LILA RAJIVA: The Mind-Body Politic
Individuals Not Ideologies
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Archive of "Media" Category
Which “Bastards”? More Discrepancies In Wikileaks “Revelations”
Maximilien Forte at Zero Anthropology:
“Which Bastards?
When asked by Larry King on Monday, 26 July, who he meant to call “bastards” when he told Der Spiegel “I enjoy crushing bastards,” Assange specified he meant U.S. forces. Assange must also believe that those studying these documents will not focus as much on the atrocities committed by the Taleban, such as the devastating carnage caused by their IEDs and suicide bombers, and their apparent disregard for the scores of civilians that are killed as a result of going after one target with a massive bomb–The Guardian, with what is arguably the best coverage of the three newspapers to have obtained the documents a month in advance of their public release, has already covered this aspect quite quickly. In these same reports, the Taleban appear to be using hammers to kill mosquitoes. Left at that level of discussion, we have data, but not much understanding–for example, of why the Taleban have nonetheless gained strength and support, or why we may view their deadly attacks as something for which the U.S. and NATO share partial responsibility, for having overthrown and persecuted the Taleban after invading and occupying their country, thereby provoking a hostile and asymmetric reaction. It would be a silly or wicked person who would argue that Afghans have no right to fight back.
While I generally agree with Assange’s sentiments, to the extent that they are knowable, I do not share his optimism about the impact of these documents. Information is not power, and it is not meaning. To make sense of these documents requires interpretation and argumentation that goes beyond and outside the limits of what are, after all, reports reflective of an American optic, produced by combatants. Source criticism and cross checking will be paramount, and to the extent that is not done, Wikileaks may witness members of the public using the same documents to not only bolster the arguments to support continuation of this war, but even an escalation to direct hostilities with Iran (see The Guardian, and see the justified alarm expressed by Marc Lynch at Foreign Policy). There is also debate between The Guardian and The New York Times over the extent to which the reports can be trusted when it comes to Pakistan’s supposed role in aiding the Taleban and conducting covert operations against the government of Afghanistan and western forces–that dispute happened within the first day of reporting on the documents, and disagreement over their credibility did not stop the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan from verbally thrashing each other in public, again within 24 hours of the documents’ release. These reports overall contain enough to hurt those who are critics of U.S. foreign policy, as much as they will hurt those who support it. They contain as much potential for escalating and expanding conflict, as they contain for mobilizing popular support to stop it. I also understand that my commentary here may well be premature, but then so are all the current commentaries.
What Should Matter to Social Scientists?To bring this discussion closer to the concerns of anthropologists and social scientists generally, there are a few points that I feel need to be made. One concerns the extent to which these records are only a partial selection of all records produced by the U.S. military. That is a significant problem, because we cannot know if the items excluded would in some way modify any conclusions we reach about the records we have. Wikileaks received a total of about 110,000 records, and released about 92,000. It is hard to believe that a period covering six years of war could have produced only this amount. To my knowledge, Julian Assange has not been asked any questions about this issue. We therefore also do not know why these records were included and others excluded. This issue will come up again when I speak about what the records reveal about the workings of the Human Terrain System.
A second problem, and it is a major one, concerns Assange’s assertions that the items were redacted to minimize the risk of harm to the sources indicated in the records. From what we have seen already, just with reference to Human Terrain Teams alone and their sources, that is completely untrue. There is no evidence whatsoever of any kind of redaction. Moreover, when one deletes information for a record, one is supposed to mark the text in some way to say either “name deleted” or “sentence deleted,” etc., and I see no evidence of that. In addition, who comprises Wikileaks’ team of redactors, and on the basis of what knowledge and expertise, as either war fighters, or people with experience and knowledge of Afghanistan, could they make calls about what was “harmless” versus “harmful” information? Which specialists did they consult, and for how long did they have the records to study? Not a word about this, merely bland and general assurances.
Indeed, Assange’s statements about Wikileaks’ “harm minimization process” seem to only focus on the safety of his “bastards,” noting that the documents “do not generally cover top-secret operations” and that they “delayed the release of some 15,000 reports” as “demanded by our source” (source). This is an exchange Assange had with Der Spiegel on this issue:
SPIEGEL: The material contains military secrets and names of sources. By publishing it, aren’t you endangering the lives of international troops and their informants in Afghanistan?
Assange: The Kabul files contain no information related to current troop movements. The source went through their own harm-minimization process and instructed us to conduct our usual review to make sure there was not a significant chance of innocents being negatively affected. We understand the importance of protecting confidential sources, and we understand why it is important to protect certain US and ISAF sources [emphasis added].
