Ronald Radosh's Blog, page 23

Mother Jones Releases a Secret McConnell Tape — and Reveals Its Own Lack of Morality and Its Hypocrisy

The American Left is at it again. This time, Mother Jones Washington, D.C., correspondent David Corn reported that last February 2, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell held a private meeting with his aides to discuss in particular how to develop attacks against possible Democratic contenders for his Senate seat, especially the actress Ashley Judd. How did the magazine know this? Corn reveals that they received a tape of the meeting from an anonymous source. The campaign aide who began the meeting started this way:

I refer to [Judd] as sort of the oppo research situation where there’s a haystack of needles, just because truly, there’s such a wealth of material.

They had many reasons to oppose Judd. As a self-proclaimed “radical,” Judd is pro-choice, for gay marriage, and, as the aide said, “anti-coal.” But what Corn sees as the real scandal is her well-known mental health issues. As the aide continued to state:

She’s clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced. I mean it’s been documented. Jesse can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she’s suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the ’90s.

This is hardly a surprise, since, as the aide notes, the information comes from Judd’s own autobiography. As Corn himself writes, “In her 2011 memoirs, All That Is Bitter & Sweet, Judd recounts her past bouts with depression, noting that she had considered suicide as a sixth-grader and that as an adult she had checked into a rehab center for depression.” One might rightfully ask, “What’s the big deal?”  Is it that Corn revealed the tape of a secret meeting, thereby getting himself and his magazine publicity? Or is it that he told the world that in any political fight, the McConnell campaign would bring to light the question of Judd’s mental stability as an issue for the electorate to consider?

If the latter, is this not a just issue to be raised? Do people voting for a senator to represent them want to elect someone prone to hospitalization for depression? Indeed, Corn even reprints Judd’s own words about how she felt returning to the United States from abroad which, he writes, McConnell would have made public to make Judd seem like a weirdo. Here’s what Judd herself said:

I call it the American anesthesia. You know, I come back to this country. I freak out in airports. The colors, the sounds, all those different ways of packaging the same snack but trying to, you know, make it look like it’s distinct and different and convince consumers that they have to have it. I mean all of that. The last time I came home from a trip, I absolutely flipped out when I saw pink fuzzy socks on a rack. I mean, I can never anticipate what is going to push me over the edge.

But in a few weeks, you know, I’m driving along smooth roads and I think nothing of it. I’m, you know, choosing between four different brands of cereal from plastic dispensers so that I don’t have to have, you know, ugly, mismatched boxes on my shelf, and I don’t think anything of it.

Well, it does make Judd seem rather weird, and she said this herself in a speech. If a Republican said this, wouldn’t any Democratic opponent jump at the chance to make this public? Is it so outrageous? Of course not.

What is outrageous, however, is that David Corn and the other MJ editors see nothing wrong in releasing a tape of a private strategy session of Republicans. How did they get this? Clearly, a trusted aide would not jeopardize his or her job to secretly tape a meeting and then give it to a major left-wing publication. And that is precisely why McConnell has accused the magazine of possibly bugging his headquarters, and has asked the FBI to investigate.

“We’ve always said the left will stop at nothing to attack Sen. McConnell, but Nixonian tactics to bug campaign headquarters is above and beyond,” campaign manager Jesse Benton said in a statement reported by the Washington Post.

Benton is on solid ground. Moreover, it is the same David Corn who, in a previous life, was in the forefront of those on the Left who condemned secret wiretapping as a violation of American’s civil liberties. Writing at The Lid, a Jewish website, Jeff Dunetz points out that Corn wrote the following regarding NSA wiretaps of suspected terrorists:

It’s not every day a former deputy attorney general testifies that the White House violated the law–and did so knowingly. But that seemed to happen this morning when former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified before the Senate judiciary committee about the once-secret NSA warrantless wiretapping program that targeted citizens and residents in the United States.

So Corn is concerned about secret wiretapping of those who might be our very real enemies, and who might use their power to harm us in a terrorist action. Their civil liberties are being violated, and Corn is upset. But obviously his concern does not extend to violating the rights of political activists preparing for a campaign, even though every side, Democrat and Republican, engages in opposition research.

The Rehabilitation of New Left Terrorists

This week, the rehabilitation of the most extreme of the New Left groups — The Weather Underground — entered a new stage.

Yesterday, The New York Post revealed that convicted felon Kathy Boudin — who was released from jail a decade ago after serving 22 years for her role as getaway driver in a deadly 1981 Brinks truck robbery — was given the position of Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work.

At the same time, Boudin was also(!) given a position held concurrently at New York University, where she was appointed Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence. She recently gave a lecture for that program on “the politics of parole and re-entry,” something which she obviously knows about.

There are, of course, many other candidates who could have been given both positions, and none of them were part of a leftist terrorist group whose action resulted in the death of the first African-American police officer in that area, and two other police officers. Two of the three had families; children grew up without their fathers.

Nine children.

When she was pulled over, Boudin shouted to the officers whose guns were drawn: “put the gun back.” They put their revolvers in their holsters.

At that point — as the officers went to inspect the back of the van she was driving — her cohorts came out with weapons blazing, killing the two policemen and one other who had joined in pursuit.

