Barack Obama’s birth certificate “industry”

When Internet Powerhouse Andy Martin wrote his first column on Barack Obama’s family history and birth certificate, Andy had no idea he was creating an “industry” that would pursue Obama’s records to the ends of the earth. Although Obama’s mouthpiece Robert Gibbs says the BC has been released (Gibbs lies) and Fox News’ Shepard Smith has insulted people who question Obama’s missing records, Andy’s Army continues to battle Obama & Company to find the facts and tell the truth about Obama’s hidden “roots.”

Internet Powerhouse Andy Martin on the firestorm he created about Barack Obama’s bogus “birth certificate”

ContrarianCommentary.com
Andy Martin
Executive Editor

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

“What hath Andy wrought?”

Obama continues his obsessive self-destruction by playing endless games over his original, typewritten 1961 birth certificate

When Andy Martin “outed" Barack Obama’s family history in 2004, and raised questions about Obama’s birth certificate in 2007, he had no idea he was creating the “birther” industry


(NEW YORK)(June 24, 2009) Today brought me another basketful of e-mails about Barack Obama and his mysterious birth certificate.

Colonel Robert Pappas is badgering Hawai’i Governor Linda Lingle about Obama’s missing document. (I was doing that a year ago.) Attorney Orly Taitz is asking a federal court enter a default judgment against Obama for failing to produce vital records including his birth certificate. Been there, done that.

Shepard Smith of Fox News is being criticized for seeking to "cover-up” the birth certificate controversy. (He’s guilty as charged.) For insulting some of Fox News' loyal viewers Shep ended up with coverage in the New York Times. How could ya, Shep? And, oh, welcome to the “club.”

Obama’s own White House opened a public access site, and was swamped with birth certificate arguments.

On and on it goes.

When I first started exposing Barack Obama in 2004, and later wrote about his missing birth certificate in 2007, I had no idea I was creating an industrial-strength controversy that would linger long after January, 2009.

And I had no idea who my partner-in-crime would be: Barack Obama. Instead of being open and honest, and coming clean, Obama's refusal to open his files has spawned a cottage industry of suspicion and even paranoia.

As for myself, I have not profited from this explosion of entrepreneurial activity concerning his birth records. We do receive contributions to cover the costs of our operations (see below), nothing more. But others have made small fortunes collecting donations from angry partisans who are convinced Obama was born in Kenya, or elsewhere.

Why has Obama refused to “lock down” the controversy?

Because he suffers from a deep character flaw, and receives intense, almost sadistic, delight seeing people distressed by confusion about his personal identity. He suffers from the same affliction: who am I? Obama morphed from a confused young man into president of the United States. But the doubts still gnaw at him.

I had no idea Obama would use his attack dogs to smear me on national television (Fox News), or use his lapdogs at the New York Times to publish lies about me (I sued them; case pending).

Some of the mainstream media may not be impressed by my efforts, but Barack Obama & Co. have always taken me very seriously. As well they should have. My work and the birth certificate and religion questions I raised ultimately cost Obama millions of votes. That’s how we earned the title “Internet Powerhouse.”

In October, 2008 I went to Hawaii to do research on Obama’s family history. I was the first investigative analyst to arrive there. Where were all the others?

After arriving, I came to the revelation (?) that the only place to file a lawsuit over Obama’s missing birth records was Hawai’i. That's where the original paperwork was located. I filed. That night nearly 100,000 persons viewed one of my web sites. Not bad for a day’s work.

My pending Hawai’i lawsuit elicits several comments every day. What is the status? What is happening? When will it be heard?

Uniformly I advise people that the judicial process is slow, and just as slow in Hawai’i as anywhere else.

My case is currently pending in the Hawai’i Intermediate Court of Appeals. (You can check their online docket, Martin v. Lingle.)

In April, 2009, we hosted a conference on the missing birth and college records (see video below). The questions and doubts keep growing.

Obama’s birth certificate mystery has become a modern day version of Charles Dickens’ Jarndyce v. Jarndyce:

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.

What will tomorrow’s e-mail hold? Maybe Barack Obama will give up the chase and release his birth certificate. He should. He is the biggest casualty of his own shenanigans. He undermines his own legitimacy and clouds his own future as president.

But until Obama releases his records I will be on the job, and on the case, seeking access to basic historical records that Hawai’i officials and Barack Obama refuse to produce. For shame.

I just wish I knew why Obama is inflicting this punishment on himself. I do not bear him any ill will. I just wish he would, in Keith Olbermann’s locker-room lingo, “man up” and release his birth certificate and college records as well. Millions, probably tens of millions of Americans, would feel better about Barack Obama if he acted openly and honestly. To date, he hasn’t. In due course he will pay the price.

You can learn more at www.BoycottHawaii.com. My appellate brief is posted on my blogs (see below).

If you wish to financially support our research and litigation you are invited to do so (see below, www.CommitteeofOneMillion… and www.BoycottHawaii.com).

P.S. At the end of all this, I am not even remotely a “birther.” I am a doubter.

I honestly believe Obama was born in Hawai’i. And although I don’t have a DNA test, yet, all my research leads me to believe Barack Obama is actually the biological son of Frank Marshall Davis. A new Barack Obama mystery waiting to be born.

Watch for our “Obama; The Hawai’i years,” currently in production but delayed by lack of funding. A blockbuster movie coming with new information about Obama’s forbearers in the Aloha State. Who knows? Maybe we will be creating a new and improved Obama birth-and-family-inquiry industry.

Who is that masked man? Barack Obama. The Man Behind The Mask.

Video archive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEygm9cmvck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZwON6dKHks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKSq2oJ0W1c&feature=related
[click on Part Two]

-----------------------------
Readers of Obama: The Man Behind The Mask, say the book is still the only gold standard and practical handbook on Barack Obama's unfitness for the presidency. Buy it.
Book orders: Amazon.com or http://OrangeStatePress.com. Immediate shipment from Amazon.com or signed copies (delayed for signing) from the publisher are available.
------------------------------
URGENT APPEAL: The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama raises money to oppose President Barack Obama's radical agenda and also to support www.BoycottHawaii.com.
www.CommitteeofOneMilliontoDefeatBarackObama.com
Please give generously. Our ability to fight and defeat Barack Obama's political agenda is directly dependent on the generosity of every American.
“The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama has no bundlers, no fat cats and no illegal contributions. Obama is opposed to almost everything America stands for," says Executive Director Andy Martin. "But while Obama has raised a billion dollar slush fund, his opponents lack sufficient resources. Americans can either contribute now, or pay later. If we do not succeed, Obama will."
-----------------------------------
Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. He has over forty years of broadcasting background in radio and television and is the dean of Illinois media and communications. He is currently promoting his best-selling book, Obama: The Man Behind The Mask and producing the new Internet movie “Obama: The Hawai’i years.” Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of www.ContrarianCommentary.com.

Martin comments on regional, national and world events with more than four decades of experience. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York. He is an announced candidate for Barack Obama’s former U. S. Senate seat.

UPDATES: www.Twitter.com/AndyMartinUSA
www.Facebook.com/AndyMartin

His columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com.
[NOTE: We frequently correct typographical errors and additions/subtractions on our blogs, where you can find the latest edition of this release.]

MEDIA CONTACT: (866) 706-2639 or CELL (917) 664-9329 (cell not always on)
E-MAIL: AndyMart20@aol.com
© Copyright by Andy Martin 2009.

Andy Martin on the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan and the civil war in Iran.

Martin says the “Mafia Mullahs” and their “Basij” are an embarrassment to Islam

Andy Martin on the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan

ContrarianCommentary.com
Andy Martin
Executive Editor

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Iran

Andy Martin on the death of Neda Agha-Soltan and the continuing conflict in Iran

Martin says the “Mafia Mullahs” are an embarrassment to Islam

“The doctrine of unintended consequences” has finally caught up with the Mullahs.

Memo to John McCain: shut up

(PALM BEACH)(June 23, 2009) Of course I have watched the video of the young woman Neda Agha-Soltan assassinated by Iranian gangsters acting at the behest of the “Islamic Republic.” Truly, the bullet that killed Neda was the shot heard round the world.

Obviously, the Iranian government has lost control of its own storm troopers.

As I always remind my readers, I do not view events in Iran from an unemotional perspective. I lived through firefights and killings in Iran. Although my events took place three decades ago, the current violence has brought them to the forefront of my consciousness.

And although I am a critic of the Iranian government, I view the Iranian people with great affection. My exposure to Shi’a Islam is also quite unique for an American: few have traveled as I have to the four holiest cities of the Shi’ite religion: Qum and Meshad in Iran, and Najaf and Karbala in Iraq. (You can see a picture of me in front of the mosque in Karbala at www.FirstRespondersonline.us.)

And so as I try to sort through the violence of the past few days, and the flatulent rhetoric of Senator John McCain and his senatorial publicity addicts, my emotions are intertwined with my memory.

All Abrahamic religions celebrate their martyrs. In my own Christian religion, the early theologian Tertullian wrote that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

I would not be surprised to find Ms. Soltan’s blood become the seed of a second Iranian revolution.

Shi’a Islam is particularly focused on martyrdom. Being in Qum during Muharram, I observed the faithful beating themselves with chains as a symbol of remembrance for the martyred Imam Ali.

Can one person’s brief life and brutal death make a difference? One person who is now described as having been “nonpolitical?”

Indeed she can.

First, a word about a double standard. Our eyes do not deceive us. If the martyr has been a man, particularly a man with a scruffy beard, his death might not become the icon of a new revolution. But Ms. Soltan was strikingly beautiful. Yes, there is a double standard. Indeed, others were slaughtered last weekend. Only one image will be fixed in time forever: Neda. The camera loves beautiful images.

The cowardly sniper who fired into a crowd may have killed an innocent bystander. But he also created an image that will endure in Iranian culture and history. The “doctrine of unintended consequences” finally caught up with the mullahs. After slaughtering tens of thousands of their own people during the past three decades, a single life snuffed out has become the martyr that will demolish their demonic “republic.” Allah Akbar.

The fate of the “Islamic Republic” is sealed. The religious junta is doomed.

It is impossible to predict whether the regime will fall sooner, or later. Truly that is in God’s hands. But the mullahs will be swept off the face of Iranian government and returned to their proper place of worship because of a single shot heard round the world: the bullet that killed Neda Soltan.

The theocratic experiment has not only failed, the experiment has embarrassingly failed. The “Mafia Mullahs” have disgraced Islam. Murdering peaceful demonstrators, or innocent bystanders in the case of Neda Soltan, is a disgrace to any religion. Creating “Basij” storm trooper cells that prey on their own people is disgraceful. Is this the “supreme leader’s” interpretation of Islam? His revelation from God? For shame.

