From server@firefly.prairienet.org Sun May 21 02:02:11 1995
	id CAA03847; Sun, 21 May 1995 02:02:06 +0200
	id AA17353; Sat, 20 May 95 19:01:33 CDT
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4 Num. 93
X-Comment:  Conspiracy Nation



              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4  Num. 93
             ======================================
                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")


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INTERVIEW WITH SHERMAN SKOLNICK -- MAY 17, 1995

On May 17, 1995, I interviewed, by telephone, Mr. Sherman 
Skolnick of the Citizens' Committee to Clean-up the Courts 
[CCCC]. The following is my summary of that interview. (Note that 
in the following, I neither necessarily agree nor disagree with 
either all or some of Mr. Skolnick's statements.)

 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +

[...continued...]

CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, that's like Leona Helmsley, where she said this thing, 
"Only the little people pay taxes."


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well... She's not that very wealthy. I'm talkin' about the 
*ultra* rich. Not millionaires but *ultra* rich: the billionaire 
billionaires.

And here's Nelson Rockefeller, testifying that he and his family 
did not pay anything for the previous 11 years! Hey. If the guys 
that have the most don't pay anything, is it any wonder that 
we've got 100-year-old bridges that collapse, railroad tracks 
that are in bad shape, hospitals that are bankrupt {5}, libraries 
and schools, school districts, that are bankrupt? The guys with 
the real money are not paying anything! *And*, since they own the 
instruments of communication, *their* puppets are not gonna ask 
some candidate, "Uh, what are you gonna do, Mr. or Madam 
Candidate, about the failure to tax the ultra rich?" Nobody asks 
the question! I'm one of the few that asks the question. And 
that's because we do a free TV show, where nobody taps us on the 
shoulder and says, "Hey! Skolnick: *shut* *up*!"


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay. But I kind of wanted to cover one more thing on this thing 
about *why* we should fear, or be concerned, about "The New World 
Order", is that, if a global government coalesces around the 
global economic power, then that is gonna supersede the Bill of 
Rights in this country.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well they're doin' that now. Because the Bill of Rights is in 
"suspension mode". Newsletter writers and others are getting 
knocks on the door by the FBI: "I saw in your newsletter there 
that you mentioned the militia. What about it?"; "I saw in your 
commentary... What about it?"

And so those that refuse to talk to the FBI, they show you, right 
at your door, a big stack of all the information they compiled on 
you: your bank loan, your car, your this, your telephone -- they 
got all your telephone records.

See, there's a national security directive in effect right now, 
as a result of the bombing in Oklahoma. And, in other words, the 
FBI doesn't need any further powers, because the President 
himself claims there's a *plot* to overthrow the government, it's 
a national security matter. And they're goin' around, and they're 
tryin' to stifle the few independent voices of communication that 
we have left in the country: newsletter writers, commentators, 
smaller radio station moderators -- they're all gettin' a knock 
on the door! And not every one of 'em is sayin', "Hey, FBI: you 
don't have an arrest warrant or search warrant for this address. 
So go away!" Some of 'em are becoming frightened. Why? They have 
children; they're worried about their mortgage. The FBI informs 
them that they've already been to the mortgage company; they're 
talkin' to all their neighbors. In other words, they're puttin' 
on the general, there's a general "wave of terror" against the 
few independent voices in the country.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay, and that's been prompted by this thing with the Oklahoma 
bombing where...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah well that's a good reason to suspect that the government did 
it, for the purpose of suspending the Bill of Rights. Whatever 
you think about the militias, whether you're for or against their 
position, they seem to have the facts right: there's an effort 
underway to suspend the Bill of Rights for this "New World Order" 
business.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah. And that would bring me back to this thing of, approaching 
this thing from the "left" via Chomsky's idea of governments 
coalescing around the economic power, and the global government 
superseding the Bill of Rights, so that it *is* something to be 
feared; that this is not some thing where people on the "left" 
can say, "Oh well, these 'right wing' people."


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
There are two questions that *Time* magazine and the other 
blowhard pundits have *not* dealt with is, they have not 
adequately explained: What are the large numbers of foreign 
troops doing on our soil? Are we facing a big problem, like Spain 
in 1933, where they brought Italy and Germany's armies onto 
Spanish soil to deal with a civil war?

