09/2/16

Will the KGB Kill Edward Snowden?

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

In a story headlined, “The New Snowden Movie is the Best PR He’ll Ever Get,” a young writer with no knowledge of Russian espionage operations quotes an ACLU lawyer as saying that the upcoming movie “Snowden” will paint the former NSA analyst living in Russia as “a hero who exposed the great injustices and overreach of the global surveillance state.” The film will therefore “have a huge effect on how the public sees Snowden,” he says.

But the film, scheduled for release on September 16, may be an attempt to salvage the reputations of both Edward Snowden and the filmmaker, Oliver Stone.

Edward Snowden is charged with espionage, and has been described by presidential candidate Donald J. Trump as a traitor who should be executed.

His disclosures of NSA surveillance techniques have assisted America’s enemies and adversaries, including the Islamic State and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I wrote a book about the case, Blood on His Hands: The True Story of Edward Snowden, examining the setbacks for American foreign policy in the wake of Snowden’s theft of classified documents, and the U.S. being caught blind regarding Russian aggression and Islamic State expansion into Europe and America.

Two days before the film’s release, some theaters will feature a live question-and-answer period between Snowden and Stone following a special screening, with Snowden appearing live from Moscow.

Stone is apparently hoping the film will restore his reputation as an avant-garde filmmaker whose previous release, “South of the Border,” was an embarrassing apology for a series of Latin American communists. It depicted Venezuela as heaven on earth and featured interviews with such despots as Hugo Chavez, Lula da Silva of Brazil and Raul Castro.

Chavez has since expired and met his maker, while Venezuela is a hell-hole example of how socialism works in practice, with shortages, massive inflation and violations of human rights on a constant basis. Lula da Silva’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, has just been impeached in Brazil. Castro is still in power because Barack Obama and Pope Francis engineered U.S. recognition of the Communist regime in Cuba, and thereby a lifeline of new money.

Trying to make himself newsworthy again, Stone has made the movie, “Snowden,” after a trip to Russia where he met with former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Upon his return, he delivered the commencement speech at the University of Connecticut, where he described Edward Snowden as “an avatar” for the next generation.

Previous avatars have included Aldrich Ames, the CIA traitor, and Robert Hanssen, the FBI traitor. Both were spies for the Soviets and are serving life sentences in prison.

“I think Snowden is a terrible threat, I think he’s a terrible traitor, and you know what we used to do in the good old days when we were a strong country—you know what we used to do to traitors, right?” Trump said to host Eric Bolling on Fox News. “Well, you killed them, Donald,” Bolling replied.

He was apparently referring to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were American citizens executed for espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union back in 1953.

Yet, President Obama’s then-Attorney General Eric Holder actually wrote to the Russians, promising them that Snowden would be spared the death penalty if he returned to the United States.

In a story about how Snowden is pulling in tens of thousands of capitalist dollars for digital speaking appearances from Russia at American colleges and other events like concerts and Comic-Con, Michael Isikoff and Michael B. Kelley of Yahoo! News reported that advance work in the media for the new Snowden movie is being handled by “veteran liberal public relations executive David Fenton.”

That seems appropriate. In the past, Fenton has represented George Soros, the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Salvadoran communist guerrillas and CIA defector Philip Agee.

Snowden seems to be the NSA equivalent of Agee, who defected from the CIA and became a Cuban and Soviet agent. Benjamin S. Civiletti, attorney general in the Carter administration, provided Agee with immunity from prosecution. At the time, the FBI wasarguing for prosecution of Agee on the grounds that he was engaging in espionage activity against the U.S.

Snowden may be seeking to return to the U.S. because of what happened to another defector from the NSA to Russia. Victor Norris Hamilton, a former code analyst with the NSA who defected to Russia, was discovered in the 1990s at a Moscow psychiatric prison hospital. After the Soviets milked him, they put him in a rubber room.

Former Reagan National Security Council staffer Oliver North says that Snowden will be killed by the Russians when they have finished using him for propaganda purposes. Then, he suggests, the Russians will blame his death on the CIA.

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.

06/10/16

Trump Seen as Vehicle to Destroy GOP

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

While showing an image of Donald Trump as a wrecking ball, veteran leftist operative Webster Tarpley told the recent Left Forum in New York City, “If we play this right, he can destroy the Republican Party.” The comments, delivered at the major left-wing gathering of the year, reflect the belief among “progressive” activists that the Donald J. Trump candidacy can be used to destroy the Republican Party and usher in a major period of Democratic Party rule, under the increasing influence of an openly socialist faction.

“This party must be destroyed,” Tarpley said, referring to the Republicans.

Tarpley’s analysis of the political scene takes on additional significance as we see evidence of communists and Mexican nationals protesting outside Trump rallies and assaulting Trump supporters. Tarpley’s audience was the Left Forum, which is described as “the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public.” The theme for this year’s event was “Rage, Rebellion, Revolution: Organizing Our Power.”