In Tehran, I used to chuckle at the envelopes we still used at the Intercontinental Hotel, celebrating the “Pahlavi Dynasty.” The Pahlavis lasted fifty years; the mullahs only thirty (even if they hang on a little longer). Only Ozymandias could appreciate these characters.

The Pahlavis fell because they would not kill their own people; the mullahs will fall because they are willing to kill their own people. Sadly, the Iranian people have been victimized through both Islamic and secular dictatorships.

This week I called the conflict in Iran a civil war. Will anyone deny that fact?

Tonight Neda lies in a cold grave.

And somewhere in the Ayatollahs’ arsenals, among the boxes of bullets and racks of rifles, some sane man must be asking himself: “Was this God’s retribution? We killed an innocent woman. Blood is on our hands. We have sealed our fate.”

Ins’allah.

------------
Some quick thoughts. I voted for Senator John McCain for president. But he should really give his media addiction a rest. His ideas on how to deal with Iran are seductively enticing. Emotionally, I agree with him. Yes, we should be on “the right side of history,” the latest catch-phrase of cable TV bobblehead conservatives. But McCain is wrong to state that what worked against the Soviet empire in the 1980’s is the only template that respects “history.” Sometimes, common sense tells us to keep our mouths shut; not because we don’t sympathize with the efforts of a proud nation to shuck off the slime of a vile dictatorship, but rather because we are powerless to influence the outcome and could negatively impact the result by intemperate blather. With all due respect, Senator McCain, please shut up. Sometimes knowing when to hold your tongue places you on the right side of history. Your need to give your insatiable appetite for TV a rest, and actually read some history.

-----------------------------
Readers of Obama: The Man Behind The Mask, say the book is still the only gold standard and practical handbook on Barack Obama's unfitness for the presidency. Buy it.
Book orders: Amazon.com or http://OrangeStatePress.com. Immediate shipment from Amazon.com or signed copies (delayed for signing) from the publisher are available.
------------------------------
URGENT APPEAL: The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama raises money to oppose President Barack Obama's radical agenda and also to support www.BoycottHawaii.com.
www.CommitteeofOneMilliontoDefeatBarackObama.com
Please give generously. Our ability to fight and defeat Barack Obama's political agenda is directly dependent on the generosity of every American.
“The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama has no bundlers, no fat cats and no illegal contributions. Obama is opposed to almost everything America stands for," says Executive Director Andy Martin. "But while Obama has raised a billion dollar slush fund, his opponents lack sufficient resources. Americans can either contribute now, or pay later. If we do not succeed, Obama will."
-----------------------------------
Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. He has over forty years of broadcasting background in radio and television and is the dean of Illinois media and communications. He is currently promoting his best-selling book, Obama: The Man Behind The Mask and producing the new Internet movie “Obama: The Hawai’i years.” Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of www.ContrarianCommentary.com.

Martin comments on regional, national and world events with more than four decades of experience. He has over forty years of experience in Asia and the Middle East, and is regarded overseas as America’s most respected independent foreign policy, military and intelligence analyst. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York. He is an announced candidate for Barack Obama’s former U. S. Senate seat.

UPDATES: www.twitter.com/AndyMartinUSA
www.facebook.com/AndyMartin

His columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com.
[NOTE: We frequently correct typographical errors and additions/subtractions on our blogs, where you can find the latest edition of this release.]

MEDIA CONTACT: (866) 706-2639 or CELL (917) 664-9329 (cell not always on)
E-MAIL: AndyMart20@aol.com
© Copyright by Andy Martin 2009.

Civil War in Iran

Foreign policy expert Andy Martin says the conflict in Iran has become a civil war. Barack Obama is essentially powerless to act or react.

Andy Martin on the evolving civil war in Iran

ContrarianCommentary.com
Andy Martin
Executive Editor

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Iran

Andy Martin breaches a taboo by becoming the first analyst to call the conflict in Iran a “civil war”`

America’s most experienced independent foreign policy and intelligence analyst predicts the destabilization of the entire region

Martin says President Obama is helpless to act.

(PALM BEACH)(June 21, 2009) As I wrote on June 15th, the most terrifying night of my life was spent in the middle of a riot in Iran thirty years ago. The images of what was a living bedlam are still vivid in my memory. I jumped into a crowd of people who were preparing to attack an opposition strongpoint and rescued a woman who was probably doomed. There were crowds of opposing Iranians fighting each other, tracer rounds flying everywhere, machine guns in the distance, people rushing to the “front.” The night culminated in my arrest as an alleged spy. I have never had another night like that, neither before nor after.

Even after leaving Iran, I went back. Watching the constant images of the violence in Tehran today reminds me of my earlier experiences. You can almost feel the tension and terror of a taunt crowd, just before it explodes. A civil war has begun.

I am experiencing the emerging Iranian civil war in a multitude of ways.

So what do my feelings tell me?

First, Joe Biden was ridiculed during the campaign for predicting that Barack Obama would be “tested” in the first six months of his administration. Iran is that challenge.

What Biden did not understand was that the “challenge” he anticipated would not come from a direct threat to the United States but rather from the need to navigate policy in the unknown byways of what is becoming the Iranian civil war. (Yes, I am the first analyst to use the term “civil war.”)

Because of my reputation as a critic of Barack Obama (and that is a correct characterization of my views) I am usually criticized by Obama’s opponents when I apply impartial analysis to BHO’s actions or don’t reflexively attack his every action. But my sense of personal integrity and independence compel me to write what I believe, not what some people want to hear.

I have two completely contradictory views on what is unfolding in Iran.

First, within the United States, Republicans are winning the Iranian presidential election. They are demanding tough words and concrete actions. Politicians will always play to their “base,” and the Republican base feels frustrated and helpless watching events in Iran. There is a tremendous temptation to “do something.” Something. Yet nothing could be more detrimental to the foreign policy interests of the United States.

Second, despite criticism of Obama’s restrained approach, and perhaps despite Obama’s own misguided beliefs behind his limited actions, his policy in Iran is the correct one.

Obama is caught in a situation where he will almost certainly lose politically, but where has to run the risk of loss in order to maintain the strategic stability of his foreign policy.

Published reports Saturday night indicated that presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi has stated he is ready for “martyrdom.” If this statement is true, then the challenge facing Obama has just metastasized far beyond his control.

No revolution can survive without a martyr; indeed, every revolution often begins with an act of self-denial and martyrdom. “Martyr” comes from the Greek word for “witness” and can invoke both observation and testimony or disclosure.

The long night I endured thirty years when I risked my life and was arrested, occurred in Moussavi’s home town of Tabriz, located in the Azerbaijan region of Iran. Moussavi’s “roots” become critical to comprehending what he has now done and to explaining where the Iranian civil war is headed. Azerbaijan is a very different part of Iran. Although Moussavi’s strongest support comes from the great urban areas, including Tabriz, Azerbaijani Moussavi’s independent streak is driving his willingness to suffer the consequences of risking his life.

The leading opposition ayatollah to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was an Azerbaijani. No doubt that rebel religious leader (who favored a form of government nearer to separation of church and state) was close to Moussavi. No one has previously made this connection; but now it is out in the open. The Azerbaijani angle will prove crucial in the days ahead.

What transpires inside a human being when they literally move beyond their own bodies to become a sacrificial vessel for rebellion or revolution? No one really knows. If Moussavi has indeed passed into that zone, where he has abandoned and renounced his own personal needs, he has become the missile that will hit the ruling junta in Tehran with lethal impact.

The Russian Revolution managed to hang on for seventy years. That was in an age when communications were nonexistent to primitive. Today communications are instantaneous.

The thirty-year-old “Islamic” revolution appears to have reached its end on a truncated timetable.

Abraham Lincoln was not elected to wage a civil war; he sought to save the union. He ended up fighting a war in order to succeed. Gorbachev and Yeltsin did not believe their demands for reform would bring down the Soviet empire; on the contrary their goal was to preserve and liberalize the existing system. But they demolished a government that was already dead.

Likewise, Moussavi did not become a presidential candidate to eradicate the Islamic revolution. But he too has fallen into the unplumbed and uncontrollable clutches of history. He has become a martyr to, of all things, open and honest elections, freedom of speech and respect for the human rights of every individual.

Republicans and conservatives, of course, are demanding stirring rhetoric strong action from Obama. But this is one time when Obama must stand virtually mute. Yes, he has proclaimed support for universal rights of peaceful assembly and free speech. And yes, as bloodshed escalates his remarks can also increase in intensity. But no, the Republicans are wrong.

It is precisely by being a bystander that America will exercise its greatest influence over events. The very essence of a civil war is that the conflict is between two competing domestic narratives. When the conflict is between slavery and freedom, there is very little outsiders can add. When the test concerns communism versus free markets, likewise bystanders are helpless. When the question is whether there will be separation of mullah and state, no one can insert themselves into this most personal of conflicts.

Ironically, Obama faces a multiplied and magnified threat of the same dimension I faced thirty years ago. If I had fought back, or raised my voice, I was a dead man (a rifle was pointed at me). I had to stay quiet. It was wrenching. A friend who came to my aid and raised his voice was threatened with getting both of us shot. I said “thanks,” and asked him to go away. I had no idea what I faced, but I knew I had to stay calm and stand still. And alone.

In a global sense, Obama faces the identical crossroads. He sees the Republicans nipping at his heels, and he probably wants to offer more vigorous encouragement to the demonstrators. He certainly sees that his carefully calibrated approach to Iran, seeking a deal with the existing regime, is disintegrating.

Because U. S. understanding of Iran is notoriously deficient, Obama has been given no clear conception of what could unfold (he better be reading this column). So he is antsy. And so is his staff. Who expected the “great challenge” to come from a civil war in Iran? Who?

How do you respond to a civil war? How do you react when people of a nation are killing each other, when neighbor is bludgeoning neighbor, when literally “all hell breaks lose?”

Throughout the Cold War American leaders repeatedly faced similar challenges.

President Eisenhower was urged to “bomb Hanoi.” In 1954. He resisted the temptation. Two years later, the Hungarian revolution created calls for direct U. S. action. Ike again resisted calls for intervention.

In 1968, I sat on the Danang River in Vietnam and watched from the sidelines as a revolution unfolded in Czechoslovakia. Then came the Russian invasion. Alexander Dubcek was the martyr in that conflict.

During the Islamic revolution in 1979, President Carter was castigated for failing to attack to free the U. S. Embassy hostages. In all of the foregoing instances, “conservatives” called for robust action, and action was exactly the wrong approach.

