RE: [Marxism] FW: "Pedigree": Bush Gang, Bonesmen, Nazis and Eug enics (Part IV )

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Perelman [mailto:michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 6:28 PM
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] FW: "Pedigree": Bush Gang, Bonesmen, Nazis and
Eugenics (Part IV )


I found an interview with the author of the book.  He sounds like he has
some good information & some crackpot information  -- John Birch stuff like
the USSR was a tool of US finance.
 --
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Hi Michael,

Great to hear from you as always. Hope you get some kind of break this
holiday.

I too have researched Sutton's background. No doubt some of the ultra-right
"black-helicopters" crowd has picked up and utilized some of Sutton's stuff;
Sutton himself has never been a Bircher or member of any right-wing group.
Having a background in both engineering and economics, Sutton was brought
into  the Hoover Institute to research Soviet technology--development and
capabilities. He was also driven out of Hoover by CIA elements when he
exposed that the CIA's notions and projections of Soviet capabilities and
technological development were not only bogus and contrived, but
deliberately so to promote the Cold War and arms build-up. He was further
ostracized when after being assigned to research violations of anti-Soviet
embargoes by U.S companies (most of his stuff deals with the NEP period but
went up to the 1960s) he also included--more extensively--violations of
anti-nazi embargoes by U.S. companies and extended his work when he became
aware of Skull and Bones ( a membership list had been sent to him) in the
1980s.

It does point out a real problem in trying to "triangulate" from
diverse--ideologically--sources. Sometimes what appears to be a given "fact"
from diverse sources, is simply the same wrong assertion or pseudo-fact
being passed around and appearing to have been "verified" by diverse sources
from diverse analytical angles. I think this was what Stuart was trying to
get at.

But here is the flip-side on "reliable" sources. Counterpunch did an article
on Blackfeet struggles by Jeffrey St.Clair
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair0905.html Although some of the basic
facts were straight, this was essentially lifted out of the bourgeois press
with a little "radical jargon" thrown in. In this article, one nominally
"Blackfeet" woman was touted as some kind of "Joan D'Arc" of the Blackfeet.
Well I know this person and her background very well; part of my family
lives at Browning where I go frequently and I can tell you that except among
a few traitors and sell-outs, she is hated as a traitor and sell-out
herself. She was a darling of the BIA and some of the BIA sell-outs for
years. She is still a large landowner, her husband is alleged by honest and
knowledgeable Elders to be a major coke dealer at Browning (an
evidence-based allegation known very well by the BIA and FBI) and one phone
call to me or someone on the ground at Browning would have confirmed that
along with the hard evidence.  But because this was from Counterpunch, a
left and therfore "reliable" source, some elements on the left picked up on
this and basically repeated--again--this bogus bullshit in this story about
this woman.

So I do try to "triangulate", when I do take a pseudo-fact as fact and find
out about it I try to correct it publicly and then take it from there. But I
do believe that we on the left can discern and utilize facts from
ideologically diverse sources without necessarily taking on the misuses,
false inferences or false extrapolations --or interpolations--that may be
the product of how some of those facts are being used ideologically; and I
believe that we must do so--but always with caution.

Take care,

Jim

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