05/28/16

Reds Demand Arms, Dollars and Trade Benefits

By: Cliff Kincaid – Accuracy in Media

Reds

Having established relations with the Castro regime in Cuba, President Obama has now signaled his willingness to sell weapons to the Communist Party dictatorship that runs Vietnam. It is the successor to the regime in Hanoi, North Vietnam, which overran South Vietnam, while in the process taking the lives of more than 58,000 Americans resisting communist aggression.

Media coverage of President Obama’s announcement in Hanoi portrayed the move as an attempt to counter Chinese influence in the region. This is pure propaganda from another “echo chamber” established by the Obama administration to sell a controversial policy. While China and Vietnam have some disagreements over territory, they are still both communist countries that share the same objective of defeating global “imperialism,” led by the United States.

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech on China-Vietnam relations at the Vietnamese National Assembly in Hanoi, Vietnam, on November 6, 2015. He referred to how relations have assumed “strategic importance.” China is Vietnam’s largest trading partner. These communist countries are not enemies. They are friends.

Continue reading

04/26/16

Support, Patriotism and Reality

By: T F Stern | T F Stern’s Rantings
War

Since the end of WWII America has been on many battlefields; but, regrettably have not made a serious attempt to force our opponents into unconditional surrender.  Instead we’ve learned how to retreat in such a way as to appear more or less victorious; not the same as having beaten your enemies into submission, …now is it?

“My country right or wrong.”   Whoa, can you imagine anyone from Generation X agreeing to that?

Some of my Facebook friends were circulating a picture of some Vietnam soldiers.  I was unable to force myself to hit the ‘Like’ button, something which caused me to consider ‘why’; …not because I didn’t support what these brave young men had done in the service of their country or that they hadn’t been valiant and done their jobs.   Something else was gnawing at me; but what?

“Sadly, fewer than 2% of you will like and share this picture of brave Vietnam soldiers. So let’s see how many likes and shares they can get.”

Continue reading

08/29/15

The Secret of Trump’s Success

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

“Go back to Univision” is how Donald Trump handled Mexican-American “journalist” Jorge Ramos when he tried to disrupt a Trump news conference. When Hillary Clinton compared Republicans to terrorists, the Republican National Committee asked for an apology. This contrast demonstrates why Trump is doing so well and the Republican Party, in general, is doing so poorly.

On the Megyn Kelly Fox News show on Thursday night, much was made of the fact that Hillary had made her comparison between Republicans and terrorists as she was looking at her notes. In other words, Kelly and her guest concluded, it was a deliberate insult. Of course it was. Why was this a surprise? Mrs. Clinton had returned to her roots as an Alinskyite, someone who demonizes her opponents as a deliberate strategy. Why can’t conservatives get it through their heads that Hillary is a committed leftist who can be just as good as Obama when it comes to poisoning the public discourse for political purposes?

Republican National Committee (RNC) Press Secretary Allison Moore said, “For Hillary Clinton to equate her political opponents to terrorists is a new low for her flailing campaign. She should apologize immediately for her inflammatory rhetoric.”

What is the point of such a statement? Does the RNC seriously believe Hillary will consider apologizing to Republicans? What the RNC should have said is that Hillary was back to using Alinskyite tactics, which she learned about in college, and that the use of such a strategy demonstrated her grounding in a form of Marxism. The RNC could have said that the American people have had enough of these divisive tactics from Obama, who has come close to inciting a race war in the United States, and that the public cannot tolerate another un-American presidency in which a top Democrat equates political opponents to foreign enemies.

As we argued more than two months ago, you have to study Marxism to understand Hillary. It is apparent the RNC hasn’t done its opposition research. Despite her love for money, Hillary is as much of a leftist as Barack Obama. She studied Alinsky in college and went to work as an intern for a law firm that employed communists. The best source of information on this is Hell to Pay, a book on Hillary by Barbara Olson, who told me in an interview in 2000 that she expected Mrs. Clinton to run for president and that her political background made her a “budding Leninist” who understood the concept of acquiring, accumulating and maintaining political power at any cost. In the same vein, she is determined to destroy the Republicans at any cost. Joe Biden has to understand this side of Hillary. It may be one reason why he is reluctant to jump into the presidential race against her. With a history of plagiarism and embarrassing off-the-cuff remarks, Biden could be torn apart.

Hillary Clinton has the blood of four Americans on her hands over her handling of Benghazi. Yet, she compares Republicans to terrorists? And the RNC responds by asking for an apology? This is almost comical.

Trump doesn’t ask for apologies. He fires back any way he can. That’s why, despite questions about his ideology and even religious views, he strikes a chord. The American people have watched their country being destroyed from within for seven years and they are tired of politicians responding with hearings, investigations and requests for apologies. They can’t figure out why Obama hasn’t been impeached by now. They want someone to tell it like it is about the deterioration of our nation and those responsible for its demise.

What Trump has done, on so many occasions it is difficult to count, is to finger the media for their role in the destruction of America. Can you believe he actually accuses liberal reporters of being dishonest? He actually mocks and ridicules them to their faces.

Univision deserves scorn. It is a “news” organization that openly targets Trump and he has the guts to counterattack when one of Univision’s hired guns shows up at a Trump news conference for the purpose of making a spectacle of himself and trying to embarrass Trump. “Go back to Univision” is precisely the comment that Ramos deserved. If anything, one can argue that Trump was too nice for inviting the advocacy journalist back to the press conference.

