REUTERS/William Philpott

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LAST SATURDAY, I accepted an invitation from Ethan, a college student, to join him in “crashing” an anti-war rally in Los Angeles. Accompanying me were “Sledge,” a mortgage broker who moonlights as a Guardian Angel; and Eric, an electrical engineer who emigrated from the Soviet Union at the age of twenty-five.

Eric, Ethan, and Sledge

I brought my digital camera and audio recorder to record the event for posterity. Ethan brought the supplies to assemble some witty signs we had downloaded and printed from the Protest Warrior website. Sledge brought along a little bit of martial arts know-how, just in case the A.N.S.W.E.R. goons got rough. And Eric brought a burning desire to enlighten some leftists regarding the true nature of communism.

And what, you might ask, does communism have to do with an anti-war rally?

A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism!) was founded in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Its stated mission is to serve as an overarching coalition of anti-war organizations around the globe.

Unless we stop President Bush and NATO from carrying out a new, wider war in the Middle East, the number of innocent victims will grow from the thousands to the tens of thousands and possibly more. A new, wider U.S. and NATO war in the Middle East can only lead to an escalating cycle of violence. War is not the answer.

The man who started it all was Ramsey Clark. Clark served as the US Attorney General under Lyndon B. Johnson, but has more recently made a name for himself by representing such upstanding world citizens as Liberia's Charles Taylor, Serbia's Radovan Karadzic, and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

You read that correctly: the founder and driving force behind International A.N.S.W.E.R. is Saddam's lawyer.

Ramsey Clark

A.N.S.W.E.R. was an outgrowth of another organization headed by Clark, the International Action Center (IAC). Founded in 1990 during the run-up to the First Gulf War, IAC was the successor to the People's Anti-War Mobilization (PAM), and the Vietnam-era organization Youth Against War & Fascism (YAWF). All of these groups were sponsored by (and served as fronts for) the Worker's World Party (WWP).

The neo-Stalinist WWP broke away from the Trotskyite Socialist Worker's Party (SWP) in 1959 over a “difference of opinion” concerning the Tibetan Uprising (the SWP sided with the Tibetan Buddhists, while the WWP supported the Chinese military action to crush the revolt). The WWP later distinguished themselves from other Marxist groups by opposing popular uprisings in Czechoslovakia (1968) and Poland (1981). They defended the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China, and would side with the KGB in the failed coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.

Under the leadership of Ramsey Clark, the IAC was the only major "anti-war" group that refused to condemn Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Indeed, Clark actually flew to Baghdad and met with Saddam Hussein in November 1990, returning home with a handful of Saddam's "guests" (diplomats' families held hostage) as a token of the Iraqi dictator's goodwill.

The IAC would go on to become leading apologists for Serbian war criminals in Bosnia and Kosovo, labeling reports of rape camps and ethnic cleansing "fabricated atrocities" (never mind those embarassing mass graves). When NATO unleashed a bombing campaign in response to the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo, Clark flew to Belgrade to express his support for Milosevic.

This is the man, and the organization, behind International A.N.S.W.E.R.

Free, Free Palestine!

BEFORE THE MARCH BEGAN, they held a rally at the corner of Broadway and Olympic. Without much difficulty, I managed to weave my way up to the front of the stage, where I had an excellent view of all the speakers.

One of the groups listed on A.N.S.W.E.R.’s steering committee is the mysterious Free Palestine Alliance (FPA).

…The FPA is reaching out to our Palestinian and Arab family in the United States, to shun the remnants of division, lock arms, stand proud shoulder-to-shoulder, unified in the call to freedom, and humbled by the sacrifice of our children, to declare ourselves a humane bridge of hope for the future.

Now what do you think they mean by “the sacrifice of our children?”

FPA Spokesman

At the pre-march rally, the FPA spokesman had a few words to say about terrorism and resistance:

Some of us have been called “terrorists” for refusing to die under Israeli bulldozers, for raising our fists against Zionism… We’ll never stop! We’ll never stop resistance as long as we live!

Here’s another possible explanation: Maybe they call you “terrorists” because you like to strap your children with explosives and send them to blow up buses full of innocent civilians -- do you think that might be it?

