Tag Archives: Cold War

06/4/15

The Evolution Of The Oil Weapon

In the age of derivatives, swaps, and electronic money transfers, a new form of warfare has emerged: financial warfare.

Recently, the US has passed sanctions on countries such as Syria, Venezuela, and North Korea , but the majority of energy related sanctions passed have been targeted at Iran and Russia.

An estimated 68 percent of Russia’s government revenue is derived from oil and gas exports, while 80 percent of Iran’s revenue comes from oil exports. That presents a very large target for the use of financial weapons.

To understand why financial warfare is now so commonplace, one must understand how it came into existence and what has been achieved taking such an approach.

The oil weapon first came into existence in 1965, when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal. What resulted from this was a declaration of war by France, England, and Israel. As a way to counter this invasion, Saudi Arabia decided to ban exports to England and France. This embargo turned out to have minimal economic impact, as the US increased shipments to Europe, and international oil companies redirected shipments to England and France.

The next embargo imposed was in 1967, when Arab states imposed an embargo on the US, Britain, and West Germany. This embargo was enacted after a rumor surfaced that Britain and the US were providing air cover for Israeli planes, after Israel bombed Egyptian military airports in the 1967 war. This embargo failed, due to the fact that Arab oil revenues declined. This embargo also wasn’t enforced properly, as Western countries were still receiving oil from Arab countries.

But the most famous incident came in 1973. This was when OPEC issued a new embargo on countries that provided military aid to Israel, in the Yom Kippur war. This proved to have a greater economic impact on Europe and the US, because Saudi Arabia displaced Texas as the world’s swing producer.

The 1973 embargo led to an increase in domestic fuel prices, shortages of gasoline, and the rationing of gasoline fuel. This embargo changed the dynamics of US foreign policy.

After the 1973 embargo, Richard Nixon sent his secretary of state Henry Kissinger to Saudi Arabia with a proposed deal, to ensure that an embargo such as this would never happen to the United States again.

After some revisions, in 1976, the House of Saud and Henry Kissinger finally reached an agreement. The agreement did the following things, according to Marin Katusa’s 2014 book, “The Colder War.” The Saudi’s agreed to:

1. Give the US as much oil as it desired, for general consumption and national security measures. Thus increasing or decreasing oil production to the benefit of the US

2. To only sell oil for US dollars, and to reinvest profits in US treasury securities.

In return, the US guaranteed:

1. The protection of the Saudi Kingdom from rival Arab countries

2. The protection of Saudi oil fields

3. Protection from an Israel invasion.

The Saudi’s agreed to this because, even though they had vast amounts of oil, they didn’t possess an army which could protect them from its surrounding enemies; which included Iran, Iraq, and Israel.

This deal not only secured a steady supply of oil to the US, but allowed the US to expand its global footprint.

How the US and the Saudi’s colluded to topple the USSR

In 1982, a secret declaration for economic war with The Soviet Union was signed. This declaration included:

• No new contracts to buy Soviet natural gas
• Accelerate development of an alternate supply to Soviet gas for parts of Europe
• A plan to substantially raise interest rates on credit to the USSR
• The requirement of higher down payments and shorter maturities on Russian bonds.

This declaration made the USSR’s debt load much more burdensome, but what delivered the final blow to the USSR was the doubling of oil production from Saudi Arabia in 1986. This pushed oil prices down to roughly 10 dollars per barrel, thus vastly decreasing the USSR’s government revenue. This declaration combined with low oil prices, according to James Norman, author of the 2008 book, “The Oil Card,” is what led to the collapse of the USSR.

Today, the international financial system is much more sophisticated. Still, using financial sanctions with the intention of creating a de facto embargo on oil is a widespread practice today – just look at the cases of Iran and Russia.

Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Evolution-Of-The-Oil-Weapon.html

By John Manfreda of Oilprice.com

05/22/15

Kremlin Disinformation and Propaganda [VIDEO]

The Right Planet

Via 20committee.com:

I recently was honored to participate at the Joint Baltic American National Committee (JBANC) conference in Washington, DC, where I took part in a discussion of Kremlin disinformation and propaganda. My comments, on Chekist Active Measures and their relevance today, kicks off at 25:25, and the Q&A following the talks may be worth your time. Enjoy (and ignore that JBANC oddly called me a blogger, and that I got cut off in the middle of one of my all-time favorite KGB anecdotes)!

05/5/15

Radical Islam: a Communist tool against the West

By: Renee Nal
New Zeal

ISIS via BBC Radio

ISIS via BBC Radio

“The KGB boss described the Muslim world as a waiting petri dish, in which we could nurture a strain of hate-America.” – Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa

The Cold War’s “most important defector,” Ion Mihai Pacepa, recently revealed that Liberation Theology “was the creation of the KGB, who exported it to Latin America as a way of introducing Marxism into the continent” and is traced to the 1968 “Conference of Latin American Bishops” as reported in a must-read article posted at Breitbart.

But Liberation Theology is only one of the many subversive creations of the KGB, who also fosters and promotes radical Islam as a “weapon against the West,” according to political commentator and New Zealand native Trevor Loudon, who is not at all surprised at the recent revelation that Liberation Theology was an invention of the KGB.

Loudon, whose book The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the US Congress is currently being made into a feature documentary, has been sounding the alarm about activities by communists in America for years. In fact, it was Loudon who first made the connection between President Barack Obama and his communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis.

Radical Islam “serves Moscow as a deniable weapon against the West,” Loudon said. The connections between radical Islam and communism have been documented here, here and here.

Consider the following by Daniel Greenfield:

Former KGB General Oleg Kalugin had said that many Al Queda terrorists were actually trained by the KGB. A sizable number of the Taliban’s top military people had Russian training as well.

Additionally, former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko “alleged that al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the FSB [formerly KGB] in Dagestan in the years before the 9/11 attacks,” as reported in his obituary at the BBC. As noted at the New American back in 2005, “al-Zawahiri had been very active as the purported top leader of Islamist terrorist operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina during Yugoslavia’s civil war.” As an aside, one of Litvinenko’s accused assassins opined that the whistle-blower accidentally poisoned himself last month.