Boudin was never repentant.

As David Horowitz points out today at NRO:

[Boudin is a] murderess who betted the cold-blooded massacre of three law-enforcement officers, including the first African-American on the Nyack police force; a woman whose actions left nine children fatherless and who has shown no genuine remorse for that.

The Rehabilitation of New Left Terrorists and the African-American Communist revolutionary Angela Davis-in Film and in our Universities

This week, the rehabilitation of the most extreme of the New Left groups-The Weather Underground-has entered a new stage. Yesterday, The New York Post revealed that convicted felon Kathy Boudin, who was released from jail a decade ago after serving 22 years for her role as getaway driver in the Brinks robbery in Westchester New York in 1981, was given the position of an Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Work. At the same time, Boudin was also given a position held concurrently at New York University, where she was appointed Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence. She recently gave a lecture for that program, on “the politics of parole and re-entry,” something which she obviously knows about.

There are, of course, many candidates with her CV who could have been given both positions, and most of them were not part of a leftist terrorist group whose action resulted in the death of the first African-American police officer in that area, and two other police officers, two of whom  had families that grew up without a father. When she was pulled over, Boudin shouted to the officers whose guns were drawn, “put the gun back.” They put their revolvers in their holsters. At that point, as they went to inspect the back of the closed doors of the van she was driving, her cohorts came out with weapons blazing, killing the two policemen and one other who had joined in pursuit.

Boudin was never repentant. As David Horowitz points out today in NRO, she is a “murderess who betted the cold-blooded massacre of three law-enforcement officers, including the first African-American on the Nyack police force; a woman whose actions left nine children fatherless and who has shown no genuine remorse for that.” Horowitz next points out the following:

Her colleagues Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who organized the terrorist Weather Underground in which Kathy Boudin was a soldier, were not adjunct faculty members like Boudin but full-fledged professors (at Northwestern and the University of Illinois). Ayers, a Columbia graduate, is an iconic figure at Columbia’s Teachers College (a third professional school at Columbia that is an ongoing disgrace) and has edited its series of classroom guides on how to use subjects like Mathematics to teach “social justice” — which, as Ayers understands and articulates it, is indistinguishable from the principles of the Communist gulags that the Cold War disposed of.

Next, this Friday is the premiere of the new film directed by and starring Robert Redford, The Company You Keep, that along with Redford, stars Shia LaBeouf, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Nick Nolte, and many other top rated Hollywood actors. Billed as a thriller, the movie is based loosely on Bill Ayers and the group that held up banks and pulled off the Brinks Robbery.

In a major 90 minute video interview with The New York Times, Redford was asked by Timesman David Carr what his motivation was for making the film. His answer was most revealing. “I was at the time,” Redford acknowledged, “very sympathetic to the Weather Underground, and I thought that their cause was just.” Redford clearly regards them as they themselves claim, as simply militant anti-war activists. Redford then said that despair on their inability to end the war forced  them to move in a new direction, and that “I disagreed with their turn to violence,” which he, like Ayers and Dohrn today, blames on the U.S. government, which they argue on a daily basis unjustly killed and harmed more people than they ever did.

Indeed, in the film itself, the Sarandon character, obviously based on Kathy Boudin, says essentially that—the same rationale that Ayers has given in scores of interviews. Just today, he again proceeded to offer a whitewash of his and the Weather Underground’s record, in a softball interview called “Bill Ayers Uncensored,” that appears on The Daily Beast/Newsweek website.

Ironically, in the very first issue of The Daily Beast, Tina Brown opted to open it with a tough anti-Ayers essay by Paul Berman, who called Ayers “the stupidest man in America, politically speaking; always is, always was.”  To those who claimed he was just an anti-war and civil rights activist, Berman correctly wrote: “But, hey, Prof. Ayers is, in fact, an unrepentant terrorist. As for ‘lunatic leftist,’ why, if this phrase does not apply to Ayers, it applies to no one.” Like Horowitz today, Berman concluded that “The armed left-wing movements of those years claimed to be the champions of black advancement, and yet made a point of destroying the actual black people who were advancing.”

Now, Brown assigned the interview with Ayers to one Marlow Stern, who clearly knows nothing about Ayers, and hence allows him to get away with a complete whitewash of his actual record. The group was created with a formal “Declaration of War” against “Amerikka.” Their goal was to start a race war in the United States, which is why in her famous speech, Dohrn made a hero of Charles Manson. They meant to destroy SDS, and transform it into the basis of a domestic guerilla army, which would “make the Revolution,” as they used to say. They incited the left to engage in this war, and the naïve interviewer allows Ayers to paint his movement in terms other than they claimed it stood for in the 60’s and 70’s. Contrary to what Ayers argues now and Redford believes, they were not part of the anti-war movement. They sought Revolution at home and victory to the Viet-Cong and all revolutionary movements abroad. As David Horowitz points out in as yet an unprinted letter to the editor of The Daily Beast,  and he is perhaps our nation’s leading expert on the New Left, the interviewer allows Ayers to wrap himself around the civil rights movement and the anti-war forces in order to exculpate himself from the crimes of which he was guilty. And as for the claim that they never hurt anyone, there are scores of actual deaths and bombings they took credit for, but for which no one was ever arrested. And as for the others, like the planned Fort Dix bombing in which their leadership blew themselves up in the W.10th street townhouse, it was not for want of trying.