The Los Angeles Times calls Ramos “the Spanish-language Walter Cronkite,” and suggests that the confrontation could somehow “prove dangerous for Trump, who thus far been something of a Teflon candidate.” This is the obligatory reference to how Trump has opened himself up to the charge of racism for putting the obnoxious Ramos in his place. Later in the article, we read that Ramos’s daughter is working for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, but Ramos “has said her job doesn’t affect his work.” Sure. Now we have another example of why Trump calls the media dishonest.

As for the comparison with Cronkite, the long-time CBS Evening News anchorman was as much of a fraud as Ramos. Cronkite undermined the war against communism in Vietnam and used his newscast as a soapbox to argue against President Reagan’s military buildup to counter the Soviets. Cronkite’s FBI file showed he was a dupe of the Soviet intelligence services, who could be counted on to promote Soviet objectives. After he retired, he showed up at a World Federalist meeting to accept an award and endorse world government through the United Nations. Hillary was there via videotape to thank him.

Ramos should ask for an apology from the Los Angeles Times for being compared to Walter Cronkite. I’m joking, of course. They are both disgraces to the journalism profession.

07/22/15

The Media Love Affair with McCain

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

In the fight between Donald Trump and John McCain (R-AZ) over the senator’s military service, the liberal media have taken McCain’s side. But since when did the media get concerned about the noble cause of fighting communism in Vietnam?

Our media, led by CBS Evening News anchorman Walter Cronkite, who was then an influential media figure, protested the Vietnam War and prompted the U.S. withdrawal and communist takeover. His FBI file demonstrated Cronkite’s contacts with Soviet officials and how he was used as a dupe by the communists.

More than 58,000 Americans sacrificed and died to save that country from communism.

The liberal media never supported the war against communism in Vietnam. Yet they are now browbeating Trump over avoiding the war through deferments. Our media are full of hypocrites. They don’t admire McCain for fighting in Vietnam. They admire him because he is a “maverick” who frequently takes the liberal line, such as on “comprehensive immigration reform.”

If the liberals in the media are so enamored of McCain’s military service in Vietnam, let them revisit the history of the Vietnam War and express some outrage over the fact that it was a Democratic Congress that cut off aid to South Vietnam, leading to the communist takeover and the genocide in neighboring Cambodia.

What about some critical coverage of Obama’s recent meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong, the head of Vietnam’s Communist Party? Vietnam is one of the beneficiaries of Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement. If passed, it would benefit Vietnam’s communist rulers.

As we have pointed out, “Interestingly, Obama is trying to sell the agreement as a counter to China’s influence throughout the world. He wants us to believe that China and Vietnam somehow differ on their common objective of achieving world communism at the expense of America’s standing as the leader of what used to be the Free World. Both countries would gladly welcome the U.S. to help pay to accelerate the growth of their socialist economies and expand their markets.”

McCain supports the TPP; Trump does not.

We have pointed out that Vietnam is “a dictatorship with the blood of those Americans on its hands,” a reference to what the communists did to McCain and our soldiers, and “which has no respect for the human rights of its own people.”

A bipartisan congressional letter about Obama’s meeting with the Vietnamese communist reaffirmed this fact. It was signed by Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), who represents one of the largest Vietnamese populations outside of Vietnam in the world, in Orange County, California. She said, “I am disappointed that the administration has chosen to host Nguyen Phu Trong, the General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party. There continues to be egregious and systemic human rights abuses in Vietnam, including religious and political persecutions. As an advocate for human rights in Vietnam I cannot ignore the dismal state of freedom of the press and freedom of speech.”

This is precisely what McCain and tens of thousands of other Americans were fighting to prevent.

Yet, McCain issued a statement, saying that he “warmly” welcomed Trong’s “historic trip” to the United States. He added, “This visit demonstrates the growing strength of the U.S.-Vietnam partnership as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the normalization of relations between our countries.”

Why is McCain celebrating a “partnership” with a dictatorship that he and thousands of Americans fought against?

What’s more, McCain says the U.S. “must further ease the prohibition on the sale of lethal military equipment to Vietnam…”  Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had partially lifted a ban on lethal weapons sales to Vietnam in October of 2014.

If our media are so concerned about an American Vietnam veteran being the target of a perceived insult from Trump, why haven’t they put pressure on the Obama administration to clean up Vietnam’s human rights record before going ahead with another agreement to benefit that regime? After all, this is the same regime that captured and tortured Sen. McCain.

The answer is that our media are using the current McCain controversy to damage Trump, who has almost single-handedly made illegal immigration into a national issue. They don’t really care about McCain’s service in Vietnam.

When President Bill Clinton normalized relations with communist Vietnam in 1995, he thanked Senator McCain and then-Senator John Kerry (D-MA) for agreeing with the notion that America had to “move forward on Vietnam.”

What has happened in the meantime?

We pointed out 11 years ago that President Clinton’s lifting of the U.S. trade embargo on Vietnam in 1995 was followed by a bilateral trade agreement. Kerry and McCain supported that, too. The U.S. trade deficit with Vietnam has been consistently rising ever since, to the point where it was $19.6 billion in 2013.

In his statement on Trong’s visit to the United States, McCain said, “Since 1995, annual U.S.-Vietnam trade has increased from less than $500 million to $36 billion last year.” He conveniently ignored the trade deficits that have cost American jobs.  For example, the communist regime has been dumping shrimp products into the United States at artificially low prices, and has become the fourth largest shrimp supplier to the U.S. market, even though several shipments have been detected with banned antibiotics.

At the time he extended diplomatic relations, Clinton said, “Whatever we may think about the political decisions of the Vietnam era, the brave Americans who fought and died there had noble motives. They fought for the freedom and the independence of the Vietnamese people. Today the Vietnamese are independent, and we believe this step will help to extend the reach of freedom in Vietnam and, in so doing, to enable these fine veterans of Vietnam to keep working for that freedom.”