Former KGB lieutenant colonel Konstantin Georgiyevich Preobrazhenskiy was granted asylum in the United States in 2006. According to Preobrazhenskiy, communists long considered Muslims as the “human resource” for the world revolution.

Watch a discussion here:

This article has been cross-posted at Broadside News.

05/3/15

Marxist Democrats and the Return of the Hanoi Lobby

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The main failure by top Republicans—and even many conservatives—is that they do not challenge President Obama as the Marxist he is, and they have no coherent alternative to his strategic plan of supporting America’s enemies.

Reflecting the current mindset—that Obama is just a misguided liberal—Republican strategist Karl Rove failed to anticipate or understand the nature of the growing anti-Obama movement, and the potential it holds. He had predicted the GOP would pick up only six seats in the House, when the Republicans picked up 14 seats. He had predicted that Republican would win the Senate with 51 seats, when the actual figure turned out to be 54.

Republicans like Rove do not understand the nature of the Democratic Party and how it has been taken over by Marxist forces. He had advised Republicans in 2008 and 2012 not to refer to Obama as a socialist. However, grassroots conservatives increasingly understand the dangers we are facing.

The 40th anniversary of the end of United States military involvement in Vietnam—and the 50th anniversary of the start of that U.S. military involvement—provide an opportunity to understand how the Democratic Party has changed. During that 10-year period, 1965-1975, more than 58,000 Americans sacrificed and died to save that country from communism.

Today, with the help of the Republican leadership, President Obama is trying to wrap up a Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal that includes communist Vietnam, a dictatorship with the blood of those Americans on its hands, which has no respect for the human rights of its own people. Interestingly, Obama is trying to sell the agreement as a counter to China’s influence throughout the world. He wants us to believe that China and Vietnam somehow differ on their common objective of achieving world communism at the expense of America’s standing as the leader of what used to be the Free World.

Both countries would gladly welcome the U.S. to help pay to accelerate the growth of their socialist economies and expand their markets.

Vietnam would be free today except for a Democratic-controlled Congress that decided otherwise. Lewis Fanning’s excellent book, Betrayal in Vietnam, notes that “…it was not the Hanoi communists who won the war, but rather the American Congress that lost it.” Fanning writes, “It was not until after the United States elections in the fall of 1974 that North Vietnamese field commanders received the go-ahead in their plans to conquer South Vietnam. As a result of the Watergate scandals, the Democrats had gained forty-three seats in the House. This liberal victory meant that in the 94th Congress there would be 291 Democrats and only 144 Republicans. In the Senate, the Democrats had gained three seats and the lineup was now 61 Democrats to 39 Republicans. This leftward shift of both congressional chambers played a significant role in the North Vietnamese decision to unleash its army.”

Going through the provisions of various bills offered by Democrats in Congress, he presents the case that “A Democratic caucus of the Congress of the United States, aided and abetted by a few liberal Republicans, cast the South Vietnamese people into Communist slavery.”

That left-wing caucus, Members of Congress for Peace through Law, decided that American military involvement would end, and dramatically reduced aid to the government of South Vietnam. Republican President Gerald Ford, who took power after Richard Nixon’s resignation, understood that Congress would not provide enough assistance to keep the country free of communism. Hundreds of thousands of “boat people” tried to escape the Hanoi communists who took power in Saigon while the communist Khmer Rouge took power in neighboring Cambodia, eliminating almost two million people.

The Members of Congress for Peace through Law eventually grew to became the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest group of congressional members within the Democratic Party. This faction is the subject of Trevor Loudon’s book, The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the US Congress, which is now being made into a major film.

The only Senate member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is Vermont’s “independent” Senator Bernie Sanders, who has just announced he is running for president. It is telling that Sanders, an open socialist who collaborated with the communists through the Soviet-run U.S. Peace Council, thinks he has sufficient stature and credibility within the party to rally the “progressives.”

Sanders worked closely with the communist fronts which were busy in the 1980s trying to undermine President Ronald Reagan’s peace-through-strength policies toward the Soviet Union.

As we have noted, the name of Bernie Sanders, then identified as former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, even showed up on a list of speakers at a 1989 U.S. Peace Council event to “end the Cold War” and “fund human needs.” Other speakers at the U.S. Peace Council event included Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan; Gunther Dreifahl of the East German “Peace Council;” Jesse Jackson aide Jack O’Dell; and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official Zehdi Terzi.

In 1981, the Soviet-front U.S. Peace Council held its second national conference. Endorsers included Democratic Rep. Danny K. Davis, one of Obama’s associates in Chicago, and David Cortright of a group known as SANE, for the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.

Rep. Davis got an award from the Communist Party in 2012 and the major media ignored it. Jeremy Segal recorded video of the Democratic Representative getting the communist award—and still the media ignored it

Today Cortright is the Associate Director of Programs and Policy Studies of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, which offers a Ph.D in “Peace Studies.” He is in charge of a conference this week in Washington, D.C. titled, “The Vietnam War Then and Now: Assessing the Critical Lessons.”

The Kroc Institute is named after Joan Kroc, the widow of McDonald’s Corp. founder Ray Kroc. She contributed $69.1 million to establish and support the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

The final conference panel, “The Anti-War Movement: What were the impacts of the anti-war movement?,” includes Cora Weiss and Tom Hayden, supporters of the communist enemy, and Cortright himself, an agent of influence or dupe.

Hayden is probably the best known of the “anti-war” activists, having become “Mr. Jane Fonda” when he married the actress after she posed with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down and kill American pilots over Vietnam. Hayden had personally written a June 4, 1968, “Dear Col. Lao” letter to a North Vietnamese official that ended, “Good fortune! Victory!”

Not surprisingly, Hayden, a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the 1960s, would later join “Progressives for Obama.”

The Democrats in Congress at that time were working with what became known as the “Hanoi Lobby,” a collection of communist and socialist groups that played a key role in America’s defeat. The remnants of the Hanoi Lobby are active today in such areas as backing Obama’s normalization of relations with and recognition of communist Cuba.

Then, like now, their plan is to work on behalf of enemies of the United States. Although they usually call themselves “anti-war” peace activists, they don’t seem to be concerned about wars started by anti-American regimes and movements which undermine U.S. interests. The Sanders candidacy will help smoke them out.