If all the above is not enough, this Friday, at AMC theater chains, a new documentary movie opens about the Communist and Black Panther revolutionary activist, Angela Davis, called “Free Angela Davis and all Political Prisoners.” Directed by filmmaker Shola Lynch, it has the support and financial backing of Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of the actor Will Smith. As the article about it makes very clear, it is out and out Communist propaganda, the kind we have not seen in decades. Once reserved for small leftist outfits like Newsreel, which made scores of Black Panther propaganda films in the 60s, now a major chain sees fit to put out such drivel for mass consumption, in the hope that a new generation- already raised at our colleges and universities in the world of leftist falsehood, will believe the portrait painted in the movie.

Pinkett Smith explains how she got involved and what she knew about Davis beforehand: “Through my family and also once I became really good friends with Tupac Shakur, that’s really when I got pretty educated about the Black Panther movement. Of course, Angela Davis being a very prominent figure during that particular era. So that’s when I became a really big fan.” Now she believes that now “Angela Davis [has] become the figure of freedom and justice not only in our country but around the world,” a belief that she 0bviously believes, but the truth of which is the opposite. She is only regarded as such by the far left in this country, and actually despised by all those who formerly lived in the Communist world of real oppression, under a system which Davis supported and whose repression against dissidents she completely approved.

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, I had a book review appear about the high school I attended in the 1950’s in New York City, which the editors appropriately titled “Fast Times at Lenin High.” I mention it here because both Angela Davis and Kathy Boudin went to that school, which was in those years staffed almost entirely by teachers who belonged to the American Communist Party or were its fellow travelers, and where any leftist proclivities learned at home were reinforced by the teaching staff.

Now, the kind of warped political education I learned at that institution has become the norm for the culture at large. Even conservatives have proved not immune to it. Yesterday, Robert Redford appeared on Joe Scarborough’s morning TV program, and found that he and his co-host waxed ecstatic about the brilliant film Redford had made, offering not one word of criticism, and accepting his own portrayal of its accuracy.

So this coming week we have had evidence of how our culture is rewarding the worst elements of the far left: New Left revolutionary terrorists who are given jobs, those who are given space in major media to spin their own story dishonestly that is bought by gullible interviewers, and two new movies resurrecting the Weather Underground and a Stalinist hack who believes in “the science of Marxism-Leninism,” as she calls it. I can think of no better ending than to again quote David Horowitz, who writes in his NRO interview, “These are sad times for our country, and the hour is late.”

 

The Stone and Kuznick Roadshow: Why Their Message Must Be Answered

This past Friday, I attended the Oliver Stone-Peter Kuznick roadshow at its Washington, D.C., venue — the national conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, held in the grand ballroom of the Washington Marriott-Wardman Park Hotel. (It was once an apartment complex, in which Henry A. Wallace lived when he was vice president during FDR’s presidency. Kuznick evidently was not aware of this; he might have dedicated the venue as a shrine.)

Their presentation, offered to a clearly leftist and liberal audience that greeted them as conquering heroes waging a battle against the supposedly right-wing establishment, was important for one major reason. It offered us insight into the mindset held by leftists such as the two presenters, and into how they depict themselves in order to gain an audience’s sympathy — how they make them believe their message is the sole truth.

Before it started, I, Roger Aronoff of Accuracy In Media, and historian Richard Raack stood outside the door handing out announcements of our own counter-session to be held the next morning, at which we intended to — and did — offer a rebuke to the Stone-Kuznick book and TV series. Attached to the announcement was my own Weekly Standard article that offered a critique of the first episodes of the Showtime program.

I haven’t leafleted anything as an act of protest in many a year, and believe me, it felt good. I only hope that many who took the leaflets actually took the time to read my article.

Following is what both Stone and Kuznick had to say, and my comments about what I learned from listening to them.

Kuznick, who did most of the talking, announced that they showed the episode about the origins of the Cold War. This is the one which ended with Henry A. Wallace: Kuznick pointed out once again that had Wallace been president instead of Harry S. Truman, the United States would have avoided the Cold War, turned to the left domestically, and had generations of peace with Stalin’s Soviet Union. Kuznick made this argument despite it having been answered in detail not only by me in various publications including PJM, but by Sean Wilentz in the New York Times Review of Books.

Kuznick simply ignored all of the detailed critiques of their argument, as if they had never been made, as if he and Stone had nothing to respond to.

Knowing full well that their audience probably had not read the critiques and had no knowledge of whether anyone had answered them, Kuznick was able to claim in his best voice that he alone dared to tell this truth about Wallace which no one else had ever dared to say.

He placed great emphasis on the phony story of how the Democratic convention of 1948 almost nominated Wallace but was stopped by party bosses — by the way, a story torn apart by Wilentz — and of how Wallace stood for peace while no one else did.

Kuznick ignored as well the evidence of Wallace’s covert meeting with the NKVD station chief in Washington, D.C., while he was still in the president’s cabinet.

Nothing was offered that would contradict the narrative both were sticking with — facts be damned.  Both Stone and Kuznick understand that gullible audiences who know nothing will think they are telling the truth.