SPIEGEL: So what, specifically, did you do to minimize any possible harm?
Assange: We identified cases where there may be a reasonable chance of harm occurring to the innocent. Those records were identified and edited accordingly.
A third problem has to do with source criticism, source confirmation, and Assange’s call for crowdsourcing. Anthropologists should relate to this issue personally. Imagine that someone gets hold of your fieldnotes, and releases a part of them. No analysis, no contextualization, no doubts about the veracity of what an informant told you is in those notes. They are released, and then members of a broad public take hold of their interpretation, and take what is reported as the truth of a situation. Wouldn’t this make you freak out? Are any of our books and journal articles a mere transcription of our fieldnotes? So who is this “crowd” that will make solid arguments from these notes? How will they check their veracity? Do they know who wrote these reports, under what conditions, under what limitations, and with what motivations? Will they travel to Afghanistan and cover the ground covered by these military units? What other documents will they use to confirm these reports, or will they trust them blindly? These are already some of the issues being raised about the alleged Iran-Al Qaeda connection, and Pakistan’s role in supporting the Taleban.”
Memoirs Of An American Refugee…
Stuart Bramhall links back to my earlier post on Barry Zwicker and the Left Gate-Keepers... who still refuse to talk about 9-11, under an article about the infiltration of the foundation left:
“As Dana Priest’s recent Washington Post expose reveals, the use of private contractors to spy on Americans (in addition to the proliferation of government spy agencies) has gone viral since the 2002 enactment of the Patriot Act. In fact some civil libertarians warn that Americans’ shrinking privacy and personal freedom is rapidly approaching that of communist East Germany under the Stasi (the East German secret police) – where one in sixteen residents were paid to report on their friends on neighbors.
Was There Domestic Spying Before 2002?
Based on 20 years experience as an anti-war and single payer activist in Seattle, I would hazard that that spying on political and community groups didn’t suddenly leap from non-existent to astronomic levels when it was “legalized” in 2002. It has always been my impression that it increased at a fairly steady rate with the rightward drift at all levels of government following Reagan’s election in 1980. I also believe that prior to the enactment of the Patriot Act, much of this domestic “counterinsurgency” activity occurred under the auspices of “left” identified foundations and think-tanks. These are private entities, funded through a combination of CIA monies and right wing philanthropy, that give the appearance of being autonomous – and genuinely progressive and liberal. However it appears that their true function is to restrict the acceptable range of progressive debate and political activity. Barry Zwicker calls them “left gatekeepers (see July 19 and 24 blog)” and Webster Tarpley “counterinsurgency” foundations.
Left Gatekeeping Foundations and the Single Payer Movement
Most of my personal experience with these left gatekeeping foundations occurred as a single payer activist. In Washington State, the single payer movement was started by doctors in 1988, under the auspices of Physicians for a National Health Program. Between 1988 and 1993, when the Seattle chapter was run by and for health professionals, it expanded rapidly, attracted much public and media attention. It was also an important partner in a broader coalition that pressured the governor to appoint a blue ribbon health commission to develop a proposal for state based, publicly financed universal health care.
Then in 1993, when the health provider joined with Washington Gray Panthers to build a broad based coalition, we suddenly hit a roadblock. There were suddenly all kinds of difficulties, which on the surface amounted to a textbook case of Cointelpro infiltration. However unlike Cointelpro, the problems didn’t appear to originate with the FBI or the police, but with local “left” leaning think tanks and foundations. The tactics, however, were classic – with the appearance of quirky outsiders who tampered with our database, seized control of our contact list to launch rumor and character assassination campaigns, split our coalitions by launching parallel, competing organizations (focused on safer lobbying activities and mild reformism), and scared off new members by repeatedly picking fights at our meetings.
A Clear Pattern
In one case we discovered the operative had a history of similar behavior in Seattle’s first Anti-Gulf War Coalition (1991) and the Seattle chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. The pattern in all three cases was the same – getting control of the database and leadership and shutting all three down – including the single payer coalition.
It was only when Washington State joined a regional coalition with single payer activists from Oregon and California – the Pacific Rim Single Payer Summit – that I got some inkling of what was happening. The synchronicity activists from other states described – down to the exact political rhetoric and targeted personal attacks – was uncanny.
It’s safe to assume that specific left gatekeeping foundations involved in suppressing the single payer movement receive generous support from the powerful insurance lobby and Big Pharma – in addition to any CIA and right wing philanthropy. Both the insurance and the pharmaceutical industry stand to lose big under a publicly funded health care system (as the sole purchaser of medication for 300 million Americans, the government would force the drug companies to agree to massive volume discounts – this occurs in all industrialized countries with publicly funded health care).
