Does anyone have information about the A.N.S.W.E.R. organization? See story
below forwarded to me by a hawkish high school buddy. Any insight will be
appreciated.
Dennis J. Foster
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: Hope for peace? Please read this!
> is this true?....or will you dis it as (just) "my truth"?
>
> ANSWER's Steering Committee
> By Ryan Anderson O'Donnell
> FrontPageMagazine.com | March 12, 2003
>
>
> The group at the forefront of the recent anti-war rallies, International
> A.N.S.W.E.R (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is in reality a front
> organization designed to further the radical agenda of several extremist
> movements from the political Left. Despite the media's assertions to the
> contrary, present incarnation of the peace movement, led by ANSWER, is
> anything but representative of mainstream America.
>
> ANSWER's steering committee reads like a "Who's Who" of radical political
> organizations. The most influential member of ANSWER's steering
> committee, Ramsey Clark's pet project known as the International Action
> Center (IAC), is considered by many observers to be little more than a
> communist front organization for an obscure Stalinist organization known
> as the World Workers Party (WWP). Yet, the IAC is not the only member of
> ANSWER's steering committee committed to extremist causes. The Korean
> Truth Commission and Pastors for Peace are staunch allies of Kim Jong Il
> and Fidel Castro, respectively, and both groups continue to support these
> murderous regimes' violation of International law. In addition to its
> role as a front for the support of totalitarian/communist governments in
> North Korea and Cuba, members of ANSWER's steering committee such as the
> Muslim Student Association and the Free Palestine Alliance continue to
> provide ideological, logistical and financial support for organizations
> devoted to the destruction of the state of Israel, including the
> terrorist group, Hamas. A comprehensive investigation of the members of
> ANSWER's steering committee make it clear that the organization is in
> actuality one of Peace's greatest enemies.
>
> Since its inception in the early nineties, Former Attorney General Ramsey
> Clark's International Action Center has been documented to be a front
> organization for the World Worker's party. While the WWP's history and
> support for murderous regimes and bloody crackdowns on
> communist/totalitarian dissidents has already been extensively documented
> by Front Page Magazine, as well as other several media outlets, through a
> deliberate infiltration strategy in which key WWP operatives have assumed
> high level positions in Clark's organization, the WWP has been able to
> exert tremendous ideological sway over the IAC, and subsequently, ANSWER.
> As noted by Kevin Coogan, a contributor to the Hit List who has
> extensively investigated the WWP-IAC connection, "it is undeniable that
> without the presence of scores of WWP cadre working inside the IAC, the
> organization, for all practical purposes would cease to exist."
>
> It was Ramsey Clark's seduction by the WWP that marked the beginning of
> the WWP's movement to the forefront of liberal activism. In 1991, the
> National Coalition was born out of the ashes of another WWP front
> organization known as the People's Anti-War Mobilization (PAM). The WWP's
> role in the creation of the National Coalition was immediately made
> apparent through the selection of prominent WWP member Monica Moorehead
> as the head of the new organization. The National Coalition quickly
> established its headquarters in a Manhattan office building adjacent to
> the offices of Ramsey Clark, which was already infested with WWP members.
> Gavriella Gemma, a WWP and National Coalition coordinator, was a legal
> secretary in Ramsey's office, and was allegedly instrumental in bringing
> Clark into the WWP fold. Clark quickly fell under the sway of the WWP,
> and within months was announced as the organization's official spokesman.
>
> Clark's appointment as National Coalition spokesman marked the beginning
> of his alliance with the WWP, an alliance that resulted in the formation
> of the International Action Center. Workers' World, the official
> newspaper of the WWP announced the creation of the IAC, describing it as
> a "center of international solidarity." However, with Clark as its
> spokesman, and WWP member Sarah Flounders as its coordinator, IAC was
> clearly designed to be the National Coalition's successor as a sanctuary
> for WWP front groups and other affiliated organizations, including the
> National Coalition to Stop U.S Intervention in the Middle East, the Hati
> Commission, the Campaign to Stop Settlements in Palestine, the Commission
> of Inquiry on the U.S. Invasion of Panama, the Movement for a People's
> Assembly, and the International War Crimes Tribunal (Coogan, p. 3). Brian
> Becker, member of the secretariat of the World Workers Party, is now a
> national co-director for the IAC. Other WWP members overtly associated
> with IAC are Sarah Sloan (youth coordinator), Teresa Gutierrez
> (co-director) and Gloria La Riva (correspondent, Workers World.) Of
> course, IAC WWP members are never identified as such at ANSWER rallies.