And the other thing is, *Time* magazine, discussing what the 
militias are complaining about, would have you believe that all 
these secret societies (like the Bilderbergs and so on), which 
the top publication pundits go to, and then never tell us 
anything -- what happened there -- that they're just little 
"luncheon groups" that are of no consequence.

I mean, the major makers and shakers of the world go to these 
secret conferences -- the Trilateral Commission, the Council on 
Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group. No report comes back. 
Only a few, right-wing journals talk about it. And then *Time* 
magazine, because the militias are making an issue of it, is 
pooh-poohing it and says, "No, no... It's just a luncheon group."

When you see a list of the Bilderberg Group, it's... the 
publisher of *Time* magazine, the editor-in-chief that's there. 
How come their magazine doesn't tell us what happened at the 
secret conference, where *they* *themselves* are part of it!?


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Do you know of any good books on the Bilderbergers?


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Uh, the only ones that publish it are the ultra-right wing! 
[laughs] So-called "ultra-right wing". The left wing, that gets a 
lot of CIA foundation money (like *The Nation*, and *In These 
Times*, and so on), they're not gonna go into it at all. So, I 
mean in a way it's a mistake to call 'em a "left wing". 
They're... I'm not sure what part of the airplane they are, 
whether they're the tail or the jet. [laughs]


CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah, I know what you mean! Because, it's almost like the left 
has pretty much disappeared. I mean, the *real* left. 'Cuz I 
remember that, say, in the '60s, that...


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well if you looked at my files, what would you find? Communist 
Party USA, clippings on them is in a right-wing file! [laughs]


CONSPIRACY NATION:
[laughs]


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
You'd have to understand the logic we apply, because *they* were 
a spokesman for the Moscow government. And so, *what* genuine 
left wing is there, in this country? The labor unions are, many 
of 'em are too close to the corporations they're supposed to 
unionize. It's a mistake to call that there's a union movement in 
the United States. The number of people working, that belong to 
unions, has fallen below 16 percent. So the bulk of the United 
States is working now without union contracts, without union 
benefits. Which means, instead of getting $15 an hour, you'd be 
lucky if you get $5 an hour. And with that, you have the 
contradiction that, you're making $5 an hour, and they want to 
sell you a $12,000 car! I mean, there's a contradiction.


CONSPIRACY NATION:
And the thing is, a lot of these so-called, say, call 'em 
"establishment leftists"... I don't see that the "left" has 
really got a connection to the working class. There's exceptions. 
Like there's a group in Detroit that was puttin' out a weekly 
newspaper called "The International Workers Bulletin", where they 
were *involved* in their community, okay?


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. Those are genuine people.

The point is, *what* "left wing" are they talkin' about? *In 
These Times* reportedly gets their money through a so-called 
"liberal foundation": The Institute for Policy Studies [IPS], 
which made them make a U-turn on the October Surprise story by 
threatening to cut their money off. And we, from what we know 
about the IPS, believe they're connected with the CIA! So I mean, 
*what* independent, left-wing publication...

All of the "left-wing" publications, put together, if you added 
them all up from their circulation statements that they're 
obliged to file every fall under the postal regulations -- all of 
'em, put together, do not amount to 150,000 circulation. The 
average of these small publications is about 5,000. So *one* 
*Chicago Tribune* or one *New York Times* *drowns* *them* *out*! 
In fact, Ferdinand Lundberg(sp?), in his book, *The Rich and the 
Super Rich*, sort of laughed a little bit. He says, "These guys, 
with their mimeograph machines," (that was the thing when *that* 
book came out), "they are like throwing spitballs at the 
Rockefeller battleship."


CONSPIRACY NATION:
On the other hand, I wouldn't -- if they're *truly* an 
independent press -- I wouldn't totally denigrate 'em, because my 
feeling is it's better to try and do *something*.


SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

                   [...to be continued...]

---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
{5} "...hospitals that are bankrupt..." As noted, I don't 
necessarily agree with everything Mr. Skolnick says. Nowadays, 
many hospitals are for-profit entities, generating cash for 
investors. Add to that the fact that hospitals and doctors 
routinely pad their bills, pass these charges along to medicare, 
and then medicare passes these charges along to the taxpayers. 
So, my question would be (which I may remember to ask Mr. 
Skolnick) -- if the money is getting stolen and wasted, what good 
will increased taxes from *any* source be, whether "ultra rich" 
or otherwise?

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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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    Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"        
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