Ronald Reagan finally won the Cold War without ever dropping a bomb or launching an invasion in Europe. The Soviet Union imploded without any U. S. action. Reagan made the hostages “too hot to handle” and the ayatollahs relented.

The “Islamic Revolution” is now doomed. But whether it falls in five hours or five days or five months or five years, America is helpless to determine. Much as we like to think we can influence, and even control, events we are helpless observers as the civil war in Iran expands.

No, Islam is not going to disappear as a force in Iran. But Islam as a controlling set of principles to organize a complex modern society has failed.

The inevitable “liberalization” which we are likely to see in the months and years ahead will not be because American military power was projected anywhere, but simply as an unanticipated dividend of the implosion of the Iranian theocracy.

The sixty years of the Soviet empire are likely to be compressed as a result of modern communications into the thirty years of the doomed Islamic experiment.

No one, not even the anointed one some people have been waiting for, Obama himself, can control the pace of the Iranian civil war. No one.

Politically, Obama has been thrust into the same situation as Jimmy Carter. He appears weak because he can’t project strength. If he attempts to act strong, he will be immeasurably weakened.

So what does all of this mean politically?

First, Obama is not acting because he is powerless to act. There is no time at which a foreign military power is as helpless as when another nation is undergoing the catharsis of a civil war.

Second, Obama will pay a price domestically for exercising restraint internationally. He is powerless to do otherwise.

Third, ultimately the 2010 election is not going to turn on what happens in Iran. Iran was a problem, and Iran will continue to be problem. Obama’s star will rise or fall not based on what happens in and what comes of the Iranian civil war. Obama’s political prospects are controlled by the American economy and nothing else.

In closing, I am reminded once again of the great legacy we received from the founding generation of Americans: separation of church and state.

America has no “established” church and yet we are the most religions of nations. Mullahs have tried to impose Islam on a great nation. The people of Iran are in rebellion. All they are asking for is the freedom to choose. To choose when and when not to pray; how and how not to dress; when and when not to think as they wish.

But whether a dictatorship is run by religious extremists in Iran, or political extremists in the former Soviet empire, or by a local madman as in Venezuela, these regimes inevitably collapse.

This I know: On Monday, June 22nd the United States of America will open for business. Some of us love Barack Obama (I am not among that deluded minority) and some of us reject Obama (yes, that’s me) and some of us are disillusioned with Obama (a growing group). We will have our say, and we will vote in adequate but not perfect elections in 2010.

We have room for Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on one side and Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly on the other, and everyone in between and even outside those four corners (I’m in there somewhere). And out of this great gumbo every day there comes a national commitment to peaceful debate and decision.

So, God bless America. And please ask him to keep his mitts off our government. Right now he has his hands full in Iran.

I wish the wonderful people of Iran peace and freedom. It is your battle to win or lose. Today, tomorrow, whenever. Your “religious republic” is dead. What will follow in its place, and when, is unknown. As for Mr. Moussavi, “welcome to the club.” History called. You answered. Now what?

-----------------------------
Readers of Obama: The Man Behind The Mask, say the book is still the only gold standard and practical handbook on Barack Obama's unfitness for the presidency. Buy it.
Book orders: Amazon.com or http://OrangeStatePress.com. Immediate shipment from Amazon.com or signed copies (delayed for signing) from the publisher are available.
------------------------------
URGENT APPEAL: The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama raises money to oppose President Barack Obama's radical agenda and also to support www.BoycottHawaii.com.
www.CommitteeofOneMilliontoDefeatBarackObama.com
Please give generously. Our ability to fight and defeat Barack Obama's political agenda is directly dependent on the generosity of every American.
“The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama has no bundlers, no fat cats and no illegal contributions. Obama is opposed to almost everything America stands for," says Executive Director Andy Martin. "But while Obama has raised a billion dollar slush fund, his opponents lack sufficient resources. Americans can either contribute now, or pay later. If we do not succeed, Obama will."
-----------------------------------
Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. He has over forty years of broadcasting background in radio and television and is the dean of Illinois media and communications. He is currently promoting his best-selling book, Obama: The Man Behind The Mask and producing the new Internet movie “Obama: The Hawai’i years.” Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of www.ContrarianCommentary.com.

Martin comments on regional, national and world events with more than four decades of experience. He has over forty years of experience in Asia and the Middle East, and is regarded overseas as America’s most respected independent foreign policy, military and intelligence analyst. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York. He is an announced candidate for Barack Obama’s former U. S. Senate seat.

UPDATES: www.twitter.com/AndyMartinUSA

His columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com.
[NOTE: We frequently correct typographical errors and additions/subtractions on our blogs, where you can find the latest edition of this release.]

MEDIA CONTACT: (866) 706-2639 or CELL (917) 664-9329 (cell not always on)
E-MAIL: AndyMart20@aol.com
© Copyright by Andy Martin 2009.

Andy Martin on Iran

Martin says the best Persian policy is no policy at all. Once again, America's uniquely qualified and experienced Middle East expert comes up with a contrarian point of view. "Masterly inactivity" is his his proposal for topping the Ahmadinejad regime.

Andy Martin on why no policy is the best policy on Iran

ContrarianCommentary.com
Andy Martin
Executive Editor

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

IRAN

BARACK OBAMA'S "POLICY" ON IRAN IS DESTINED FOR THE SCRAP HEAP, ALONG WITH EVERY PRIOR U. S. POLICY OF THE PAST SEVERAL DECADES

ANDY MARTIN ON EVENTS IN IRAN, AND THE FUTURE

OBAMA HAS INHERITED AND ADOPTED GEORGE BUSH'S FLAWED APPROACH TO IRAN, AND HE WILL FAIL JUST AS BUSH DID

(NEW YORK)(June 15, 2009) For an expert on Iran, I have an unusual background. I spent the longest night of my life—a lifetime really—under arrest as a spy in an Iranian town few have ever heard of. In 1979. One false move and the end would have been the end. I made it out. And went back again. But that night is still very vivid in my mind.

My policy recommendations were ignored in 1980, and they will no doubt be ignored thirty years later. I was right then, and I am right now: the best "policy" on Iran is no policy at all.

Allow me to explain.

Politicians gain public office and power by creating promises about "policies." Obama's "policies" include promises concerning the triad of "energy, health and the economy," as well as "negotiation" abroad. But these "policies" are complete nonsense. They assume that the world reacts to our commandments, and they assume that someone, maybe even the president of the United States, can control the world.

"Policy" rarely makes it into the real world and when "policy becomes reality" the result is often disaster. In 1999 Governor George Bush and his brother Jeb unleashed a torrent of abuse on me after I aired a commercial stating GWB wanted to "bomb Iraq." I understood what no one else in the media did: George Bush was obsessed, yes obsessed, with Iraq.

Bush's Iraq obsession destroyed his family's legacy, destroyed his own administration and very nearly destroyed the United States. Our "victory" in Iraq is truly a Pyrric one. Our armed forces "won" a conflict that made the world more dangerous, more unstable and more unmanageable for America.

In 2003 I predicted that Israel would be the big loser in "George Bush's war," and received more abuse for that view. I have been proven correct. Few would deny that Israel is more endangered today than it was in 2003. For my perspicacious analyses I was called an "anti-Semite." Thanks but no thanks.

Politicians, especially successful ones at the pinnacle of power in Washington, in the White House and Congress, are almost psychologically unable to admit that their "policies" are usually just political nonsense, and often self-defeating nonsense, intended merely for campaign donor consumption.

What about Iran? How about a thumbnail history? Our policy before 1979 was to support the Shah. The Shah's regime unleashed obscene excesses, all of which created a populist backlash. The Shah also tortured Iranians. The Israeli Mossad played a large role in training the Shah's Savak how to abuse Iranians. Because of the U.S.'s close relationship with Israel, we got the "credit" for Israel's torture teaching in Iran. Again, thanks but no thanks.

After the fall of the Shah, we entered into a cold war with Iran. It was then that I pitched up in Iran and was arrested in 1979, released, and went back again in 1980.

When I later developed a plan to secure the release of the U. S. embassy hostages, President Jimmy Carter was not interested. He was "using" the hostage situation to conduct a "Rose Garden" strategy for reelection. The "crisis" furnished a basis for Carter to avoid going on the hustings to debate Senator Ted Kennedy. Carter, of course, was deeply unpopular. Carter did win renomination, but the rest is history. Ronald Reagan became president and Carter's years in office were completely discredited. The Rose Garden strategy had succeeded in the short run only to backfire in the long run.

So I go back along way with Iran and the Middle East. People don’t always want to hear what I have to say (these views will no doubt prompt more attacks) but I have been more right than wrong over the past forty years.

This column and the insights I offer have been in the writing for many months, maybe years. Writing has been pushed aside by other breaking news. Now Iran is the breaking news.

Some time ago, probably a year or two ago, the Washington Post Travel section had an article on visiting Iran:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090100511.html

The Post travel story on Tehran fit perfectly into my column-in-the-writing because the innocuous report documented a warm welcome for Americans. The travel section showed how absurd our foreign policy had become. We received more accurate "foreign policy" information from the travel pages than we did from the editorial or news sections.

The reason for this information anomaly was that Iran has become our latest demon. We don’t understand the Persians (as I usually call them), and what we don’t understand we simply cannot accept. So we develop a "policy" to deal with our national ignorance.

In the case of Iran we have an even more dangerous situation. Iran is led by a demonstrably malicious and malignant leader. Israelis, never at a loss to create an opportunity to lose an opportunity, have used Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to substitute for the fallen Saddam Hussein. It was Israelis, after all, who promised Bush that the "road to Jerusalem leads through Baghdad." Anyone heard that corker recently?

Today, Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to sell the story that there can be no peace in Palestine until Iran is resolved. He likes that song because "Iran" is not going to be resolved. Persia is a nation state with a history going back thousands of years.

Although Israelis are not responsible for our invasion of Iraq (George Bush is), Israeli diplomats helped inveigle Bush into thinking that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world and an "existential" threat to Israel. The same poppycock is now being rebranded to justify an Israeli attack on Iran.

What is the real world story? What should our "policy" be?

No policy at all.

President Obama should declare that the United States is ignoring Iran, and will let the Iranian people resolve their own differences. The less we say about Iran, the sooner change will come in that unfortunate nation. The only issue which Ahmadinejad has to unify his nation is American "policy" moves, and Israeli threats to trigger yet another Middle East war.

Just to insert a "joke" (no joke at all) at this point. Last year people said if I voted for John McCain, I would get "Bush III." I voted for McCain. And got? Bush III. Obama's foreign policy is indistinguishable from a Bush III approach to Iran.

