"Now I just wonder where they got that linkage from?"
And I wonder where you got yours from - it sounds like a political establishment issued document to me, and given the history under discussion, that would be heavily influenced be Senator Joe McCarthy who decided what information was or was not permissible every bit as his counterpart in th USSR
I grew up with an interest in History; my family background and my love of song took me to Ireland where I found the two went hand in hand
Ireland's history is recorded in songs made by the people who also made their history and played an active part in changing its course
Ireland's written history is full of deliberate gaps and still locked up archive, as is the case with every former subject nation
I mentioned the Easter Week Executions earlier - Britain has a 'Thirty Year Rule' on disclosure of historical information, yet a century later there is no access to the proceedings that led to those executions.
I also mentioned The Belgian Congo and the destruction of all documentation following the collapse of Emperor Leopold's Lethal Enterprises
All past documentation of history came with an agenda and quite often the writing of history eually comes with their own agendas
For instance, we have numerous contradictory histories of The Miner's Strike
To understand that historical event you have to pick your way through them all and make up your own mind - if you have a shred of fairness in you, you go and ask the miners as well.
That goes for every aspect of oral culture I have ever been involved in - I have not gone with my own agenda and imposed it on what we collected, but have attempted to record the opinions of those who were generous enough to give us their time and information, and everything they had to say is documented and on record (and freely available, where possible - difficult in Britain, where what 'ordinary people' have to say is of no great interest to our 'betters' or by our trained experts.
People like Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger blasted the media wide open with eight hour-long radio programmes based on the people's voices - after the eighth, the BBC got cold feet and silenced those voices
For me - it is what they had to ay that is the essence of our history - not the often heavily agenda driven professional writings of trained historins
"Our history's got a hole in it", as the song should have said
"Now I just wonder where they got that linkage from?"
As usiual, you reduce these discussions to ill-manned and somewhat cowardly slanging
I don't know who you are, you choose to write from the safety of anonymity
Anybody interested enough can go listen to our work - it's pretty well archived and available
I don't know everything - I don't know very much; but I have spent a lot of time asking people who know far more than I do and trying to pass on what they have to say
Please stop behaving like a schoolyard bully - it really doesn't impress and it certainly doesn't help with the sharing of ideas
Jim Carroll