04/14/17

Fox Commentator in Bed with Kim Jong-un

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

The Epoch Times newspaper is currently running an editorial series called “The Dead End of Communism” that includes a detailed discussion of the diabolical, even Satanic, roots of Karl Marx, the father of communism. Looking at his writings in detail, the authors document how his goal was “to enact a sort of vengeance against heaven.” Contrary to his “progressive” profile, Marx hated humanity and life on earth. His appeal was that he promised a heaven on earth. But it turned out to be hell for those living under it.

Communism has killed more than 100 million people, and millions more are at risk of death. The people of South Korea and other countries are currently in the crosshairs of Communist North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The communist ruler, Kim Jong-un, has even threatened America with a nuclear attack.

The North Korean nuclear weapons program was assisted by President Bill Clinton’s administration, in the name of stopping it, and the Obama administration did little to contain it. It’s likely that former President Barack Obama informed President Donald Trump about this growing problem, and that this helps explain why Trump has been so concerned, even preoccupied, with the North Korean nuclear threat since he took office.

Of course, the North Korean regime could not survive without the assistance of its communist neighbor, China. So communism is not itself dead. It is very much alive and a real threat. Trump understands this, but continues to be assaulted by the media and their Democratic Party allies about his so-called Russian connection, for which there is no evidence.

A serious examination of the real Russia problem can be found in The Epoch Times series marking the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. President Trump recognized that Russia has not changed significantly from the old Soviet days when he authorized a U.S. military strike on Russian client state Syria in response to its alleged chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Russia’s relationship with Syria and Iran represents the “Red Jihad” that has existed since the days of Lenin, when the founder of the Soviet state urged the “oppressed” Muslims to join in a global campaign against the West.

Meanwhile, communism is very much alive and doing well in Latin America. The communist rulers of Venezuela are in the news for totally mismanaging their once-healthy economy and persecuting their own citizens. And Washington Times investigative journalist Martin Arostegui writes about how Colombia’s FARC communist guerrillas are still in the business of dealing drugs and spreading terrorism.

It was supposed to be a “peace process,” but the serious flaws in the agreement made between the terrorists and the government will have to be fixed if Colombia is going to survive as a free and independent country. “Three months into the agreement’s implementation, the guerrillas have surrendered what critics say is a token number of weapons while the production of coca has skyrocketed from 63,000 hectares in 2013 to 188,000 last year,” writes Arostegui. “Analysts attribute the rise to concessions that the FARC has obtained through the peace process.”

Like the mess in Syria, Obama’s fingerprints are all over this. As the author notes, “President Obama backed the peace process by trying to delist the FARC as a terrorist group to facilitate an agreement. He earmarked $450 million for fiscal 2017 to underwrite the deal, and his secretary of state, John F. Kerry, publicly met with FARC leaders.”

It looks like “peace” in Colombia is similar to the “100 percent” elimination of chemical weapons in Syria.

As President Trump attempts to rally the nation in the face of the North Korean threat, we can see how communism is also very much alive on the streets of America. Communist groups have organized a tour covering nine U.S. cities, from April 4 through the 16th, to mobilize against the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system in South Korea. THAAD is designed to deter a North Korean nuclear attack. It’s the one thing Obama set in motion to help defend South Korea.

The main sponsor of the anti-THAAD tour is the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a self-described “revolutionary Marxist party in the United States,” and its front, Act Now to Stop War & End Racism (ANSWER).

Individual endorsers of this campaign include Marxist academic Noam Chomsky and former Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who is now a Fox News contributor.

Remember Kucinich? His Fox News bio notes that he “conducted an exclusive interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to discuss the allegations of the use of chemical weapons alongside FNC’s Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Greg Palkot.” That was aired on Special Report with Bret Baier back in 2013. After the recent allegations of a chemical attack, Kucinich was back on Fox News saying he didn’t think Assad was behind it.

It’s fascinating that Kucinich is now a leader of the campaign against defending South Korea from a communist attack.

His “message of solidarity to the Korean people in the struggle to oppose the THAAD missile ‘defense’ system” reads like something written by a North Korean propagandist. “THAAD is not a technology for peace,” Kucinich says. “It is for war.”

Kucinich says, “It could be argued that the installation of such a system, whether it works or not, is a provocation (‘first the shield, then the sword’). Added to the joint U.S./South Korean military exercises, it places an additional burden of tension to already strained relations with the North. I would instead urge greater reliance upon the wonderful capacity of the Korean people to engage in diplomacy with the brothers and sisters in the North, to avert conflict.”