> Ostensibly, this lack of WWP identification is because their positions at
> the IAC are to be the focus of the rallies. While this may be
> superficially accurate, one wonders how many of the anti-war
> demonstrators at ANSWER events would be pleased to know their time and
> donations are aiding a group (WWP) that supported the Tiananmen Square
> massacre?
>
> The IAC's formation of the Korea Truth Commission, another ANSWER
> steering committee member, provides further evidence of WWP's heavy hand
> in the ANSWER coalition. Presumably incorporated to uncover some form of
> "truth" about the Korean War, the KTC has proven itself to be little more
> than a mouthpiece for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK),
> and the communist nation's lackeys in the IAC and WWP. Once again, the
> infamous Ramsey Clark is the organizer behind this entire charade. Under
> guidance of Clark's IAC, the KTC has sent eight delegations to the Korean
> Peninsula in order to gather "evidence" of war crimes allegedly committed
> during the Korean War. These fact-finding delegations unsurprisingly
> included all of the usual suspects: Ramsey Clark, Gloria La Riva, and
> Brian Becker. Most of these delegations accomplished little more than
> finding every excuse to vilify the United States, while praising Kim
> Jong-Il's North Korea. The reports filed by these delegations were often
> short on concrete fact, choosing instead to spend pages extolling the
> virtues of the communist regime in the North. For example, the eighth
> delegation reported back:
>
> To the visitor, Pyongyang leaves the impression of a clean, modern world
> capital. It is a city of two million people with an efficient public
> transit system, wide, tree-lined streets, and all the cultural amenities,
> hospitals, schools, parks and sports facilities that one would expect to
> find in a large metropolis. Industry has been located on the perimeter of
> the city to avoid the problem of pollution as much as possible.the people
> of Pyongyang present themselves as cultured and purposeful. There is no
> sign of vagrancy or homelessness. Instead of billboards with product
> advertising, the streets are adorned with posters, banners and
> inscriptions exhorting citizens to work together to build a powerful
> nation.
>
> Anyone familiar with the Pyongyang regime knows such a glowing
> representation of the city and its government is inaccurate. However,
> since much of the KTC is controlled by Kim Jong-Il's fan club at the WWP
> and the IAC, such misrepresentations should come as little surprise.
>
> In fact, at the time of this article's publication, the KTC does not even
> have its own website; the IAC has simply devoted a portion of its
> Iacenter.org to information on the KTC. While other organizations are
> active in the KTC, it is clear that Ramsey Clark and the IAC/WWP alliance
> dictate the commission's agenda.
>
> The KTC's flurry of activity in the late nineties culminated with an
> International War Crimes Tribunal on U.S. Crimes in Korea, a shameless
> travesty that made a mockery of the Tribunal concept. Once again, the WWP
> and IAC's fingerprints were all over the tribunal. Sarah Flounders served
> as the Tribunals co-chair, while Ramsey Clark appointed himself Chief
> prosecutor. Brian Becker was listed as a Tribunal Sponsor, while Sandra
> Smith, Gloria La Riva and Anne Becker all led discussion groups related
> to the tribunal. Unsurprisingly, with the WWP running the show, the
> tribunal, like many of today's anti-war protests, dissolved into an orgy
> of anti-Americanism, with little adherence to its stated purpose, the
> truth.
>
> WWP influenced groups like the IAC and the KTC are not the only members
> of ANSWER's steering committee that back rogue dictatorships. Another of
> ANSWER's steering committee members, Pastors for Peace (PFP), is
> partially funded by the ARCA foundation, an organization devoted to
> supporting pro-Castro groups in the United States. In the last decade
> alone, ARCA has granted well over one hundred thousand dollars to PFP.
