1967: Panic In Detroit

Operation Bolo on January 2nd 1967, 28 USAF F-4 phanton jets lure North Vietnamese MiG – 21 interceptors into a dogfight over Hanoi and shoot down 7 of them. This leaves only 9 MiG 21s operational for North Vietnamese. US pilots, however, are prohibited by Washington from attacking MiG air bases in North Vietnam.

Project Apollo was launched as the final push to meet JFK’s goal of putting a man on the moon. January 1967, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Roger Chafee and Edward White were killed when a fire consumed their command module. – 20th Century America, Millenium 2000 page 91. Program was halted for 18 months.

www.washington–report.org/backissues/0491/9104027.htm

OPERATION JUNCTION CITY in 22nd February 1967 – over 20 villages with populations of 5000.

King’s “the casualties of the war in vietnam” – 25th February – anti-war theme.

Martin Luther King “Beyond Vietnam” to a church crowd in NYC 4th April.

Arab-Israeli war of 1967 – France imposed an arms embargo.

PM Levi Eshkol unified the Labour parties and led in six-day war.

Young NeoCon movement. Israel became the cause celebre after its victory in the 1967 war. Born again Zionists. Rostow Brothers and Ben Wattenberg served LBJ administration and helped him draw up support for the Vietnam War among Jewish Liberal Democrats by convincing them that only a strong and interventionist USA can guarantee the security of Israel.

Israel helped contain Soviet expansionism in the area.

RFK took on the cause of poverty and racial rights. Mexicans exploited for cheap labour in upstate New York. Puerto Ricans in Bedford – Stuyvesant ruins and Indians stranded on dying reservations.

He proposed a coalition of resident-owned community development corps employing local talent and voting local resources with public funds supplementing private investment. It worked. Conservatives resisted his ideas for nationwide action. NAACP lawyer Marion Wright was convinced RFK was genuine.

The Soviets were aware of the Arab nation’s (Egypt) poor intelligence capabilities against Israel and manipulated this weakness to their own advantage. By May 10th 1967 Presdient Nasser had received reports of Israeli troop concentrations along the Syrian border from four friendly intelligence services – Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese and Soviet. The multitude of apparently independent sources corroborating each other’s warnings served to strengthen Nasser’s belief in their reliability. He was unaware, of course, that all reports had ion fact been fed into the various systems by the Soviets.

Deception Operations – David A Charters and Maurice A J Tugwell page 163.

“In 1967 the government of Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a ship of the US Navy, in international waters on the high seas, killing 34 men and wounding another 171. Israel claims that the attack was a case of mistaken identity. Survivors and senior US government officials including Sec of State Dean Rusk, say it was no accident. They claim that the attacking forces circled the ship at close range for many hours before attacking and continued to attack for at least 40 minutes after examining the ship by boat from less than 50 feet away.”

From the USS Liberty Page.

When did France impose arms embargo on Indo-Pakistan conflict?

Israel fought a further war – the six day war – and in the process occupied Gaza and the West Bank thus bringing Palestinian refugees under its military control. East Jerusalem was also occupied and taken from Jordan. These military occupations were bitterly resisted by Palestinians, not least because Israel built “settlements” all across military occupied territories.

Avi Shlaim: the settlements were part of a policy of exerting strategic and military control, eg, “surrounding the huge Greater Jerusalem area with two concentric circles of settlements with access roads and military positions.”

The settlements also exploited water sources in occupied territories. Each Israeli consumes three times as much water as a Palestinian.

War of attrition at the Suez Canal.

Thousands of homes in the refugee camps were demolished to make access roads. Hundreds of young Palestinian men were arrested and deported to Lebanon and Jordan, while political leaders were exiled to Sinai. Some relatives of suspected terrorists were transported to the detention camp in southern Sinai.

Malmstrom AFB UFO/missile incident 16th March 1967. 

Israeli and Arab forces battle; six-day war ends with Israel occupying Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and east bank of Suez Canal (June 5).

Red China announces explosion of its first hydrogen bomb (June 17).

June – “Where Do We Go From Here: chaos or community” by King, published.

On the 25th June 1967 the “all you need is love” live broadcast  was aired.

Racial violence in Detroit; 7,000 National Guardsmen aid police after night of rioting. Similar outbreaks occur in New York City's Spanish Harlem, Rochester, N.Y., Birmingham, Ala., and New Britain, Conn. (July 23).

