

Then we can get down to business.