Those participating included the Democratic Socialists of America (which supported Barack Obama and now Bernie Sanders), the Southern Poverty Law Center, representatives of the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, the “Exonerate Ethel Rosenberg” campaign, CodePink, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Workers World Party, the Trans Queer Liberation Movement, and the Greek Communist Party.

A former operative in the movement led by Lyndon H. LaRouche, an aging Marxist ideologue who served time in prison on fraud charges, Tarpley is viewed by the left as an expert on the class struggle that defines the evolution of the American political system. He has been a prominent figure in the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement, which blames unnamed U.S. officials for carrying out the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. He is today associated with the Tax Wall Street Party, a group backing the Sanders proposal to raise taxes on financial transactions in order to finance a socialist super state.

Drawing on historical sources and stories about turmoil in the Trump campaign and the GOP, Tarpley predicted that Trump’s candidacy will divide the Republicans and result in one of its factions merely surviving as a regional party based in the Deep South, rural areas, and the intermountain West. However, he said the party itself has become so dependent on “aging white men,” a shrinking percentage of the electorate, that it may be “demographically doomed” in the long term.

Tarpley, who thinks Sanders has not gone far enough to the left, believes opposing Trump and calling him a fascist is a smart organizing tactic by the left. In his talk, “Destroy the GOP—Split the Dems,” Tarpley describes the Sanders campaign and associated groups as “New Deal Democrats,” as opposed to the “Wall Street Democrats” backing Hillary Clinton. Eventually, if everything goes according to plan, the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party will take control in a “progressive realignment,” and a “new progressive coalition” could emerge and dominate American politics for decades.

“Trump is the trigger” for this dramatic series of developments, he told the leftist conference, and it means the Republican Party could go “extinct,” since it is perceived as being hostile to the new immigrants who have flooded into the country. He is predicting a complete political realignment for the period 2016 to 2046.

However, left unsaid in his presentation is whether after Mrs. Clinton is presumably done with her first term as president, she could be challenged for another term by the Sanders wing of the party, possibly represented at that time by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

But the idea that Warren is somehow against the interests of Wall Street and finance capital is, of course, complete nonsense. She ran for the Senate with the support of hedge fund billionaire George Soros and other big money liberals.

While Tarpley is not a supporter of Mrs. Clinton or President Obama, he gives Obama, a skilled Marxist-trained operative, enormous credit for assembling a winning coalition in the presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012. He explained, “2008 was a watershed election, and in retrospect that will become more obvious than it is now.” He said Obama had ushered in “a new phase” of politics that has put tremendous pressure on the Republican Party to generate support from enough of the electorate to survive as a national political entity.

“That future is what you have to keep your eyes on,” he emphasized. “That’s where you have to get. It means a crushing defeat for Trump, if we can do it.”

At the same time, Tarpley acknowledged that Trump supporters have “legitimate economic beefs,” based on the declining standard of living, and the fact that “deindustrialization” has harmed the middle class by destroying millions of factory jobs. But the Republican ideology is “in crisis,” as factions of the party disagree over the benefits of free trade and solutions to other economic problems. Other major Republican donors have libertarian tendencies that threaten the GOP coalition as well, he stated.

While the demise of the Republican Party may seem like wishful thinking, Tarpley outlined a political scenario that is plausible to outside experts and which could mean that the GOP would meet the fate of other political parties in American history—such as the Federalists, Whigs, and Know-Nothings — “by breaking apart” and losing the presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court in the process.

Tarpley’s predictions about Trump’s negative impact on the Republican Party came just a few weeks before Trump unleashed a series of attacks on a “Mexican” judge, who was actually born in the United States, prompting more concern from current and former Republican officials that the Trump presidential campaign could jeopardize Republicans prospects in November.

The destruction of the GOP also means the defeat of what Tarpley called the “neocon warmongers,” defined as those who favor U.S. military intervention against radical regimes and terrorist groups in the Middle East.

Continuing the pro-Russian bent that has long characterized the LaRouche movement, Tarpley favors the destruction of NATO. He was a speaker at the “No to War, No to NATO,” conference in Rome, Italy, which also included a representative of the old Soviet front, the U.S. Peace Council. Tarpley then participated in a forum on “good relations with the Russian Federation” held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

While Trump has been critical of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and has questioned the need for NATO, a one-time anti-Soviet alliance, these positions were not of any interest or concern to Tarpley. Instead, Trump was viewed as an opportunity to divide and weaken the Republican Party.

With the Republican Party out of the way, the activists making up the Left Forum would be able to consolidate their power in the Democratic Party and move it even further to the left, in terms of more socialism at home and more accommodation of “anti-imperialist” and “anti-capitalist” forces abroad.

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.

06/6/16

The Red Guards Are Green

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

The media have given the misleading impression that the policies of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a self-declared socialist, are radically different than those of President Obama or Hillary Clinton. In reality, they all propose to use government power to control the economy by either confiscating the assets of private firms or running them out of business.