We have American threats. Israeli saber rattling. U. N. sanctions. Diplomacy. Demands. The usual suspects.

All of these "policies" are sheer nonsense. Sanctions are not going to stop much of the world from trading with Iran. And sanctions will lose their effectiveness against Iran the same way they lost their impact on Iraq. Iran sells millions of barrels of oil every day. The day Iran is prevented from selling oil the price of a barrel will top $200 or more.

Israel has nuclear weapons. We know it. Everyone in the Middle East knows it. Weaponry brings prestige. Eventually everyone is going to have nuclear weapons. This is really difficult for anyone (including me) to accept. But technology cannot be stopped.

The idea that a nation of seven million is going to be allowed to retain nuclear armaments (Israel) while a nation of seventy million will be denied nuclear defenses (Iran) is one of the conceits that foreign policy pays to political campaign fund raising in America. Real world? It ain't gonna happen. So let's get real.

Iranians just had an election. I don't have a clue whether the voting was rigged or not. There are opinions on all sides, and I respect most of those opinions. Surprise: whether the election was rigged or not doesn't make a darn bit of difference to my non-policy. Whether the election was rigged or not is not going to change our need for a hands-off approach.

Here are the opening parameters for our non-policy.

1. U. S. "culture" is still our most potent "nuclear" weapon. We are the undisputed center of the universe when it comes to freedom, with all of the good and bad that such cultural and political and economic freedom can generate. Every day the best and worst that our culture can produce is dumped on the Internet and instantly spread worldwide.

President George Bush was completely correct when he said we should foster freedom and democracy. But we should promote freedom and democracy with electrons, not invasions.

People abroad are free to pick and choose what they want (unless they live in China, where a government of thuggish leaders think they know best what one billion Chinese should receive). Given a choice, people will choose freedom and, eventually, they will fight for freedom. In 1979, Iranians deposed the Shah. No one could stop them.

As soon as Iran exploded this weekend, Iranian goons tried to shut off phone and Internet access. They know where the threat to their regime lies.

2. We should stop fooling ourselves and think we can fool the world. No one was deluded by our previous foreign policy towards Iran and the Middle East; we were marching to the tune of an Israeli military band. With disastrous consequences for the Israelis.

Pro-Israel Americans need to accept that Israel is often a poor judge of what is in that nation's long-term interest. Israelis were welcomed as liberators in Palestine in 1967. If they had given Palestinians freedom instead of occupation, the two nations would be closely joined today. No one wants to remember 1967 because 1967 was a lost opportunity. For Israel. (In all fairness, in 1967 many seasoned Israeli leaders predicted disaster if the occupied territories were retained. History has vindicated their warnings.)

3. Iran has attacked no one. Iran was attacked by Iraq. Iraq was aided by the United States in continuing a murderous invasion of Iran. Americans may have forgotten this "inconvenient truth," but no one in Iran has. We need to remember our failures.

4. U.S. and Israeli politicians routinely use lies and hysteria and disgraceful exaggerations to keep themselves in power. Why not Iranians? Aren't Iranian politicians capable of the same abuses? Most of the world—and, as it turns out—most Iranians--realize that Holocaust denial is disgraceful. Instead of falling for the Israeli catnip that Holocaust denial is the tip of an imminent Iranian nuclear-armed attack, we should apply the same level of scrutiny and skepticism to Iranian political rhetoric that we devote to our own. How about this racist, ignoramus, anti-Obama video on Haaretz:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1090967.html

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1092485.html

Should Obama view the video and bomb Israel? Ban travel to Tel Aviv? Impose sanctions? These are obviously absurd suggestions. But Iranians have no monopoly on ignorance. Watch the videos. (The videos are particularly pernicious because the morons who are speaking are American Jews who are invited to Israel to "learn" the truth. Scary.)

May I also remind readers that laws have been passed by almost every recent congress to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? These laws are wonderful "fetchers," as we use to call them in the Illinois legislature. They "fetch" campaign dollars. Sixty years after Israel was created, the U. S. embassy remains in Tel Aviv.

There is a giant disconnect between political rhetoric and reality and public policy in America; why can’t we accept the same standard for analyzing our critics?

5. The nuclear monopoly is dying. We can pop and toot about Iran and North Korea all we want. Nuclear weapons are going to spread, slowly at times, more rapidly at others. We have not yet reached the stage where a bunch of MIT students can fashion a nuclear weapon as a prank, but we are not far off.

In this regard, Americans often harbor racist misconceptions about other nations. We think our technology is the best (it is) but that everyone else is second-class. Second class can still be world class. Iraq supposedly had modern technology (after all that's why we went to war, isn’t it) and Iran today has world-class technology (which is why we have a new round of Israeli hysteria trying to trigger a war).

Instead of discouraging the spread of nuclear technology, which has been an abject failure, we should probably do precisely the opposite, and offer to arm anyone who can pay (no foreign aid here) with nuclear facilities, weapons, labs. So what? In an extreme situation, we should offer Iran a bomb, put the bomb in a public square, and leave a U. S. Air Force sergeant behind to dust off the weapon from time to time. The bomb will rust away before it is ever used.

6. Iran is going to change. But Iran is going to change not when Israelis bomb Tehran but only when Iranians topple their own regime the same way they did in 1979. The Iranian regime is a soulless (for a theocracy) government in which human rights and human beings are fodder for religious extremists. But so what? When was the last time Iran invaded another country? I can’t remember. Can you? Iran's bad government is no reason for America to start or condone another self-destructive war.

7. I am known (and revered and reviled) as a critic of Barack Obama. But Obama—give the devil his due—is smart enough to realize that triggering a war, or letting Israelis start a war, is insane. Stop. Iran supports Hizballah? Hamas? Of course they do. Is Israel free to mau mau Iran while Iran is not free to do the same? As long as Palestinian rights are denied, Iran will be able to profit from subsidizing Palestinian liberation movements. Hint: the road to Tehran lies through Tel Aviv (U.S. embassy) or Jerusalem (Israel government) not vice versa as Netanyahu suggests.

Netanyahu has reversed the route because he never wants to recognize a Palestinian state. If anyone is in denial, it is the "democracy" of Israel that believes it can appropriate Palestinians lands forever, and maintain a perpetual occupation of the Palestinian people with a peace "process" that is all process and no peace. Now there's a real delusional "policy" for you.

Israeli military leaders (virtually the entire government) claim they would rather start a war with Persia than run the risk of peace. Is that a sensible policy evaluation? Not in my opinion. Israel's existence is threatened by endless war, not endless peace.

The bottom line: I don’t know when or how the Iranian people are going to topple their leadership. It may come soon, or not for decades. No one can predict. That's for Iranians, not Americans or Israelis, to decide. The more input we have, the more likely the "output" will backfire on our strategic interests. Our long-term interests lie in leaving Iranians alone, taking a "hands-off" position and having no "policy" whatsoever.

At Britain's MI5 they would call my proposal a plan for "masterly inactivity." Perhaps were Iran is concerned we meet to master both our emotions and our rhetoric.

The maraschino cherry: If Hillary or Obama called me and said, "What can we do to help the Iranian people?" I would say "end the sanctions, lift the embargo." The only way to torpedo the Ahmadinejad regime is with freedom, not firearms.

Contrarian? Sure. Common sense? Absolutely. Sanctions have never worked, and they will not work in Iran. Freedom can bring down the regime. By essentially doing nothing and ignoring the regime instead of making them central to our national agenda we become more, not less, powerful in Iran. "Iran for the Iranians" is the biggest threat we can direct at Persia.

Why not end thirty years of failure and try an approach that is sure to succeed? Because politicians have to have "polices," and policies are merely prescriptions for failure.

-----------------------------
Readers of Obama: The Man Behind The Mask, say the book is still the only gold standard and practical handbook on Barack Obama's unfitness for the presidency. Buy it.
Book orders: Amazon.com or http://OrangeStatePress.com. Immediate shipment from Amazon.com or signed copies (delayed for signing) from the publisher are available.
------------------------------
URGENT APPEAL: The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama raises money to oppose President Barack Obama's radical agenda and also to support www.BoycottHawaii.com.
www.CommitteeofOneMilliontoDefeatBarackObama.com
Please give generously. Our ability to fight and defeat Barack Obama's political agenda is directly dependent on the generosity of every American.
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-----------------------------------
Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. He has over forty years of broadcasting background in radio and television and is the dean of Illinois media and communications. He is currently promoting his best-selling book, Obama: The Man Behind The Mask and producing the new Internet movie “Obama: The Hawai’i years.” Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of www.ContrarianCommentary.com.

Martin comments on regional, national and world events with more than four decades of experience. He has over forty years of experience in Asia and the Middle East, and is regarded overseas as America’s most respected independent foreign policy, military and intelligence analyst. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York. He is an announced candidate for Barack Obama’s former U. S. Senate seat.

UPDATES: www.twitter.com/AndyMartinUSA

His columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com.
[NOTE: We frequently correct typographical errors and additions/subtractions on our blogs, where you can find the latest edition of this release.]

MEDIA CONTACT: (866) 706-2639 or CELL (917) 664-9329 (cell not always on)
E-MAIL: AndyMart20@aol.com © Copyright by Andy Martin 2009.

Andy Martin on anti-Semitism and the Washington Holocaust Museum rampage

Martin responds to a column on anti-Semitism by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post.

ContrarianCommentary.com
Andy Martin
Executive Editor

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

ANDY MARTIN RESPONDS TO MICHAEL GERSON’S COLUMN IN FRIDAY’S WASHINGTON POST

(CHICAGO)(June 13, 2009) Initially I wasn’t going to comment on the anti-Semitic rampage earlier this week at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. My desk is piled high with work that is past due, and I have several columns of my own that I want to get out. The vicious and senseless attack was obviously the work of a madman.
www.nypost.com/seven/06122009/postopinion
/opedcolumnists/jews_true_nemesis_173814.htm

But I was deeply moved by a column Friday in the Washington Post by Michael Gerson:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/11/AR2009061103335.
html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Mr. Gerson crystallized the evil and insanity of anti-Semitism.

My own upbringing was rather philo-Semitic. When other kids were being taught about baseball, my mother was lecturing me on our family friend Dr. Sigmund Neumann, who had fled the Third Reich. I learned about the Nazis and their murderous regime at an early age. When I was old enough to have a paper route, Dr. Neumann used to invite me in for a chat. He was a scholar at Wesleyan University. The Nazis had burned his books.

As a small boy, I still vividly remember the first time one of my friends made an anti-Semitic statement. I was stunned. I still am. How could anyone have poisoned my friend’s mind at such a young age?

