Konversations with Kevin (Kevin D. Akin) #1

Kevin D. Akin is the State Chair of the California Peace & Freedom Party (the party that for some crazy reason I still choose to be a member of).  Recently, Kevin sent an email which wound up getting re-circulated to a number of people, some of whom I know and most of whom I don’t know (who probably don’t know me from Adam).  Kevin starts his email out by asserting that “Jan is not a reliable source, as he has told many malicious lies about people I know, but this of course does not mean that what he says here is not true, just that it needs to be checked out.”  He goes on in the middle of the email to claim that “I find it amusing that Jan, who slanders and libels people frequently under false names…”

Well, let’s talk about credibility.  This will be the first of several missives dealing with Kevin’s record of credibility — or incredulity — based on past conversations I’ve had with the guy over the many years I’ve known him.  But first, I’ve demanded that Kevin put up or shut up by telling me exactly what “false names” I’ve ever used and what it is that I’ve supposedly said that was slanderous or libelous about anybody.

In response, Kevin has explicitly told me to get my head out of my ass (his words). You have to wonder about somebody who engages in the argumentum ad hominem (abusive) who has somehow managed to get himself elected to head a political party on the California ballot that purports to be for due process (he’s for due process except for people that he accuses of misconduct, apparently).  He has so far refused to identify the names that I’ve supposedly used or what defamation I’ve engaged in.

Anyway, how’s this for credibility, Kevin?

Years ago I was in a conversation with Kevin in which I pointed out that my father had become such a hard core Stalinist that he’d even supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and that he’d even bought into the Russian contention that Warsaw Pact intervention was necessary because supposedly, 20,000 British troops had been parachuted into the country.  Now, a rational and honest person might wonder in the aftermath of the Russian led invasion that depending upon the estimate, put 175,000 – 500,000 troops and 2,000 tanks into Czechoslovakia, why no British troops were displayed by the Soviet forces as captured and killed, but this concept did not occur to Akin.

Akin opined that not only was that allegation of the Soviets’ true, but he also repeated some bizarre nonsense about statistics about thousands of Western supposed tourists in Czechoslovakia with certain characteristics who were claimed to be Western spies and saboteurs.  Well again, a rational and intelligent being might question why none of those spies and saboteurs were captured by the Warsaw Pact forces and put on public trial for espionage and sabotage.  But not Kevin.

Well, I’ve been known to get hoodwinked now and then into taking wrong political positions, but swallowing the Brezhnev Doctrine hook, line and sinker is not one of them.  I was a fan of the Plastic People of the Universe, as was later Czech President and Poet Vaclav Havel (after the fall of the Iron Curtain), whose LP album Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned had to be smuggled out of the country to the West, because playing rock and roll or jazz without a government permit was a crime under the Soviet installed regime.

People like Kevin are afraid of the truth, in the tradition of the Soviet installed regime that ruled Czechoslovakia before the “Velvet Revolution.”  Prior to that revolution, the Plastic People of the Universe were put on trial by the regime for their audacity in performing the “One Hundred Points:”

1. They are afraid of the old for their memory.
2. They are afraid of the young for their innocence.
3. They are afraid even of schoolchildren.
4. They are afraid of the dead and their funerals.
5. They are afraid of graves and the flowers people put on them.
6. They are afraid of churches, priests and nuns.
7. They are afraid of workers.
8. They are afraid of party members.
9. They are afraid of those who are not in the party.
10. They are afraid of science.
11. They are afraid of art.
12. They are afraid of books and poems.
13. They are afraid of theatres and films.
14. They are afraid of records and tapes.
15. They are afraid of writers and poets.
16. They are afraid of journalists.
17. They are afraid of actors.
18. They are afraid of painters and sculptors.
19. They are afraid of musicians and singers.
20. They are afraid of radio stations.
21. They are afraid of TV satellites.
22. They are afraid of free flow of information.
23. They are afraid of foreign literature and papers.
24. They are afraid of technological progress.
25. They are afraid of printing presses,duplicators and xeroxes.
26. They are afraid of typewriters.
27. They are afraid of phototelegraphs and telexes.
28. They are afraid of automatic telecommunications with abroad.
29. They are afraid of letters.
30. They are afraid of telephones.
31. They are afraid to let people out.
32. They are afraid to let people in.
33. They are afraid of the left.
34. They are afraid of the right.
35. They are afraid of departure of the Soviet troops.
36. They are afraid of changes of the ruling clique in Moscow.
37. They are afraid of détente.
38. [This line is missing in the printed version.]
39. They are afraid of treaties have signed.
40. They are afraid for the treaties have signed.
41. They are afraid of their own police.
42. They are afraid of the spies.
43. They are afraid for their spies.
44. They are afraid of chess-players.
45. They are afraid of tennis-players.
46. They are afraid of hockey-players
47. They are afraid of gymnast girls.
48. They are afraid of St. Venceslas.
49. They are afraid of Master Jan Hus.
50. They are afraid of all the saints.
51. They are afraid of gifts to the kids on St Nicholas.
52. They are afraid of Santa Claus.
53. They are afraid of knapsacks being put on the statues of Lenin.
54. They are afraid of archives.
55. They are afraid of historians.
56. They are afraid of economists.
57. They are afraid of sociologists.
58. They are afraid of philosophers.
59. They are afraid of physicists.
60. They are afraid of physicians.
61. They are afraid of political prisoners.
62. They are afraid of the families of prisoners.
63. They are afraid of today’s evening.
64. They are afraid of tomorrow’s morning.
65. They are afraid of each and every day.
66. They are afraid of the future.
67. They are afraid of old age.
68. They are afraid of heart attacks and cirrhosis.
69. They are afraid even of that tiny trace of conscience that may still be left in them.
70. They are afraid out in the streets.
71. They are afraid inside their castle ghettoes.
72. They are afraid of their families.
73. They are afraid of their relatives.
74. They are afraid of their former friends and comrades.
75. They are afraid of their present friends and comrades.
76. They are afraid of each other.
77. They are afraid of what they have said.
78. They are afraid for their position.
79. [This line is missing in the printed version.]
80. They are afraid of water and fire.
81. They are afraid of wet and dry.
82. They are afraid of snow.
83. They are afraid of wind.
84. They are afraid of frost and heat.
85. They are afraid of noise and peace.
86. They are afraid of light and darkness.
87. They are afraid of joy and sadness.
88. They are afraid of jokes.
89. They are afraid of the upright.
90. They are afraid of the honest.
91. They are afraid of the educated.
92. They are afraid of the talented.
93. They are afraid of Marx.
94. They are afraid of Lenin.
95. They are afraid of all our dead presidents.
96. They are afraid of truth.
97. They are afraid of freedom.
98. They are afraid of democracy.
99. They are afraid of Human Rights’ Charter.
100. They are afraid of socialism.So why the hell are WE afraid of THEM?