> According to PFP, these grants go towards humanitarian relief cargo such
> as medicine, computers, and school buses. Of course, PFP fails to note
> that in Cuba, everything is owned by the state. And that Castro is the
> State. So essentially, PFP is using ARCA's grant money to prop up
> Castro's worker's paradise.
>
> Reports from Cuba indicate that the medicine PFP claims has gone directly
> to the Cuban people is in fact often sold at the government's "foreigners
> only" stores. Since regular Cubans are not allowed to own computers, the
> government immediately seizes the machines. As for the school buses
> donated by PFP to the Cuban people? Cuban refugees have reported these
> buses are now used by the police for raids against anti-Castro dissents.
>
> Not only do these humanitarian shipments aid Castro, but they are also in
> flagrant violation of US law. Although the 1992 Cuban Democracy act
> allows for private humanitarian donations to Cuba, "appropriate licensing
> and inspection procedures must be met by all donors." PFP has repeatedly
> failed to follow such procedures, as illustrated in a letter composed by
> a group of US Congressmen to the Director of the Office of Foreign Asset
> controls. The letter documents PFP's numerous violations of the Cuban
> embargo, concluding that "Pastors for Peace has publicly and
> intentionally violated the law in an attempt to challenge US policy
> towards the Castro dictatorship. If Pastors for Peace was truly the
> peaceful humanitarian organization which it claims to be, it would not
> make its travel and resources contingent on political posturing, or
> violently violate the law and injure customs officials."
>
> In its zeal to bolster Castro's Communist cabal, the PFP has even
> resorted to violence in order to defy the Cuban Democracy act. Despite
> the fact that the PFP could ship humanitarian goods to Cuba if licensed
> under the Trading with Enemies Act , the group has consistently sought
> out confrontation with United States authorities. The most violent of
> these clashes occurred in 1996 when thirty vehicles carrying two hundred
> activists and three hundred computers was stopped at the Mexican border
> by US customs officials. PFP activists then exited their caravan and
> attempted to break through the blockade. A physical confrontation quickly
> erupted between the Customs officials and the activists, and although PFP
> profess adherence to "non-violent techniques," the melee resulted in
> serious injuries to four customs officials, three of which required
> hospitalization. A single PFP activist received minor injuries.
>
> PFP has no qualms about placing the health and safety of American
> citizens at risk, as demonstrated by its involvement with "biorat." In
> July of 2001, Customs Officials seized more than thirty pounds of
> "biorat" from PFP activists. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease
> Control and Prevention in Atlanta, "Biorat is not admissible into the
> United States," because "it poses a public health risk worldwide." The
> report cites a "1996 article in the British medical journal Lancet
> asserting that the product could easily cause food-borne disease in
> people."
>
> Through his sympathizers like Pastors for Peace, Castro continues to
> export toxins into the U.S. that could harm the American people. The
> desire of Pastors for Peace to smuggle contraband biochemicals into the
> United States needs to be scrutinized carefully, especially as our nation
> remains on alert against biological and chemical terrorism.
>
>
> While not directly associated with the WWP or the rogue regimes in North
> Korea and Iraq, two other ANSWER Steering Committee members, the Muslim
> Student Alliance (MSA) and the Free Palestine Alliance (FPA), continue to
> contradict ANSWER's alleged commitment to peace and ending racism. The
> Free Palestine Alliance is an outspoken supporter of the intifada, the
> Palestinian Uprising that has killed thousands of Israelis. Started by
> the Islamic Jihad, the Intifada has been guided by the PLO and strongly
> influenced by terrorist organizations like Hamas, which carry out suicide
> bombings. While the FPA does not overtly endorse the terrorist elements
> of the Intifada, much of the same rancor and anti-Semitism that drives
> the Hamas suicide bombers is on display at FPA events. For example, this
> past April, ANSWER sponsored a Free Palestine Rally, marchers bore signs
> reading " 'Chosen People' : It's Payback Time." The Nation's Liza
> Featherstone reported "Some demonstrators' signs bore swastikas and SS
> symbols [that while] intended to draw parallels between Hitler and
> Sharon, [could] easily [be] construed as pro-Nazi."