False. The Vietnamese people did not become independent. They became slaves of the communists.

Obama recently met with their slave master. But our media didn’t utter any tears for the victims of communism.

You may also recall that then-Senator Kerry ran a Senate investigation that brought the search for live American POWs from the war to a close. McCain was a member of the Kerry committee.

Since McCain has been in the news for his military service, this should have been a newsworthy topic for our media.

Roger Hall, A POW/MIA researcher, went to court, having sued the CIA for documents on missing or abandoned Vietnam POWs. Hall and many others are convinced that hundreds of American POWs were left behind in Vietnam.

Former Senator Bob Smith (R) of New Hampshire wrote the legislation creating the Senate Select Committee on POWs and MIAs in the early 1990s in order to get the truth released to the public.

“Despite the release of thousands of documents and the testimony of dozens of witnesses, I could not complete the job. Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Select Committee, and Senator John McCain were more interested in establishing diplomatic relations and putting the war behind them than they were about finding the truth about our missing,” said Smith. “I fought them constantly to the point of exhaustion. It was a very sad chapter in American history.”

A YouTube video exposed McCain’s efforts to block access to POW information and examines his alleged cooperation with the North Vietnamese while he was in captivity. Senator Smith is one of those featured in the video.

Why don’t the media remind us of that? We have the answer. They are too busy bashing Trump and trying to look patriotic about the Vietnam War.

07/17/15

How the Republicans Plan to Lose to Hillary

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

A new survey from Univision, the pro-Mexico television network, demonstrates the utter folly of Republicans appealing to Hispanic voters. It finds that 68 percent have a favorable view of Hillary Clinton despite the scandals swirling around her. By contrast, only 36 percent have a favorable view of former Republican Governor Jeb Bush, who is married to a Mexican and speaks Spanish.

Bush “was the highest-rated of all the Republican candidates,” Univision reports, with Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a one-time proponent of amnesty for illegals, coming in second with only a 35 percent approval rate.

What the poll demonstrates is that Hispanics are basically owned by the Democratic Party. The Democrats’ power grab for the Latino vote has been successful. However, ultimately the Democratic Party’s success in the presidential election depends on convincing Republicans to fruitlessly continue to appeal to Hispanics, while abandoning the GOP voter base of whites, conservatives and Christians.

Overall, in terms of political party affiliation, 57 percent of Hispanics identified themselves as Democrats and only 18 percent said they are Republicans. A total of 25 percent called themselves independent.

In another finding, 59 percent of Hispanic voters said they were satisfied with Barack Obama’s presidency after his six years in office. Clearly, most Hispanics have drunk the Kool-Aid. For them, it appears that federal benefits and legalization of border crossers are what matters. Most of them don’t bat an eye in regard to Obama’s lawless and traitorous conduct of domestic and foreign policy.

What the Republicans have left is to try to appeal to white, conservative and Christian voters. But that strategy, of course, runs the obvious risk of being depicted by the liberal media as racist. After all, whites are not supposed to have a “white identity,” as Jared Taylor’s book by that name describes.

Whites cannot have a racial identity, but Hispanics and blacks can. This is one aspect of political correctness. As communists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who are themselves white, put it in their book, it is a “race course against white supremacy.”

If Republicans pander to Hispanics, they will alienate their voter base, which has shown in their reaction to the Donald Trump candidacy that they want more—not less—action taken to control the border with Mexico. Republican Senator John McCain (AZ) calls the Trump supporters “crazies,” an indication that the GOP establishment would rather jettison these people than bring them into the Republican camp. Like McCain, former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has also attacked Trump, saying his remarks about criminal aliens are hurting the GOP. It’s amazing how a loser like Romney, who also threw in the towel on gay marriage when he was governor of Massachusetts, continues to generate press. What he is saying is what the liberal media want to hear.

Of course, the political correctness which dominates the national dialogue and debate also means that Republicans like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are likely to continue to demonize Trump, thereby alienating many whites. As a result, the Republicans will get less of the conservative and Christian vote, further diminishing their chances of winning the White House. It will be a replay of the losing campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney. Republicans have already alienated many Christian voters by giving up the fight for traditional marriage. They had planned to abandon border control as an issue until Trump and “El Chapo” got in the way.

Meanwhile, in another amazing turnaround, Republicans on Capitol Hill are backing Obama’s call for “sentencing reform,” a strategy that will empty the prisons and increase the crime rate, thereby alienating GOP voters in favor of law and order.

As this scenario plays out, Mrs. Clinton is coming across on the Democratic side looking like a moderate, by virtue of the fact that an open socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), is running “to her left” for the Democratic nomination.

The Clinton-Sanders show has all the earmarks of a carefully staged demonstration of the Marxist dialectic, an exercise designed to create the appearance of conflict in order to force even more radical change on the American people through Democratic Party rule.

Anybody who knows anything about Hillary, a student of Saul Alinsky, understands that her “moderation” is only a façade. Her thesis on Alinsky for Wellesley College was titled “There Is Only the Fight…” That is the Marxist strategy. It is the Alinsky version of the Marxist dialectic. It was also adopted by Obama, who was trained by Alinsky disciples working with the Catholic Church in Chicago.

In my column, “Study Marxism to Understand Hillary,” I noted that Barbara Olson had come to the conclusion while researching her book on Hillary that “she has a political ideology that has its roots in Marxism.” Olson noted, “In her formative years, Marxism was a very important part of her ideology…”

This means that Mrs. Clinton understands that the Sanders candidacy actually supports and does not undermine her own candidacy. It makes Hillary look like a moderate while she moves further to the left, a place she wants to be, in response to the left-wing Democratic base. Only the Marxist insiders seem to understand what is happening.