Ironically, Sanders is opposing Obama’s Asia trade agreement, largely because Big Labor is against it, while top Republicans in the House and Senate are trying to round up enough votes to approve fast track trade promotion authority for Obama and then pass the agreement itself. These are the same Republicans who have been complaining that Obama has assumed too much executive authority.

It seems as if the Republicans never learn. Or else they don’t want to.

04/29/15

Iran Literally Fired a Shot Across an American Ally’s Bow, But Obama Won’t Dump His Disastrous Deal

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

What, if anything, would cause President Barack Obama to step away from the negotiating table with Iran?

This is the question I find myself pondering in light of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy Patrol’s unchecked act of aggression on Tuesday against America’s interests in the Straits of Hormuz – an act that in a sane world would in and of itself put an end to the president’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran.

As of this writing, reports indicate that the Iranian Navy Patrol fired shots at and ultimately seized a commercial cargo ship, the M/V Maersk Tigris, which flies under the Marshall Islands flag. Some believe Iran was even targeting a U.S. vessel.

An Iranian warship takes part in a naval show in 2006. (Photo: AP)

An Iranian warship takes part in a naval show in 2006. (Photo: AP)

In a helpful dispatch, commentator Omri Ceren notes the significant implications of such an action given that the U.S. is: (i) Treaty-bound to secure and defend the Marshall Islands, and (ii) Committed to maintaining the free flow of commerce in the strategically vital waterways of the Middle East — as affirmed just one week ago on April 21 by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf and Pentagon Spokesman Col. Steve Warren.

The U.S. fulfilling its obligations to its protectorate, and acting to ensure vital shipping lanes remain open are not trivial matters.

Further, this act can be seen as a brazen test of the sincerity of U.S. resolve, as it was timed to coincide with the opening of the Senate’s debate on the Corker-Menendez Iran bill.

Yet there is a broader and perhaps more important context in which to consider what Ceren calls an act of “functionally unspinnable Iranian aggression.”

Even if we ignore the history of Iranian aggression against the U.S. and its allies since the deposal of the Shah in 1979, the firing upon and seizing of the Tigris marks the latest in a long series of such provocations that Iran has undertaken in just the last few months. Consider:

This rhetoric and action comports with Iran’s historic hostility toward the U.S. since the fall of the Shah. Lest we forget, this list of atrocities includes, but is certainly not limited to:

Would Iran’s most recent actions in the Strait of Hormuz coupled with the litany of other recent and historical bellicose acts lead one to question whether it is in the United States’ interest to continue negotiating with the mullahs?

Put more directly: In what respect can the U.S. consider Iran to be a reliable, honorable negotiating partner?

Iranian women hold an anti-US sign, bearing a cartoon of US President Barack Obama, outside the former US embassy in Tehran on November 2, 2012, during a rally to mark the 33rd anniversary of seizure of the US embassy which saw Islamist students hold 52 US diplomats hostage for 444 days. This year's rally came just days before US presidential election in which Republican challenger Mitt Romney has made Iran's controversial nuclear programme a top foreign policy issue. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Iranian women hold an anti-US sign, bearing a cartoon of US President Barack Obama, outside the former US embassy in Tehran on November 2, 2012, during a rally to mark the 33rd anniversary of seizure of the US embassy which saw Islamist students hold 52 US diplomats hostage for 444 days. This year’s rally came just days before US presidential election in which Republican challenger Mitt Romney has made Iran’s controversial nuclear programme a top foreign policy issue. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Concerning the content of the nuclear deal being negotiated, it should be noted that the Iranians have stated the agreement accomplishes the very opposite of what the American public been led to believe. With respect to sanctions, Iran says they will be fully lifted upon the execution of the accord. As MEMRI notes, in an April 9 address, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini gave a speech in which he called America a “cheater and a liar” and

publicly set out the negotiating framework for the Iranian negotiating team, the main points of which are: an immediate lifting of all sanctions the moment an agreement is reached; no intrusive oversight of Iran’s nuclear and military facilities; the continuation of Iran’s nuclear research and development program; and no inclusion of any topics not related to the nuclear program, such as missile capability or anything impacting Iran’s support for its proxies in the region.

It is no wonder then that the nuclear deal has been lambasted on a bipartisan basis, including at the highest levels of the national security establishment. Even former Secretary of State James Baker is highly critical of the Iran deal – and his animus toward Israel, perhaps the primary casualty of the deal, may be second only to that of President Obama.

As to whether Khameini’s portrayal of the deal is accurate, former CIA analyst and Iran expert Fred Fleitz asserts that under the terms of the agreement, Iran will (i) be able to continue enriching uranium, (ii) not have to disassemble or destroy any enrichment equipment or facilities, (iii) not be required to “permit snap inspections and unfettered access to all Iranian nuclear facilities, including military bases where Iran is believed to have conducted nuclear-weapons work,” (iv) be able to continue to operate its Arak heavy-water reactor, a plutonium source, in contravention of IAEA resolutions and (v) be subjected to an eased sanctions regime that will be incredibly difficult to re-impose.

If this were not enough, so intent is the Obama Administration on reaching a deal that it has been reported that for signing this agreement, Iran may even receive sweeteners including a $50 billion “signing bonus.”

The contorted logic used by the president in defense of his progressive stance towards Iran is worthy of Neville Chamberlain. During an interview with New York Times soulmate Thomas Friedman, Obama opined:

Even for somebody who believes, as I suspect Prime Minister Netanyahu believes, that there is no difference between Rouhani and the supreme leader and they’re all adamantly anti-West and anti-Israel and perennial liars and cheaters — even if you believed all that, this still would be the right thing to do. It would still be the best option for us to protect ourselves. In fact, you could argue that if they are implacably opposed to us, all the more reason for us to want to have a deal in which we know what they’re doing and that, for a long period of time, we can prevent them from having a nuclear weapon.

Sen. Tom Cotton provides a necessary corrective in a recent interview:

I am skeptical that there are many moderates within the [Iranian] leadership … I think it’s kind of like the search for the vaunted moderates in the Kremlin throughout most of the Cold War, with the exception that we could always count on the Soviet leadership to be concerned about national survival in a way that I don’t think we can count on a nuclear-armed Iranian leadership to be solely concerned about national survival.

