12/31/14

CNN Moves on to New “Scandal”

CNN contributed to the atmosphere in which two New York City police officers were murdered last week. Then, it shed tears for the dead cops. Their contribution included their inaccurate and sensationalized coverage of police confrontations with black criminals. Now, CNN is moving on, as Republicans prepare to take over both Houses of Congress. The new target: a top House Republican who associated with extremists.

CNN wants people to believe the GOP is racked by various New Year’s scandals, including that House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke to a pro-white group in 2002. Scrambling to answer to the liberal media mob, Rep. Scalise is putting out various statements, such as that he didn’t know what the group was all about. He said he now finds the group’s pro-white views abhorrent.

But why hasn’t there been a smidgeon of attention on CNN for the fact that Democratic Rep. Danny K. Davis (IL) was honored at the Communist Party’s headquarters in Chicago for a lifetime of “inspiring leadership.”

The Davis “honor” was only two years ago, in 2012. Scalise spoke to the pro-white group 12 years ago.

Welcome to the world of liberal media bias.

Another difference is that Rep. Davis knew precisely what the event was all about. In fact, he was proud of being honored by communists. But that’s not a story, even though communism is still very much alive, having already killed about 100 million people. The North Korean regime, the subject of so much attention in recent days, is run by communists. So is Cuba.

Once again, for the umpteenth time, we are given a demonstration of the liberal media’s double standard. Associating with alleged extremists is only a problem for Republicans, not Democrats.

Republicans have to learn that being perceived as pro-white is wrong; being pro-black and/or pro-Red is fine. That’s why Republican Senator Rand Paul (KY) gets praise for meeting with racial agitator Al Sharpton to talk about “criminal justice reform.”

But speaking 12 years ago to a group, started by David Duke, who wasn’t even at the event in question, is now a major scandal for the Republican Party, as defined by CNN.

Davis, of course, is given even more leeway because he is President Obama’s buddy. Davis and Obama were members of the Chicago New Party, a group designed to move the Democratic Party to the left. They appeared together to talk about their shared values.

Jeremy Segal, a disciple of the late Andrew Breitbart, produced a video of Rep. Davis being honored by the communists. No video of Rep. Scalise’s 12-year-old speech has yet surfaced. But it’s bad enough, from CNN’s perspective, that he apparently did speak to the group and that information about the appearance was dug up by a liberal blogger. This makes it a huge scandal.

The stench of the double-standard is made worse by the fact that CNN employs cop-killer apologist Marc Lamont Hill as a paid contributor. Hill sings the praises of convicted terrorist Joanne Chesimard, who was involved in the “execution style” murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. She fled to Cuba to escape justice. Hill’s Twitter page had once been plastered with police mug shot photos of the convicted terrorist. In one post, Hill praised the terrorist, saying she was “one of the great heroes in the black freedom struggle.”

The Scalise “scandal” is based on the allegation that he spoke to a group run by David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who was not even at the event and had “moved to Russia,” according to various reports. As we have noted, Duke now has connections to a Vladimir Putin adviser and apparently sees the Russian regime as the savior of white people worldwide.

Scalise ran the group of House conservatives known as the Republican Study Committee. Speaking of extremists, we noted in 2013 that Scalise failed to take a stand against the expansion of terror TV channel Al Jazeera in the U.S. He told us through a spokesperson that he “believes Al Jazeera has a First Amendment right to expand its broadcasts in the United States and that a congressional investigation of Al Gore’s deal with the channel is not warranted.” We had asked for his position on the deal when Gore was selling his stake in Current TV to Al Jazeera.

We noted, “By offering the First Amendment excuse in favor of the deal, Scalise is ignoring the evidence that Al Jazeera is not a legitimate news operation but rather a conduit for propaganda from terrorist groups, with whom it has intimate and ongoing relations.” We explained that, in the United States, it is against the law to provide material support to terrorists, with “material support” defined as including expert advice or assistance and communications equipment.

The deal went ahead because Rep. Scalise and other top Republicans, including Rep. Michael McCaul (TX), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, refused to investigate or hold hearings on the deal. We later found out that Al Jazeera and Qatar had hired Capitol Hill lobbyists to push the deal through.

Regarding the aforementioned Marc Lamont Hill, Fox News fired him as a paid contributor on the channel, after we brought his extremist views to the attention of News Corporation executive chairman Rupert Murdoch. CNN didn’t bat an eye in picking him up as a commentator and contributor.

We noted that, on December 6, 2006, when reports indicated that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was sick, Hill declared on his blog that he was afraid the information might be true. “My fears about Fidel’s health are not only personal but political,” he wrote.

Some of the more extreme material has been scrubbed from his site, but he still features a letter from Chesimard from an undisclosed location in communist Cuba. Chesimard declared, “I am 60 years old and I am proud to be one of those people who stood up against the ruthless, evil, imperialist policies of the U.S. government.” Hill commented, “Let us give thanks for her life and her sacrifice.”

This is apparently acceptable to CNN, which now pretends to honor the sacrifices of our police officers.

On her birthday, Hill tweeted, “Happy Birthday to Assata Shakur on her 67th Birthday. Wishing you 100 more years of love, struggle, and freedom.”

CNN has no problem paying an apologist for a cop-killer living under the protection of the communist regime in Cuba. But it will be on top of Scalise’s 12-year-old speaking engagement to a pro-white group as long as it thinks it can milk some ratings from the controversy.

But forget about CNN covering Danny Davis’s communist connection. If they raised that, they might have to take a look at Obama’s relationship with Rep. Davis—and another Davis, the one named Frank Marshall Davis, his communist mentor. And that is definitely a taboo subject.

How can these CNN anchors and commentators keep a straight face? Should we really take them seriously? Is acting like MSNBC one of their New Year’s resolutions?