Some uninformed commentators refer to something called “Clintonism,” a supposed moderate brand of Democratic Party politics. If that ever existed, it applied to Bill Clinton and not Hillary.

The fact is that Sanders and Mrs. Clinton have associated with the same gang of communists and fellow travelers for many years. Sanders was an active collaborator with the Communist Party-sponsored U.S. Peace Council.

As for Hillary, Barbara Olson reported in her book Hell to Pay that Robert Borosage, who served as director of the Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), was “a colleague and close acquaintance” of Clinton. Olson wrote that Mrs. Clinton operated in the “reaches of the left including Robert Treuhaft and Jessica Mitford,” who had been “committed Communists” and “Stalinists.” Olson said that Hillary worked for Treuhaft and paved the way for Mitford to lobby then-Governor Bill Clinton on the death penalty issue.

Olson described Hillary as a “budding Leninist” who understood the Leninist concept of acquiring, accumulating and maintaining political power at any cost. She wrote that “Hillary has never repudiated her connection with the Communist movement in America or explained her relationship with two of its leading adherents. Of course, no one has pursued these questions with Hillary. She has shown that she will not answer hard questions about her past, and she has learned that she does not need to—remarkable in an age when political figures are allowed such little privacy.”

Researcher Carl Teichrib has provided me with a photo of a Hillary meeting with Cora Weiss from the May 2000 edition of “Peace Matters,” the newsletter of the Hague Appeal for Peace. Weiss, a major figure in the Institute for Policy Studies, gained notoriety for organizing anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and traveling to Hanoi to meet with communist leaders. In the photo, Hillary is shown fawning over a Hague Appeal for Peace gold logo pin that Weiss is wearing.

Teichrib, editor of Forcing Change, recalls being an observer at the 1999 World Federalist Association (WFA) conference, held in association with the Hague Appeal for Peace, during which everyone in attendance was given an honorary membership into the WFA. In addition to collaborating with the pro-Hanoi Hague Appeal for Peace, the WFA staged a “Mission to Moscow” and held several meetings with the Soviet Peace Committee for the purpose of “discussing the goal of general and complete disarmament” and “the strengthening of the United Nations.” Mrs. Clinton spoke to a WFA conference in a tribute to veteran newsman Walter Cronkite, a supporter of world government

In the WFA booklet, “The Genius of Federation: Why World Federation is the Answer to Global Problems,” the group described how a “world federation,” a euphemism for world government, could be achieved by advancing “step by step toward global governance,” mostly by enhancing the power and authority of U.N. agencies.

Obama’s Iran deal continues this strategy by placing enormous power in the hands of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

At this stage in the campaign, even before the first Republican presidential debate, we can already see how the race is playing out. Hillary is counting on the Republicans nominating another loser with a losing strategy while she moves to the left and looks like a moderate.

Alinsky would be proud.

07/3/15

Mesmerized by the Bear: The Great Soviet Deception

By: Brent Parrish
The Right Planet

Part 1

Part 2

This is a rather prophetic lecture, if you ask me, by Don McAlvany on the false demise of Communism. It was recorded 25 years ago, in 1990, shortly following the fall of the Berlin Wall, which marked the beginning of the Weidervereinigung des Deutschlands (Reunification of Germany).

What I find particularly fascinating about McAlvany’s presentation are his references to KGB defector Anatoliy Golytsin’s book New Lies for Old. I have written previously (see here) about Anatoliy’s Golytsin’s startlingly accurate predictions concerning Soviet plans to deceive the West into believing Communism was dead, and that the Soviet Union was a thing of the past. Golytsin went on to write his second book entitled The Perestroika Deception in 1995.

Most of Golytsin’s predictions have proven true in hindsight. In 1984, when New Lies for Old first hit the bookshelves, Golytsin predicted that the Berlin Wall would be torn down in order to fool the West into believing that the Soviet Union was shattered. What makes Golytsin’s prediction even more eye-opening is the fact he had written the manuscript years before New Lies for Old reached publication.

The Soviets were masters at disinformation and deception. The sophistication of their subversive techniques are breathtaking in scope and audacity. Many in the West have failed to grasp the incredible lengths the Soviets and the KGB were willing to go to in order to deceive and subvert their enemies—namely, the United States and the entire Western world.

Many of the strategies and tactics employed by the Soviets—such as the dialectical and the “two steps forward, one step” back  strategies—are foreign to many Western minds. But a thorough understanding of these strategies is paramount if one hopes to counter them. (You might’ve noticed I’ve switched to the present tense. I’ll get to that.)

Take the dialectical strategy, for example. Without getting into a dissertation on Marxist dialectics, the dialectical strategy entails the manipulation of friend and foe alike—playing both sides of the fence, so to speak. Communists are known for setting up “false opposition” groups in order to control and herd their opposition. Vladimir I. Lenin once said, “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” Leading the opposition requires infiltration, also referred to as “controlled opposition.”

Golitsyn-Perestroika-Deception-Dialectical-Quote

Communists are willing to take “one step back” in order to “move two steps forward”; giving a false impression they are in a position of weakness; when, in fact, they are strong. Such a strategy can provide an opportunity to offer “concessions” to the enemy—but only “concessions” that provide the ability to move “two steps forward.” The goal is to goad the enemy into offering real concessions (i.e. compromise), while only offering token concessions that have no real lasting consequences on the long-range strategy of crushing the enemy.

“We advance through retreat … when we are weak, we boast of strength. and when we are strong, we feign weakness.”

—V.I. Lenin

All-war-is-based-on-deception

The strategy of feigning weakness in order to lull the enemy into complacency is a rather Machiavellian concept; but it also is derived from the ancient Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu’s maxims on war.

… Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat…. Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline, simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength…. Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions…. Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act. He sacrifices something, that the enemy may snatch at it…. [“two steps forward, one step back”] By holding out baits, he keeps him on the march; then with a body of picked men he lies in wait for him.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Back in February of 2014, I had the opportunity to sit down with world-renown researcher Trevor Loudon, author of the book Barack Obama and the Enemy Within. He relayed a story to me that left me incredulous, and it ties right into the whole Soviet strategy of feigning weakness.

An ex-Communist friend of Trevor’s from New Zealand actually attended Lenin’s Institute for Higher Learning in Moscow. Promising members of the Communist Party, from all over the world, were sometimes offered the opportunity to travel to Russia for further training at the International Lenin Institute, where they learned things like racial agitation, trade union building, every facet of Russian history (albeit selective Russian history)—even training in explosive devices, small arms and guerrilla warfare tactics. Trevor’s friend said that a Soviet official at the Moscow institute told the students the reason the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan was that the Soviet Union needed “their own Vietnam.”

Yes, you read that correctly.

But, if you ever listen to former Soviet officials speak about the Russian experience in Afghanistan, they often times make the comparison to the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. According to Trevor’s friend, it was all done to feign weakness and lull the West into thinking the Soviet Union wasn’t the military force they purported themselves to be. The fact of the matter is the Soviets could’ve wiped Afghanistan off the map, had they so chosen to do so.

As I drove home from my meeting with Trevor, I could scarcely believe what he had told me. But I began to ponder my own knowledge of Soviet history. The more I thought about what Trevor had told me, the less incredible it seemed.

For example, in the late 30s, the Soviet regime under Josef Stalin was systematically liquidating thousands of Russian citizens every single day. It was known as the “Great Purge.” Stalin’s depraved and blood-thirsty executioner, Lavrenti Beria, oversaw the murder of millions of Russians, and even participated on countless occasions in the executions of his own people.

After war broke out between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, there were numerous incidents of Soviet units being ordered to attack German positions and strongholds in suicidal frontal assaults that resulted in horrific casualties, often numbering in the hundreds or thousands. There are accounts of the dog tags being stripped from the dead in order to cover up the crimes of the Soviet regime. Rarely has there been an example in history of a nation that treated its own war dead with such utter contempt.

So, as I thought more and more about what Trevor had told me, it started to seem quite plausible—if not to be expected from such a morally bankrupt regime. When President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” it was not unwarranted hyperbole. For it is not possible, in words, to describe the horrors and terrors that have been visited upon the Russian people under the Soviet system—and, more than likely, are still being visited upon the Russian people … albeit not at the astonishing levels as was experienced during Stalin’s merciless and bloody reign.

As Don McAlvany points out in his lecture, there had been six periods of “glasnost” dating back to the 20s prior to 1990. During all of the so-called glasnost periods, the United States and the West were duped into believing the Soviets were changing their tune—only to watch the Soviets return to their oppressive and tyrannical ways after securing concessions from the United States. The old dialectical doctrine of “two steps forward, one step back” has proved wildly successful against the United States and its allies, helping to further the Russian strategy for international rule and subversion.

Six-Periods-of-Glasnost

The Soviets (i.e. Communists) employ long-range strategies. Like a master chess player, they think ten steps ahead. Stalin’s henchman Lavrenti Beria said in the early 50s, “Capitalism’s short-term view can never envisage the lengths across which we can plan.” Sadly, the United States has never really formulated long-term strategic goals to counter such threats.

Golytsin predicted the Soviets would put a “happy face” on Communism by calling for “democratic reforms” in Russia, and in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Bloc countries.

Many in the West viewed the chummy meetings between Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan as a clear sign the Cold War was over, and that Soviet-style Communism had been defeated. Talk of glasnost (“openness” or “publicity”) and perestroika (i.e. restructuring, remaking, reforming, regrouping) filled the airwaves and Western press at the time.

Did Mikhail Gorbachev ever renounce Communism? Was he really a reformer who only wished to move Russia toward “democracy”?

Well, that depends on how one defines democracy.

Via MRC:

During the 70th anniversary of the Marxist revolution [in October 1987], Gorbachev reaffirmed his country’s expansionist desires: “In October of 1917, we parted with the Old World, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a New World, the World of Communism. We shall never turn off that road.”

Oh, and there’s plenty more of that, from where that came from (hat tip: The Contemplative Observer):

We are for a Lenin who is alive! In building our future we are basing ourselves upon the gigantic intellectual and moral potential of the socialist idea linked with the theory of Marxism-Leninism. We see no rational grounds to give up the spiritual [sic!!!] richness contained in Marxism. Through restructuring [i.e. ‘perestroika’], we want to give socialism a second wind and unveil in all its plenitude [meaning: globally!] the vast humanist potential of the socialist system.” – “In order to achieve this, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union returns to the origins and principles of the Bolshevik Revolution, to the Leninist ideas about the construction of a new society… Our Party was and remains the Party of Lenin… In short, we are for a Lenin who is alive.” – “We must seek these answers guided by the spirit of Leninism, the style of Lenin’s thinking, and the method of dialectical cognition.”

—Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking to a group of Russian students, Nov. 15, 1989

“Gentlemen, Comrades, do not be concerned about all that you hear about ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’ and democracy in the coming years. These are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant change within the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans, and to let them fall asleep.

—Mikhail Gorbachev, early in his tenure, speaking before the Politburo

The Party has made “specific decisions on how to update our political system”. – “Thus we shall give a fresh impetus to our revolutionary restructuring. We shall maintain our quiet [i.e. Leninist] creativity and daring in an efficient and responsible fashion in a Leninist Bolshevik manner.”

—Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking at the 27th CPSU Congress, March 1986

“Adopting a bold, realistic, mobilising and inspiring strategy, one that is Leninist in spirit, the struggle for the triumph of Communist ideals, of peace and progress, the 27th Congress of the CPSU expresses the Party’s firm determination to honourably follow our great road, and open up new vistas for the creative energy and revolutionary initiative of the… people’s intelligentsia. The Congress calls on all Soviet people to dedicate all their strength, knowledge, ability, and creative enthusiasm to the great goals of Communist construction, and to worthily continue Lenin’s victorious revolutionary cause, the cause of the October Revolution!”

—Mikhail Gorbachev, closing address to the 27th CPSU Congress, March 6, 1986

“Perestroika is a revolutionary process for it is a leap forward in the development of socialism, in the realization of its crucial characteristics.”

—Mikhail Gorbachev: ‘Perestroika’, 1987

“What is meant [by the term ‘revolution from above’] is profound and essentially revolutionary changes implemented on the initiative of the authorities themselves but necessitated by objective changes in the situation. It may seem that our current perestroika could be called ‘revolution from above’. True, the perestroika drive started on the Communist Party’s initiative, and the Party leads it. I spoke frankly about it at the meeting with Party activists in Khabarovsk [already!!!] in the summer of 1986. We began at the top of the pyramid and went down to its base, as it were. Yes, the Party leadership started it. The highest Party and state bodies elaborated and adopted the program. True, perestroika is not a spontaneous but a governed process.

—Mikhail Gorbachev: “Perestroika,” 1987

“We openly confess that we refuse the hegemonial endeavours and globalist claims of the United States. We are not pleased by some aspects of American policy and of the American Way of Life. But we respect the right of the American people, just as the right of all other peoples, to live along its own rules and laws, its own morals and inclinations.”

—Mikhail Gorbachev: “Perestroika,” 1987

“Those who hope that we shall move away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed.”

—Mikhail Gorbachev:  “Perestroika,” 1987

“We see that confusion has arisen in some people’s minds: aren’t we retreating from the positions of socialism, especially when we introduce new and unaccustomed forms of economic management and public life, and aren’t we subjecting the Marxist-Leninist teaching itself to revision? … No, we are not retreating a single step from socialism, from Marxism-Leninism …

—Mikhail Gorbachev, 1988

Alexander-Trachtenberg-Bella-Dodd-Quote

Many in the West are also of the belief that the KGB no longer exists. But nothing could be farther from the truth. While no longer called the KGB, the secretive security agency merely restructured (i.e. perestroika), and is now known as the FSB (Russian Federal Security Forces). The FSB is still headquartered in the infamous Lubyanka building in Moscow. The FSB is the KGB.

A little while back, I visited the official FSB website (fsb.ru). I used Google translation services to translate the pages. One link titled “Our Leaders” lists the names of such notorious figures as Felix Dzerzhinsky, Yakov Peters, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, Lavrenti Beria, Yuri Andropov … and Vladimir Putin. Remember, the official FSB website lists these individuals as their “leaders.” It doesn’t look like anything has changed to me, as far as the old KGB is concerned, except for the name.

One of the main goals of the Soviets was to eliminate NATO. With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the dialectical application of their “two steps forward, one step” back strategy, Moscow hoped to gain concessions from the United States—namely, the dissolution of NATO. But the United States was resistant to the idea of breaking apart the NATO alliance. So, like the saying goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”—NATO, that is. Once again … infiltrate and take over from within.

“Russian membership of the Council of Europe will open up intensified new cooperation between Russia and Europe and will assist us in reaching our objectives of achieving membership of the European Union and of NATO.

—Then Russian Foreign Minister, Andrei Kozyrev, after Russia’s admission to the Council of Europe by February 8, 1996

Perhaps one of the most important predictions Anatoliy Golytsin made was his repeated insistence that the purpose of all these subversive tactics was “the establishment of a neutral, socialist Europe” (New Lies for Old, pg. 334).

Enter the European Union.

“The collective security model … should pave the way for a gradual evolutionary synthesis of several processes: integration within the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] and the EU [European Union], strengthening and increasing the role of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, transforming NATO [and] working together to prevent or resolve conflicts.”

—Yuriy Ushakov, Director of the Directorate for European Cooperation at the Russian Foreign Ministry, in International Affairs, Vol. 4, #5 (1995): “Europe: Towards a New Security Model”

Of particular note in the above quote is the reference to “transforming NATO.”

For those who may still be of the opinion that talk of a “one-world government” (i.e. “new world order”) is strictly relegated to the realm of crackpots and so-called “conspiracy theorists,” consider the words of the unelected full-time President of the EU, Herman Van Rompuy, who has openly referenced the agenda for “global governance” on more than one occasion. Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has referred to the European Union as a “pale version of the Soviet Union.”

In 2009, Van Rompuy said:

“2009 is also the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The climate conference in Copenhagen, is another step towards the global management of our planet.”

Van Rompuy has also stated his desire to work closely with Russia in order to further the agenda of global governance:

“By working together, the EU and Russia can make a decisive contribution to global governance … to global economic governance in the G8 and the G20.”

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine shows the “Russian Bear” still has its claws. Just today there was a report Russia was reviewing the “legality” of Baltic states’ independence. The level of disinformation coming from Putin’s state-run media machine has reached fever pitch within Russia. The Russian people are being fed a steady and constant diet of hyper-nationalistic and intensely anti-American rhetoric; it resembles a war-time footing.