>
> While the FPA's support of the Palestinian Intifada, an uprising that has
> claimed the lives of thousands of Jewish civilians and will continue to
> claim more, is disturbing enough, the Muslim Student Association has
> indirectly contributed to numerous terrorist organizations, including
> Hamas, and perhaps even Al-Qaeda. The MSA has actively solicited
> donations for the Holy Land Foundation.10 Treasury Department Secretary
> Paul O'Neill named the HLF, as well as two Palestinian-based financial
> organizations, as "Hamas operated organizations." President Bush
> described Hamas as "one of the deadliest terrorist organizations in the
> world today," which seeks the total destruction of the State of Israel.
> Altaf Husain, national president of the MSA, said his organization has no
> plans to stop raising money for various groups unless federal authorities
> crack down. He called suspicions about terrorist links post-attack
> "hype," and said it is up to the government to trace the money. "We are
> as American as anyone else. Why should we be the ones looking for all
> these so-called 'sleeper cells' or whatever?"
>
> Mr. Husain's indifference towards aiding terrorist organizations seems to
> have infected many of MSA's student chapters. For example, according to
> the Supreme Islamic Council, "The MSA's Ohio State University chapter
> produces a Web newsletter called MSA News, which has included news
> releases from the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, which is on the State
> Department list of terrorist organizations that Americans are forbidden
> to support or finance, and the Islamic Salvation Front, a fundamentalist
> party banned in Algeria."
>
> MSA's terror connections appear to even extend beyond Hamas and into the
> shadowy realm of bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror organization. In 1998, while
> investigating the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the FBI
> recovered diaries maintained by Wadih El Hage, a bin Laden Lieutenant. In
> Mr. El Hage's journals, investigators discovered passages that referred
> to a "joint venture" with the Holy Land Foundation. In addition, Mr. El
> Hage's address book contained the name and phone number of an alleged
> Hamas figure who worked with the HFL, Ghassan Dahduli.14 If the HLF was
> indeed involved with El Hage, then it seems indisputable that some MSA
> money has gone to fund al-Qaeda. Subsequently, a strong argument could be
> made that members of International ANSWER's steering committee indirectly
> contributed to the September 11th attacks that massacred 2,792 women and
> men. Quite an impressive feat, for an organization dedicated to "peace."
>
> The tolerance for anti-Semitism and violence against Jews that taints the
> MSA and IFA also manifests itself in the WWP. When a WWP delegation, lead
> by Sam Macy and Sue Bailey, traveled to North Korea in April 1992 to
> attend Kim Sung Il's 80th birthday celebration, the group entered into
> discussions with other hardline Communist groups, including an
> anti-Semitic Stalin-worshipping sect called the Russian Communist Workers
> Party (RCWP) (Rossiskaia Kommunisticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia, or RKRP),
> which emerged from the anti-Gorbachev, "anti-revisionist" Movement of
> Communist Initiative in November 1991.
>
> This contact between the WWP and RCWP continued to intensify after the
> parties left North Korea. "On September 3rd, 1992, WW ran an article by
> Viktor Tyulkin, the group's Secretary of its Central Committee. They
> remained in contact, and on Marcy's 85th birthday Tyulkin sent him a
> "message of solidarity" from the RCWP that was reprinted in the October
> 17th, 1996 WW. Tyulkin's comrade Victor Anpilov from the Executive
> Committee of Working Russia also enclosed his own "message of
> solidarity." This is the same Victor Anipilov who co-founded the RCWP and
> recently attacked Boris Yeltsin's presidency as a "Jewish conspiracy."
>
> Although collaboration and "solidarity" between communist organizations
> is not in itself shocking, much of the RCWP's platform, which tends to
> mirror Anipilov's Yeltsin comments, is. According to the leftist
> International Solidarity with Workers in Russia (Sword-SITR-MCPP) group,
> the RCWP could be best described as "an extremely racist and homophobic
> party whose members worship Stalin, campaign against black people in
> general and rap music in particular, issue material calling for
> homosexuals to be jailed, and published a party document in 1997 that
> blamed Russia's economic crisis on "American imperialism and
> international Zionism." The group also attacked current Russian President
> Vladimir Putin for being so close to "the Jews that he ignores true
> Russian 'patriots'."