As for Lord Chamberlain, Sen. Cotton – he of that irksome letter to Iran — takes a more charitable view, noting:

It’s unfair to Neville Chamberlain to compare him to Barack Obama, because Neville Chamberlain’s general staff was telling him he couldn’t confront Hitler and even fight to a draw—certainly not defeat the German military—until probably 1941 or 1942. He was operating from a position of weakness. With Iran, we negotiated privately in 2012-2013 from a position of strength … not just inherent military strength of the United States compared to Iran, but also from our strategic position.

To those who recognize reality, this deal – coupled with our weak response to the ongoing provocations of the Iranian Government — not only threatens our national security and that of our allies, but reflects an utter dereliction of duty to uphold the Constitution, and protect our people against foreign enemies.

In a word, it is treasonous.

04/5/15

Russia… Heating Up The Cold War On The Road To World War III

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton


Russian Arctic Troops

Norway is worried over Russia, and so they should be. Add to that list of worriers, NATO. Russian ships have now docked at the once secret Norwegian naval base in the Arctic. It would seem that Norway has become a strategic chess piece once again in what is shaping up to be the road to World War III. Russia has its massive Northern Fleet based on nearby Kola Peninsula. “We sold the only base worthy of the name that we had up there. It’s pure madness,” former vice admiral Einar Skorgen, who commanded Norway’s northern forces, told AFP. Indeed, it is madness and the Russians have swooped in to take advantage of this lunacy. Skorgen and other critics are now claiming that Norway has robbed itself of a crucial foothold in the far north, forcing its submarines to travel hundreds of extra miles from their bases to defend the region. Lack of foresight on the Norwegians’ behalf has given the Russians a strong foothold in a very militarily important geopolitical area.

Now, three Russian military ships have spent the entire winter docked deep within the mountain hideaway, once a closely guarded military facility. “We are the only country along with Russia to have a permanent presence in the Barents Sea, where we share a common border. Obviously our navy should be stationed there, including our submarines,” Skorgen said. “If the ships aren’t there where they are needed, they might as well be scrapped altogether.” He is soooo right on that.

The military base changed hands and was rented to the Russkies to house their research vessels. Really, guys? You fell for that crap? Some of these seismic survey ships are reportedly linked to state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The Norwegians and NATO put this base on their military’s version of eBay and no one – including the US – made a bid. So, a Norwegian businessman sealed the deal in 2013 for a paltry $5,000,000 and turned around and leased it to the Russians. This is a massive joke considering that NATO invested nearly $500,000,000 into the construction of the base. “There are no longer any secrets surrounding this base,” said its new landlord Gunnar Wilhelmsen. “Not since the military and NATO agreed to put it on sale over the Internet, along with photographs of every nook and cranny.”

Historic blunder does not begin to cover this move. Those ‘research vessels’ are military vessels, you idiots, some of them surely updated and modernized versions of the old “fishing trawlers” that the USSR used to send out to plague our Naval exercises. Only the Russians know what is on those ships and what they are doing, but I’ll go out on a limb here and say it isn’t reading survey maps and taking samples. This is a special kind of stupid. The decision to close the base was made by the leftist government of Jens Stoltenberg, who has gone on to become NATO’s current Secretary General and who has warned countries not to lower their guard when it comes to Russia. Ironic much? So, first Jens, being the good socialist he is, closes the base and enables the sale of it to the Russians, then he warns not to trust the Russians. Yes, he is epically stupid, unless he’s working for the Russians that is. That is altogether possible.

Kjell-Ola Kleiven, a blogger writing on security issues in Norway, calls the affair the “biggest blunder in recent history” in an oil-rich country which boasts the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. Labeling this a ‘blunder’ is being way too kind. “With 7,000 billion kroner in the bank,” he wrote, “you would have thought that the Norwegian nation had the means and savvy to retain ownership of Olavsvern base.” Despite the protests, Norway’s current right-wing government has shown no signs of reversing the decision made by its predecessors. So the conservatives are just as suicidally stupid as the socialists. “There are no plans to re-establish military installations in Olavsvern,” Audun Halvorsen, political advisor to the defence minister, told AFP in an email. “The owner of the site can use it as he sees fit and the armed forces do not have the authority to impose restrictions, nor any mandate to monitor civilian ships that dock there,” he added. “Any suspected irregular activity is a matter for the police and legal authorities.” Well, the fallout from World War III is a matter for the world, buddy. And this sounds like something out of Eric Holder’s pie hole concerning police actions versus terrorism. Historically it has been the job of the left to screw things up and the job of the right to make sure those things are not fixed. You’re all in it together and while your military is telling you, “Danger, danger, Will Robinson!” you blithely sell out your military installations and chastise those who object. What a bunch of unbelievably useful idiots.

So, what do you do when you bet all of your military capital on the Cold War being over, only to find the Russians were kidding? The Cold War never ended, it shifted. Does everyone out there still think Russia is the world’s savior? Because, if you do, you are in for a huge surprise and it won’t be pleasant.

The Spy Who Waged War In The Cold

Taking the Arctic benefits Russia in multiple ways. One of them is the vast oil and gas reserves they can claim. It provides a crucially strategic military vantage point. This by the way, further endangers the US and Alaska specifically. Palin was right when she that said you can see Russia from parts of Alaska, and Russia has their scopes on us as well. By the way, the only climate change that the Arctic is experiencing is the Cold War, which is experiencing a bit of a warming curve.

Russia has been a very busy totalitarian regime as of late. Included in their activities and plans, of course, is Iran. Now that Obama has betrayed Israel and mandated that Iran gets nuclear weapons, the Russians want in on the nuclear fun as well:

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov then said that a UN arms embargo against Iran should also go.

“Lifting sanctions on Iran, including the arms embargo, would be an absolutely logical thing to do,” said Igor Korotchenko, who heads the Global Arms Trade Analysis Center think tank in Moscow.

“Of key importance to us is the delivery of the upgraded S-300 missiles to Iran… A contract to this effect could be resumed on terms acceptable to both Moscow and Tehran,” he added.