I write about my personal experience, as a single payer activist, with left gatekeeping foundations in my recent memoir The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.”
It’s The Media, Stupid..
Lloyd Marcus at Renew America, June 28, 2010:
“Again, I say charges that the movement is racist are absurd. Here are a few of my personal tea party experiences. Keep in mind, I have performed at well over two hundred tea parties across America.
Anatoliy Golitsyn: The Communist Strategy Of Deception And Disinformation
Anatoliy Golitsyn - New Lies for Old: The Communist Strategy of Deception and Disinformation
Google: The CIA’s Spy-Buddy
From Eric Sommer at Pravda.ru via Market Oracle, January 14, 2010:
“The western media is currently full of articles on Google’s ‘threat to quit China’ over internet censorship issues, and the company’s ’suspicion’ that the Chinese government was behind attempts to ‘break-in’ to several Google email accounts used by ‘Chinese dissidents’.
However, the media has almost completely failed to report that Google’s surface concern over ‘human rights’ in China is belied by its their deep involvement with some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet:
Wash-Po’s “Objective” Reporter On Conservatism Outed As Conservative-Hater
Reporter David Weigel’s feverish imaginings about the group he pretends to cover objectively have surfaced in emails sent to the liberal listserv, Journolist, according to Fishbowl DC (hat-tip to LRC blog).
Why am I not surprised?
Global-warming “scientists” turn out to be political hacks grinding over-sized axes; “educators” preaching “tolerance” and “love” turn out to be sexual Bolsheviks; green “activists” turn out to be shills for billionaire speculators….. (more…)
Deconstructing Soros: “A New World Architecture”
From George Soros on Project-Syndicate.org. (Nov. 4, 2009), his vision of the new world order.
My comments are in italics.NEW YORK – Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, the world is facing another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism.
Soros Blames Germans For Being Fiscally Responsible
Reuters reports (June 23, 3010) that Soros is wringing his hands over Germany’s savings policy:
“Germany’s budget savings policy risks destroying the European project and a collapse of the euro cannot be ruled out, billionaire investor George Soros said in a newspaper interview released on Wednesday.
Are Secularists and Atheists A Persecuted Minority?
Atheists and agnostics often imply that they are a persecuted minority. I decided to look it up.
Turns out that after Christianity and Islam (which the elites have conveniently set at each others’ throats), secularists command the largest following (along with Hindus). By the time the Christians and Muslims get done polishing each other of, I guess they’d be the most dominant group. Hmm..mm, as my friends at the Daily Bell would say. For the record, I define myself as an esoteric Christian, neo-Hindu, skeptical spiritualist, and ethical occultist (“God’s Son, Falwell’s Mother, and the Rest of Us Ho’s,” Dissident Voice, May 18, 2007). (more…)Wikileaks’ Julian Assange “In Danger” From Pentagon?
More on the ubiquitous founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. I maintain a neutral to positive rating on Assange, despite criticism of him. The whistleblower emails on anthropogenic global warming that were published on Wikileaks (climategate) hugely damaged the climate cabal, but there are some credible writers who maintain that he’s passing off disinfo as well. I honestly can’t tell one way or other. Lately it’s occurred to me that that the controversy might relate to infighting between factions of the intelligence community, but how is the question. Anyway, that’s pure speculation on my part.
“Safe” School Czar’s X-Rated Recommended Reading For Children
Update: Citizen Link blog notes that Kevin Jennings will be given an additional $45 million for his budget in 2011, bringing the money under his management to $410 million.
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I missed this interesting story at the end of last year, from Gateway Pundit. Strange that child abuse/pedophilia and its promotion is a big story for the press when it’s related to the Catholic church or Republican politicians (and it should be), but a non-story at other times. I wonder why.
The story was apparently picked up by a Bulgarian site, but, according to Michelle Malkin (no favorite of mine) and Dana Loesch at Big Government,, here in the US it’s still one of the most under-reported stories of 2009:Posted by Jim Hoft on Thursday, December 17, 2009, 6:12 AM
(Big Warning on Content)Gold Reacting To Anxiety, Says ECRI Chief
Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the influential Economic Cycle Research Institute, has said he’s sure the economy is “rolling over” but can’t definitively call it a recession yet. Today he adds that the elevated price of gold signals anxiety more than inflation concerns. ECRI has a good track record as a trend predictor, from all accounts. On the other hand, it’s also true that gold is hitting new highs and the financial media has to put a good spin on that. Wall Street doesn’t like physical gold, because whenever it dominates the news stories, it undermines the stock and fund selling on which the Street mainly depends. (more…)
Matt Taibbi: Gonzo Journalist Or Establishment Plant?