12/29/14

None Dare Call It Treason 50 Years Later

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

I recently asked John A. Stormer, author of the 1964 bestseller, None Dare Call It Treason, if he thought President Barack Obama was a Marxist. “He’s two things,” Stormer told me. “Is he a Marxist or is he a Muslim? He is really involved in both of these things. He’s anti-American.”

Obama’s policies have benefited enemies of the U.S. across the spectrum, from Muslim to Marxist. All of these anti-American forces have made dramatic gains under Obama. This means that the situation is far worse for America than when Stormer wrote his seven-million-copy bestseller.

Stormer’s book was described at the time as an exposé of how the U.S. government was ostensibly “fighting” communism with its right hand, while actually aiding, supporting, and promoting communism with its left. The book was self-published at a time when the U.S. was opposing communism in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, but doing business with countries like the Soviet Union, which were supplying the enemy that was killing American soldiers on the battlefield.

The difference now, as we have seen with Obama’s recognition and bailout of the Castro regime in Cuba, is that the U.S. government doesn’t even pretend to be anti-communist anymore. Obama has made the U.S. into a facilitator of international communism.

Our troubles are compounded by the spectacle of “conservatives” who pretend not to grasp what is going on. Columnist George Will writes at National Review that Cuba is a “geopolitical irrelevancy.” He says, “Cuba’s regime, although totalitarian, no longer matters in international politics.”

Will must have missed Vladimir Putin’s visit to Cuba in July, when he had meetings with brothers Raul and Fidel Castro and participated in a ceremony at the Memorial to the Soviet Internationalist Soldier. It is a tribute to Soviet soldiers who were stationed in Cuba in the early 1960s and died there. Putin forgave most of Cuba’s debt to the former Soviet Union.

Before that, in May, investigative reporter Bill Gertz noted that Cuba and Russia “concluded a security deal” aimed at bolstering “intelligence and military ties” between the two countries.

Will must have missed that dispatch.

But Russia isn’t the only U.S adversary that considers Cuba geopolitically relevant.

Toby Westerman, editor of International News Analysis Today, wrote a 2012 column noting that Communist China regards the island of Cuba as “strategically located for the interception of U.S. military and civilian satellite communications,” and that “China’s spy service also cooperates closely with Havana’s own world-class intelligence services.”

Westerman added, “The value Beijing places upon the information acquired via Havana can be seen in the October 2011 visit to the island by General Guo Boxiong, Vice Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission. Guo’s presence in Cuba underscored that China has a special military commitment in addition to a sizable economic investment in Cuba.”

Considering the damage that is being done to the United States, and the failure of “conservative” columnists such as George Will to recognize it, we are reminded that the title of Stormer’s book came from the famous John Harington quotation: “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

But it gets worse.

Just two days after Obama announced his new Cuba policy, Raul Castro received the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, Dmitry Rogozin, during an official visit to Cuba on the occasion of the 12th Session of the Cuba-Russia Intergovernmental Commission.

Will should be advised that all of this is being covered in the English-language version of the official Cuban Communist Party paper Granma. The information is not a national security secret.

The Cuba-Russia Intergovernmental Commission on economic-trade and scientific-technical collaboration held a meeting designed to “advance tasks and objectives established during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Cuba in July…” The objective, according to Granma, is “to realize agreements in order to increase exchanges in diverse spheres” and “address key areas of interest to both countries.”

While Raul Castro’s talk of a “new economic model” in Cuba has been trumpeted far and wide by the U.S. media, his December 20 speech to the “National Assembly of People’s Power” said this does not mean that capitalism will be tolerated. He said the “guidelines” for the new economy make it clear that “The economic system which will prevail in Cuba will continue to be based on the people’s socialist ownership of the fundamental means of production, governed by the socialist principle of distribution, from each according to his/her capacity to each according to his/her contribution.”

He referred to “the irreversibility of socialism in Cuba.”

To understand the strategic significance of Obama’s change in policy toward the dictatorship in Cuba, Castro said he will be participating in the Seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Panama on April 10-11, 2015. The event is managed by the Organization of American States (OAS), a group that used to be dedicated to promoting democracy in the hemisphere.

How things change.

In January 1962, the OAS was an anti-Communist organization, having established a “Special Consultative Committee on Security Against the Subversive Action of International Communism.” The group declared, “The principles of communism are incompatible with the principles of the inter-American system.”

It passed a resolution declaring, “The present Government of Cuba has identified itself with the principles of Marxist-Leninist ideology, has established a political, economic, and social system based on that doctrine, and accepts military assistance from extra-continental communist powers, including even the threat of military intervention in America on the part of the Soviet Union…”

Nothing has changed over the years, except that Russia has replaced the Soviet Union and international communism has made dramatic gains in the hemisphere.

Another big change, of course, is that the U.S. President is either a Marxist or a Muslim. Take your pick. Perhaps, as Stormer says, anti-American is the best description.

Referring to Republican Senators Rand Paul (KY) and Marco Rubio (FL), Will writes, “As they brawl about Cuba, a geopolitical irrelevancy, neither seems presidential.” But this is the kind of debate that we desperately need to have. It will determine if the U.S. is a force for good or evil in the world. Senator Paul has sided with Obama and Castro. Senator Rubio has come down on the side of freedom.

This debate will not only determine if the Republican Party remains pro-freedom and anti-communist, but whether the United States will stay true to Ronald Reagan’s vision of a world free from communism.

It is troubling, 50 years after the publication of None Dare Call It Treason, that we have to go through this debate all over again—this time with the stakes even higher.

One thing is clear at this point: we need a new generation of conservatives in the media willing to take a stand for freedom, and to conduct a review of the “death of communism.”