Next, they used a second ploy: playing the victim.

This time it was Oliver Stone’s turn to talk. Stone actually expected the audience to believe that they were two truth-tellers who had no podium with which to make their case. The media was controlled by the right wing, he said, and they had to battle against a media that essentially blacklisted them and in which they never could have a voice.

Did Stone really believe this? Especially if, as we will see, the evidence he bragged about literally denigrated his own argument?

He failed to mention that both he and Kuznick have been on scores of major TV and radio talk shows to hype their project. Indeed, they have been universally received as brave soldiers for the truth — even on conservative programs like Mike Huckabee’s radio show.

Not only has the media not avoided them, its bookers have bombarded them with endless opportunities to peddle the Showtime series and their book.

The Stone and Kuznick Road-Show, and Why Their Message Has to be Answered

This past Friday, I attended the Oliver Stone-Peter Kuznick road show in its Washington, D.C. venue, the national conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, held in the grand ballroom of the Washington Marriott-Wardman Park Hotel. (Once an apartment complex, in which Henry A. Wallace lived when he was Vice-President during FDR’s presidency, which historian Kuznick evidently was not aware of, or he might have dedicated the venue as a shrine.)

Their presentation, offered to a clearly leftist and liberal audience that greeted them as conquering heroes waging a battle against the supposedly right-wing establishment, was important for one major reason. It offers us an insight into the kind of mindset held by leftists such as the two presenters, and how they depict themselves in order to gain an audience’s sympathy and to make them believe that their message is one of the sole truth.

Before it started, I, Roger Aronoff of Accuracy In Media, and historian Richard Raack, stood outside the door handing out announcements of our own counter-session to be held the next morning, at which we intended to- and did- offer a rebuke to the Stone-Kuznick book and TV series. Attached to it was my own Weekly Standard article that offered a critique of the first episodes of the Showtime program. I haven’t leafleted anything as an act of protest in many a year, and believe me, it felt good. I only hope that many who took the leaflets actually took the time to read my article.

Following is what both Stone and Kuznick had to say, and my comments about what I learned from listening to them:

Kuznick, who did most of the talking, announced that they showed the episode about the origins of the Cold War. This is the one which  ended with Henry A. Wallace, whom he pointed out once again, that had Wallace been president instead of Harry S. Truman, the United States would have avoided the Cold War, turned to the left domestically, and had generations of peace with Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Kuznick made this argument despite it having been answered in detail not only by myself in various publications including PJM, but by Sean Wilentz in The New York Review of Books. Kuznick simply ignored all of the detailed critiques of their argument, as if they had never been made, and that he and Stone had nothing to respond to. Knowing full well that their audience probably had not read them and had no knowledge that anyone had answered them, he could talk in his best voice that he alone dared to tell this truth about Wallace that no one else had ever dared to say.

He placed great emphasis on the phony story of how the Democratic convention of 1948 almost nominated Wallace and was stopped by party bosses- a story torn apart by Wilentz- and of how Wallace stood for peace while no one else did. He ignored as well the evidence of Wallace’s covert meeting with the NKVD station chief in Washington, D.C., while he was still in the president’s Cabinet. Nothing was offered that would contradict the narrative both were sticking with, facts be damned. To gullible audiences who know nothing, Stone and Kuznick both understand that they knew the audience will think they are telling the truth.

Next, they moved to the second ploy: playing the victim. This time it was Oliver Stone’s turn to talk. Stone actually expected the audience to believe that they were two truth-tellers who had no podium with which to make their case. The media was controlled by the right-wing, he said, and they had to battle against a media that essentially blacklisted them and in which they never could have a voice.

Did Stone really believe this, especially as we will see, the evidence he bragged about literally denigrated his own argument? He failed to mention that both he and Kuznick have been on scores of the major TV and radio talk shows to hype their project, on which they have been universally received as brave soldiers for the truth, even on conservative programs like Mike Huckabee’s radio show. Not only has the media not avoided them, its bookers have bombarded them with endless opportunities to peddle the Showtime series and their book.

Next, Stone informed the audience that when Showtime’s repeat of the series comes to an end, the contract with them is up. At that time, Time-Warner has picked up the series, will release it on their cable systems in major cities, as well as on DVD, for purchase and for use in college courses. Since Showtime is a cable network and Time-Warner is a cable service, he emphasized, it now would get much wider audience than it did while aired only on Showtime’s cable for fee service.

In addition, Stone told us that the program is set to air next week in Britain—“The British are anti-Soviet,” Stone said, “and it might be harder for their audience to accept it, but we’ll see.” With those words, Stone revealed that being anti-Soviet is to him a very bad thing, and that he finds it hard to believe in this day and age that anyone could ever have had such a position.  Not only was the program to be aired in Britain, he informed us, but was soon to premiere in both China and Turkey! It did not occur to Stone, evidently, why both of these nations might want to air a program whose main thesis is that American imperialism is an evil result of a vicious American empire that wants to rule the world and hold down “progressive” nations like Communist China with its state-controlled media and Islamist Turkey.