Note 1: This web post by the anti-fascist author of several books on mind-control and propaganda, Alex Constantine, is perhaps a bit harsh in its conclusions. Taibbi might simply not know enough to steer clear of disinformation. Also, to be fair, he’s a more talented writer than Constantine gives him credit for being. (more…)
CIA Funds Both Sides Of War, Uses NY Times For Psyops (Yawn)
David DeGraw at Alternet.org describes how US intelligence ishas been behind both sides of the war on terror and how the media aids the war effort with calculated psyops like the recent “finding” of mineral deposits in Afghanistan that was trumpeted in the New York Times. (more…)
“Butch Dad” Day Or Are Atlantic Writers Necessary?
“A perfectly brain dead piece in The Atlantic, called “Are Fathers Necessary,” published, (in)appropriately enough, around Father’s Day:
“Dads, we tell our husbands, are essential influences on children, the source of unique benefits. There’s only one problem: none of this is proven.
Barry Zwicker: Noam Chomsky And The Left Gatekeepers
My Comment:
This piece was published on the web in October 2008 2007 and is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of “Towers of Deception,” Barry Zwicker, New Society Publishers, September 1, 2006. The left gatekeepers referenced in the piece include well-known and well-respected activists like Amy Goodman, Sonali Kolhatkar, David Basarmian, Howard Zinn, and Noam Chomsky.
Helen Thomas: An Appreciation
Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, at Foreign Policy Journal, (via Counterpunch), June 16, 2010:
“The propagandists for the Israel Lobby, who occupy the Wall Street Journal editorial page while pretending to be journalists, are determined to remove Helen Thomas from the annals of journalism. In case you have already forgotten, a few days ago the distinguished career of Helen Thomas, the 89-year-old doyen of the White House Press Corps, was ended by the Israel Lobby, which made an issue about her opinion that immigrant Jews should leave Palestine and go back to their home countries.
Indian versus Israeli Reactions To Provocation
The Great Bong on the difference between the Indian and the Israeli approach to provocation:
“As someone primarily interested in sub-continental politics, what is most interesting for me however, more than the role of Turkey, is the difference between India and Israel in their reactions to provocation, being in similar boats—- — democratic countries with strong militaries, surrounded by antagonistic countries on many sides, eager to provoke them to conflict over disputed territories.
Are You A Member Of The Libertarian Mob?
In a piece called “Tea-Party Jacobins,” NY Times, May 27, 2010, (hat-tip to LRC blog), Mark Lilla calls Tea Party activists a “libertarian mob,” since they proclaim the belief “that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone” and they have only one “Garbo-like thing to say, they want to be left alone.”
Hmmmm. Couldn’t have said it better m’self. Consider me now a card-carrying member of the libertarian mob. (more…)
The Huggable Hedgie: Einhorn, Fairy-Tales, And The “Activist” Gravy Train
Mark Mitchell at Deep Capture on well-known hedge-fund “activist,” David Einhorn:
“In addition, Allied was not, as Einhorn claimed, a massive Ponzi scheme. Einhorn had made the smarmy suggestion that Allied was a Ponzi because it supposedly raised money from the markets to pay its dividends. An SEC official told the inspector general that this claim was patently false – it was perfectly obvious that Allied legitimately paid dividends out of earnings.
Doing Well By Doing Good: Corporate Brand Teaching
In the old days, people who did things for love of their community, for idealism, or for a cause they believed in, were in it just for that. They deserved the respect they got. Today, volunteer work has been festooned with all kinds of goodies, and, not unnaturally, it’s drawing people more interested in the goodies than the good. And not unexpectedly, the king of “doing well by doing good” - Goldman Sachs - is in the thick of it. (more…)
Afghanistan Has Trillion Dollar Deposits Of Iron, Copper, and Lithium
So now we know the real reason for the Afghan war.. I wonder how long the Pentagon has had this information? BBC reports on June 14, 2010:
“Afghanistan may have more than a trillion dollars worth of untapped mineral deposits, a spokesman for the ministry of mines has suggested. The statement came after reports in the New York Times of the work of a team of Pentagon officials and US geologists. They discovered large quantities of iron and copper as well as valuable deposits of lithium. However, questions are being asked about the timing of the release of the latest information.
Experts Trumpet ISI-Taliban Link As Excuse For US “Counter-Measures”
Shock. Pakistani intelligence (the ISI) might be involved with the Taliban.
When the obvious is stated with all the fanfare of a papal decree from such organs of the ruling class as the London School of Economics and our own JFK School of Government (Harvard), can military action be far behind? File this along with my previous post, Mad Dog alerts.
