Repost: If this is the A.N.S.W.E.R. then what was the ?

This is a repost from an old article posted on my personal blog 03.24.2003.

I have been asked a few times now to trace some of the information that leads to the connection between many of the large “peace” rallies currently with the socialist (I have mistakenly said communist in the past) organization “World Workers Party“. I had previously referred to this connection in an entry called “Cartooning for Peace!“.

This post is an interesting one, this entry is basically the “rich media” version of a mailing list post as I don’t use HTML in emails for wide distribution. So, I put up a version of this there, and am referring them to this post in order to get the links and so on.

posted about 03/24/03 at 01:24:00

A.N.S.W.E.R. has a director by the name of Ramsey Clark, who also happens to be the founder of the International Action Center – an organization self defined as “Information, Activism, and Resistance to U.S. Militarism, War, and Corporate Greed”. The connection between the organizations is so strong that they use their URL and email addresses basically interchangeably in their mass mailings and information.

No doubt you’ve seen the names if your in the “peace” movement – a google search for “answer.org” and “iacenter.org” show that they have supplied the busses and speakers for many of the large demonstratiosn in both the US and England.

Now, that in and of itself isn’t a problem – and even a cursory examination of the websites above shows that Clark is a bit extreme in his views… but it gets more amusing.

The International Action Center and A.N.S.W.E.R. both use the same address:

39 West 14th Street, #206
NY, NY 10011

Interestingly, a number of other organizations also use that address… including the “Peoples Video Network“. The PVN actually holds it’s social events in the offices at 55 W. 17 St., Fifth Floor, NYC… which happens to be the address of record for the “World Workers Party”. And let’s not forger “Vote No War“.

While we are looking, we find that “The Peoples Rights Fund”, ostensibly a tax exempt charity to do educational work. Of course, they are large financial donors to the International Action Center of course and at one time listed themselves as a day care center on their IRS forms to get a tax exemption.

Now, Ramsey Clark himself has strong ties to the WWP in addition to IAC and A.N.S.W.E.R. – in fact he seems to spawn political organizations at a dramatic rate. Other organizations who also are tied to the WWP are listed below. Sadly, most of them don’t have websites… almost all URL’s associated with them point to the IAC website.

• Iraq Sanctions Challenge
• Peace for Cuba
• U.S. Out of Korea Committee
• Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Mideast
• Millions for Mumia

By the way, the Iraq Sanctions Challenge boasts of violating the UN sanctions and restrictions by smuggling in supplies that the UN had specifically forbidden.

So what do we have?

A moderately large, well funded network of organizations that sometimes hide and sometimes advertise their ties to the World Workers Party – a socialist organization with a distinctly anti-US tendency. These organizations are glued together in no small part by Ramsey Clark, who has at times past been a legal council for the Saddam government of Iraq and of course, on their payroll.

These organizations put a lot of money into supplying speakers, transportation and organizational facilities for rallies and protests that they then trumpet on their miscellaneous websites and in their fund raising propaganda as “spontaneous” uprisings of “the people”.

It is safe to say that if the average protester knew who was pulling their strings, and what those people stood for, that they would not associate with or give their support to A.N.S.W.E.R. and Ramsey Clark.

References

• International Action Center homepage
• VoteNoWar.org Only the People Can Stop the War on Iraq
• International ANSWER Act Now to Stop War End Racism
• THE MYSTERIOUS RAMSEY CLARK
• Tracking Down A Fifth Column
• MotherJones.com Commentary
• Peoples Video Network

[tags]a.n.s.w.e.r., socialism, communism, terrorism[/tags]