Technically, this may be fascism, rather than socialism. But the totalitarian nature of what is taking place is unprecedented in American history. America is becoming a socialist state that not only determines the fate of private industry, but attempts to control what people think and read about important public policy issues.

In Venezuela, which is admittedly ruled by a socialist regime, an iconic firm called Empresas Polar, which provides everything from pasta to beer, is suffering under government price controls and regulations, and has been declared an enemy of the state. The Wall Street Journal has been covering the fate of this firm in detail in a dramatic series of articles.

Here, the problem is actually worse. Rather than targeting just one firm, the Obama administration has been seeking to destroy the entire coal industry, along with the jobs of tens of thousands of workers that the old-style Marxists used to claim to represent. In their latest move, “the Obama Administration is giving the industry its last rites by halting new coal leases on federal lands where mining is still profitable,” the Journal noted.

This is not just Obama’s policy. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that if she became president, “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

The official Democratic Party policy of destroying the coal industry is being done in the name of saving the environment from alleged global warming. Toward that end, Obama signed the Paris Climate Agreement for the purpose of reducing global CO2 emissions. But he refused to submit the agreement for Congressional approval. The Global Warming Policy Foundation has published an academic paper which says the agreement is essentially a fraud, adding that it exempts countries such as China and India from undertaking any reductions.

In order to stifle debate over the job-destroying policies of the Obama regime, a group of Democratic state attorneys general are using legal tactics in an effort to criminalize and prosecute those challenging the global warming theory.

In an interview conducted by Ginni Thomas and carried by The Daily Caller, Dr. Kim Holmes, author of The Closing of the Liberal Mind, says the criminalization of dissent on climate change is “truly Orwellian” and “borderline totalitarian.” It is another sign of the decline of American democracy, documented in another important book, Democracy: And Why It Will Fail in America.

At the same time, the Portland (Oregon) Public School Board has voted to ban textbooks and other materials that do not support the theory of climate change. Patrick Wood, Editor of Technocracy News & Trends, asks, “Will they ban materials from the homes of students? What will be the punishment for being caught with such materials on Portland Public School campuses?”

The left-wing group Rethinking Schools calls this Portland, Oregon, board decision “the country’s most far-reaching policy on teaching climate justice in the schools.” It says the policy commits Portland schools to “abandon the use of any adopted text material that is found to express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its roots in human activity,” and requires the school district to develop a comprehensive plan to “address climate change and climate justice in all Portland Public Schools.”

This is, of course, occurring on a local level. But one could easily anticipate the Obama administration adopting this policy on a national basis, in the form of a directive to local districts, similar to the federal dictate on bathroom policy.

This agenda can be called fascism or socialism. But another “ism” also rears its ugly head.

Bill Bigelow, a former teacher and current curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, has referred to Howard Zinn as “the great historian and activist.” Zinn, whose books are force-fed to young people on many college campuses, was not only a member of the Moscow-controlled and Soviet-funded Communist Party USA (CPUSA) but lied about it. Zinn taught in the political science department of Boston University for 24 years, from 1964 to 1988.

Bigelow is the co-editor of a textbook on environmental education, A People’s Curriculum for the Earth. It looks like his campaign is at least partly designed to get his own textbook into the schools. Indeed, the group reports that Portland’s resolution “began in a workshop” led by the book’s co-editors, Bill Bigelow and Tim Swinehart. Swinehart, who teaches at Lincoln High School in Portland, is an alumnus of the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling.

Commenting on the campaign to criminalize dissent on climate change, Dr. Kim Holmes said, “Once you break that barrier and tell scientists they will be punished, this is like the Inquisition in the 16th century or the Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution in China.”

Ironically, the Roman Catholic Church is involved in this modern-day inquisition, since Pope Francis has already issued a papal encyclical on climate change in an “unholy alliance” that includes anti-capitalist and pro-population control advocates.

The Red Guards were groups of students, formed under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party, which eliminated remnants of the old order.

How different is that from what is happening in the U.S. today? The group Rethinking Schools says that what happened in Portland could inspire similar efforts around the country, leading to “millions of public school students” who would then become part of a nationwide army of activists recognizing “a climate emergency” that requires “shutting down coal-fired power plants, banning new pipelines and off-shore drilling.”

Swinehart declares, “Now the real work begins: transforming the principles of this resolution into the education of climate literate students across the district who feel empowered to work toward a more just and sustainable future.”

These new Red Guards are coming to a school district near you. Can we rescue America from mysticism and tyranny?

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.

05/19/16

The Rapid Fall of Socialist Venezuela

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

I have never seen a country in my lifetime devolve as fast as Venezuela has and I fear it is a window into our future considering the way things are going here in the States. This was the very predictable outcome for Venezuela thanks to Hugo Chavez implementing socialism/communism in the country. But instead of an uber slow, painful decline, Venezuela is getting all their pain pretty much at once. Depending on the next president (and it really doesn’t matter at this stage whether it is Clinton or Trump), we could see something very similar occur here. All the ingredients are in the mix to make it happen and fast.