The Associated Press reports (June 13, 2010):
“Pakistan’s main spy agency continues to arm and train the Taliban and is even represented on the group’s leadership council despite U.S. pressure to sever ties and billions in aid to combat the militants, said a research report released Sunday.
The Free Bees Sing “9-11’s A Lie”
9-11’s A Lie
(sung to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees from the soundtrack of the motion picture, “Saturday Night Live” )
Well you can tell by the way the buildings fell
There was something wrong, now its time to tell
Spread the word, its nothing new
You gotta educate yourself in “truth”
It’s not alright, it’s not okay
For you to look the other way
We can help you understand
The New York Times effect on man (more…)Wikileaks’ Role In Julius Baer Case Linked to Soros, Sachs, & Spooks?
From The Wayne Madsen Report (a subscription-based service) comes this analysis (April, 2010) of the attack on the financial privacy of Swiss money manager, Julius Baer Group, exposed by whistle-blower Rudolf Elmer:
“WMR’s financial intelligence sources report that the unauthorized disclosure of a compact disk to Wikileaks that contained financial details of the clients of the secretive and usually highly-secure Zurich-based independent money management Julius Baer Group was designed to destroy the firm’s standing with its customers and make it ripe for a hostile takeover by interests associated with multi-billionaire vulture capitalist George Soros, including Goldman Sachs. Julius Baer was founded in the 19th century.
Agenda 21 Alert: Cap & Trade’s Scoping Plan Will Crush Small Business
Cassandra Anderson at Freedom Advocates sounds the alert about the underhanded push for “sustainable development” - Agenda 21 - through ‘Cap and Trade”.
(By the way, we’re all for sustainable development as long as it’s voluntary and comes without the heavy hand of the kleptocracy. So too we’re all for caring for the environment, choosing your family size wisely, reusing resources, and cultivating modesty, restraint, and thrift as essential components of the supremely capitalist moral virtue of prudence. But we’re not for any of these things when they’re hustled through surreptitiously as part of an agenda of top-down control and expropriation of people’s wealth and work). (more…)
Army Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks “Helicopter Attack” Video Probe
From Wired.com:
“Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.
SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.
Steve Cohen To Leave Trading, Says Vanity Fair
Well, well, well. It looks like Patrick Byrne, Judd Bagley, Mark Mitchell and the rest of the estimable team at Deep Capture are having more than some effect.
Not only have the Germans and Austrians banned naked short- selling, Vanity Fair, our least favorite low-class, high-gloss magazine of the DC twitterati, tells us that Steve Cohen is closing up shop as a trader. Sith Lord Cohen doesn’t like the spotlight, it seems. Maybe he remembers all too well what he was up to in the 1980s……even if Reuters wants to keep it buried.
In the July issue of Vanity Fair, legendary hedge-fund billionaire Steve Cohen tells special correspondent Bryan Burrough that he might be ready to walk away from active trading. How big would that be? Well, says Burrough, it’s “a little like saying that God is ready to walk away from Earth.” In this video, Burrough takes the measure of Cohen’s controversial careeer—and offers his theory on why the reclusive banker granted the second in-depth interview of his 30-year career to Vanity Fair.
BP: Corporatist Couch Potato Or Market Hero?
“Corporatist System
But BP’s defenders and statist critics both have it wrong. This is not the story of a well-meaning or negligent firm operating in the free market. Negligent or not, BP is a player in a corporatist system that for generations has featured a close relationship between government and major business firms. (It wouldn’t have surprised Adam Smith.) Prominent companies have always been influential at all levels of government — and no industry more so than oil, which has long been a top concern of the national policy elite, most particularly the foreign-policy establishment.
Is The Flotilla Story About Perception Or Reality?
“The bid to shape global perceptions by portraying the Palestinians as victims of Israel (my emphasis) was the first prong of a longtime two-part campaign. The second part of this campaign involved armed resistance against the Israelis.”
– Stratfor (George Friedman) cited by John Mauldin’s Outside the Box (more…)
Glenn Greenwald: US No Different From Israel
“One can express all sorts of outrage over the Obama administration’s depressingly predictable defense of the Israelis, even at the cost of isolating ourselves from the rest of the world, but ultimately, on some level, wouldn’t it have been even more indefensible — or at least oozingly hypocritical — if the U.S. had condemned Israel? After all, what did Israel do in this case that the U.S. hasn’t routinely done and continues to do?
Spilling The Wrong Blood
From Lynda Brayer, a human rights lawyer living in Haifa, Palestine, who is an active participant in the One State in Palestine movement and supports the Return of Palestinian Refugees to Palestine.