I was also exposed to bigotry against my own family. My mother’s side of the family is Greek-American. When we went to the beach every summer I was occasionally reminded that Greeks still could not buy property on Ocean Boulevard. That was reserved for “Yankees,” as some people are still called in New England. Greeks were relegated to the swamps and side streets.

My mother told me that growing up in Manchester, New Hampshire some kids used to yell ethnic epithets at her on the street. That discrimination left a lasting impression on me.

As a young student in England, I observed the still-raw wounds of World War II. One child in my prep school had been part of the kindertransport, and his adoptive parents had disguised his name to protect him from some future outbreak of anti-Semitism.

My own father was an anti-Nazi warrior who regaled me with stories of “killing Jerries” and training Jews to defend the Middle East. I thank God that dad was there as part of the Greatest Generation. He gave me the greatest gift.
One of my best friends, who died recently, was featured in a movie, The Richie Boys, about Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany and returned on D-Day to fight the Third Reich.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPlUMe_nKO0
My friend was fabulously wealthy, and donated large sums of money to support good works in Israel, primarily reconciliation between Israelis and Arabs.

And here the story gets more complex.

I am obviously identified with criticism of the Israeli government and its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Some Israelis and pro-Israel Americans like to brand anyone who challenges the occupation of Palestine as “anti-Semitic.” Its not anti-Semitism to challenge the Israeli government’s political and military policies.

When false accusations of anti-Semitism are used to silence critics of the Israeli government a potential anti-Semitic backlash can be created. Many Americans, including many Jews, are appalled at the lockstep, not to say goosestep, manner in which the U. S. Government has endorsed Israeli actions over the past decades.

I don’t agree with Barack Obama on many issues. But I do support his apparent efforts to level the playing field in the Middle East, and to return sanity to our government’s policy. And, of course, some Israelis are now accusing Obama of being an anti-Semite. Let me be clear, neither Obama nor I are anti-Semites. Presidents Jimmy Carter, George Bush (I) George Bush (II) were also called anti-Semites by some Israelis. We are all in good company.

Although I disagreed with George W. Bush’s Middle East policies, there has never been a more pro-Israeli administration than Bush-Cheney’s. But pro-Israeli voters still abandoned the Republican Party for Obama. Go figure.

Last year during the heat of the election, Obama sent his rotund rogue Robert Gibbs to the Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes to falsely accuse me of being an anti-Semite. The Obama tactic was a crude distortion of the truth fostered by New York Times reporter James Rutenberg. The smear backfired. My profile rose after the Times and Fox News were used as mouthpieces to spread the anti-Semitic lie.

Transparently I was opposing Obama on political grounds. For Obama to authorize a smear against me, using false claims of anti-Semitism based on a decades-old lawsuit, was despicable conduct on his part. But Obama’s attack was also a compliment, confirming that his campaign staff feared my Internet newspaper’s influence over millions of voters. I am hopeful that some day Obama will apologize to me for his unfortunate behavior. (What the hell; he has apologized to everyone else.)

In the meantime, Mr. Gibbs has had to hire a lawyer and defend his malignant behavior in an Illinois court.

The truth is disarmingly simply. Decades ago, I was politically harassed by corrupt Democratic federal judges in Chicago. (I was rescued by Republican judges.) Thieves moved in to loot my property. Because all of my opponents in court were Jewish, I developed a claim of religious discrimination. But, in a second round of misuse of the law, crooked judges in New York and Connecticut tried to trump up my discrimination claim as “anti-Semitic.”

Their motive: Judge Jose Cabranes was a cocaine-crazed psycho who had been appointed as a federal judge to placate his own ethnic constituency. He had and has lived his entire life with rage at his own sense of inadequacy and unworthiness. When I stood before Cabranes and confronted him with his corruption, he exploded and retaliated by abusing his power as a judge to smear me.

In other words, the false accusations of anti-Semitism against me were nothing more than the efforts of a cocaine-crazed, crooked federal judge to harass me because I exposed him and touched his vulnerability. More amazingly, judicial careers were destroyed by Cabranes’ rage and venom. I attacked him and his fellow traveler Judge John O. Newman, and helped scuttle their nominations to the Supreme Court.

The lawyer who represented me against Cabranes’ depredations has advised me for 26 years and remains a friend.

In retrospect, my lawsuit was an unfortunate legal tactic, and I regret lodging the claim. Ironically, the U. S. Supreme Court soon upheld my legal theory in the federal discrimination case, in the unrelated proceeding of Shaare Tefila, 481 U.S. 615 (1987). Thus, my accusations of religious discrimination against the Connecticut crooks were legally arguable but unfortunately opened the door to false accusations of anti-Semitism against me.

Left-wing media try to portray me as anti-Semitic based on those events a quarter-century ago. They are pretty desperate to find dirt, and there is little of it in my long life.

As an aside, claims made in lawsuits are privileged precisely because people and their attorneys are often forced to make legal and factual claims which they do not personally endorse. That was my situation. I was not anti-Semitic, but was placed in a situation where my arguments could be distorted and falsely portrayed as anti-Semitic merely because I raised a claim of apparent bigotry.

Over the years I have collected money from people who falsely accused me of being anti-Semitic. I don’t sue in all instances, but I keep these lawsuits going to send a message: unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism are as irresponsible as anti-Semitism itself.

Of course, when people such as Obama and the New York Times trump up accusations of anti-Semitism against me, they usually boomerang. I hope to collect from the New York Times before that newspaper goes bankrupt.

The Andy Martin Peace Plan for the Middle East, which I announced in July 2000, called for protecting both Israelis and Palestinians with U. S. troops. Someone who is wiling to risk U. S. lives to defend both Israelis and Palestinians is hardly anti-Semitic. A decade later, the Andy Martin Peace Plan is now finding increased support as a pragmatic solution to the endless conflict between Israelis and Palestinians; I am proud of my ongoing efforts to foster peace in the Middle East.

Those of us who are active in working for genuine peace in the Middle East are still forced to defend against false accusations of anti-Semitism when we challenge Israeli government policies. Israelis who equate criticism of their government with anti-Semitism bear false fitness to anti-Semitism itself. Political criticism and anti-Semitism are not the same.

Sadly, there is very little that can be done to punish the anti-Semitic lunatic who attacked the Holocaust Museum on Wednesday. At his age and in his state of mind, punishment is problematic. We are left with a horrific crime for despicable reasons, in which the law is largely powerless to extract an adequate punishment.

Left-wing Democrats have now suggested that anti-Semitism is a right-wing or “conservative media” virus. Nothing could be further from the truth. But ultimately, for either Democrats or the mainstream media to politicize and propagandize with false accusations of anti-Semitism is disgraceful behavior.

A few closing thoughts.

My first day in high school, a football player was harassing a Jewish kid in our class, Stephen Mayer. He was making fun of Mayer’s religion. I told the football guy to stop, and when he didn’t, I beat the crap out of him. He never made another anti-Semitic remark in my presence.

My entire life has been devoted to fighting bullies and crooks, wherever they are found, but usually in government, the courts and politics. In my prequel to Obama’s Cairo speech, I offered to march hand-in-hand with pro-Israel senators and representatives who back a balanced U. S. policy and a just peace:
www.contrariancommentary.com/community/
Home/tabid/36/mid/373/newsid373/434/Default.aspx
There has never been any room for anti-Semitism in my life. Not when I defended Steve Mayer, not today, not ever.

There was one point Mr. Gerson left out of his very moving and pertinent discussion of anti-Semitism in the Washington Post. Fear. One of the goals of anti-Semitism is to make people fearful, to depersonalize and dehumanize them. That is how the Holocaust in Germany became possible.

We must always be on guard to fight against fear, and those who would make us fearful. One of the greatest gifts America has given all of us is freedom from fear. We are free to live our lives in peace and freedom. On Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, Muslims and Jews live and trade in peace. Everywhere, we respect each other and support each other’s freedom to live in peace and safety, free from any form of fear. Freedom-from-fear is an American value; it is part of our national character. It is our legacy from the past, and our enduring gift to future generations. We must never let evil gain a toehold in our society.

Today, Barack Obama’s admirer Hugo Chavez is spreading anti-Semitism in Venezuela. Because I once had a Venezuelan Jewish girlfriend, who was a refugee from Egypt, she warned me very early about Chavez’ evil potential. If I could send Obama a message, it would be, “Speak out against Chavez. Don’t let his evil pass. Don’t let Chavez poison the Americas with anti-Semitism.”

When the New York Times lodged its false accusations of anti-Semitism against me last year, my Jewish friend was the first person on the phone offering unlimited financial assistance to mount a media counterattack. I have a deep and abiding loyalty to my departed friend. While I don’t have the resources he did to work for peace, I do have a voice.

That voice will always be raised in chorus with Mr. Gerson. Anti-Semitism is evil, and we should confront and attack anti-Semitism everywhere and wherever we find it.

That’s the American way.

------------------------------------------
Readers of Obama: The Man Behind The Mask, say the book is still the only gold standard and practical handbook on Barack Obama's unfitness for the presidency. Buy it.
Book orders: Amazon.com or http://OrangeStatePress.com. Immediate shipment from Amazon.com or signed copies (delayed for signing) from the publisher are available.
------------------------------
URGENT APPEAL: The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama raises money to oppose President Barack Obama's radical agenda and also to support www.BoycottHawaii.com.
www.CommitteeofOneMilliontoDefeatBarackObama.com
Please give generously. Our ability to fight and defeat Barack Obama's political agenda is directly dependent on the generosity of every American.
“The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama has no bundlers, no fat cats and no illegal contributions. Obama is opposed to almost everything America stands for," says Executive Director Andy Martin. "But while Obama has raised a billion dollar slush fund, his opponents lack sufficient resources. Americans can either contribute now, or pay later. If we do not succeed, Obama will."
-----------------------------------
Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. He has over forty years of broadcasting background in radio and television and is the dean of Illinois media and communications. He is currently promoting his best-selling book, Obama: The Man Behind The Mask and producing the new Internet movie “Obama: The Hawai’i years.” Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of www.ContrarianCommentary.com.

Martin comments on regional, national and world events with more than four decades of experience. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York.

UPDATES: www.twitter.com/AndyMartinUSA

His columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com.
[NOTE: We frequently correct typographical errors and additions/subtractions on our blogs, where you can find the latest edition of this release.]

MEDIA CONTACT: (866) 706-2639 or CELL (917) 664-9329 (cell not always on)
E-MAIL: AndyMart20@aol.com
© Copyright by Andy Martin 2009.

Andy Martin’s Chicago: The life and death of Edward V. Hanrahan

Chicago author Andy Martin remembers the controversial public official Ed Hanrahan, whose own life was destroyed by a burst of gunfire that killed two Black Panther party activists forty years ago. Hanrahan died on June 9th.