Not long ago, Venezuelans would never have imagined that they would be starving and cooking their pets up for dinner. Sadly, that is exactly what is happening now. That and widespread violence. Last week, they burned a looter alive as an example to everyone else. This is what the endgame looks like in a despotic regime… we watch it like it is reality TV, but to Venezuelans, it is just reality and it is deadly. Radical Leftists were allowed to rule a wealthy country and this is the outcome. They had more proven oil reserves than anyone else on the planet, including Saudi Arabia. But those at the top ripped off the wealth and made sure everyone else was equally repressed and in want. Eventually, the system collapsed as it always does under this form of government. And violence and death follow every single time.

Now there are massive food shortages… people can’t even get toilet paper. Bread lines are a stark reality. Looting is taking place everywhere and every violent crime imaginable is being committed in broad daylight… no hope is coming for these victims and thanks to their government, they are not armed. If you will remember, Chavez was elected, then passed a law that got him named as president for life. Then he had the military seize the media. Businesses followed suit soon after. Now, chaos reigns.

Continue reading →

10/21/15

Selling Sanders, Socialism and Hypocrisy

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Millionaire businessman Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream was on CNN last week talking about his presidential candidate, career politician and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a “social democrat,” not a socialist. For his part, Cohen said, “You know, I’m a capitalist, clearly, and I support the guy.”

Capitalism has certainly been very good to Ben & Jerry. Their Vermont-based ice cream business is an American success story. But in 2012, they sold out to the British-Dutch conglomerate Unilever for a purchase price of $326 million. The result was that Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield became members of the one-tenth of one percent that Sanders rallies against. Cohen and Greenfield each has a reported net worth of $150 million.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the top one-tenth of one percent consists of 160,000 families with net assets of at least $20 million.

Unilever is worth $129 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Sounds like one of the big corporations Bernie should rail against.

During the Democratic presidential debate, Sanders said, “We’re gonna win because first, we’re gonna explain what democratic socialism is. And what democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of one percent in this country own almost 90 percent—almost—own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top one percent.”

He called for a tax on Wall Street but not ice cream to pay for the free college educations he’s proposing for students. But a Wall Street tax would affect the 55 percent of Americans who report having money invested in stocks.

A popular Bernie Sanders meme notes that while he claims to want to get money out of politics, he bribes people with the promise of government benefits in exchange for votes.

What is clear is that Sanders, a true socialist, believes Americans have too many choices, and that apparently the government must step in to regulate and determine what’s best for consumers. “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country,” he told CNBC. “I don’t think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on.”

Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry’s, produces many different kinds of deodorants. Labeled “The World’s No. 1 Antiperspirant” featuring “body-responsive antiperspirant technology,” Degree is available in a range of formats for men and women. They include:

Degree Men Dry Protection
Degree Men Fresh Deodorant
Degree Men Adrenaline Series
Degree Men Clinical Protection

Sanders hasn’t said anything about too many choices of ice cream. According to published reports, there are about 40 varieties of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream available in pint form. There are reportedly 159 ice cream brands available nationwide.

One could easily argue that underarm deodorants and sneakers are more important than ice cream. But CNN’s Carol Costello didn’t make that point.

In fact, Cohen said his company has produced another flavor, a Bernie Sanders ice cream called Bernie’s Yearning. He told Costello that the giant chip on the top represents all the wealth that’s gone to the top one percent of the population over the past 10 years. “And the way you eat it is that you whack it with your spoon, then you mix it around,” he said. “That’s the Bernie Yearning.”

We are all supposed to have a good laugh about all of this. Except that in socialist Venezuela, which Sanders once praised for shipping fuel to New England, there is a shortage of toilet paper.

That doesn’t bother the Hollywood super-rich. Blogger Steve Bartin notes that dozens of “artists and cultural leaders” have signed up as supporters of Sanders’ socialist program, including comedian Sarah Silverman, once quoted as saying unborn children are “just goo.” Bartin cites a piece by Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal which says that Hollywood gets about $1.5 billion in tax credits and exemptions, grants, waived fees and other financial inducements. His source was a liberal group, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which noted that the funds could otherwise have been spent “on public services like education, health care, public safety, and infrastructure.”

In other words, services that could benefit what Sanders calls “ordinary Americans,” if only the Hollywood elite weren’t taking advantage of the taxpayers.

The Bernie Sanders campaign is proud of the Hollywood support. It says the number of “major artists from all genres of music, comedy, acting, writing, and producing” in support of Sanders has reached 125. They have their own special section on the “Sanders for president” website. Dr. Cornel West, honorary co-chair of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is listed under the category of “academic/philosopher.”

Sanders supporter and Hollywood director Adam McKay, who with Will Ferrell, co-wrote and directed the films “Anchorman” and “Step Brothers,” said, “As artists and citizens we believe it is time for government to once again represent the people and not just big money. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate speaking against the widespread legalized corruption that has handed our government to billionaires, large corporations and banks.”