“Furthermore, what exacerbates the image problem for the Israeli government is that it is no longer Arab blood that has been spilt, but nice “white” or “European” blood that, in the West, is different from Arab or Muslim blood. The international reverberations and the trial against Israeli officials in the case of Rachel Corrie, who was deliberately murdered by an Israeli bulldozer driver for attempting to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home, should have provided sufficient warning to the Israeli regime of what is now about to unfold. Having chosen to confront the flotilla, it has now fallen into the proverbial biblical pit of its own making!
Strategies Of Tension
The Daily Bell on the tensions between Israel and the world as an elite manipulation:
“The creation of the tiny theocratic state of Israel was not something that came about because of an upsurge in sentiment that such a state was needed. Even Dr. John Coleman, who has written a recent (fairly vituperative) history of the Rothschilds, explains that the Jewish state was an invention of the elites – especially the Rothschilds – not a movement that bubbled up from Jewish populations around the world. The book, written in 2007, certainly makes a case for the Rothschilds as the driving force in the political developments and wars of the 19th and 20th century, especially. The motivating idea – the goal – is one-world government, though Dr. Coleman does not spell out the linkage between the state of Israel itself and the larger issue of global governance.
Rudolf Steiner On Why Plutocrats Love Democracy
“It is interesting that the excellent statement was made in 1910 [by Francis Delaisi, La Démocratie et les Financiers, 1910]: ‘… that big capital has succeeded in creating out of democracy the most wonderful, the most effective, the most flexible instrument for the exploitation of the population as a whole.
David Icke, Canadian Speech Laws, and Subversion Through Mythology
(Update June 2):
I should clarify that I think that Icke actually misunderstands many of the concepts he repackages - especially relating to kundalini energy (snake energy). I don’t know if this misunderstanding is deliberate or not, never having read his writing to any great extent. (more…)
Powell Suggests Military Take Over Of Gulf Oil Disaster
We were waiting breathlessly for this:
“Former US secretary of state Colin Powell joined calls for the military to take command of the operation from BP. Powell said the problem was beyond the capacity of BP to solve and the government should bring in “decisive force”. He said: “The military brings organisation, it brings control, it brings assets.”
War has become nation-building and peacetime operations have become warlike…
Everything is a crisis, everything is a war. Everything is about ceding more power to the state, while allowing the “private” sector to dump its costs on the government.
Read the rest of the article here.
Bypass The US Media, Says Black Novelist
Thoughtful and impassioned advice from Ishmael Reed, interviewed on his recent book, “The Return of the Nigger Breakers”.
Reed notes the one-sided treatment of pathologies in the black community, versus the treatment of pathologies in other communities:
“The Gates line is picked up by white critics like Nicholas Kristof urging white rule to return to Africa. I wrote Kristof a letter about his constant hammering of black male behavior toward women without challenging the wide-spread abuse of women by white men.
The Daily Bell Gets It….
The Daily Bell on why the show trial of Goldman (albeit a worthy target, in my opinion) is most likely to be just another ruse of the powers that be:
“The progressive press, in our estimation, tries to blame individuals or certain corporations (Enron comes to mind, and now Goldman) to distract from the larger issue, which is the corruption of civil society itself by this horrid, pernicious mercantilism.
Barrick Gold Threatens Vancouver Publisher
CBC News in Canada reports that bankster-associated gold miner Barrick Gold is shutting down critical writing on the Canadian mining industry. (Thanks to Chris Cook).
An excerpt:
“The threat of legal action from mining giant Barrick Gold has forced Vancouver-based Talonbooks to postpone publication of a book about the Canadian mining industry.
Publisher Karl Siegler calls it a clear case of “libel chill” by one of Canada’s largest mining companies.
The book, Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice for the World’s Mining Industries, was to be published in spring 2010, but in February, the publisher and everyone else involved with the book got a threatening letter from Barrick lawyers.
Radio Interview: CFUV.UVIC.CA, May 10, 2010
Update: Here’s Chris Cook’s radio interview of me on University of Victoria Radio, May 10, 2010.
I’m in the last third. As it was, we didn’t talk much about the crisis, except a bit at the end. We talked mostly about how libertarians suddenly became too dangerous to be allowed across the border.
ORIGINAL POST:
I’ll be talking with Chris Cook of The Peace and Earth Justice website and University of Victoria Gorilla radio show about the financial crisis and the call for regulation; also, about Canada’s increasing unfriendliness to free speech on political matters.