It is signed by Kucinich with the biographical information, “Member of the United States Congress, 1997-2013. Democratic Candidate for President 2004 and 2008.”

It certainly looks like a major figure in the Democratic Party is acting like a foreign agent for the North Korean regime. There seems to be more evidence of his work on behalf of Kim Jung-un than there is for Trump being a Russian agent.

Is there any likelihood that his fellow Democrats will raise any alarm by this kind of behavior? Will they call for hearings and investigations?

Perhaps his employer Fox News should look into it.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

08/18/15

New Agers Back Socialist Sanders as Messiah

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The huge crowds greeting socialist Bernie Sanders in his run for the Democratic presidential nomination cannot just be attributed to large numbers of left-wingers. There is a hard-core left-wing element to the Sanders candidacy, of course. But Sanders has tapped into what used to be one of Hillary Clinton’s key constituencies, the New Age Movement. A top Sanders adviser is the influential “spiritual teacher” Marianne Williamson, whose self-help books have been heavily promoted by Oprah Winfrey and sold millions.

The New Age Movement is a growing group of people in America who have broken with the Judeo-Christian tradition to instead endorse the notion of God as a mystical force inhabiting humans, the earth, or spiritual “masters.” Oprah’s website describes it somewhat differently: “For 20 years, Marianne Williamson has been a pioneer on the front lines of a worldwide spiritual movement aimed at creating a global shift in collective consciousness.”

Taking this perspective into the political realm, Williamson has advocated a Department of Peacebuilding and has created a group called the Peace Alliance to bring this about.

Constance Cumbey has written two books on the New Age Movement and says its “toolbox is mysticism,” or “altered states of consciousness,” which are said to draw people into a relationship with spiritual forces in the world that are part of a “New World Order” and global religion to be headed by an anticipated “messianic figure” of some kind.

Whatever this mean for the world as a whole, it appears that Williamson sees Sanders as the savior of the American political system.

Williamson, who writes on the Sanders-for-president website about the need for “revolutionary power,” has used her vast influence to mobilize her followers on behalf of the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party. She says the Marxist presidency of Barack Obama hasn’t been radical enough. “Having invested so much hope in 2008 in a candidate who turned out in many ways to disappoint, it’s not easy to summon our internal forces for another big wave of revolutionary fervor,” she says. But Sanders, the “independent” socialist senator from Vermont, is a true revolutionary, she says. “If we all show up and exercise our power as citizens, Senator Sanders can win the presidency in 2016,” she adds.

Analyst Trevor Loudon has documented that Sanders, the only Senate member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is actually a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization that backed Obama’s political career and works with openly communist groups. “DSA works very closely with three of America’s leading communist groups—the Maoist leaning Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the ‘old guard’ Communist Party USA, and the CPUSA spin-off Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism,” notes Loudon. “The four groups have even seriously considered merging in recent years.”

We have noted Sanders’ history of involvement with Communist Party-controlled groups such as the U.S. Peace Council. In the 1980s, he was part of the Soviets’ “nuclear freeze” campaign to undercut President Ronald Reagan’s military build-up.

A former nightclub singer, Williamson herself ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2014 on a platform that included abortion rights, gay rights, socialized medicine, and the need to combat what she perceives as man-made global warming, nowadays called climate change. “While a lifelong Democrat herself, Marianne ran the congressional race as an Independent, making the statement that she was not beholden to either party,” noted writer Tabby Biddle.

“While America has some serious enemies—and it’s certainly our responsibility to protect our country and our children—I believe our country’s way of dealing with security issues is increasingly obsolete,” Williamson declared. “We cannot simply rely on brute force to rid ourselves of enemies. In so doing, we overburden our military by asking them to compensate for the work that we ourselves are not doing. The only way to make peace with your neighbors is to make peace with your neighbors.”

She added that, if she won, she would co-sponsor the bill to establish a U.S. Department of Peacebuilding that would examine “non-violent problem-solving options” to global conflict. The department was to be paid for out of the defense budget.

Labeled by The Hollywood Reporter as “Hollywood’s favorite New Age Guru” because of her influence with movie producers, directors, and actors, Williamson hosted Sanders at her own feminist-oriented “Sister Giant” conference earlier this year. Described personally as a “radical feminist mother,” Williamson has a daughter whose father is not known and whom she refuses to name.

While some of the New Age rhetoric and books can be dismissed as expensive but harmless fun, it’s when these “spiritual teachers” exert political influence and address global issues that we can see a tendency that seems even more radical than the usual Marxist drivel emanating from Democratic Party politicians such as Obama.

However, there is overlap. Williamson’s proposed Department of Peacebuilding, which was to be headed by a Secretary of Peacebuilding, was introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), one of Fidel Castro’s closest friends in the U.S. Congress.

Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who also works with Williamson, had introduced a similar bill. “The intention is to develop an organized approach, tapping the intellectual and spiritual power of America to develop programs that would include teaching children the principles of peace: teaching them peace giving, peace sharing, mutuality, seeing the other person as an aspect of oneself, of teaching the inner equality of all people,” Kucinich said in a post on Williamson’s Peace Alliance website.

Like Sanders, Williamson is considered by some to be pro-Israel. But in her book,The Healing of America, she discussed how Egypt’s highest Muslim cleric had once approached her “to make sure you understand that Islam is a religion of peace.” She didn’t say whether the Muslim leader condemned and rejected the passages in the Koran that call for killing the “Infidels” who resist Islam.

She also wrote, “The creative challenge of spiritual life is to know enough about God to be hopeful. From Jesus to Buddha to Moses to Mohammed, wayshowers have risen out of the timeline of history to draw maps and pave roads to a more perfect world.” The comparison of Jesus—who led a perfect life and preached love—to the Muslim Prophet Mohammad, is offensive on its face. Islam began in violence and Mohammad himself was a violent warrior.

The term “wayshowers” is common in New Age circles and refers to spiritual beings supposedly leading us into a new world of community and harmony.

When Keith Ellison became the first Congressman to take the oath of office with his hand on the Koran, Williamson commented, “Fantastic story.” Ellison, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, endorsed Williamson in her run for Congress.

For a time, Williamson and her associate Jean Houston of the Foundation for Mind Research were considered to be in Hillary Clinton’s political camp. Houston had tried to help Mrs. Clinton, when she was First Lady, “communicate” with Eleanor Roosevelt during a mystical “channeling” session. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote about these sessions in a book on the 1996 presidential election.

At some point, however, Cumbey says Houston and Williamson abandoned Hillary. Williamson said in 2008 that she was supporting Barack Obama and not Hillary because “I am not going to vote with my vagina.”

This was a dramatic turnaround, since Mrs. Clinton in her memoir Living Historyhad discussed hosting Williamson and Houston and other New Agers at Camp David. “You were wonderful to me back in 1994 when you invited me to the White House. It’s a memory I will treasure always, and you gave it to me,” Williamsonwrote back to Hillary in a Huffington Post article.

But the 2014 Williamson article, “An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton,” was actually prompted by Williamson’s revelation that the former First Lady was getting too close to powerful interests in society. Williamson pleaded with Clinton to, “Stop cozying up to the banks, to the chemical companies, to the military-industrial complex, to the party machine, and to all the various financiers who make up the plutocracy now ruining this country.”

The pleas apparently went unheeded, since Williamson eventually broke completely with Hillary and now promotes Sanders for president and writes for his website. Through Sanders and other such candidates, she insists, America can experience a revolution “of light, of consciousness, and love” and “break out of this ridiculous corporate straightjacket that imperils us the way it does now.”

Whatever this means, it has occurred to some on the far-left that while Sanders is taking on “corporate power and oligarchy” and calling for vast federal spending increases for social welfare programs, the “issues” section of his presidential website says absolutely nothing about foreign policy. The group called RootsAction complains that his stump speech hardly mentions the “huge military budget” and says he must challenge “militarism and ongoing war.”

Perhaps Williamson’s proposed Department of Peacebuilding will be the focus of one of Sanders’ next speeches, a development that will make the socialist senator not only look like a pawn of Williamson and the New Age Movement, but the true leader of the Loony Left.

01/31/15

Washington Times’ Bombshell Tapes Confirm Citizen Commission’s Findings on Benghazi

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

As Hillary Clinton further delays the announcement of her 2016 run for the White House, more news has broken regarding her role in the 2011 disastrous intervention in Libya, which set the stage for the 2012 Benghazi attacks where we lost four brave American lives.

Two new stories from The Washington Times expose some of the infighting among government agencies and branches of government on this controversial decision, and highlight the key role that Clinton played in initiating the war. You can listen to tapes of discussions between Pentagon staffers, former Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), and the Qaddafi regime for yourself.

This news also validates the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB) 2014 interim report, which exposed that Muammar Qaddafi had offered truce talks and a possible peaceful abdication to the United States, which Washington turned down.

“[The article] also makes it clear that the Benghazi investigation needs to be broadened to answer the question: ‘Why did America bomb Libya in the first place?’” commented Rear Admiral Chuck Kubic (Ret.), a key source for the CCB’s interim report who was also quoted by the Times.

