Title: JOHN LENNON AND YOKO ONO HAVE BIG PLANS TO BRING DOWN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY THIS FALL STARRING J. GORDON LIDDY AND OTHERS Source:
theusversusjohnlennon URL Source:http://www.theusversusjohnlennon.com/site/ Published:Jul 13, 2006 Author:theusversusjohnlennon Post Date:2006-07-13 17:27:25 by TLBSHOW Keywords:None Views:4645 Comments:10
I may be wrong so feel free to correct me - I was under the impression that John Lennon was rather dead. So dead that in fact he is completely incapable of planning anything.
Mudboy Slim: Right Since Birth! (dumb since conception)
History Professor Jon Wiener Discusses Lennon's Politics, FBI Files and Why Richard Nixon Sought to Deport Him
Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.
John Lennon
In 1997 -- that's what? -- 15 years later, virtually all of the issues were resolved by the Clinton administration. They released almost all of the pages we were seeking. They paid $204,000 of our legal expenses. But they still withheld ten pages, which they said were national security documents provided by a foreign government under a promise of confidentiality. We're still trying to get those ten pages. And just recently, a court ordered the F.B.I. to release them, and the F.B.I. has now told us they are going to appeal that decision. So, ten pages to go, national security documents.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you're saying, Professor Wiener, that John Lennon is still a threat to the national security of this country?
JON WIENER: Well, I'm not saying that, but the F.B.I. is telling us that they cant release these ten pages, because they contain information provided by a foreign government under a promise of confidentiality. Now, we're not even allowed to know the name of the foreign government. My guess is that it's not Afghanistan.
And, in fact, there's a guy in England named David Shayler, a former employee of MI5, the British organization that corresponds with our F.B.I. He says he saw a Lennon file at MI5. He described its contents. It had information about Lennon's ties with the British New Left and the anti-war movement in London and the Irish movement. Shayler was prosecuted by the Brits under their Official Secrets Act and sentenced to six months in prison for revealing this information.
The Reagan administration refused to release the rest of this report in April 1981. The FBI cited its authority under the Freedom of Information Act to withhold "information which is currently and properly classified ...in the interest of the national defense or foreign policy." I filed an administrative appeal. In January 1983 the Justice Department Review Committee declassified the FBI report on the John Sinclair concert, and the assistant attorney general for legal policy released eight more pages of it.
The portion that had been withheld "in the interest of national defense or foreign policy" began with a complete set of the lyrics to the song "John Sinclair." They had been classified "confidential" by the FBI since 1971, even though they were printed on the back cover of John's 1972 album, Some Time in New York City: "Was he jailed for what he done / Or representing everyone?" (Sinclair had been jailed on a Marijuana charge.) Copies had been forwarded to the FBI offices in Boston, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Perhaps the FBI thought that John planned to bring a tour to these cities. Along with the lyrics sheet, the FBI sent a report from its files on the performance itself: John's wife Yoko Ono "can't even remain on key"; John's "John Sinclair" "probably will become a million seller...but it is lacking Lennon's usual standards."
Here was FBI rock criticism: J. Edgar Hoover's middle-aged men in dark suits trying to figure out whether John Lennon would succeed in bringing rock and revolution together. No other rock star aroused the government's fears this way. No other rock star was ordered deported, as John was, in a government effort to prevent a concert tour.
Was the FBI justified in regarding John Lennon as a significant political force? Or was it only acting out Nixon's paranoia, his desire to remove every obstacle to his own reelection, no matter how insignificant?
The experiences of anger and exaltation that rock music provided for countless young people were not in themselves political experiences. Lennon knew that. He also knew that rock could become a potent political force when it was linked to real political organizing--when, for example, it brought young people together to protest the Vietnam war. In 1971 and 1972 he made a commitment to test this political power. The twenty-six pounds of files reveal the government's commitment to stop him.
John's appearance in Ann Arbor was his first concert in the United States since the Beatles' 1966 tour. He shared the stage with the most prominent members of the "Chicago Seven," who had led the antiwar protests outside the Democratic national convention in 1968: Jerry Rubin, founder of the Yippies, Bobby Seale, chairman of the Black Panther Party; Dave Dellinger, the veteran pacifist; and Rennie Davis, the New Left's best organizer. Stevie Wonder made a surprise appearance. All of them called for the release from prison of John Sinclair, a Michigan activist. Sinclair had led the effort to make rock music the bridge between the antiwar movement and the counterculture, and between black and white youth. He had already served two years of a ten-year sentence for selling two joints of marijuana to an undercover agent.
On the proposed tour Lennon and his friends planned to raise money to revive local New Left organizing projects and to urge young people to come to the "political Woodstock" outside the Republican national convention in August. John had been talking to Bob Dylan, trying to get him to join the tour. None of these plans had been made public.
In 2002 Yoko Ono donated the rights to Lennons solo songbook to Amnesty International. Now, with Ms. Onos blessing, artists are coming together to record cover versions of Lennons most powerful and resonant songs, in an effort to revive his uniquely potent mix of art and activism. In a world still troubled by war and poverty Lennons message is just as relevant today as it was when he first wrote the tracks.
AROUND £600m will be invested in Liverpool John Lennon Airport if all elements of an ambitious masterplan to treble passenger numbers and create the UK's first "superport" succeed.