Most of the Q and A was handled by the on-stage moderator, who was friendly to both of them, and asked them lowball set-up questions meant to not phase them. At one point, she asked them how the series and book was received, to which Kuznick replied that they had overwhelmingly favorable responses from TV reviewers, and that the book had blurbs from respected mainstream historians who all said how essential and important it was. Kuznick, of course, knows full well that the blurbs are all from left-leaning scholars, all of whom have the same point of view he has- and not from any truly mainstream historians like John Gaddis of Yale University, Alonzo Hamby of Ohio University, or others who if asked, would more than likely think their book a farce, as does Wilentz and David Greenberg of Rutgers University.

At that point, Kuznick went on to say that there was some criticism, from “defenders of the American Empire,” mentioning Wilentz in particular, whom he blasted as being in the same school as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the late highly regarded historian who of course was of the broad mainstream left, but which Kuznick termed a “Cold War liberal,” to leftists a derogatory term.  He went on to say that “These Cold War liberals have joined conservatives in attacking us,” thereby putting his critics in one bag as all one of a kind- both being defenders as he said more than once, of “the American Empire.” Indeed, he added that “Wilentz, like Schlesinger, defends the American Empire.” That, I guess, is one way of dealing with the devastating blast that Wilentz had written.

At that moment, I had had enough. I stood up- although I shouted in a loud voice but without a microphone, and perhaps only those in my immediate area heard all I had to say- that one of your critics you are attacking is right here. I continued to say that both of them were liars and cowards who refused to debate, that everything they were saying was false and could be answered, and I urged those in attendance to come as well to our session the next morning, that would provide a major criticism of the arguments they were listening to and which they saw in the episode that had just been screened. At first, there was total silence, and a look of confusion on Stone and Kuznick. Then Stone proceeded to start talking as if nothing had happened, and did not comment at all on what I had said.

Third, it is more than clear that on the issue of history, Kuznick is the sole culprit. Stone talks largely on how he decided to deal with doing the film, dispensing with talking heads and using footage bolstered by his own stentorian voice, that used music and the emphasis he places on various points to show approval or disapproval of what is depicted in the footage used. On the issue of historical truth, he again gave his usual pitch that the film had been thoroughly vetted for accuracy, although one thinks he must really know that CBS lawyers do not go over a film for its treatment of history, but only to see that nothing libelous is said about any living figure. If one could sue for distortion of history, I guarantee that there would be a lot of people standing in line to bring charges. When asked later what he hoped to get out of the series and book, he answered that “our hope is that our book replaces all existing college textbooks,” and he mentioned that some professors already were assigning it as the textbook for their classes. Kuznick added that even Stone’s daughter used a textbook that said the bombing of Hiroshima was necessary and was done to save American lives.

Finally, the moderator said that there would be a few questions from the audience in the remaining time. Most of course were approving, but one stood out for me, because of the answer Kuznick gave to the question. What did they think, the two were asked, of Kim Jong-Un’s warlike blustering and his threat of using force against South Korea and even brandishing the threat of using nuclear weapons? Any rational person, of course, would immediately condemn North Korea’s current dangerous actions. Not the two of them, however!

Kuznick replied that although he did not approve of what Kim Jong-Un and the North Koreans were doing, “it was understandable because it was a response to the United States military actions aiding South Korea in recent days,” and he then went on a tirade about how the U.S. decimated both South and North Korea in the days of the Korean War, used napalm as they did later in Vietnam, and generally harmed the people of Korea, something that he thought the North Koreans well remembered, which is why they view the United States and the South Koreans in a hostile fashion. As usual with leftist ideologues, any bad things said by Communist rulers is excused and explained as a just or understandable response to American aggression. Clearly, to both men, the U.S. is “the evil empire.”

The next morning, we appeared to a rather small group at our counter session. I was pleased that those who came did so because they got our leaflet, and there were defenders of Stone and Kuznick with whom I was able to argue with and show at length how they distorted history to use it as a vehicle to implement a leftist political agenda. The video of the session will be available soon at the AIM website, and I will add a link to this post when it appears, in a week or so.

As I have argued before, in the presentation you can see at Frontpagemag.com, winning the fight for the culture is a critical issue. Once Stone and Kuznick get their essentially old line Communist film into all regular cable outlets and the book is adopted as a text—it will begin to have the same insidious effect that Howard Zinn’s propagandist screed had on high schools students as well as young college students. The goal of Stone and Kuznick is to distort our history in order to indoctrinate students and turn them into opponents of the United States, and essentially, create a new generation of activists who will help bring down the free nation we live in.

To them, history is not a tool to understand our past, but a mechanism of indoctrination in which lies about the Cold War, in this case, are used to turn the young against their own country. That is why opposing them is important, and why we cannot stop in waging the fight against those who help spread their lies only because they see money in it. Lenin famously quipped that the Bolsheviks would “sell the capitalists the rope with which we will hang them.” In sponsoring Stone and Kuznick’s lies, Showtime and now Time-Warner are proving Lenin rather prophetic.

 

 

 

 

North Korea Rattles Its Sabers: Evidently, a Threat That Must Be Taken Seriously

Why is Kim-Jong Un, the new boy emperor of the “hermit kingdom,” choosing this time to rattle the sabers?

NBC News reports this morning:

North Korea put its rocket units on standby Friday to attack U.S. military bases in South Korea and the Pacific, after repeated threats and one day after two American stealth bombers flew over the Korean Peninsula in a military exercise.