Columnist Doug Powers commented, “I assume liberal celebs are pulling for Sanders’ style of socialism because he’s going to eliminate the tax credit programs for billion-dollar entertainment corporations? That story line would be too unbelievable even for Hollywood.”

Taking the personal hypocrisy one step further, leftist filmmaker Michael Moore has been quoted as saying that Sanders won the Democratic presidential debate because he questions “the core system” of wealth and power in the U.S. Moore’s net worth has been estimated at $50 million and he just went through a messy divorce, revealing that he had a 10,000 square foot lakeside home in northern Michigan once valued at $2 million.

Meanwhile, sniffing a story here, The New York Times has run a piece, “Bernie Sanders Has Fund-Raiser at Fancy Hollywood Home,” noting that the socialist finished up the debate and then raised money at the home of wealthy real estate operator Syd Leibovitch. The paper reported that tickets for the event sold for a minimum of $250. Those who spent the maximum, $2,700, or who raised $10,000, were invited to a special “pre-event reception,” the paper said.

It sounds like a special benefit for the rich and powerful.

The names on the host list included Marianne Williamson, the famous New Age spiritual teacher who has called for repealing Columbus Day. One of Williamson’s other political objectives being promoted by her Peace Alliance group is a federal Department of Peacebuilding.

Perhaps Sanders will promote that idea in the next presidential debate, after he bashes the rich and announces which brands of sneakers, deodorant and ice cream will go out of business under his administration.

When will the rest of the media follow the lead of The New York Times and expose this “man of the people” and his Hollywood backers as the phonies they truly are?

07/14/15

Iran Deal: Be sure of this much – With Obama’s help, Evil is Winning

By: William Palumbo
The American Report

What began in 2012 with secret negotiations between Valerie Jarrett and Iran has now borne its toxic, likely nuclear, fruit. It is now all but certain, excepting an unlikely Congressional intervention, that the Obama administration will officially legitimize the world’s most prolific sponsor of Islamic terror. This follows on the heels of a surprise announcement that Obama would normalize relations with Cuba.

From Tehran to Havana, evil is winning, and Obama is leading the way.

Let’s recall a few things about the Iranian and Cuban deals, and their negotiators:

Obama’s Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1956. A personal friend of Barack and Michelle since she introduced the couple, Jarrett is widely assumed to be the most powerful person in the White House. The subject of an FBI investigation, Jarrett’s family is connected with old guard Chicago Communists, including Obama’s political mentor, Frank Marshall Davis.

If that weren’t enough to make you question this “deal,” Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter is married to an Iranian man with family in Iran. Conflict of interest, anyone?

Barack Obama is the president who backed the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood into power during the Arab Spring. After issuing Presidential Study Directive Eleven (PSD-11), Obama allied the U.S.A. with terrorists in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and is still backing anti-Assad terrorists in Syria. His administration, through the DOJ, has purged all mention of “Islam” and “Muslims” from counter-terrorism. With Obama’s approval, the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service have been weaponized against conservatives and Republicans. Yes, that means Obama views American citizens, not Islamic terrorists, as the most dangerous threat to national security.

Likewise, domestic counter-terrorism efforts have been hampered against Muslim Brotherhood front Islamic organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who are now regarded as friends and invited to the White House. Finally, Obama has crippled the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and left the southern border completely open to whatever murderer, rapist, or terrorist wants to walk in.

Iran, for its part, has been the preeminent sponsor of Islamic terrorism since 1979. Its current leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, personally translated into Farsi the works of Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brother who developed the ideology of modern Islamic terror. Iran funds both Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran has a friendly relationship with the terrorist regime of Omar Bashir in the Sudan, where there is ongoing Christian genocide.

Through Hezbollah, they operate narcotics and terrorist networks around the world, including in Latin America. Hezbollah is remarkably powerful in Venezuela and Mexico, and was behind the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which targeted Argentine Jews.

Cuba, an Iranian ally, is home to another other rogue anti-American regime that welcomes Hezbollah terrorists. Bill Ayers, the domestic terrorist who launched Obama’s political career, helped organize trips to Cuba for the Students for a Democratic Society with the infamous Venceremos Brigade.

Not only have the Ayatollahs and Castro brothers been rewarded for their treachery, they are being rewarded handsomely: Cuba will now have full diplomatic relations with the United States, and Iran is expected to receive $100 billion in previously frozen funds.

Do you now start to get a picture of what Obama and the U.S. State Department have accomplished?

2016: A Vote for Republicans, or more Terrorists

In a rare show of wise solidarity, GOP Presidential candidates have denounced the disastrous Iranian deal. Indeed, to listen to Republicans today is almost like listening to former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who has publicly blamed Obama for ruining the close relationship between the United States and Israel.