Gee, I suppose they’re only going to use those missiles as peaceful paper weights as well. Nothing to worry about at all.

The Americans are putting on a show of force in this game of smoke and mirrors, where nothing is what it seems. On April 1, American B-52 bombers trained with allies over the Arctic and the North Sea. Officially, the flights were just a training mission. Unofficially, they’re meant to show Moscow that Washington won’t back down from a fight. Wish I believed that. The US Air Force planned the training missions — nicknamed Polar Growl — for months, yet launched its planes shortly after the Kremlin wrapped up a massive war game in Russia’s frigid northern regions. STRATCOM, which oversees America’s nuclear arsenal, including the flying branch’s heavy bombers, organized the practice sessions. It was a show of strength to reassure our NATO allies and send a message to the Russians. But the growl doesn’t really bare any teeth.

From War Is Boring:

But Russian officials no doubt see the flights as a response to their recent impressive Arctic maneuvers. For five days in March, tens of thousands of Russian troops, hundreds of warplanes and helicopters and dozens of ships and submarines gathered for the surprise drills.

“New military challenges and threats demand [a] further boost of the military capabilities of armed forces and special attention is being paid to the condition of the newly-set-up strategic command in the north,” Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said as the mock battle got under way.

Shoigu was referring to the Arctic headquarters Moscow set up in December 2014. Eight months earlier, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin announced a massive expansion of military facilities in the country’s sparely populated northern areas.

“We need to strengthen our military infrastructure,” Putin said during a meeting of the country’s Security Council. “In particular, to create — in our part of the Arctic — a unified network of naval facilities for new-generation ships and submarines.”

The Kremlin followed up those plans with a revised, over-arching military doctrine at the end of 2014. The new policy described a world where Washington and its NATO allies were dangerous threats bent on encroaching on Russia’s borders.

And the posturing and game of military chicken continues apace… but it’s pretty clear who has the bigger set here, and who has the “flexibility” going on. In March, Russia tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile. US officials and security analysts say it is a new violation of Moscow’s arms control treaty commitments. Like the Russian bear cares. The March 18th flight test of a new RS-26 missile is part of a large-scale nuclear arms buildup by Russia and is raising concerns about treaty compliance. Moscow is engaged in a major nuclear forces buildup that includes new land-based missiles, new missile submarines and new bombers. Meanwhile, Obama has merrily reduced our nuclear capabilities by a whopping 66%. One does not have to be a mathematical genius to see where that leads.

Russia is using Prompt Global Strike as one of its myriad of excuses for upping their air and missile defense capabilities. They claim we may preemptively strike them, which I highly doubt. Obama is much more likely to go golfing with Putin, than bomb him. The PGS initiative aims to deliver a precision-guided conventional weapon airstrike within less than one hour after Washington deems the target to be a national security threat. But since Obama is soooo flexible, that airstrike is not likely to occur under his command.

Russia claims that Washington’s PGS has an overall structure similar to that of a nuclear triad. It first of all aims to conduct swift strikes from land and sea using already existing intercontinental and submarine-based ballistic and cruise missiles. Air-launched hypersonic missiles currently in development are a second option the Pentagon is working on. In addition there were hypothetical plans of kinetic bombardments from an orbiting space platform. This gives the Russians cover to work on development and implementation of comparable weapons. To counter the supposed American threat, Russia is developing a new generation of mobile surface-to-air missile system – the S-500 – designed among other things to intercept supersonic targets. While the missile for the system is still under development, once it is completed, it would be capable of intercepting any perspective ballistic and aerodynamic targets.

In the Arctic region, Russia has already quickly deployed air defense missile and artillery systems. The Defense Ministry also plans to deploy MiG-31 interceptor aircraft to protect Russian vessels sailing along the Northern Sea Route. They have already placed Pantsir systems in the Arctic. Deployment of MiG-31 on Russia’s Arctic airfields is planned as well. Meanwhile a new fully automatic radar station is undergoing final tests.

While Russia is beefing up militarily, not only have we been reducing across the board, what we do have is horrifically outdated. Many of our nuclear missile silos are using technology that is technologically a joke. For example, CBS News has documented that eight inch floppy disks are still being used in many of our missile silos. At this point, the US military plans to keep Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles that were originally deployed in the 1960s and 1970s in service until 2030. Gee, that makes me feel warm, fuzzy and secure. Meanwhile, the Russians now have nuclear subs that are almost silent and we’ve known about them for some time – from 2012:

A Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks and its travel in strategic U.S. waters was only confirmed after it left the region, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

It is only the second time since 2009 that a Russian attack submarine has patrolled so close to U.S. shores.

Imagine a scenario where Russian nuclear subs approach our coastlines completely undetected and launch a barrage of missiles toward our cities and military bases. We could be wiped out before we even knew what hit us. Red Dawn comes to mind. The Russians know this and what is worse… we know it.

As far as preparing for a nuclear attack… once again, the Russians have been preparing for decades while we have just ignored the threat. Did you know that the Russians have a massive underground complex in the Ural mountains that has been estimated to be approximately 400 square miles in size? In other words, if true, it is roughly five-to-six times as big as the total area of Washington DC, or roughly the land area inside the DC Beltway. They also have dozens of similar, smaller sites throughout Russia. The Russians have also been constructing thousands of new underground bomb shelters in major cities such as Moscow. In the US, we can’t even fortify our power grid. It’s embarrassing and it’s suicidal in the extreme.

According to a Russian think tank, the best way for Russia to solve its problem with America would be to launch a nuclear weapon at Yellowstone National Park and hope it would set off a super volcano, destroying the continent. They are also eying the San Andreas fault. I consider this bluster, but who knows? Surely the Russians know that nuking Yellowstone would almost assuredly not set off the super volcano… in fact, it would probably drain off the caldera. Details. Who says the Russians don’t have a sense of humor?

On a more serious note, the Russians are playing both sides of the fence in Europe. From the far right to the radical left, populist parties across Europe are being courted by Russia’s Vladimir Putin who aims to turn them into allies in his anti-EU campaign. The Front National (FN) in France, Syriza in Greece and Jobbik in Hungary may be the most famous ones, but they are far from being alone. Some, like Britain’s UKIP, have disturbingly adopted a “benevolent neutrality” toward Putin. You’ll remember that countries and entities did the same with Adolph Hitler once upon a war. The Kremlin banks on these parties’ accession to power to change Europe and separate it from NATO and the United States, while aligning with Russia.