What is different about Kim’s threat this time: an unnamed American official “warned that the isolated communist state is ‘not a paper tiger’ and its reaction should not be dismissed as ‘pure bluster.’”

As we all know, North Korea stands alone as a pure model totalitarian state — the remaining Communist country most resembling the Soviet Union of the ‘20s and ‘30s when Joseph Stalin attempted to erase any existing independent civil society, or Mao’s China in the age of the Cultural Revolution when that nation literally went mad in a domestic orgy of violence and destruction in the name of building revolution and smashing any semblance of “bourgeois” behavior.

“The time has come,” little Kim is quoted as saying, “to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation.” Of course, the only such situation is that created by either Kim or the North Korean generals who are testing his mettle, perhaps because they wish to control the nation themselves and are forcing him to a test which, if he does not pass, could possibly lead to a military coup. “Bonapartism,” the Bolsheviks called it in the early days of the Soviet Union — they feared if order was not restored after taking power and a civil war was underway, the military could quickly move to run the USSR on its own.

The U.S. official went on to say that although the world knows Kim is inexperienced, they do not know whether or not he has any real wisdom. Indeed, just last week a North Korean soldier at the 38th parallel separating South from North Korea threw a hand grenade at one of the soldiers patrolling the South’s side of the line of demarcation. Such a provocative act could not have been taken independently. In addition, Kim-Jong Un also threatened the South with a nuclear attack.

The government-controlled media also published an article presenting the populace with an ideological justification for the threats. “The opportunity for peacefully settling the DPRK-U.S. relations,” the paper’s propagandist Minju Joson wrote, “is no longer available as the U.S. opted for staking its fate. Consequently, there remains only the settlement of accounts by a physical means.” Ms. Joson continued:

A battle to be fought by the DPRK against the U.S. will become a war for national liberation to defend the sovereignty and dignity of the country and, at the same time, a revolutionary war to defend the human cause of independence and the justice of the international community.

The words emulate the kind of clarion call familiar to observers of revolutionary movements in their earliest phase, as they tried to rally the population and  army to pull together to save the Revolution from foreign threats. Immediately, Kim gave the order for a mass rally of tens of thousands to be held in the main square of Pyongyang a few days ago. The assembled masses yelled in union: “Rip the Puppet Masters to Death!” As the regime put its rocket launchers on standby — with missiles easily able to hit South Korea as well as other nearby nations — the United States responded with a show of force, sending two nuclear-capable stealth bombers to the region.

Why Conservatives Should be Critical of Obama’s Middle Eastern policy, but No Longer Attack him as an Enemy of Israel

I, along with other supporters of Israel, have for the past few years rightfully been critical of President Obama and his position on the Middle East, beginning with his disastrous Cairo speech and his misguided decision to combine a wooing of the Arab world with a decision to put U.S. pressure first and foremost on Israel. Particularly, Obama chose to make settlements the most important issue regarding the peace process.

The major change during his two days in Israel was a decisive shift in approach, which many of his ardent supporters have been loath to acknowledge. This shift was succinctly pointed out by veteran foreign affairs analyst Leslie Gelb:

In Israel, Obama went further than ever in trying to placate Bibi’s position. The president said that the issue of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, the hottest button for Palestinians, should not be dealt with in advance of negotiations, as the Palestinians demand, but should be placed on the table only after the negotiating groundwork has been set. Indeed, almost everything Obama has said on this trip backpedals on his earlier priority of freezing those settlements. This is a body blow to Abbas and his supporters that can be assuaged only by a real Washington push for negotiations, one that involves U.S. positions disliked by Bibi and bound to cause moaning among many Israelis.

If one puts this truth first, Obama’s speech the next day to leftist students may be seen as the other side of the coin. Roger L. Simon is not alone in responding favorably to Obama’s words. It was, as David Horovitz, editor of The Times of Israel perceptively points out, a “left-wing Zionist speech,” perhaps the most cogent statement of such a viewpoint that the Israeli public has heard since the old days of Habonim and Hashomer Hatzair, the two most important Zionist left-wing youth groups of the ’50s, ’6os, and Israel’s early period of labor Zionism.

Obama may indeed have stirred the hearts of the hand-picked leftist students who were present at the event, but garnering their wild applause is one thing; the hard reality of trying to make peace with the Palestinians, led by Abbas — not to speak of Hamas — is another. As Horovitz says, the problem is that Obama’s utopian vision “is hardly consensual”:

This speech was the “reset” of Obama’s personal relationship with Israel. It was the speech in which he showed his knowledge of Israel, quoting its religious texts and its political visionaries, recalling the suffering of exile, the yearning for the homeland. It was the speech in which he acknowledged the extent of the hostility tiny Israel has faced and continues to face in this region, the relentless series of wars it has been forced to fight for its survival.

He knew, he told the listening Israelis, that you live in a region in which many have rejected your very right to exist. He knew, he said, that the security of the Jewish people in Israel cannot be taken for granted. He knew Israel had seized opportunities for peace with Egypt and Jordan under Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, and tried hard to make peace with the Palestinians, including under Ehud Olmert at Annapolis. He knew that the 2000 Lebanon pullout and the 2005 Gaza withdrawal had been met with rocket fire, and that “the hand of friendship” had too often been met with rejectionism and terror.