“Despite the willingness of both AFRICOM Commander Gen. Carter Ham and Muammar Qaddafi to pursue the possibility of truce talks, permission was not given to Gen. Ham from his chain of command in the Pentagon and the window of opportunity closed,” reads Kubic’s statement for our report from last year. You can watch here, from a CCB press conference last April, as Admiral Kubic described his personal involvement in the effort to open negotiations between Qaddafi and the U.S. government.

Now we learn that the likely source of the stonewalling came from the State Department—and Secretary Clinton—herself. “On the day the U.N. resolution was passed, Mrs. Clinton ordered a general within the Pentagon to refuse to take a call with Gadhafi’s son Seif and other high-level members within the regime, to help negotiate a resolution, the secret recordings reveal,” reported the Times on January 29.

Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates indicated in his book, Duty, that he was opposed to the war for national security reasons. He highlighted a division among White House advisors—with Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, and Samantha Power “urging aggressive U.S. action to prevent an anticipated massacre of the rebels as Qaddafi fought to remain in power.” Add to that list the former Secretary of State.

“But that night, with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces turning back the rebellion that threatened his rule, Mrs. Clinton changed course, forming an unlikely alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention,” reported The New York Times on March 18, 2011, the day after UN Resolution 1973 authorizing a “no fly” zone in Libya was voted on and passed.

“Within hours, Mrs. Clinton and the aides had convinced Mr. Obama that the United States had to act, and the president ordered up military plans, which Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hand-delivered to the White House the next day.”

The Washington Times now reports that “In the recovered recordings, a U.S. intelligence liaison working for the Pentagon told a Gadhafi aide that Mr. Obama privately informed members of Congress that Libya ‘is all Secretary Clinton’s matter’ and that the nation’s highest-ranking generals were concerned that the president was being misinformed” about a humanitarian crisis that didn’t exist. However, one must wonder just how much President Obama implicitly supported Clinton in her blind push to intervene in what was once a comparatively stable country, and an ally in the war against al Qaeda. While this new report is certainly damning of Mrs. Clinton’s actions, and appears to place the blame for the unnecessary chaos in Libya—which ultimately led to Benghazi—on her shoulders, President Obama shares the blame as the ultimate Decider-in-Chief.

“Furthermore, defense officials had direct information from their intelligence asset in contact with the regime that Gadhafi gave specific orders not to attack civilians and to narrowly focus the war on the armed rebels, according to the asset, who survived the war,” reports The Washington Times in its second of three articles. Saving those in Benghazi from a looming massacre by Qaddafi seems to have been a convenient excuse made by the administration for political expediency. Could it be, instead, that President Obama, as well as Mrs. Clinton, put greater value on the rise to power of an “Arab Spring” government with Muslim Brotherhood connections? And, as the CCB interim report shows, the U.S. government was willing to go so far as to facilitate the provision of arms to al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Libya in order to ensure that Qaddafi fell.

Will the mainstream media pick up on these new revelations, or will they cast them aside as another “phony scandal” to throw into their dustbins filled with other stories that might possibly embarrass the Obama administration, or prove to be an impediment to Mrs. Clinton’s path to the White House?

“It’s critical to note that Qaddafi was actively engaged with Department of Defense officials to arrange discussions about his possible abdication and exile when that promising development was squashed by the Obama White House,” noted CCB Member Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer, regarding the failed truce talks. “The Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi has been asking, ‘Why?’ for well over a year now.”

“It is time the American people and the families of those who fought and gave their lives at Benghazi in September 2012 were told why those brave Americans had to die at all, much less die alone with no effort made to save them,” she said.

Clinton, through House Democrats, has indicated that she is willing to testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. But Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) recently indicated that the Committee must first examine her emails from the State Department before questioning his witness. This complicates the issue of her testifying, since Mrs. Clinton is in the process of calculating when she will announce her presidential run.

Do the emails that Gowdy has requested from the State Department even extend back to 2011?

Chairman Gowdy identified three “tranches” that his potential questioning would fall under in an interview with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren:

Why was the U.S. Special Mission Compound open in the first place?
What actions did Clinton take during the attacks?
What was Clinton’s role during the talking points and Susan Rice’s Sunday morning talk show visits?

A fourth tranche should be: Clinton’s push to intervene in Libya and how it set the stage for an insecure country and strong jihadist movement willing—and able—to attack the Americans posted there. And while he’s at it, Rep. Gowdy should ask Mrs. Clinton to explain why all of the very legitimate requests for increased security in Benghazi were turned down, and why were Ambassador Chris Stevens’ personal security staff, from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) directed to store their weapons in a separate location—not on them—on the night of September 11, 2012?