Hillary, who will almost assuredly be the Democratic nominee, is supportive of the deal. Unsurprising, as Clinton was a fellow architect of the Arab Spring, and her personal aide Huma Abedin is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood through her immediate family.

For Americans at all concerned with the future of their country, it should be very clear that the Democrat Party stands with terrorists. Choose wisely in 2016.

04/12/15

Obama Strangles the Monroe Doctrine and Embraces Latin Dictatorships, Communists and Fascists

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

I wrote some time ago on how John Kerry went to Latin America and declared the Monroe Doctrine dead. Obama just finalized it in Cuba. The Monroe Doctrine has been in place since 1823 and has long warned America’s enemies to not even THINK about using South America as a back door to bring Communism and aggression to our doorstep. Well, Obama has thrown that proverbial door wide open to South America and has invited in every enemy we have. Hell, he’s thrown our door at the borders open inviting them into the US as well. He wants America at war and brought to her knees and he’s really going for it now.

As Doug Ross pointed out, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 brought us to the very brink of nuclear war. The Monroe Doctrine stopped that apocalyptic nightmare from becoming a reality. Kennedy “cited the Monroe Doctrine as a basis for America’s ‘eyeball-to-eyeball’ confrontation with the Soviet Union that had embarked on a campaign to install ballistic missiles on Cuban soil.” That was before the Democrats went full blown Marxist and decided to destroy America from within her own shores. Obama has now stated for the world that the US will no longer act to resist overseas influence in the Western Hemisphere.

During the seventh Summit of the Americas, our enemies took turns swinging at American foreign policy. From 19th century territorial raids on Mexico to US support for the overthrow of Chile’s socialist government in 1973 and the 1989 invasion of Panama that removed Gen. Manuel Noriega, Washington’s interventions in Latin America were targets of rebuke during long speeches by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his allies. Obama quipped, “I always enjoy the history lessons that I receive when I’m here.” I’ll bet he does. He’s also meeting with Maduro and cuddling with him while he’s there. Dictators of a feather. Next, it will be Obama’s ongoing bromance with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who is a hardline Leftist and a long time ally of South American socialists Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales. Last week Correa tweeted “¡Heil Hitler!” in response to a Twitter user posting an article reporting that ex-Ecuadorian President Osvaldo Hurtado had called him a “fascist” for his repeated crackdowns on journalists. I’m sure Obama can relate. Remember, no matter the propagandic rhetoric from Correa on Obama being an “afro American,” Obama held hands with the Ecuadorian president to bring in as many illegal immigrants as he could and the two were aligned on common agendas. Things are never what they appear.

From the White House Dossier:

Obama, who spoke Friday during a “civil society” forum in Panama City, Panama, disparaged past efforts by the United States to forestall the spread of Communism in Latin America and suggested similar missions would no longer be undertaken.

“The days in which our agenda in this hemisphere so often presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity, those days are past,” Obama said.

Civil Society forum? How very George Soros… how very Progressive/Marxist. This condones Communism in our hemisphere – here on our turf, for our neighbors with our blessing. Virtually every country in South and Central America is now controlled by Communists and dictators because we decided to stay out of it. Regardless of the threat to America. Now, you’ve got Russians, Chinese and Iranians down there and I very much doubt they are on a goodwill tour. We are blatantly inviting an attack on America and Obama is welcoming it. He is not naive or clueless to the evil down there – he revels in it. He just apologized for the US’ intervention over the last 200 years – that intervention kept us safe and free, but no more.

James Monroe was a wise man who has now been undone by the enemy within here in America:

The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety . . .

With the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

The US now finds itself the one restricted in the Americas – but our enemies are free to roam, plot and attack. This is a recipe for suicidal disaster of historic proportions and Obama knows it.

Obama is about to remove Cuba from the list of states sponsoring terrorism:

Sometime during this weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Panama, President Obama is expected to grant one of Cuban President Raul Castro’s top demands and remove his country from the Unites States’ list of governments that sponsor terrorism.

That, as Sen. Robert Menendez warns, not only flies in the face of all evidence, but removes critical leverage in Washington’s efforts to bring scores of fugitive American terrorists to justice.

The latest State Department report on state sponsors of terrorism — a list that has included Cuba since 1982 — notes that Cuba’s longstanding ties to the Basque terrorist group ETA “have become more distant,” though it still provides “safe haven” to its members.

Havana also harbors terrorists who struck in the United States, such as cop-killers Joanne Chesimard and Charles Hill (who also hijacked a plane), FALN bomber Guillermo Morales and scores of others who’ve avoided accountability for their crimes. (Many of those crimes, incidentally, were committed in the tri-state area.)

Weasel Zippers calls it his “reach out to terrorists” initiative. That’s right on the money.

Obama never lets a political platform go to waste and this Summit of the Americas in Panama City was no exception. President Obama expressed his anger and frustration over Iran with those “trying to short-circuit the actual negotiations,” insisting that “it needs to stop” and pointing the finger squarely at the GOP. I’m sure his aggressive sentiments were roundly approved of by all the dictators in attendance.