Workers of the World, Unite!

OUR PLAN was for the guys to infiltrate the march with their signs, while I would blend in with the crowd and document the reactions of the other demonstrators. It didn’t take very long before one of the WWP punks realized that someone wasn’t toeing the party line.

Pete "Red" Reilly: "We are not about the election process; we are not reformist. The Workers World Party is a revolutionary party with a revolutionary stance for a new state, a people’s state.”

I recognized Pete Reilly (aka “Red”) from a previous A.N.S.W.E.R. rally in San Diego. He was the guy who called me a “f---ing fascist,” and then ran off to complain to the cops. This time around, Red made the mistake of approaching Eric first, perhaps assuming that he was the most easily intimidated of the three.

“Why don’t you get out of here, you f---ing fascist?” It was Red’s favorite opening line.

“Have you ever lived in communist country?” Eric calmly replied, in his thick Ukrainian accent.

“What?”

“I grew up in Soviet Union.” He sounded just like Yakov Smirnoff.

“I’ll bet you think that sign is f---ing funny, don’t you?”

“You try living under communist system, see how you like it.” Eric retorted.

Sledge shot Red a nasty look.

“You’ve guys are looking for an ass-kicking, you know that?” But Red was already backing off, perhaps realizing that he was out of his weight class.

Sure enough, just like he had done a couple of months earlier in San Diego, he immediately started looking for an authority figure to back him up. Red attracted the attention of one of the green-vested protest monitors, who tried to tell Ethan that he and the boys would have to leave. But Ethan was no pushover; he gave the poor girl a lengthy lecture in his First Amendment rights, without so much as breaking his stride.

The guys managed to make it all the way to the end of the march before Green Vest Girl came back, this time with reinforcements. A mob of about a dozen Green Vest Gestapo surrounded the boys, and after a brief "exchange of views," hustled them to the other side of the yellow tape.

Green Vest Gestapo

After the commotion died down, I approached one of the monitors. “What was the deal with those guys?” I asked.

She shrugged. “They’re the ENEMY.”

“Oh.” I slipped back into the crowd, savoring the irony.

Swimming in the Sea of Humanity

ONE OF WAYS that radical groups like A.N.S.W.E.R. seek to enhance their legitimacy in the eyes of the general public is to invite celebrities to speak at their rallies.

Danny Glover

Stop the war NOW. Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. We are here to allow our voices to be heard. We are here to make a statement to not only the Bush Administration. But we are here to make a statement to John Kerry as well. We are to say that there will be no empire in our names. We are here to say that we will defend people and their right to self-determination, their right to their sovereignty around the world…

After hearing his speech, I’m willing to give Glover the benefit of the doubt. I’m going to assume that, unlike the folks who sponsored this rally, he didn’t approve of the Tiananmen Square massacre, or the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo – because that would make him a hypocrite of the first order. Besides, I really liked him in those Lethal Weapon movies.

Instead of listening to the endless litany of speakers (including John Parker, the WWP’s presidential candidate), I decided to see what kinds of interesting people I could find in the crowd.

A man dressed all in black probably fancied himself as a “Black Bloc,” anarchists who like to break things and fight cops (who I'm sure LOVED his T-shirt). But all he did was stand out in the hot sun looking like a fool...

While posters making fun of President Bush were the most popular, he wasn’t the only one being compared to Hitler...

I met a few lovely ladies from CODEPINK, a radical feminist action group...

I spotted a man holding a "Kerry for President" poster, but he was looking pretty lonely in this crowd...

Che Guevara: terrorist, or pop icon?

To be continued…

VISIT MY PHOTO ALBUM.

FROM WASHINGTON, Bill of INDC Journal interviews radical activist Michael Berg, the father of slain contractor Nick Berg.

FROM SAN FRANCISCO, "Agent Zombie" documents another gathering of the loony left (via Bill Hobbs). Zacharia of Below Street Level was also present.

FROM PARIS, Ray of Medienkritik and Erik Svane crash an anti-American rally on the 60th Anniversary of D-Day.