Ex-Communist turned vocal anti-Communist, Dr. Bella V. Dodd (1904-1969), author of the book School of Darkness, pointed out there are three concepts that are important to differentiate concerning Communism, i.e., the Communist Conspiracy (i.e. “world conspiracy”), the Communist Party (political arm), and the Communist Movement (“social action,” i.e. praxis).

At the heart of Communism lies conspiracy. In order to subvert and deceive, conspiracy is a vital and necessary component. Communists are taught to lie … the predetermined ends always justify the means. Period.

Excerpt from page 24 of John Stormer's book None Dare Call It Treason (1964)

The one thing Communists and their ilk cannot withstand is their strategy and process being exposed. Communism is a form of psychological warfare (i.e. psyops) based on deception. Psyops only work if the party who is being deceived and manipulated is unaware of the tactics being employed against them. In essence, it’s a mind game. This is why it absolutely crucial to understand the dialectic process when it comes to Marxism-Leninism, if one wishes to have any success at countering such subversive and deceitful tactics.

Unfortunately, for many Americans and Westerners, it is still inconceivable that such a conspiracy is, and has been, employed against them. As one long-time and well-known researcher on Russian (i.e. Communist) strategy and tactics, J.R. Nyquist, recently wrote:

This last point is not to be made in polite society, and few are well-informed enough to know something of its validity. For 99 out of 100 persons, it is preferable to believe a lie. As a former British MP once said within my hearing; “Reagan and Thatcher saved the West from socialism.” But a former Russian GRU colonel, sitting across the table, whispered in my ear, “But America is the Marxist paradise.”

If you still find it hard to believe that the U.S.A. is already a “Marxist paradise,” and the world is moving toward global governance (i.e. worldwide socialism), I would encourage you to read the Communist Manifesto. Pay particular note to what has been referred to as the “10 planks of the Communist Manifesto” in Chapter Two. And then ask yourself, how many of these 10 points have already been implemented in the United States? I think, if you’re intellectually honest with yourself, the answer will shock you. And if it’s still too hard to digest and believe, just apply the scientific method: observe, make predictions, test your predictions, and then draw your own conclusion.

05/3/15

Obama’s Trade Deal With Communist Vietnam and Muslim Brunei

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

Kevin Kearns, president of the U.S. Business & Industry Council (USBIC), is interviewed about whether the Republican-controlled Congress will pass President Obama’s Trans Pacific Partnership. USBIC is a national business organization advocating for domestic U.S. manufacturers since 1933. He says previous trade deals have resulted in the U.S. losing five million manufacturing jobs and 57,000 manufacturing establishments since 2000.

02/4/15

Terrorists and Our Idiot President

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

TerroristsYou know something is terribly wrong when three former Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz and Madeleine Albright tell a Senate Armed Services Committee that the President of the United States is an idiot with no idea how to conduct foreign affairs. Well, they didn’t say it in those words, but that was pretty much the message. That was January 29.

Two days earlier retired 4-Star General James Matthis, former head of U.S. Central Command, former Army Vice Chief of Staff and 4-Star General Jack Keane, and Navy Admiral William Fallon, also a former CentCom chief, had also testified before the Committee. They had a similar message as the diplomats. Obama and the other idiots in the White House are completely clueless regarding the threat of radical Islam in general and a potential nuclear Iran in particular.

This is, after all, a White House that is trying to call those intent on taking over the entire Middle East and, after that, the rest of the world anything other than “terrorists.” They have used terms such as “insurgents”, “activists” and “militants.” Here at home, they are still referring to the killings at Fort Hood as “workplace violence.” Don’t any of these idiots understand that the terrorists, whether they call themselves al Qaeda or the Islamic State, Hezbollah, Hamas or any other name all constitute the same threat?

That’s what the generals addressed. They told the Senate committee that absence of a White House strategy makes the ISIS, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan wars “unwinnable.” I have been around since the end of World War II and that stretch of U.S. history is one in which we fought to a stalemate in Korea and a loss in Vietnam. After we won the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama pulled out and now they are lost too. There was a time when Americans and their leaders knew how to win wars.

Indeed, there was a time when Americans preferred to elect generals to be their President, starting with George Washington. Among those with that rank were Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Ruther P. Hayes, James A. Garfield. Chester A. Arthur. Benjamin Harrison, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. All the others had also served in the military in some capacity…except Barack Hussein Obama.

Obama not only doesn’t have experience in the military, he doesn’t seem to like them much. He has done everything he can to reduce our military capacity to fight a war anywhere or to show any genuine respect for the troops on active duty. The only uniform he ever wore was as an Indonesian Boy Scout.

Obama Foreign PolicyRetired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis told the Congress “America needs a refresh national security strategy. We need to come out from our reactive crouch and take a firm, strategic stance in defense of our values.” Apparently those values don’t matter to the White House or to those left-wingers who wet their pants over the popularity of “Sniper”, a film that pays tribute to our troops who fought the war in Iraq.

Under Obama’s term in office, radical Islam has increased four-fold in the past five years, ISIS ten times since 2012 and Iran has masterminded control of the capitols in Beirut, Lebanon, Damascus, Syria, Baghdad, Iraq, and now in Sanaa, Yemen. It has been the power behind Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Gen. Keane described Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan as an “absolute strategic failure.” He called radical Islam “the major security challenge of our generation.”

Regarding Iran, Gen. Keane said, “In 1980, Iran declared the United States as a strategic enemy and its goal is to drive the United State out of the region, achieve regional hegemony, and destroy the state of Israel.”

“Is there any doubt that Iran is on the march and is systematically moving toward their regional hegemonic objective?” asked Gen. Keane. “Iran has been on a 20-year journey to acquire nuclear weapons, simply because they know it guarantees preservation of the regime and makes them, along with their partners, the dominant power in the region, thereby capable of expanding their control and influence. Add to this their ballistic missile delivery system and Iran is not only a threat to the region, but to Europe, as well.” The U.S. in time will be in missile range.