Andy Martin on the death of Chicago’s Edward V. Hanrahan

ContrarianCommentary.com
Andy Martin
Executive Editor

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The rise and fall of Cook County State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan

Hanrahan’s career serves as a metaphor for the evolution and revolution of the Democratic party locally in Chicago and nationally during 1968-1972

(CHICAGO)(June 9, 2009) Former Cook County State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan died earlier today. I got to know Hanrahan well during the extraordinary 1977 primary election that followed the death of Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley.

Hanrahan’s rise and fall was a metaphor for the Viet-Nam era and the evolution/revolution of the modern Democratic Party.

And, suddenly, I feel older today. With Hanrahan’s death I am the last surviving candidate of that unbelievable 1977 primary season. Hey, I’m too young to be that old.

Ed Hanrahan was an extremely bright student who went from parochial education in Chicago to Notre Dame, to Harvard Law School after World war II.

Hanrahan burst on the Chicago scene as a federal crime fighter. After Mayor of Chicago, the two most important positions for the Democratic Party are Cook County State’s Attorney and United States Attorney. Anyone who is aware of how the current U.S. Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, has caused havoc for Richard J. Daley’s son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, knows why the local prosecutorial posts are so critical to the survival of the Daley Machine’s patronage and corruption.

Hanrahan was colorful and aggressive in pursuing organized crime. I first came to Chicago for a visit in 1963 and fell in love with the place. As a student, I waited until my friends finished their copies of the Chicago Sun-Times, and then eagerly read the lurid stories of hoodlum politicians and gangland corruption. Alderman “Paddy Bauler” had said in 1955 “Chicago ain’t ready for reform,” and indeed it wasn’t. I was to personally collide with Mayor Daley in 1968 over yet another Illinois state corruption scandal.

But Ed Hanrahan’s rise and fall had a broader significance. He was prototypical of the mid-century Democratic party. The Democrats had been demonized during the 19th century as the party of “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” Nationally, the Democratic Party in the 1960’s was still led by many Irish Catholics who shared a common provenance: parochial schools, excellent academic credentials and high achievement. And pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism.

The 1960’s were also the beginning of the end of the era of political “big tents." "Liberal" Republicans were still welcome in the Republican Party, and “conservative Democrats” were not only welcome in the Democratic Party, they were the backbone of the party’s urban base in the North and racist stranglehold in the South.

In 1968 Mayor Daley “promoted” Hanrahan from the U. S. Attorney’s office to Cook County State’s Attorney. Only in the bizarre world of the Daley Machine would a step from the federal government to the county government be considered a “promotion.”

One night in 1969, Ed Hanrahan’s career was shattered. State’s Attorneys police staged a “raid” on a Black Panther Party cell and two men were killed by police gunfire. Hanrahan probably approved the raid but it is doubtful he had anything to do with the actual operational implementation. The deaths produced a firestorm of criticism and mortally wounded Ed’s career.

Hanrahan followed the traditional approach to a botched police operation: he defended police tactics. But the killings of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were no ordinary “mistakes.” During 1968, Chicago had garnered an image and reputation as a racist, mean-spirited city. Barack Obama’s controversial supporters Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn had chosen Chicago to stage their “Days of Rage” in 1969. The media were also evolving in a more confrontational direction.

Hanrahan’s public credibility was shattered by the aftermath of the Black Panther raid. He would never escape responsibility for the tragic incident.

Overnight, Hanrahan went from being a powerful Democratic politician to a political pariah. For a man who had taken great pride in his progression through public office, the inner pain of this estrangement must have been as close to a lethal wound as the ones his police had inflicted on Hampton and Clark.

The Daley Machine tried to dump Hanrahan in 1972, but he survived the primary only to be defeated during the national Republican Party sweep that reelected President Richard Nixon and elected Republican Cook County State’s Attorney Bernard Carey.

During this era, from the late 1960’s and the aftermath of the disastrous Chicago Democratic National Convention of 1968, to the 1972 presidential election, the Democratic Party itself underwent a massive metamorphosis: 1972 was the year the party assumed the form it still has today: liberal, educated, upscale leadership, and all still carried on the back of a Black urban underclass.

The working class Catholic, urban-based backbone of the party was moving to the suburbs; these stalwarts were gradually supplanted by the anti-war and then “McGovern” Democrats who gained control of the party in 1972, four years after the convention disaster in Chicago and three years after the deaths of Hampton and Clark.

While even today Irish Catholics continue to be an important constituency of the Democratic Party, as well as “Reagan Democrats” of 1980 and 1984, never again would an urban, Irish-based leadership control the national party organization.

Indeed, the seeds of President Barack Obama’s eventual nomination were initially planted in the 1972 campaign, during which both Bill and Hillary Clinton were pro-McGovern activists.

In 1972, at the age of 51, in the prime of his life, Edward Hanrahan became a dead man walking in Chicago politics.

I met Ed in 1977 when he was a candidate for Mayor of Chicago in the primary that was held after the death of Richard J. Daley in December, 1976. And herein lies a story about a peculiarly interesting period in my life.

In the wake of Daley’s death, the Democratic Machine was thrown into disarray. As a stopgap measure Alderman Michael Bilandic was appointed interim mayor until a new election could be held.

I stumbled into the campaign as the only corruption-fighting reformer challenging Machine domination of the city.

The Machine still feared Hanrahan’s potential because of his high profile in the media.

State Senator (later Mayor) Harold Washington was the candidate of many semi-independent African-American leaders. The Machine tried to neutralize his support by running a second African-American, Ellis Reid. Former congressman Roman Pucinski (“Pooch”) thought he had a chance of parlaying the Polish-American vote into victory in a divided primary.

Pooch didn’t like Hanrahan and the feeling was mutual.

But Ed Hanrahan and I became friendly. Then Pooch and I became close. Pooch discovered that I liked to work late into the evening. Rare was the primary campaign night when I did not receive a 1:00 A.M. call from Pooch. Occasionally, Pooch would ask me to act as an intermediary with Ed. Once Ed learned I was having late night calls with Pooch, Ed would also call, through not as late as Pucinski.

My improbable role as a candidate morphed into something quite unusual, a liaison between the various candidates who would not deign to speak to each other in public. Through my efforts, we took the hard edges off each other, and focused our attention on the Daley Machine candidate, Bilandic.

One writer, for the Chicago Daily News if my memory serves me correctly, wrote a story about how this group of candidates got along surprisingly well for such a contentious and controversial group of big egos. No one could understand how we achieved such a casual and cordial working relationship.

My role as political emollient in the process was beneath the surface and was only known to a handful of media types who saw my own metamorphosis during the campaign. The NBC station in Chicago, WMAQ-TV, was attacked by Cook County Board President George Dunne for being the “Martin” channel. Dunne accused WMAQ of biased coverage in my favor. (Unbelievable.)

With the assistance of yet another Chicago legal institution, colorful criminal attorney Julius Lucius Ecchles, I wounded the Machine in court. My radio and TV commercials relentlessly attacked the Machine candidate Bilandic.

It was also during this campaign that I began to focus attention on an obscure federal statute, the “Civil RICO” law. My Chicago lawsuits triggered a nationwide “RICO revolution.”

Almost all of the media from that era have “retired,” a word I increasingly dislike in the extreme. I think Dick Kay of WMAQ-TV was the last of the media Mohicans from 1977. He “retired” recently.

As I got to know Hanrahan in private, he was clearly a man of impeccable integrity. His rigid religions upbringing and education had infused his character with the “absolutes” of good and evil. The police were good. Black Panthers were evil. Good could do no evil, and evil could do no good. Hanrahan paid a penultimate price for his stoic beliefs, beliefs that were then crumbling under the onslaught of anti-war opposition and consequent radicalization of both the Democratic Party and the Roman Catholic Church.

Having been converted to a more nuanced view of morality at Oxford University, I did not take such an absolutist attitude. It was because of the flexibility and intuitiveness of my Oxonian upbringing that I was able to act as an interlocutor between Ed, Pooch, Harold, Ellis and the streets of Chicago.

More than three decades have passed since that extraordinary primary session in 1977. After losing the primary Ed lapsed into obscurity. He must have played and replayed and replayed the events of December 1969 over and over again. One cold night, two young men were murdered by excessive and unnecessary police gunfire. As the “commanding officer” on that failed and fatal raid, Ed Hanrahan paid the price for the mission’s failure.

Politically, Hanrahan was adjudged guilty, and executed. Morally, he was probably not guilty. His “crime” was rigid adherence to the scheme of good and evil that had been schooled in him as a young man. He could no more escape his past than the Panthers could escape the police gunfire. Three men died that night in December 1969.

That primary also changed my life in many ways. And today I am the last living member of the team of candidates that challenged Daley Machine domination of City Hall. I am older, and wiser; but in many ways I am still the relentless reformer fighting corruption and working to help the average citizen get a fair shake and a fair break from the high and mighty in government. My own sense of morality keeps me going. There’s a little of Ed Hanrahan in me as well.

Ed, rest in peace. You were a good man who paid a terrible price for a mistaken judgment that could have consumed any one of us. Now that you have joined the angels, I am sure you and Fred Hampton and Mark Clark will have a lot to argue about and an eternity to debate a flash in the night that forever incinerated three lives.

[There is more to my role the 1977 primary, and some day I hope to have the time to publish an expanded version of these observations. Tonight, however, I merely want to remember Ed Hanrahan, a good man who was caught up in a situation that was almost biblical in its tragic impact on all those who were part of the unforeseen and unforgettable events.]

-----------------------------
Readers of Obama: The Man Behind The Mask, say the book is still the only gold standard and practical handbook on Barack Obama's unfitness for the presidency. Buy it.
Book orders: Amazon.com or http://OrangeStatePress.com. Immediate shipment from Amazon.com or signed copies (delayed for signing) from the publisher are available.
-----------------------------------
Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. He has over forty years of broadcasting background in radio and television and is the dean of Illinois media and communications. He is currently promoting his best-selling book, Obama: The Man Behind The Mask and producing the new Internet movie “Obama: The Hawai’i years.” Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of www.ContrarianCommentary.com.

Martin comments on regional, national and world events with more than four decades of experience. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York. He is an announced candidate for Barack Obama’s former U. S. Senate seat.

UPDATES: www.twitter.com/AndyMartinUSA

His columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com.
[NOTE: We frequently correct typographical errors and additions/subtractions on our blogs, where you can find the latest edition of this release.]

MEDIA CONTACT: (866) 706-2639 or CELL (917) 664-9329 (cell not always on)
E-MAIL: AndyMart20@aol.com
© Copyright by Andy Martin 2009.