>
> Despite the RCWP's unabashed anti-Semitic proclamations, the WWP
> continues to allow RCWP members to present their political views in the
> pages of Workers World. By declaring "solidarity" with the RCWP, it can
> only be presumed the WWP sympathizes with the organizations' public
> statements regarding Jews. Rather than condemn their comrades' assertions
> that Jews will be the downfall of Russia, the WWP has chosen to remain
> silent.
>
> Further illustrating their sympathy towards anti-Semites, ANSWER's
> organizers, many of whom are documented members of the WWP, have
> frequently refused to let devoted political leftists and peace advocates
> speak at rallies if they hold a pro-Israel position. The most celebrated
> of these incidents occurred when Rabbi Michael Lerner was barred from
> speaking at a recent IAC anti-war rally in San Francisco. Yet, at its
> January march in Washington, ANSWER "handed a microphone to Abdul Malim
> Musa, a Muslim cleric who on October 31, 2001 appeared at a news
> conference at the National Press Club with other Muslim activists and
> members of the New Black Panther Party, 'where speakers asserted that
> Israel had launched the 9/11 attacks and that thousands of Jews had been
> warned that day not to go to work at the World Trade Center.' At that
> press conference, Musa blasted the 'Zionists in Hollywood, the Zionists
> in New York, and the Zionists in D.C.' who 'all collaborate' to put down
> blacks and Muslims."
>
> ANSWER's connection to anti-Semites extends even to Ramsey Clark, the
> head of IAC and a leader of the new anti-war coalition. As an attorney,
> Clark has taken it upon himself to represent several clients primarily
> characterized by their intense hatred of Jews. In 1989, Clark represented
> Lyndon Larouche, who by the late 1970's embraced far-right anti-Semitism
> and Holocaust denial. Despite Larouche's documented history of
> anti-Semitism, Clark expressed 'amazement' at the personal 'vilification'
> directed at Larouche throughout the trial. Clark also represented PLO
> leaders in a suit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the elderly
> vacationer who was shot and thrown overboard from the hijacked Achille
> Lauro cruise-ship by renegade Palestinian terrorists in 1986. Another
> Clark client was Karl Linnas, an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard in
> Estonia (where he had overseen the murder of some 12,000 resistance
> fighters and Jews), who was being deported from the US to the USSR to
> face war crimes charges. Clark again lost the case but again went to bat
> for his client in the public arena, questioning the need to prosecute
> Nazis "forty years after some god-awful crime they're alleged to have
> committed."
>
> It is not troubling that Clark defended these anti-Semitic thugs; our
> nation guarantees every man and woman the right to an attorney. However,
> there is clearly something highly questionable about a man, especially
> one with Clark's profile, who makes an effort to publicly defend Nazis
> and anti-Semites after their trial has been concluded. However, in light
> of IAC's connection with the WWP, an organization that in the past had
> been vehemently opposed to the state of Israel and, most importantly,
> supported the RCWP, Clark's comments immediately assume a far more
> nefarious context.
>
> Taken one example at a time, each of the facts presented concerning the
> activities of ANSWER's steering committee would not be sufficient to
> indict the organization as a whole. However, even a brief study of some
> of ANSWER's steering committee members reveals a pattern of support for
> governments, extremist organizations and radical individuals whose goals
> contradict ANSWER's stated purpose of stopping war and ending racism.
> Unfortunately, the mainstream media has shown little inclination to
> investigate the organizations supporting ANSWER, and thus the vast
> majority of ANSWER's supporters have no understanding of the group's true
> origins. As conflict with Iraq, due to Hussein's continued lack of
> compliance with UN Resolution 1441, becomes inevitable, it is likely
> ANSWER will double its efforts to infiltrate mainstream America's
> political consciousness. Therefore, our citizenry must remain vigilant
> against these front organizations efforts to wrap their poisonous agenda
> in the banner of peace and brotherhood. After all, the greatest trick the
> Devil ever played was convincing man he never existed.
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________
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