Russia is heating up the Cold War on the road to World War III across the planet and especially in the Arctic. She has some very strange bedfellows as well. The true axis of evil comprises Russia, China and Iran, who all have their missiles aimed at us. I think the Cold War is about to get hot as the Russian bear dons a parka and skis north, to Alaska.

03/19/15

Obama Peddles Osama’s Propaganda

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Without America there would be no Islamic State.

Indeed, without America there would have been no Cold War. Without the Cold War there would have been no need to arm and train the Mujahideen against the Soviets. Without the Mujahideen there would have been no Al Qaeda. Without Al Qaeda there would have been no Iraq War. And without the Iraq War there would have been no Islamic State. Or as President Barack Obama put it:

ISIL is a direct outgrowth of Al Qaeda in Iraq which grew out of our invasion which is an example of unintended consequences which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.

Such is the pretzel logic to which one must subscribe if one is to believe the president.

Which is to say that Barack Obama’s argument during a recent interview with VICE News is patently absurd.

(Image Source: VICE News/YouTube screengrab)

(Image Source: VICE News/YouTube screengrab)

But there is something worse than the absurdity of the president’s remarks, his implicit banal Bush-bashing and unwillingness or inability to ever take responsibility for anything – the least of which includes his failure to negotiate a status of forces agreement with Iraq.

President Obama’s argument in the main is that America’s actions in the Middle East create terrorists. But by invoking “blowback,” he is parroting precisely the propaganda that Al Qaeda, Islamic State and other jihadist groups want us to repeat, while ignoring the self-evident truth that their actions come not from without but from within. In so doing, as when he raised the scepter of The Crusades, the president provides a veneer of legitimacy and even moral standing to genocidal Islamic supremacists who seek to destroy Western civilization and create a global caliphate.

The words of Osama bin Laden himself are germane to this argument. Witness what Al Qaeda’s godfather said during a May 1998 interview with ABC’s John Miller:

The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target.

…The wrongs and the crimes committed against the Muslim nation are far greater than can be covered by this interview. America heads the list of aggressors against Muslims.

…They rip us of our wealth and of our resources and of our oil. Our religion is under attack. They kill and murder our brothers. They compromise our honor and our dignity and dare we utter a single word of protest against the injustice, we are called terrorists. This is compounded injustice.

In a particularly nauseating portion of the interview in which Miller implores bin Laden to “give us the true picture that clarifies your viewpoint” – as opposed to the “distorted picture of Islam, Muslims and of Islamic fighters” presented by “American politicians,” bin Laden continues [emphasis added]:

The leaders in America and in other countries as well have fallen victim to Jewish Zionist blackmail. They have mobilized their people against Islam and against Muslims. These are portrayed in such a manner as to drive people to rally against them. The truth is that the whole Muslim world is the victim of international terrorism, engineered by America at the United Nations. We are a nation whose sacred symbols have been looted and whose wealth and resources have been plundered. It is normal for us to react against the forces that invade our land and occupy it.

Ignored however is the rest of bin Laden’s message [emphasis added]:

…[O]ur call is the call of Islam that was revealed to Mohammed. It is a call to all mankind. We have been entrusted with good cause to follow in the footsteps of the Messenger and to communicate his message to all nations.

…In our religion, we believe that Allah has created us for the purpose of worshipping him. He is the one who has created us and who has favored us with this religion. Allah has ordered us to make holy wars and to fight to see to it that His word is the highest and the uppermost and that of the unbelievers the lowermost. We believe that this is the call we have to answer regardless of our financial capabilities.

This too answers the claims of the West and of the secular people in the Arab world. They claim that this blessed awakening and the people reverting to Islam are due to economic factors. This is not so. It is rather a grace from Allah, a desire to embrace the religion of Allah.

…I am one of the servants of Allah. We do our duty of fighting for the sake of the religion of Allah. It is also our duty to send a call to all the people of the world to enjoy this great light and to embrace Islam and experience the happiness in Islam. Our primary mission is nothing but the furthering of this religion.

This bin Laden interview is crucial because it illustrates the two-sided nature of Al Qaeda’s rhetoric and the rhetoric of jihadists more broadly — appealing on the one hand to the West’s materialism, and on the other to the Middle East’s idealism.

Indeed one of the primary but underappreciated elements of the global jihad is the subtle psychological warfare in which bin Laden engages above by way of the materialist argument.

Understanding the West’s unhealthy sense of guilt and shame, bin Laden portrays jihadists as the oppressed to our oppressor, the victim to our aggressor. Bin Laden knew that repeating such arguments — regardless of their veracity — would have a profound effect on the Western consciousness over time.

Conversely, playing on our moral relativism, multiculturalism and religious tolerance, bin Laden knew that we would fail to internalize his idealist worldview: A worldview formed by the Islamic doctrine that animates jihadists and lays bare their goals, strategies and tactics.

We have accepted the former (materialism) but ignored the latter (idealism), which explains in part why we are losing to the global jihad.

If you disagree with this assertion, consider that we in the West ask “Why do they hate us?” We search in vain for “root causes” of radicalization, and tell ourselves that a group that calls itself Islamic State and follows Muhammad literally perverts Islam or has nothing to do with it at all.

Meanwhile, our enemies self-identify as Islamic jihadists — a jihad compelled by the corpus of Islamic texts – whose end goal is to make the entire world submit to Allah’s rule.

President Obama either out of political correctness, ignorance or a more nefarious impulse damages America’s cause by parroting the victimology that Osama bin Laden knew Western progressives would buy hook, line and sinker.

He gives credence to our enemies’ arguments while implementing an agenda ostensibly to combat them wholly consonant with such a worldview, and thereby wholly ineffectual.

This is the far more consequential and far more dangerous takeaway from the president’s interview than the tired invocation of “Bush’s fault” that Obama’s critics have harped on.