A Preview of the Program:
GR 05-50 101.9 FM 104.3 Cable ‘cfuv.uvic.ca
Monday May 10, 2010
5:00:00 3:00 Welcome to GR, etc. Gordon Campbell’s Liberal party has promised it will enact the Harmonized Sales Tax, or HST come hell or high water; and he may get plenty of both. To call the opposition to the tax popular in B.C. merely scratches the surface of the deep dissatisfaction felt in Canada’s westernmost province. After watching nearly a decade of service cuts, and relentless tax relief to corporations and the wealthiest of British Columbia’s citizens, more tax rises for the working class is about as welcome here as as communicable disease. Resistance to the proposed HST has organized, and petitions currently making the rounds in every voting jurisdiction are piling up signatures, hoping to reach a level that will force the government to back down. Brad Slade is a long-time labor activist and he’s the Regional Organizer for the South Island and the Islands with Fight The HST. Brad Slade in the first half.
And; what lies behind the recent economic meltdown in the United States?
Years of deregulation on high-flying financiers and the introduction of increasingly exotic investment vehicles created a bubble economy whose collapse now threatens the entire global economy, but who is to blame? Lila Rajiva is a journalist and author, whose book titles include: ‘The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media,‘ and ‘Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets’, co-written with Bill Bonner. Her articles are available on the internet at CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, and Lew Rockwell.com, and in mainstream sources such as The Washington Post and The Hindu.
Lila Rajiva and the politics behind financial calamity in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed on the view from Victoria’s burgeoning street society. But first, Brad Slade and B.C.’s tax revolt in the making.
5:03:00 21:00 Discussion w/ Brad Slade
“Welcome back to the show, Brad; it’s been a few months since your last visit here; what’s the latest on the Fight the HST front?”
5:24:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:25:00 10:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:35:00 3:00 Music
5:38:00 21:00 Discussion w/ Lila Rajiva
Welcome back to GR, etc.
Just what lies behind the recent economic meltdown in the United States? Years of deregulation on high-flying financiers and the introduction of increasingly exotic investment vehicles created a bubble economy whose collapse now threatens the entire global economy, but who is to blame?
Lila Rajiva is a journalist and author, whose book titles include: ‘The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media,‘ and ‘Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets’, co-written with Bill Bonner. Her articles are available on the internet at CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, and Lew Rockwell.com, and in mainstream sources such as The Washington Post and The Hindu.
“Welcome back to the program, Lila; we initially planned to discuss an economics forum that took place in Vancouver over the weekend. What is that forum about, and why were you not in attendance?”
Robert Bolt On Reputation Versus Reality
At times I regret the loss of privacy and the vulnerability to slander that anyone who writes publicly has to face. It seems that no good deed goes unpunished by the mob that sees only upto the horizons of its own vulgar perspective.
Being a thief itself, it sees thieves in honest people. Being a liar itself, it calls what is patently truthful a lie. Motivated solely by venality and malice, it can see no other motivation in people who obviously struggle to hew to their conscience, even when it endangers themselves.
How to escape slander without losing privacy to the envious, the malevolent, the pathological? You cannot. But you can consider your real audience, as Sir Thomas More suggests, in Robert Bolt’s fine play “A Man for All Seasons” (1960). More’s counsel addresses Richard Rich, an academic who despairs that the virtues of a great teacher can never be known beyond a small circle, but it’s advice that applies as well to anyone who has ever suffered from slander directed at them, when their actions were not only not dishonorable, they were more than ordinarily brave and honorable.
“MORE: Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher.
Perhaps even a great one.
RICH: And if I was, who would know it?
MORE: You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that . . . Oh, and a quiet life.”
State Terror: How Soviet “Socialist” Police Fueled Pogroms
(Cont). The Truth about the Kielce Pogrom:
“The Soviet strategists who were in control of Poland saw significant advantage in fostering an animosity between Jewish and gentile Poles. This animosity was used as a tool to aid in the subjugation of Poland early in its capture into the Soviet empire in 1944. After World War II, Soviet machinations in this regard succeeded in converting the image of Jewish victims of German-Nazi genocide into the image of Jewish oppressors (Kersten, p. 130). This was purposely done to put the Polish gentile population between “a rock and a hard place.” Polish gentiles were left with two options: either don’t respond to the Soviet oppression, or respond to the Soviet oppression and thus appear to be anti-Semitic.
Although the image of Jews as oppressors was spread beyond Poland, this phenomenon was very noticeable in Poland, where there was a steady flow of news and often well-substantiated (if sometimes exaggerated) rumors of executions of anti-communist Poles by Jewish executioners serving in the Soviet-controlled terror apparatus. Kersten describes this unfortunate development when Soviet policies created the impression that Jews played the main role in the subjugation of Poland and other satellite countries to the communist system. At the same time, the communist propaganda machine equated opposition to the “socialist” regimes with anti-Semitism. So, if a Polish person opposed the socialist Sovietization of Poland, that person was branded as an anti-Semite. This smoke screen was used successfully to obscure the reality of the Soviet subjugation of Poland by the Soviet Union.