“We have no comprehensive strategy to stop it or defeat it,” said Gen. Keane.

Thanks to Barack Obama, the United States of America can no longer be seen as the world leader, opposing the forces that seek to impose control. Former allies, particularly in the Middle East, no longer have any confidence that we would come to their defense if they were attacked.

Thanks to Barack Obama, our enemies have been emboldened and our allies confused, but it is not that confusing. He is an idiot who lacks any grasp of history’s lessons and he is a coward who cannot be expected to seriously respond to our own and our allies’ enemies.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

02/3/15

The Other Cause of Terrorism

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

Corruption

I never fail to be astonished by the amount of corruption there is in the world. It is a very human trait whether it was royalty asserting that they ruled by God’s choice until their subjects rose up against them or modern day despots encountering the same fate.

Thieves of StateSarah Chayes has authored “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security” ($26.95, W.W. Norton) and it is quite timely when you consider that corruption ignited the “Arab Spring”, first in Tunisia when a peddler grew so tired of the police asking for bribes that he set himself afire in protest. Its dictator’s wife openly displayed the nation’s stolen wealth for which they were driven from power. In Egypt there was a similar response when the public tired of the looting of the state treasury by Mubarak’s son. Revolts from Libya to Syria have been generated by the same cause.

Corruption in the Middle East has a long history, but it is worldwide and, depending on the nation, is either tolerated as part of the way the culture does business or resisted by governments who understand that it undermines their legitimacy. Throw a dart at the map of the world and you are likely to hit a nation where corruption is influencing current events. As Chayes notes, “Time and again U.S. officials are blindsided by major developments in countries where they work. Too often they are insensible to the perspectives and aspirations of population.”

A classic example is Afghanistan where both the Soviet Union and the U.S. ran into such ingrained corruption that it undermined their objectives, the former to turn it into a satellite and the latter to turn it into a modern, democratic government. Chayes cites Afghanistan as a classic example of why the Taliban emerged as a jihadist movement. Corruption in the form of bribes, kick-backs, cronyism, is so deeply engrained in Afghanistan that it generated a movement to replace it with sharia law by Islamists.

“If the very Afghan officials by whose sides they planned to combat extremists were generating those extremists themselves—by having men shake down travelers and taking a cut, or leaving bills unpaid, or by providing judiciously selected ‘intelligence’ to engineer a night-raid against a rival trafficking network—it was too big a paradox to take in. NATO officers,” said Chayes, “did not want to know.”

“The corruption networks” in Afghanistan, writes Chayes, “were just too vertically integrated: any move against any official, no matter how lowly, would reverberate all the way up the chain to Karzai.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, Afghanistan had been a constitutional monarchy with a national assembly and local elders affording a check on executive power. “Citizens expected a decent education from their government, health care, even employment in state-owned industries.” That changed when Hamid Karzai took over. At that point government became a criminal enterprise.

The 9/11 attack prompted the U.S. to invade to drive out al Qaeda, but it also led to its staying on to fight the perceived enemies of Afghanistan. They—otherwise known as the Taliban—were being generated in part by the desire to drive out the corrupt Karzai administration.

What we tend to forget about the “Arab Spring” was that “millions of Arabs chose a constructive way to force change. They chose political revolution—a peaceful, civic, inclusive, and responsible form of revolt—directed square at their own leaderships, not at Western countries, not even those seen as regime allies.”

This is not to suggest that Islamism hasn’t degraded from its opposition to widespread corruption into organizations seeking to take control over the nations where it has spread. It has and this is most evidence in the incredibly corrupt nation of Nigeria where since 2009 Boko Haram has developed terrorism to new heights of barbarity—if that is possible.

An oil-rich nation, the billions that it generates have gone missing thanks to the administration of Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan. The police in Nigeria are hated as much as Boko Haram and, as we have seen, have not demonstrated any ability to eliminate the terrorist organization.

Why would any police officer or member of the armed forces want to die for a corrupt, kleptocratic administration? This was true back in the days when the U.S. was fighting in Vietnam, true when the Iraqi armed forces fled from those of the Islamic State, and it explains why even the active participation of U.S. forces does not result in victory against the terrorist organizations.

Why then should we be surprised that many throughout the Middle East have turned to Islam to address the problems they encounter from the corruption of their governments? “Lured by militant advocates of a religious ordering of human affairs, they will seek to roll back four hundred years of political history.”

In the West, we regard those regions of the world where corruption is rampant as backward. We can be forgiven for forgetting that our ancestors in England, the Netherlands, and parts of France laid the groundwork for modern democracy by their efforts to curb the corruption of the monarchies that enjoyed the good life at the expense of their subjects.

By the time the Founders came together to create the U.S. Constitution, they had been well-schooled and experienced in what it would require to keep corruption at bay with a government whose powers were limited and divided among executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

We are their beneficiaries, but that does not mean we have defeated corruption. The vast entitlement programs are just one example of the way millions are secured illegally by deception and disbursement. Other forms of corruption are addressed in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that forbids the use of bribery by corporations doing business in foreign nations.

The U.S. is not alone, however. Just as occurred in 2008, the too close relationship of the banking community and government led to financial crises in Ireland and Iceland. The public’s rejection of corruption in Ukraine led to its current civil unrest.

The role of corruption in the nations experiencing Islamic terrorism cannot be underestimated. Its role in the conduct of the world’s affairs is huge and a constant threat whose many forms must be understood, addressed, and eliminated to the greatest degree possible.

© Alan Caruba, 2015