Feature Image: AP Photo/Irwin Fedriansyah

03/19/15

Anti-Marxist Counter-Revolution in Latin America

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

On Saturday, March 21, at 1:00 p.m., the Washington Conclave for Democracy will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to discuss freedom, democracy and free elections in Latin America. “The conference is aimed to expose fraud and deception in electoral processes in Latin America,” says organizer Dalmo Accorsini. The event is open to the press and the public and will feature several speakers with knowledge of the communist advance in the Western hemisphere, including in the U.S. The event will congregate conservative leaders and political activists from the USA and Latin America to denounce the Foro de São Paulo and the recent election results in Brazil.

The National Press Club is located at 529 14th Street, NW, 13th Floor, Washington DC, DC 20045 United States. Contact: Dalmo Accorsini, 561-803-5724, [email protected]

Background: With the end of the Cold War in 1989, it was believed by many that communism was on the wane. However, with Fidel Castro isolated in Cuba, he reached out to Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva of the Worker’s Party of Brazil, who would later become President of Brazil. An event was hosted in São Paulo, Brazil in 1990, the seat of Lula’s power, bringing together what came to be known as the São Paulo Forum.

03/12/15

Catholic Church Captured by “Progressive Forces”

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Armando Valladares, Castro’s political prisoner for 22 years, said his Catholic faith was strengthened behind bars by hearing young Catholics shouting “Viva Cristo Rey,” for “Long Live Christ the King,” and “down with communism!” as they faced the firing squad. It has been his hope that Cuba would one day be free of communism. But he is far less hopeful now that Pope Francis has taken measures that he says “objectively favor the political and ecclesiastical left in Latin America” and could undermine the “Christian future of the Americas.”

Meanwhile, Marxist writer Richard Greeman has written an extraordinary article, “Catholicism: The New Communism?,” arguing that “progressive forces” have  “captured” the Vatican, and that Francis is conducting a “purge” of traditional elements, such as those loyal to anti-communist Pope John Paul II.

Valladares, author of Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag, was the United States Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission under the Reagan and Bush administrations. He writes in a recent column that Francis was the “most eminent architect and mediator” of the Obama administration deal with Cuba that will “now provide the repressive apparatus of the Cuban regime with rivers of money and favorable publicity.”

He goes on, “We are witnessing one of the greatest examples of media sleights-of-hand in history: From a well-deserved image of aggressor, a regime which for decades spearheaded bloody revolutions in Latin America and Africa and continues to spread its tentacles in the three Americas, has been craftily made to look like a victimized underdog.”

He says the responsibility lies with the unexpected rise of a Francis-Obama “axis” in foreign affairs that benefits Marxist governments throughout Latin America.

Valladares, who received the Citizen’s Presidential Medal from President Ronald Reagan, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in communist Cuba in 1960 for being philosophically and religiously opposed to communism. He was tortured and kept in isolation for refusing to be “re-educated.” He was released after 22 years in prison, in 1982, when international pressure was brought to bear on the regime.

Valladares says it’s not just the Cuba betrayal that concerns him. He notes that Francis overturned the suspension of Nicaraguan priest Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a former communist Sandinista foreign minister and a leading pro-Castro figure in liberation theology.

Despite his credentials as a political prisoner turned human rights activist and powerful voice for freedom, his column on the Obama-Francis “axis” has received very little attention. An associate says it seems “too politically incorrect,” an apparent reference to the fact that Francis is a global media star for identifying with the poor, and that liberals and conservatives alike are reluctant to criticize him.

Valladares, however, says the pope has gone far beyond taking up the cause of poor people. His column notes that Francis personally attended something called the World Meeting of Popular Movements last October in Rome. “It gathered 100 revolutionary world leaders, including well-known Latin American professional agitators,” Valladares points out. “The meeting turned out to be a kind of marketing ‘beatification’ of these Marxist-inspired revolutionary figures.”

One of the participants in the Vatican event was Evo Morales, the Marxist President of Bolivia who dedicated his election victory last year to Cuba’s Fidel Castro and the late Venezuelan Marxist ruler, Hugo Chávez.

The Vatican’s own description of the meeting referred to changing “an economy of exclusion” and “an idolatrous system of money.” The statement went on, “Together we want to discuss the structural causes of so much inequality (inequidad) which robs us of work (labor), housing (domus) and land (terra), which generates violence and destroys nature. We also want to face the challenge Francis himself sets puts [sic] to us with courage and intelligence: to seek radical proposals to resolve the problems of the poor.”

Valladares isn’t the only one to notice the “radical” or leftward drift of the papacy. Greeman’s article wondering if Catholicism is the “new communism” appears in New Politics, a socialist magazine “committed to the advancement of the peace and anti-intervention movements” and which “stands in opposition to all forms of imperialism…”

New Politics has strong links to the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that backed Barack Obama’s political career from the start. Its “sponsors” include Noam Chomsky, Frances Fox Piven, Michael Eric Dyson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West and the late communist historian Howard Zinn.

Greeman notes that the world’s Catholic Bishops have “explicitly pointed to capitalism as the basic cause of impending global catastrophe,” in the form of climate change, and have “called for a new economic order.” He was referring to a group of Catholic Bishops who met at the U.N. climate talks last December and blamed “the dominant global economic system, which is a human creation,” for global warming. They argued for “a new financial and economic order” and the phasing out of the use of fossil fuels.

Greeman says the Bishops’ attack on capitalism was generally ignored, even on the left, and he understands why. There have been so many “rapid changes” coming out of Rome “since the ascension to the Throne of Saint Peter” by Pope Francis that it is hard to keep up with them, he says.

Francis will issue a Vatican document, known as an encyclical, on climate change in June or July.

Greeman writes that these “radically anti-capitalist Catholic positions” have got him wondering whether Catholicism is “the new Communism,” Rome “the new Moscow,” and the church “the new Comintern.” The term “Comintern” refers to the Communist International, an association of national communist parties started by Lenin.

Growing up as a “red diaper baby” during the Cold War, Greeman writes, Catholicism was “synonymous with militant anti-Communism.” But changes that started coming years ago in the church have been accelerating under Francis, he writes. He attributes some of this “change” to Francis, who is from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Jesuit, which is a “progressive” religious order whose “solid organization and discipline” and “attempts to take over the Church” go back centuries.