Andy Martin’s Chicago: The life and death of Edward V. Hanrahan

Chicago author Andy Martin remembers the controversial public official Ed Hanrahan, whose own life was destroyed by a burst of gunfire that killed two Black Panther party activists forty years ago. Hanrahan died on June 9th.

Andy Martin on the death of Chicago’s Edward V. Hanrahan

ContrarianCommentary.com
Andy Martin
Executive Editor

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The rise and fall of Cook County State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan

Hanrahan’s career serves as a metaphor for the evolution and revolution of the Democratic party locally in Chicago and nationally during 1968-1972

(CHICAGO)(June 9, 2009) Former Cook County State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan died earlier today. I got to know Hanrahan well during the extraordinary 1977 primary election that followed the death of Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley.

Hanrahan’s rise and fall was a metaphor for the Viet-Nam era and the evolution/revolution of the modern Democratic Party.

And, suddenly, I feel older today. With Hanrahan’s death I am the last surviving candidate of that unbelievable 1977 primary season. Hey, I’m too young to be that old.

Ed Hanrahan was an extremely bright student who went from parochial education in Chicago to Notre Dame, to Harvard Law School after World war II.

Hanrahan burst on the Chicago scene as a federal crime fighter. After Mayor of Chicago, the two most important positions for the Democratic Party are Cook County State’s Attorney and United States Attorney. Anyone who is aware of how the current U.S. Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, has caused havoc for Richard J. Daley’s son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, knows why the local prosecutorial posts are so critical to the survival of the Daley Machine’s patronage and corruption.

Hanrahan was colorful and aggressive in pursuing organized crime. I first came to Chicago for a visit in 1963 and fell in love with the place. As a student, I waited until my friends finished their copies of the Chicago Sun-Times, and then eagerly read the lurid stories of hoodlum politicians and gangland corruption. Alderman “Paddy Bauler” had said in 1955 “Chicago ain’t ready for reform,” and indeed it wasn’t. I was to personally collide with Mayor Daley in 1968 over yet another Illinois state corruption scandal.

But Ed Hanrahan’s rise and fall had a broader significance. He was prototypical of the mid-century Democratic party. The Democrats had been demonized during the 19th century as the party of “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” Nationally, the Democratic Party in the 1960’s was still led by many Irish Catholics who shared a common provenance: parochial schools, excellent academic credentials and high achievement. And pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism.

The 1960’s were also the beginning of the end of the era of political “big tents." "Liberal" Republicans were still welcome in the Republican Party, and “conservative Democrats” were not only welcome in the Democratic Party, they were the backbone of the party’s urban base in the North and racist stranglehold in the South.

In 1968 Mayor Daley “promoted” Hanrahan from the U. S. Attorney’s office to Cook County State’s Attorney. Only in the bizarre world of the Daley Machine would a step from the federal government to the county government be considered a “promotion.”

One night in 1969, Ed Hanrahan’s career was shattered. State’s Attorneys police staged a “raid” on a Black Panther Party cell and two men were killed by police gunfire. Hanrahan probably approved the raid but it is doubtful he had anything to do with the actual operational implementation. The deaths produced a firestorm of criticism and mortally wounded Ed’s career.

Hanrahan followed the traditional approach to a botched police operation: he defended police tactics. But the killings of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were no ordinary “mistakes.” During 1968, Chicago had garnered an image and reputation as a racist, mean-spirited city. Barack Obama’s controversial supporters Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn had chosen Chicago to stage their “Days of Rage” in 1969. The media were also evolving in a more confrontational direction.

Hanrahan’s public credibility was shattered by the aftermath of the Black Panther raid. He would never escape responsibility for the tragic incident.

Overnight, Hanrahan went from being a powerful Democratic politician to a political pariah. For a man who had taken great pride in his progression through public office, the inner pain of this estrangement must have been as close to a lethal wound as the ones his police had inflicted on Hampton and Clark.

The Daley Machine tried to dump Hanrahan in 1972, but he survived the primary only to be defeated during the national Republican Party sweep that reelected President Richard Nixon and elected Republican Cook County State’s Attorney Bernard Carey.

During this era, from the late 1960’s and the aftermath of the disastrous Chicago Democratic National Convention of 1968, to the 1972 presidential election, the Democratic Party itself underwent a massive metamorphosis: 1972 was the year the party assumed the form it still has today: liberal, educated, upscale leadership, and all still carried on the back of a Black urban underclass.

The working class Catholic, urban-based backbone of the party was moving to the suburbs; these stalwarts were gradually supplanted by the anti-war and then “McGovern” Democrats who gained control of the party in 1972, four years after the convention disaster in Chicago and three years after the deaths of Hampton and Clark.

While even today Irish Catholics continue to be an important constituency of the Democratic Party, as well as “Reagan Democrats” of 1980 and 1984, never again would an urban, Irish-based leadership control the national party organization.

Indeed, the seeds of President Barack Obama’s eventual nomination were initially planted in the 1972 campaign, during which both Bill and Hillary Clinton were pro-McGovern activists.

In 1972, at the age of 51, in the prime of his life, Edward Hanrahan became a dead man walking in Chicago politics.

I met Ed in 1977 when he was a candidate for Mayor of Chicago in the primary that was held after the death of Richard J. Daley in December, 1976. And herein lies a story about a peculiarly interesting period in my life.

In the wake of Daley’s death, the Democratic Machine was thrown into disarray. As a stopgap measure Alderman Michael Bilandic was appointed interim mayor until a new election could be held.

I stumbled into the campaign as the only corruption-fighting reformer challenging Machine domination of the city.

The Machine still feared Hanrahan’s potential because of his high profile in the media.

State Senator (later Mayor) Harold Washington was the candidate of many semi-independent African-American leaders. The Machine tried to neutralize his support by running a second African-American, Ellis Reid. Former congressman Roman Pucinski (“Pooch”) thought he had a chance of parlaying the Polish-American vote into victory in a divided primary.

Pooch didn’t like Hanrahan and the feeling was mutual.

But Ed Hanrahan and I became friendly. Then Pooch and I became close. Pooch discovered that I liked to work late into the evening. Rare was the primary campaign night when I did not receive a 1:00 A.M. call from Pooch. Occasionally, Pooch would ask me to act as an intermediary with Ed. Once Ed learned I was having late night calls with Pooch, Ed would also call, through not as late as Pucinski.

My improbable role as a candidate morphed into something quite unusual, a liaison between the various candidates who would not deign to speak to each other in public. Through my efforts, we took the hard edges off each other, and focused our attention on the Daley Machine candidate, Bilandic.

One writer, for the Chicago Daily News if my memory serves me correctly, wrote a story about how this group of candidates got along surprisingly well for such a contentious and controversial group of big egos. No one could understand how we achieved such a casual and cordial working relationship.

My role as political emollient in the process was beneath the surface and was only known to a handful of media types who saw my own metamorphosis during the campaign. The NBC station in Chicago, WMAQ-TV, was attacked by Cook County Board President George Dunne for being the “Martin” channel. Dunne accused WMAQ of biased coverage in my favor. (Unbelievable.)

With the assistance of yet another Chicago legal institution, colorful criminal attorney Julius Lucius Ecchles, I wounded the Machine in court. My radio and TV commercials relentlessly attacked the Machine candidate Bilandic.

It was also during this campaign that I began to focus attention on an obscure federal statute, the “Civil RICO” law. My Chicago lawsuits triggered a nationwide “RICO revolution.”

Almost all of the media from that era have “retired,” a word I increasingly dislike in the extreme. I think Dick Kay of WMAQ-TV was the last of the media Mohicans from 1977. He “retired” recently.

As I got to know Hanrahan in private, he was clearly a man of impeccable integrity. His rigid religions upbringing and education had infused his character with the “absolutes” of good and evil. The police were good. Black Panthers were evil. Good could do no evil, and evil could do no good. Hanrahan paid a penultimate price for his stoic beliefs, beliefs that were then crumbling under the onslaught of anti-war opposition and consequent radicalization of both the Democratic Party and the Roman Catholic Church.

Having been converted to a more nuanced view of morality at Oxford University, I did not take such an absolutist attitude. It was because of the flexibility and intuitiveness of my Oxonian upbringing that I was able to act as an interlocutor between Ed, Pooch, Harold, Ellis and the streets of Chicago.

More than three decades have passed since that extraordinary primary session in 1977. After losing the primary Ed lapsed into obscurity. He must have played and replayed and replayed the events of December 1969 over and over again. One cold night, two young men were murdered by excessive and unnecessary police gunfire. As the “commanding officer” on that failed and fatal raid, Ed Hanrahan paid the price for the mission’s failure.

Politically, Hanrahan was adjudged guilty, and executed. Morally, he was probably not guilty. His “crime” was rigid adherence to the scheme of good and evil that had been schooled in him as a young man. He could no more escape his past than the Panthers could escape the police gunfire. Three men died that night in December 1969.

That primary also changed my life in many ways. And today I am the last living member of the team of candidates that challenged Daley Machine domination of City Hall. I am older, and wiser; but in many ways I am still the relentless reformer fighting corruption and working to help the average citizen get a fair shake and a fair break from the high and mighty in government. My own sense of morality keeps me going. There’s a little of Ed Hanrahan in me as well.

Ed, rest in peace. You were a good man who paid a terrible price for a mistaken judgment that could have consumed any one of us. Now that you have joined the angels, I am sure you and Fred Hampton and Mark Clark will have a lot to argue about and an eternity to debate a flash in the night that forever incinerated three lives.

[There is more to my role the 1977 primary, and some day I hope to have the time to publish an expanded version of these observations. Tonight, however, I merely want to remember Ed Hanrahan, a good man who was caught up in a situation that was almost biblical in its tragic impact on all those who were part of the unforeseen and unforgettable events.]

-----------------------------
Readers of Obama: The Man Behind The Mask, say the book is still the only gold standard and practical handbook on Barack Obama's unfitness for the presidency. Buy it.
Book orders: Amazon.com or http://OrangeStatePress.com. Immediate shipment from Amazon.com or signed copies (delayed for signing) from the publisher are available.
-----------------------------------
Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. He has over forty years of broadcasting background in radio and television and is the dean of Illinois media and communications. He is currently promoting his best-selling book, Obama: The Man Behind The Mask and producing the new Internet movie “Obama: The Hawai’i years.” Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of www.ContrarianCommentary.com.

Martin comments on regional, national and world events with more than four decades of experience. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York. He is an announced candidate for Barack Obama’s former U. S. Senate seat.