Having set this up to woo Israelis, the president then moved on to tell them to keep working for the Palestinian state that would be in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians, and which he argued the Palestinians deserved as a matter of justice.

And that is the rub.

The Time to Help Cuba’s Brave Dissidents Is Now: Why the Embargo Must Not be Lifted

The presence this week in the United States of dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, the most well-known of Cuba’s brave dissident community, has again brought to the forefront the reality of the situation facing the Cuban people in the Castro brothers’ prison state.

Last week, Sanchez spoke at both Columbia University and New York University, where she recalled how different things were a decade ago during what Cubans refer to as the “Black Spring,” when independent journalists were given a summary trial and large jail sentences. It was the arrest of these opponents of the regime that led to the Ladies in White, the wives and mothers of prisoners who regularly marched in silence in front of government buildings each week.

Ten years ago, Sanchez pointed out, there was no access to the internet for anyone in Cuba, it barely existed, and there were no flash drives to record information and no social networking sites to spread the word about the state’s repression. Now, bloggers like Sanchez — who gains access to tourist hotels, posing as a Westerner so she can use their internet facilities — have managed to get past the regime’s ban on use of the internet and to freely reveal to the world the reality of life in Cuba.

“Many independent journalists and peaceful activists who began their work precariously have now resorted to blogs, for example, as a format to circulate information about programs and initiatives to collect signatures,” Sánchez said. She and others have done just that, getting signatures on petitions to demand the release in particular of one well-known Cuban journalist. In addition, Sanchez is circulating a petition known as “the Citizens’ Demand” to pressure the Cuban regime to ratify the UN political rights agreements signed in 2008. The signers are calling for a legal and political framework for a full debate of all ideas relevant to the internal crisis facing the Cuban people on the island.

In effect, this demand for democracy is nothing less than a call for creation of a political democracy that would, if implemented, lead to the collapse of the edifice of the Communist one-party state.

As Sanchez put it: “It is important to have initiatives for transforming the law and demand concrete public spaces within the country.” Since a totalitarian state does not allow for such space and prohibits a real civil society from emerging, the actions of the dissidents are a mechanism for forcing such change from below. They are fighting what her fellow blogger Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo called a “culture of fear over the civil society” that the secret police seek to enforce.

For liberals and leftists in the United States, the main demand they always raise is to “lift the embargo.” According to the argument they regularly make, the embargo has to be lifted for the following reasons: 1) it is not effective; 2) it gives the regime the excuse to argue to the Cuban people that the poverty they suffer is the result of not being able to trade with the United States and other nations honoring the embargo; 3) lifting the embargo would hence deprive Fidel and Raul Castro from their main propaganda argument, revealing that the reasons for a collapsed economy are the regime’s own policies; and 4) trade and travel from the United States would expose Cubans to Americans and others who live in freedom, help curb anti-Americanism, and eventually lead to slow reform of the system.

What these liberals and leftists leave out is that this demand — lifting the embargo — is also the number one desire of the Cuban Communists.

The Hidden Purpose of Organizing for Action — Obama’s New Political Action Group

Today in Washington, D.C., major donors to the Obama campaign are meeting with the president at a $50,000 per person fundraiser on behalf of the ongoing campaign’s new so-called “grassroots” organization, Organizing for Action. It is officially explained as follows:

A nonprofit organization established to support President Obama in achieving enactment of the national agenda Americans voted for on Election Day 2012. OFA will advocate for these policies throughout the country and will mobilize citizens of all parties and diverse points to speak out for speedy passage and effective implementation of this program, including gun control, sensible environmental policies to address climate change and immigration reform. In addition, OFA will encourage the formation of chapters that will be dedicated at the grassroots level to this program, but also committed to identifying and working progressive change on a range of issues at the state and local level.

The official statement is as non-threatening as possible, hiding what is particularly unique and different about this group. Those visiting its website will not be made aware that no American president has ever put together a group such as this.

In essence, it is the campaign organization continuing on after the last election, now focused on promoting outside pressure towards a left turn by the nation.

The liberal Huffington Post terms it “a pro-Obama group positioned as progressive answer to Karl Rove,” but that is not entirely accurate. Rove’s operation is a top-down, donor-driven group that, for example, has recently taken out ads against actress Ashley Judd to harm her chances to get the Democratic nomination should she decide to run against Mitch McConnell in the next Kentucky Senate race.

The OFA, on the other hand, is much more than a group hoping to influence the choice of a candidate in a race and to be a source of funding for ads and a campaign. It is a group more akin to the Alinskyite community organizing force with which young Obama cut his teeth, an organization meant to mobilize the Left to pressure for things like “taxing the rich” via organizing and actions such as those the now-defunct ACORN used to engage in.

That is why it purports to be non-partisan. It wants outside pressure to push the Democratic Party — whose candidates it inevitably will support — to back the most left-wing programs put forth. As the article by Samuel Jacobs at Huffington Post makes clear, that means “attacking the influence of special interest money in politics.” Of course, this excludes special interests like big pharma, with whom Obama has cut a deal in exchange for getting their support of Obamacare.