Greeman refers to the Catholic or “universal” Church as “the only actually existing organized world-party,” whose “vast wealth and influence are now in Francis’ hands.” He writes about “the capture” of the church by “progressive forces,” a development which opens up “huge possibilities for human liberation and perhaps a chance for the planet to avoid climate catastrophe.” He believes Francis “and his allies” are now conducting a “purge of the apparatus” in the Vatican.

Writing in Links, an international socialist journal, Canadian activist Judith Marshall discusses meeting the pope during the World Meeting of Popular Movements and witnessing his presentation to the group. “Pope Francis’ forthright statements on the social ministry of the church hearken back to the 1960s and 1970s when liberation theology was such a dynamic force in promoting struggles for social justice, particularly in Latin America,” she wrote. “The symbolism of a World Meeting of Popular Movements which brought a multitude of the poor right into [the] heart of the Vatican has not been lost on those looking for a resurgence of liberation theology.”

Liberation theology was manufactured by the old KGB to dupe Christians into supporting Marxism.

She also insisted that Francis “has arguably made the Papacy the most radical and consistent voice in pointing to the profanity of global inequality and exclusion. He has also repeatedly named the inordinate power of multinational corporations and finance capital as key factors in reproducing global poverty and destruction of the planet.”

She says Francis met with several Marxist activists from Latin America and even met privately with President Morales of Bolivia who “stressed how Mother Earth had become ill from capitalism,” and that “under the prevailing global economy, the planet would actually do better without humans—but humans need the planet.”

In a previous meeting Morales told the pope, “For me, you are brother Francis.” The pope responded, “As it should be, as it should be.”

02/18/15

Reds in Hollywood Making a Comeback

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Bryan Cranston is famous for his role as meth cook “Walter White” on the AMC drama series, “Breaking Bad.” He may become infamous for something else later this year. He is playing the role of Stalinist Communist and Hitler apologist Dalton Trumbo in the new film, “Trumbo.”

The film is said to be in its “post-production” phase, and Cranston may not have known what he was getting into. It’s hard to believe he would have played this role had he known the facts about Trumbo’s service to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Once the facts get out, his role could derail what looked like a promising career.

Allan H. Ryskind, author of the new book, Hollywood Traitors, anticipates that the film “Trumbo” will be “celebrating Dalton Trumbo, a major Hollywood Ten figure and longtime Communist enthusiast…” He notes that the advance publicity for the film says that Trumbo bravely took a “stand against the Communist-witch-hunt at the height of the Cold War” and was “punished for his principled stand for free speech and the Constitution.”

Indeed, the conventional wisdom is that Trumbo and all other members of the “Hollywood Ten were innocent victims of a ‘blacklist.’” The facts show something very different. Trumbo was in fact a Soviet/Nazi agent of influence in Hollywood. All of the “Ten” were communists but Trumbo was one of the worst.

Ryskind, the son of famous Hollywood screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, reports that “Trumbo, in truth, was a full-fledged Stalinist who had the distinction of siding with three of the most barbarous dictators in the 20th century: Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and North Korea’s Kim-Il Sung.”

Ryskind, a long-time editor of the newspaper Human Events, worked on this book for many years and combed through Trumbo’s papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison. He goes on to write, “Like so many of his comrades, he [Trumbo] became a Hitler apologist after Stalin joined Hitler in that 1939 pact. In order to poison the well against Hitler’s enemies, he demonized the Fuehrer’s foes. England was no democracy, he argued in his 1941 novel, The Remarkable Andrew, because it had a ‘king.’ FDR was guilty of ‘treason’ and ‘black treason’ for his pro-England policy. No drop of American blood should be risked or spilled for the selfish and deceitful British.”

On the matter of Trumbo’s support for the communist North Korean regime, Ryskind notes, “When North Korea waged war against South Korea in 1950, where did Dalton stand? In an unpublished movie script dedicated to several Hollywood Ten figures, he has the heroine declare that North Korea’s invasion was perfectly justifiable, for this is “Korea’s fight for independence, just as we had to fight for our own independence in 1776.”

Ryskind provides more details in a special report that accompanies the release of his book. He says, “Communist Dalton Trumbo, a prominent screenwriter, a Hollywood Ten figure and a Hollywood icon, led the fight in America to ease Hitler’s burden of conquest. He did this by demonizing Hitler’s enemies, assailing Great Britain as deceptive and dishonorable and suggesting it was unworthy of assistance because it was a monarchy not a democracy. England, he also noted, had declared war against Hitler, not the other way around, and he accused FDR, previously a Communist Party favorite, of being guilty of ‘treason’ and ‘black treason’ for giving England military assistance. Trumbo vigorously presented his views in speeches and in writing, and laid out his case most explicitly in his 1941 novel, The Remarkable Andrew.”

The rest of the story is also provided by Ryskind: “The Hollywood Communist contingent, including Trumbo, quickly turned against Hitler after the Fuehrer betrayed Stalin in June of 1941, launching a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. Then, and only then, did the radical screenwriters switch sides again, now demanding America give massive assistance to the Soviet Union to combat fascism and help it survive the Nazi onslaught. Only after Hitler invaded the USSR did the Communist screenwriters become ‘patriotic,’ since they believed US assistance was crucial to the Soviet Union’s survival.”

After examining the historical record, including Trumbo’s papers, Ryskind concludes, “…I’ve never found a paragraph, or even a phrase, where he ever publicly or privately condemns Stalin’s Soviet Union in a meaningful way, certainly not when the Caligula in the Kremlin was dispatching his own citizens by the millions, egging Hitler on as he invaded the Western democracies, cheering Goering’s air force as it rained death and destruction on London and eagerly devouring Eastern Europe in the post-World War II era. Not a peep of protest or regret from a man whom Hollywood longs to lionize.”

It may be the case that Cranston was not aware of the facts about Trumbo’s service to the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany. That is why I recently sent him a letter setting forth the facts contained in this column. If he was deceived about Trumbo’s true character, he has the right to raise hell.

Whatever the ultimate fate of the film and Cranston’s role in it, Ryskind’s book about the days when communists were trying to dominate Hollywood has suddenly taken on more importance.