US Army battled blacks in Detroit – 43 killed

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924145,00.html?iid=chix-sphere

Detroit, July 1967. The worst riot of the decade erupted on a muggy night when police raided an after-hours drinking club. At the height of the violence, Johnson sent in the U.S. Army, and the National Guard fired machine guns from Sherman tanks. The seven-day toll: 43 killed, 2,000 injured, 7,000 arrested and 5,000 left homeless.

Local police units under FBI control used to systematically harass and arrest member of the Revoutionary Action Movement (RAM) [Maxwell Sanford – leader of RAM]. FBI memorandum to Hoover on 30th August 1967 “Any excuse for arrest was promptly implemented by arrest. Any ossibilty of neutrlising a RAM activist was exercised.” FBI rhetoric that RAM was “violence prone” but no such convictions were ever upheld. But RAM was eventually destroyed, just because its politics weren’t the status quo politics within the lmits set by Washington DC. LOOK UP

Maxwell Sanford’s Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and operation to harass RAM members and their families.

An FBI memorandum to Hoover – August 30th 1967 – “any excuse for arrest was promptly implemented by arrest. Any possibility of neutralising a RAM activist was exercised.”

FBI rhetoric claiming RAM “violence prone” – no convictions were ever obtained on charges of violence. RAM was thereby destroyed.

In 1965, Huey Newton was released from jail, and, with his friend from Oakland City College, Bobby Seale, had joined a black power group called the Revolutionary Action Movement, which had a chapter in Oakland and followed the writings of Robert F. Williams. Originally from North Carolina, Williams published a newsletter called The Crusader from China, where he fled to escape kidnapping charges. RAM was often seen as extremely violent; in 1965, three east coast RAM members were charged with conspiring to blow up the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, and the Washington Monument. The Oakland chapter consisted mainly of students, and were not interested in this more extreme form of activism. Newton and Seale's attitude was more militant, and the pair left RAM searching for something more meaningful to them [7].

Around this time, the pair were working at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center and they also served on the advisory board. In an effort to deal with police brutality, the advisory board obtained five thousand signatures in support of the city council setting up a police review board to review complaints of police brutality. Newton was also taking classes at the City

College and at San Francisco Law School, and both were active in the North Oakland Center. Thus the pair had a large number of connections and friends with whom they talked up the new organizational they had in mind. Inspired by the success of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and Stokely Carmichael's calls for separate Black political organizations,[8] they wrote their initial platform statement, the ten-point program, with the help of Huey's brother, Melvin, and decided on a uniform of blue shirts, black pants, black leather jackets, Black Berets, and openly displayed loaded shotguns [9]. Wikipedia

The “Soviets began experimenting in 1967 with ‘hunt and kill’ satellites and over the following four years conducted 6 tests in space using ‘killer’ satellites to search out and destroy target satellites.” 1975.

The US became disturbed to learn that the USSR appeared to be developing a Fractional Orbital Bombardment system (FOBS) that could be launched into orbit some 100 miles above the Earth. It could be targeted on a predetermined target.

More expensive and less accurate than conventional ICBMs.

But Soviets could use it with less warning see 1970 – the US tried to counter threat.

Vietnam dissent now peaking. The RAND corporation released Japanese documents on Manchuria (see 1932) – the similarity between Jap policies in china and US in Vientam was too close for the information to reach widespread distribution.

US counter-insurgency doctrine was consciously modelled on the practices and achievements of the WW2 fascists, although it was the Nazis who were the preferred model.

“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” – low ratings; “I Spy” – transformed greatly just before being cancelled.

“You Only Live Twice” hit the cinemas and Connery quit as Bond.

Bob Dylan, “Basement Tapes”

Bobby Searle – Chairman of BPP

Huey Newton – BPP ‘minister of defense’

Party’s hq was in Oakland.

James Brown “Let Yourself Go”. Chicken scratch guitar (Jimmy Nolen and Alphonso Kellum) Brown becoming much more rythmic – melody is going. Aretha Franklin made her first recordings for Atlantic. Otis Redding made his final recordings for Stax / Volt.

“Cold Sweat”, “even the horns of the incomparable Maceo Parker and Pee Wee Ellis became percusion instruments, subservient to the groove”. “The first funk masterpiece” “the keystone of hip-hop.”

Thurgood Marshall sworn in as first black U.S. Supreme Court justice (Oct. 2).

Theatre

Musical “Hair” opened on Broadway New York on 2nd December 1967. Nudity and drug taking mad eit controversial – transferred to London’s West End in 1968 and caused similar controversy there.