A O I

[Richard Fiero]

Witherall Leonidas wrote:
>  . . .
>Ahem!! Careful? "Oh, jimmy, you must be more careful!"
>I can't help but point out that you are
>being "careful" not to explain why you have posted
>this
>complaint. It's clearly an ad hominem post. Let's be
>more careful. All of us.
>
>If you feel that jim is somewhat off in his
>interpretation why not tell us about that.
>
>Maybe you have not been careful here. You could have
>asked him for clearification. It seems obvious that he
>posted the photos as nothing more than a scrap book.

Not intended as an ad hominem, my remark stems from an 
alertness to a fairly regular stream of apologetics which 
invariably attack the credibility of the victims of some 
federal or civil security apparatus in minor excesses of 
attitude adjustment. Most recently the attacks here on the 
credibility of complaints by the victims of police actions at 
the Genoa G8 demonstrations. wood jim's original statement was 
obviously written in haste and it's certainly unfair to pick on 
it. Just this tiny off-hand remark that self-immolations might 
be typical of war protesters or could generate protest in '63 
long before the war ramped up. But this carries immediately to 
four dead at Kent State, the horrible rabble at the Chicago '68 
DNC dropping human excrement from windows on the innocent cops 
and so on with instances not of civil disobedience but peaceful demonstration.

wood jim wrote:
>"The man sits impassively in the
>     central market square, he has set
>     himself on fire performing a ritual
>     suicide in protest against
>     governmental anti-Buddhist policies."
>
>Actually, I should be more careful with my grammar.
>;-)
>If you read the posts on this topic carefully, I did
>not err on the historical facts. There are three
>points  I am prepared to discuss. 1. The
>sacred/profane monk/IA suicide. 2. How this relates to
>the anti-war Vietnam movement and how this is related
>to 3. The generation/gender gaps and communication
>from old to young.

We don't know what Founder IA thought other than seeing an 
immediately available solution. We are not even sure that 
Founder IA read the caption. Moreover, we cannot be sure that 
the monk was not a devious ChiCom pinko troublemaker taking 
advantage of excess numbers of photographers in Saigon to chip 
away at Diem credibility. Never will know. We can be fairly 
certain that Nixon and cohorts and predecessors managed to 
polarize the US populace nearly beyond repair in addition to 
the obvious human costs on all sides. So much for the 
"politicized" '60's as being anything other than an entirely logical response.

I may have completely misread wood jim's immolation remark but 
it remains that the site that we were led to in order to view 
the photograph not only mentions the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution 
but quotes it fully without mentioning that it was most 
certainly bogus having been manufactured for the purpose of 
involving US forces.

Suspiciously yours,
...