Raul Castro generously absolved Barack Obama of America’s past imperialism. That’s what Communist families are for right? Better have a barf bag ready – the crap speweth:

Castro, whose country was invited to the gathering for the first time this year, received an ovation when he began his speech by saying the “time had come for him to speak here” on Communist-ruled Cuba’s behalf.

He referred to the United States’ “wars, conquests and interventions” in the region, saying through an interpreter that the country has been a “hegemonic force that plundered territories throughout the Americas.”

Castro recalled that the U.S. Congress authorized military intervention in Cuba in the late 19th century and that led to the establishment of a military base in Guantanamo that still “occupies our territory.”

In the 20th century, the United States carried out a series of “interventions to overthrow democratic governments” in Latin America, where “dictators were installed in 20 countries, 12 of them simultaneously.”

“In South America alone, hundreds of thousands of people were killed,” Castro said, adding that the most “brutal” episode was the 1973 U.S.-backed coup that toppled Chilean President Salvador Allende’s democratically elected socialist government.

But after finishing his review of Latin American history, Castro issued an apology to his U.S. counterpart.

“The passion comes out of my pores when the revolution is involved, but I want to apologize to President Obama because he doesn’t have anything to do with all of that,” Castro said, eliciting another round of applause.

“All (of the previous U.S. presidents) are indebted to us, but not President Obama,” who is an “honest man … with a manner about him that speaks to his humble origins,” the Cuban leader said.

So, Obama strangles the Monroe Doctrine and embraces Latin dictatorships, Communists and fascists, while decreeing long live Communism in the Western Hemisphere. Is there anyone out there that still laughably thinks Obama is not an enemy from within? Once again, I join with Doug Ross in longing for a true conservative president. The question is, will we make it to the next election before the Communist crap hits the fan? How can our military leaders not see the impending attack on America that is all but certain when you throw our borders wide open and actually bring in massive amounts of illegal aliens, kill off the Monroe Doctrine, then cozy up to every Communist dictator and fascist in Latin America and as a finale, invite in the Axis of Evil: Russia, China and Iran into your midst… just what do you think is going to happen? Is America truly that suicidally oblivious to our enemies?

Obama, his lieutenants and minions have spent months — even years — crafting a narrative of harm done to Cuba by our embargo of trade with them. What’s missing from this narrative is this almost-never-mentioned fact: “Despite the Spanish term bloqueo (blockade), there has been no physical, naval blockade of the country by the United States after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The United States does not block Cuba’s trade with third parties: other countries are not under the jurisdiction of U.S. domestic laws, such as the Cuban Democracy Act […]. Cuba can, and does, conduct international trade with many third-party countries; Cuba has been a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1995.” (Quote from above link.) So, ponder that for a moment. Cuba is today and has been for decades a cesspool of human rights denial, a commercial and industrial failure, and a place from which natives fled to have any chance of a decent life. This despite the fact that Cuba has been free to trade with the entire rest of the world. It is clear from this that Cuba’s problems do not, even in the smallest degree, originate with America’s refusal to support or endorse the tyranny enforced by the brothers Castro. They did this entirely to themselves.

Obama said of his critics of a potential Iran deal: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of narrow minds.”(*see footnote) So, chaos would be the justice warrior of an open society? Obama is pumping his fist in the air and a la Che Guevara is shouting “Viva la revolucion!” while proclaiming the Monroe Doctrine is dead, long live the dictator.

Unsavory Agents

*(Obama’s familiar sounding “quote” is actually a misquote of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous statement:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Emerson’s actual quote illuminates the small-mindedness of the man who, in an effort to project sophistication, instead utters the bland, repetitious and fallacious consistencies so thoroughly woven through the fabric of his life and administration: that socialism will cure all of Man’s ills. Obama’s attempt to appear the scholar reflects instead Emerson’s “little statesman,” as he dissembles once again.)

04/11/15

Mark Levin: Obama’s foreign policy doctrine

MARK LEVIN: Our country won’t be destroyed by Islamo-Nazis…it’s gonna COLLAPSE FROM WITHIN

Levin: We Are Witnessing ‘Complete Evisceration of American Citizenship’

03/18/15

Anti-Marxist Counter-Revolution in Brazil

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

With the Middle East in turmoil and Russia’s Vladimir Putin threatening nuclear war, most of our media have missed a big story south of the border. President Barack Obama’s fellow Marxist, Dilma Rousseff, is coming under tremendous pressure to resign her presidency in Brazil. As many as three million Brazilians took to the streets on Sunday to demand the impeachment of Rousseff, a former Marxist terrorist, and the end of the rule of the Brazilian Workers’ Party.

Such a development would be a major blow to the anti-American left in Latin America, which has been operating since 1990 under the rubric of the São Paulo Forum, a pro-communist movement started by Rousseff’s predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, and Fidel Castro.