UPDATES: www.twitter.com/AndyMartinUSA

His columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com.
[NOTE: We frequently correct typographical errors and additions/subtractions on our blogs, where you can find the latest edition of this release.]

MEDIA CONTACT: (866) 706-2639 or CELL (917) 664-9329 (cell not always on)
E-MAIL: AndyMart20@aol.com
© Copyright by Andy Martin 2009.

Andy Martin’s Chicago: The life and death of Edward V. Hanrahan

Chicago author Andy Martin remembers the controversial public official Ed Hanrahan, whose own life was destroyed by a burst of gunfire that killed two Black Panther party activists forty years ago. Hanrahan died on June 9th.

Andy Martin on the death of Chicago’s Edward V. Hanrahan

ContrarianCommentary.com
Andy Martin
Executive Editor

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The rise and fall of Cook County State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan

Hanrahan’s career serves as a metaphor for the evolution and revolution of the Democratic party locally in Chicago and nationally during 1968-1972

(CHICAGO)(June 9, 2009) Former Cook County State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan died earlier today. I got to know Hanrahan well during the extraordinary 1977 primary election that followed the death of Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley.

Hanrahan’s rise and fall was a metaphor for the Viet-Nam era and the evolution/revolution of the modern Democratic Party.

And, suddenly, I feel older today. With Hanrahan’s death I am the last surviving candidate of that unbelievable 1977 primary season. Hey, I’m too young to be that old.

Ed Hanrahan was an extremely bright student who went from parochial education in Chicago to Notre Dame, to Harvard Law School after World war II.

Hanrahan burst on the Chicago scene as a federal crime fighter. After Mayor of Chicago, the two most important positions for the Democratic Party are Cook County State’s Attorney and United States Attorney. Anyone who is aware of how the current U.S. Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, has caused havoc for Richard J. Daley’s son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, knows why the local prosecutorial posts are so critical to the survival of the Daley Machine’s patronage and corruption.

Hanrahan was colorful and aggressive in pursuing organized crime. I first came to Chicago for a visit in 1963 and fell in love with the place. As a student, I waited until my friends finished their copies of the Chicago Sun-Times, and then eagerly read the lurid stories of hoodlum politicians and gangland corruption. Alderman “Paddy Bauler” had said in 1955 “Chicago ain’t ready for reform,” and indeed it wasn’t. I was to personally collide with Mayor Daley in 1968 over yet another Illinois state corruption scandal.

But Ed Hanrahan’s rise and fall had a broader significance. He was prototypical of the mid-century Democratic party. The Democrats had been demonized during the 19th century as the party of “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” Nationally, the Democratic Party in the 1960’s was still led by many Irish Catholics who shared a common provenance: parochial schools, excellent academic credentials and high achievement. And pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism.

The 1960’s were also the beginning of the end of the era of political “big tents." "Liberal" Republicans were still welcome in the Republican Party, and “conservative Democrats” were not only welcome in the Democratic Party, they were the backbone of the party’s urban base in the North and racist stranglehold in the South.

In 1968 Mayor Daley “promoted” Hanrahan from the U. S. Attorney’s office to Cook County State’s Attorney. Only in the bizarre world of the Daley Machine would a step from the federal government to the county government be considered a “promotion.”

One night in 1969, Ed Hanrahan’s career was shattered. State’s Attorneys police staged a “raid” on a Black Panther Party cell and two men were killed by police gunfire. Hanrahan probably approved the raid but it is doubtful he had anything to do with the actual operational implementation. The deaths produced a firestorm of criticism and mortally wounded Ed’s career.

Hanrahan followed the traditional approach to a botched police operation: he defended police tactics. But the killings of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were no ordinary “mistakes.” During 1968, Chicago had garnered an image and reputation as a racist, mean-spirited city. Barack Obama’s controversial supporters Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn had chosen Chicago to stage their “Days of Rage” in 1969. The media were also evolving in a more confrontational direction.

Hanrahan’s public credibility was shattered by the aftermath of the Black Panther raid. He would never escape responsibility for the tragic incident.

Overnight, Hanrahan went from being a powerful Democratic politician to a political pariah. For a man who had taken great pride in his progression through public office, the inner pain of this estrangement must have been as close to a lethal wound as the ones his police had inflicted on Hampton and Clark.

The Daley Machine tried to dump Hanrahan in 1972, but he survived the primary only to be defeated during the national Republican Party sweep that reelected President Richard Nixon and elected Republican Cook County State’s Attorney Bernard Carey.

During this era, from the late 1960’s and the aftermath of the disastrous Chicago Democratic National Convention of 1968, to the 1972 presidential election, the Democratic Party itself underwent a massive metamorphosis: 1972 was the year the party assumed the form it still has today: liberal, educated, upscale leadership, and all still carried on the back of a Black urban underclass.

The working class Catholic, urban-based backbone of the party was moving to the suburbs; these stalwarts were gradually supplanted by the anti-war and then “McGovern” Democrats who gained control of the party in 1972, four years after the convention disaster in Chicago and three years after the deaths of Hampton and Clark.

While even today Irish Catholics continue to be an important constituency of the Democratic Party, as well as “Reagan Democrats” of 1980 and 1984, never again would an urban, Irish-based leadership control the national party organization.

Indeed, the seeds of President Barack Obama’s eventual nomination were initially planted in the 1972 campaign, during which both Bill and Hillary Clinton were pro-McGovern activists.

In 1972, at the age of 51, in the prime of his life, Edward Hanrahan became a dead man walking in Chicago politics.

I met Ed in 1977 when he was a candidate for Mayor of Chicago in the primary that was held after the death of Richard J. Daley in December, 1976. And herein lies a story about a peculiarly interesting period in my life.

In the wake of Daley’s death, the Democratic Machine was thrown into disarray. As a stopgap measure Alderman Michael Bilandic was appointed interim mayor until a new election could be held.

I stumbled into the campaign as the only corruption-fighting reformer challenging Machine domination of the city.

The Machine still feared Hanrahan’s potential because of his high profile in the media.

State Senator (later Mayor) Harold Washington was the candidate of many semi-independent African-American leaders. The Machine tried to neutralize his support by running a second African-American, Ellis Reid. Former congressman Roman Pucinski (“Pooch”) thought he had a chance of parlaying the Polish-American vote into victory in a divided primary.

Pooch didn’t like Hanrahan and the feeling was mutual.

But Ed Hanrahan and I became friendly. Then Pooch and I became close. Pooch discovered that I liked to work late into the evening. Rare was the primary campaign night when I did not receive a 1:00 A.M. call from Pooch. Occasionally, Pooch would ask me to act as an intermediary with Ed. Once Ed learned I was having late night calls with Pooch, Ed would also call, through not as late as Pucinski.

My improbable role as a candidate morphed into something quite unusual, a liaison between the various candidates who would not deign to speak to each other in public. Through my efforts, we took the hard edges off each other, and focused our attention on the Daley Machine candidate, Bilandic.

One writer, for the Chicago Daily News if my memory serves me correctly, wrote a story about how this group of candidates got along surprisingly well for such a contentious and controversial group of big egos. No one could understand how we achieved such a casual and cordial working relationship.

My role as political emollient in the process was beneath the surface and was only known to a handful of media types who saw my own metamorphosis during the campaign. The NBC station in Chicago, WMAQ-TV, was attacked by Cook County Board President George Dunne for being the “Martin” channel. Dunne accused WMAQ of biased coverage in my favor. (Unbelievable.)

With the assistance of yet another Chicago legal institution, colorful criminal attorney Julius Lucius Ecchles, I wounded the Machine in court. My radio and TV commercials relentlessly attacked the Machine candidate Bilandic.

It was also during this campaign that I began to focus attention on an obscure federal statute, the “Civil RICO” law. My Chicago lawsuits triggered a nationwide “RICO revolution.”

Almost all of the media from that era have “retired,” a word I increasingly dislike in the extreme. I think Dick Kay of WMAQ-TV was the last of the media Mohicans from 1977. He “retired” recently.

As I got to know Hanrahan in private, he was clearly a man of impeccable integrity. His rigid religions upbringing and education had infused his character with the “absolutes” of good and evil. The police were good. Black Panthers were evil. Good could do no evil, and evil could do no good. Hanrahan paid a penultimate price for his stoic beliefs, beliefs that were then crumbling under the onslaught of anti-war opposition and consequent radicalization of both the Democratic Party and the Roman Catholic Church.

Having been converted to a more nuanced view of morality at Oxford University, I did not take such an absolutist attitude. It was because of the flexibility and intuitiveness of my Oxonian upbringing that I was able to act as an interlocutor between Ed, Pooch, Harold, Ellis and the streets of Chicago.

More than three decades have passed since that extraordinary primary session in 1977. After losing the primary Ed lapsed into obscurity. He must have played and replayed and replayed the events of December 1969 over and over again. One cold night, two young men were murdered by excessive and unnecessary police gunfire. As the “commanding officer” on that failed and fatal raid, Ed Hanrahan paid the price for the mission’s failure.

Politically, Hanrahan was adjudged guilty, and executed. Morally, he was probably not guilty. His “crime” was rigid adherence to the scheme of good and evil that had been schooled in him as a young man. He could no more escape his past than the Panthers could escape the police gunfire. Three men died that night in December 1969.

That primary also changed my life in many ways. And today I am the last living member of the team of candidates that challenged Daley Machine domination of City Hall. I am older, and wiser; but in many ways I am still the relentless reformer fighting corruption and working to help the average citizen get a fair shake and a fair break from the high and mighty in government. My own sense of morality keeps me going. There’s a little of Ed Hanrahan in me as well.

Ed, rest in peace. You were a good man who paid a terrible price for a mistaken judgment that could have consumed any one of us. Now that you have joined the angels, I am sure you and Fred Hampton and Mark Clark will have a lot to argue about and an eternity to debate a flash in the night that forever incinerated three lives.

[There is more to my role the 1977 primary, and some day I hope to have the time to publish an expanded version of these observations. Tonight, however, I merely want to remember Ed Hanrahan, a good man who was caught up in a situation that was almost biblical in its tragic impact on all those who were part of the unforeseen and unforgettable events.]

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Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. He has over forty years of broadcasting background in radio and television and is the dean of Illinois media and communications. He is currently promoting his best-selling book, Obama: The Man Behind The Mask and producing the new Internet movie “Obama: The Hawai’i years.” Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of www.ContrarianCommentary.com.

Martin comments on regional, national and world events with more than four decades of experience. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York. He is an announced candidate for Barack Obama’s former U. S. Senate seat.

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His columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com.
[NOTE: We frequently correct typographical errors and additions/subtractions on our blogs, where you can find the latest edition of this release.]

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