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Welcome to my Blog, The War On The 60s! - currently scoring record numbers of hits, thankyou very much!

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The birth of the Trendies: boutiques in Carnaby Street, London, in the 1960s; with the Post-War austerity finally over, young people now had massive spending power. (I'm pretty sure the bike in the foreground is a Triumph...)

"The War On The 60s" is the title of a book which I'm proposing to write.  The title is fairly evocative, I hope! - but let me explain a little more.

Ever since the 1960s happened, the “turbulent”, “sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll”, “We don't want your stinking war” decade has had a bad rap. “The War on The 60s” has ranged from verbal propaganda to actions that are not only sinister, but threaten our fundamental principles as a society.

This book I hope will help explain the 60s to the new young idealists, and perhaps remind those who shared the experience, what was so unique, beautiful and valuable about it - so good that it's been under attack ever since.

To those who dislike the 60s, it will help them to see that the period actually represented much of what is best in our humanity, with a magnificent heritage including the environmental movement, our first Black President and our first woman Secretary of State.

Then I hope you'll agree that “It’s time for a new 60s!”

Peace and Love,

Richard Lancaster.

So Cool! Instant Access to My Posts

I'm not much of a techie, as you know - what can you expect from an English Major?  However, I just googled The War On The 60s, and up came links to all the Posts on the Blog - very handy for those who missed one or two....

Here's the Link:  https://plus.google.com/116754171248675787521/posts

It's Time We Had Some Fun....

... and very soon I'll be bringing you  "Topless and Literary in NYC".

In the meantime, though - just cos it's on my mind - let's talk about  COINTELPRO.

This is from my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s":

"On a night in March 1971 when much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier boxing-match, a group of activists broke into the two-man FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, with a crowbar, and emptied the file cabinets of more than a thousand documents.

They called themselves The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, and the papers revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress any challenge to the status quo.

16 days later, over the Government's objections, the “Washington Post” revealed that it had received an envelope with 14 FBI documents, detailing how the bureau had enlisted a local police chief, mail carriers and a switchboard operator at nearby Swarthmore College to spy on campus and black activist groups in the Philadelphia area.

The “burglars” were never identified; and the American public heard for the first time a sinister new word,: "COINTELPRO". Short for the FBI's "secret counterintelligence program," this was created to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the U.S. Under these programs, beginning in 1956, the bureau worked to "enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles," as one COINTELPRO memo put it, "to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."

It wasn't until 1975-76 that the Senate mounted a full-scale investigation, known as the Church Committee after its chair, Sen. Church of Idaho. They found that the FBI, working with local Police forces, ignored the law and the Constitution....

“Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”

Along with the Anti-War Movement, and even occasionally the Ku Klux Klan, the prime target of Cointelpro was the Black Panthers."

More about the Black Panthers another time....

McCarthy and his "Ism"

Last week when I wrote about the idiot Michele Bachmann, who would be just a sad joke if she didn't influence significant numbers of voters (not to mention occupying a seat in our hallowed House of Representatives), I said I would post something about McCarthyism. 

The other day, the wondrous Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" showed Bachmann pronouncing to the world, on fair-and-balanced Fox News of course, “Literally, the decisions of our life and death, may very well be in the hands of the IRS.”

What can one say, except "WTF?"?  "Literally", Michele, the IRS doesn't have hands!  As for "our life and death", I'd be far more concerned about the Tea Party's Congress-Members endangering us, than I would the IRS.

So - back to McCarthyism....

Here's what I wrote in my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s" about a man who is an eternal stain on the honor of the United States:

"The justifiable fear of the nuclear Bomb provided an opening for one of the world's great charlatans. In 1950 Joseph McCarthy, a little-known Senator from Wisconsin, gave a speech to a Republican Women's Club. He produced a piece of paper which he claimed was a list of 205 known Communists working for the State Department. He never proved the guilt of these “spies”, indeed he never made the list public. But before he was done he had ruined hundreds of lives and careers.

His House Un-American Activities Committee (“Hewack”) with its blackmailing inquisitors, rampaged through industry, Universities, even Hollywood, trampling on the Constitution and terrorising people, mainly innocent, into choosing between “naming” their friends or going to jail for Contempt of Congress. A favorite “crime” invented by the McCarthy-ites was being “prematurely anti-Fascist”, that is having opposed Hitler before the Government did! McCarthy's antics goaded playwright Arthur Miller to write “The Crucible”, about the Puritan witch trials in 17th-century Massachusetts – and the name “Witch-Hunt” is still synonymous with McCarthyism."

COINTELPRO, Anyone?

From my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s" -

On a night in March 1971 when much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier boxing-match, a group of activists broke into the two-man FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, with a crowbar, and emptied the file cabinets of more than a thousand documents.

They called themselves The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, and the papers revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress any challenge to the status quo.

16 days later, over the Government's objections, the “Washington Post” revealed that it had received an envelope with 14 FBI documents, detailing how the bureau had enlisted a local police chief, mail carriers and a switchboard operator at nearby Swarthmore College to spy on campus and black activist groups in the Philadelphia area.

The “burglars” were never identified; and the American public heard for the first time a sinister new word,: "COINTELPRO". Short for the FBI's "secret counterintelligence program," this was created to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the U.S. Under these programs, beginning in 1956, the bureau worked to "enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles," as one COINTELPRO memo put it, "to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."

It wasn't until 1975-76 that the Senate mounted a full-scale investigation, known as the Church Committee after its chair, Sen. Church of Idaho. They found that the FBI, working with local Police forces, ignored the law and the Constitution....

“Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”