In a growing scandal, the treasurer of the ruling Workers’ Party has been charged with corruption and money laundering linked to the state-run oil company, Petrobras, a firm which has benefited from U.S. taxpayer loans provided through the Export-Import Bank under Obama.

While Obama has attempted to stifle oil development and production in the United States, his administration officially launched an “energy partnership” with Brazil in August of 2011. “We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers,” Obama told a group of Brazilian business leaders.

Some stories appearing in the Western press did note that as many as one million Brazilians turned out on Sunday to protest massive corruption linked to the Rousseff administration. One photo from the march showed a Brazilian waving a sign that said, “We won’t be another Venezuela,” a reference to another Marxist basket case of economic failure and corruption.

But sources contacted by Accuracy in Media say the turnout was far larger, with as many as three million Brazilians in the streets.

Alessandro Cota, a Brazilian who is currently a philosophy and political science researcher at the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy, Government, and Social Thought, told AIM, “This March 15 is certainly a new beginning for Brazil and probably the end of the dreams of all those who wanted to turn the largest country of Latin America into a socialist republic. After 12 years under the rule of the Brazilian Workers’ Party—8 years under President Lula (2003-2011), and 4 years under President Rousseff (who was re-elected last October for another four-year turn)—the Brazilian people, tired of waiting for opposition politicians to take action against the government, took the lead and decided to make history by themselves.”

Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, President of the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy, Government, and Social Thought, said, “Never and nowhere has a government been so completely rejected by its own population. But it is more than that. It is not only the rejection of a government, or a President. It is the rejection of the whole system of power that has been created by the Workers’ Party, which includes intellectuals and opinion-makers in the big media. People are no longer afraid of going against the Workers’ Party. Brazilians realized that all the power that President Lula, President Rousseff, and their minions had was based on a bluff, and now they are calling it.”

In Brazil, Cota said, the actual turnout was three million people who made it clear that “they want President Rousseff and the Workers’ Party out.” The figure of one million people who took to the streets was from the city of Sao Paulo alone.

He added, “It was the largest nationwide anti-government demonstration in the history of Brazil, and it happened just two days after the Workers Party’s allies organized their own ‘popular’ demonstration in support of President Rousseff.” He said the March 15 wave of protests was genuinely popular, a massive embodiment of the seven percent approval rating that Rousseff received only a few days ago. He said the March 15 demonstrations took place in 26 of the 27 Brazilian states and at least 160 cities, not to mention the anti-government protests that happened abroad.

By contrast, Cota said a pro-government demonstration was attended by a mix of card-carrying union members and people who got paid the equivalent of $10.

It appears that the Brazilian mainstream media have decided to deliberately play down the anti-regime sentiment. Cota said, “According to Datafolha, a local polling company linked to the leftist newspaper Folha de São Paulo, there were only 210 thousand people gathered on Avenida Paulista, the main thoroughfare of the city of São Paulo, a number that not only contradicted the official estimate of the State Police of São Paulo, but also the eyes of those who use them to see.”

The protests in Brazil are giving hope to those who see an opportunity to defeat Marxism in the Western hemisphere.

The pro-communist association called the São Paulo Forum was created in 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet Union led many to believe communism itself was on the wane. However, that was when Fidel Castro reached out to Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva of the Workers’ Party of Brazil, who would later become President of Brazil. An event was hosted in São Paulo, Brazil, bringing together what came to be known as the São Paulo Forum. The international movement included many different leftist groups, such as the communist narco-terrorists known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and communist and leftist parties in the region.

Incredibly, a report appeared which seemed to demonstrate a possible link between the Obama presidency and this leftist group.

On March 1, 2008, before U.S. presidential elections, Operation Phoenix was launched by Colombian special security forces just inside the Ecuadorian border. Raúl Reyes, second in command of the FARC, was killed. Documents found in Reyes’ computer after his death disclosed that “gringos” representing Obama wanted to meet with the FARC and that they were opposed to U.S. military aid for the Colombian government. Obama had been publicly critical of the Colombia government’s human rights record.

The Bush administration, using the services of the NSA, helped the Colombian government of President Alvaro Uribe in its war with the Cuban-backed FARC by locating and killing terrorist leaders and decimating the organization. But Uribe’s successor, President Juan Manuel Santos, the former defense minister, suddenly opened up negotiations with the FARC in Havana and has recently suspended the bombing of FARC camps and bases. As a result, the Santos-led negotiations could enable the FARC to escape criminal charges and emerge in the political process in Colombia as a respectable opposition movement.

Supporters of Uribe accuse Santos of allowing “Castro-Chavism” in the country, a reference to the long-time Cuban dictator and former Marxist ruler of Venezuela. Although the members of the São Paulo Forum do not believe in democracy, the FARC seems to have learned the lesson that they have to disguise themselves as democratic forces in order to further their goals, as their armed struggle has not been successful.

Like Obama in the U.S., these Marxists work through the system and slowly dismantle democratic institutions and checks on their power.

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.

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.”