When the New Left Shilled for North Korea

The DPRK is beautiful, Clean, honest, free, and totally revolutionary. It is a new civilization called Socialism. … A new potent force is beginning to emerge in the Third World — The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under the leadership of Comrade Kim Il-Sung [who is] refocusing the perspective of the Revolutionary Peoples of the Whole World who are not already liberated, powerful and secure. This is a historic development and the revolutionary peoples … must take heed of it.
  

– Eldridge Cleaver diary entry, 1970.

———————

When North Korea was still being led by its original founder, Kim Il-Sung, the visitors from the United States to the horrendous Communist regime were not the likes of Dennis Rodman. Today, the founder’s grandson, Kim Jong-Un,  has inherited the mantle of leadership, thereby carrying on the dynasty that rules in the name of Marxism-Leninism, as modified by the founder’s philosophy of juche, or self-reliance, autonomy, and independence.

How far the North Korean Communists have fallen. Back in the day of the old fellow-travelers’ tours to the various communist paradises, the regimes had their praises sung by the likes of the African-American baritone Paul Robeson, who regularly went to the USSR and told the world how great Comrade Stalin was and how the Soviet Union had the only real democracy on Earth. At least Robeson was an All-American football quarterback and the most well-known black American actor and singer in the 1930s and 40s. He also received a law degree at Columbia University. That a man so intelligent could function as a dupe for Stalin was far more worrisome than seeing Rodman do the same today. No one would call Rodman intelligent. He is both a useful idiot as well as a real one; Robeson only filled the first category.

Bruce Bawer hits it squarely on the head when he notes that Rodman gives an impression of “utter foolishness and ignorance,” so much so that Bawer wonders if he ever has read any book at all. Bawer also points out that the attention given his view of North Korea is an indication of how the modern cult of celebrity “has taken root even in the presidential palace in Pyongyang.” And how many of our fellow countrymen might be influenced by the hosannas to both the late Hugo Chavez and the soon to be late Fidel Castro by showbiz stars like Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Tim Robbins, Harry Belafonte, and of course, Oliver Stone. The list goes on.

So let us turn to the reign of the founder of the hermit kingdom, Kim Il-Sung, who one thinks would never have welcomed Dennis Rodman to his lair. That Rodman is welcome there today is the result of Kim wanting a good education for his children and grandchildren, with the result that the current ruler learned to love basketball and Rodman while a student in one of the most elite schools in Switzerland. When a Red ruler sends his kids for a good education out of the homeland, one never knows what might be the result.

We now know, thanks to the enterprising scholarship of a young M.A. student at The College at Brockport, Benjamin R. Young, about the hitherto unknown ties of the American New Left with Kim Il-Sung’s North Korea, which it seems these major New Left activists hoped to have replace both the Soviet Union and Communist China as the model for socialism in their own day and age.

Now, Young’s findings and documents are online for all to see at the website of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and its division, the Cold War International History Project.

Young writes:

From the autumn of 1969 to the winter of 1971, the Panthers identified Kim Il Sung’s Juche Idea, rather than the teachings of Mao Zedong, as the most effective application of Marxism-Leninism. The Panthers utilized the slipperiness of Juche as a way to evade the Chinese and Soviet lines of Marxism-Leninism — much in the same way, some argue, the North Koreans used Juche.

So infatuated was Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party’s minister of information, that he sent his wife Kathleen to North Korea when she was pregnant so that she could receive “the proper rest and medical care necessary at the time.” She gave birth to their daughter on July 31, 1970, in Pyongyang, which fortunately means that she can never be president of the United States. They named the baby Juju Younghi, to make her name sound Korean. Later, Cleaver claimed that in North Korea she got “the most excellent and thorough medical attention in my life,” as well as “the most pleasant and comfortable living conditions for myself and my family.”

And you thought Cuba was the favorite place for health care among New Leftists — I anxiously await a Michael Moore film about how wonderful North Korea is.

The delusionary view of North Korea was also stated by Panther leader Elaine Brown, who wrote that North Korean farmers “live at a much higher standard than the average person in the United States who would be involved in farming work, or even a worker.” The average North Korean had good health care, medical facilities, a housing and clothing allotment, and free education through college.

As for South Korea, the Panthers called it an oppressive puppet regime of the United States, led by a “running dog of U.S. imperialism” in a country in which the people lived in poverty and near starvation. “In North Korea,” she wrote, “ … the people are getting everything they need, while … in the South, people who speak the same language are starving.”

I was not unaware of the fascination of the New Left with North Korea. Those of you who have read my memoir, Commies, A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left, might recall a few pages on the left-wing journalist Robert Scheer, who now edits his own webzine (Truthdig.com).

In the summer of 1970 on a trip to San Francisco, I went to see Scheer, who was then living in the Red Family Commune and working at its kindergarten: the Blue Fairyland. During the visit, I taped Scheer for a weekly radio program that my friend Louis Menashe and I had on New York’s WBAI, the flagship station of the leftist and counter-culture Pacifica radio network. I wanted to talk to him about the state of the Left, the nature of the radical movement, and his work in journalism.

All Scheer agreed to talk about, however, was his recent visit to North Korea, and his view of its leader, Kim-Il Sung.