The Soviet terror apparatus in Poland included the so-called Polish military counterintelligence. It was initially integrated with the Soviet Smersh [Death to Spies] organization directed against German spying and subversion. However, when the front crossed the prewar Polish territory, Smersh was used increasingly against the significant Polish resistance to Soviet domination. In November 1944, the Polish section of Smersh became renamed Informacja, in which Col. Checinski later served for 10 years. Informacja remained under the close supervision of Smersh and was at first headed by Soviet Col. Nicolai Kozhushko. Soviet officers assigned to the Polish army were considered vulnerable to Polish influence and were under close surveillance by a special Informacja [Information] department. Informacja was clearly a Soviet-led force, not at all an independent force loyal to Poland.
At the time of the most intensive terror, between 1944 and 1955, Smersh used its Informacja branch to have agents pose as members of the military prosecutor’s office. They used this apparatus to conduct political trials in military courts in Poland. Tortured witnesses were “prepared” for these trials and later were secretly executed “to remove any trace of the provocation” (Checinski, p. 57). In that period, of the 120 officers serving in Informacja, only about 18 were Polish-born. Most of these 18 were Polish Jews and the rest were Soviet citizens, some of them Jews.
The Soviets were creative in inventing their own opportunities to manufacture conflict between Polish Jews and gentiles. For example, it was Soviet policy in Poland to change Yiddish names of Jews into Slavic-Polish names. This practice was resented by both Jewish and gentile Poles. An American journalist, Samuel Loeb Shneiderman, who visited Warsaw in 1946, wrote in his book “Between Fear and Hope” (New York, 1946) that under the cover of Polish names Jews were continuing their ethnic identity and must have felt like their ancestors forced into conversion to Christianity during their persecution in Spain (Kersten, pp.76, 108). The name-changing became widespread. It served to deprive the Jews of their cultural heritage in order to form a “progressive Jewish nation,” to use Stalin’s expression.
Checinski describes how Stalin ordered the NKVD to prepare a civilian network of police terror and repression, called the UB [Urzad Bezpieczenstwa), to work in parallel with the Informacja in Poland. The "Polish intelligentsia boycotted the security service, which was treated with universal contempt as an instrument of foreign domination" (Checinski, p. 61). Thus, the NKVD, despite its deep-rooted anti-Semitism, "could not do without Jews. Jewish officials were often placed in the most conspicuous posts; hence they could easily be blamed for all of the regime's crimes" (Checinski, p. 62). The Soviet strategy of using people with striking Semitic features as the most visible executioners of Soviet policy in Poland was also aimed at presenting understandable anti-communist feelings within Poland as anti-Semitism. In 1945, the upper echelons of the terror apparatus were staffed with Jews. This created the appearance that many Jews in Poland were members of the Soviet-controlled terror apparatus. A public proclamation, made at a convention of Jewish members of the ruling communist party [PPR, Polska Pania Robotnicza] on October 7-9, 1945, stated that in postwar Poland, conditions were created for the Jews to find an outlet for their political, social, and national ambitions. Needless to say, neither Poles nor Jews trusted this official statement. The Zionists openly advocated a massive emigration to Palestine (Kersten, p.80), which for different reasons was also desired by the Soviet leadership.”
and
” Is hatred for a person simply because of his ethnicity more acceptable today, as long as the object of the hatred is a Pole rather than a Jew? And once it is decided that it is important to instill hatred against members of a given ethnic group, can there be any limit to the perpetration of lies, myths, and mischaracterizations to drive the hatred home? And once ethnic hatred is started and nurtured in a people, where will it end? The Holocaust itself unfortunately provides one answer, one such ending point.”
Anti-Polonism Is Not The Answer To Anti-Semitism
Iwo Cyprien Pogonowski on anti-Polonism in the writing of WW II history:
“These animosities [from WW II], in order to live on, have to be carefully cultivated in younger people by those who may feel their interests are served by doing so. Surprisingly, there have been systematic attempts by some to keep these animosities alive by devising mythological accounts of what happened preceding World War II, during the War, and in the aftermath of the War. Even more surprisingly, some of these mythologies have been advanced by people from groups who were victimized in the War, people who should have the strongest vested interest in the truth being propagated.
There are many versions of these mythologies, but one in popular currency in mid-1990’s North America distills roughly to this: an outside force known as the Nazis forcibly gained control of Germany and under totalitarian military rule forced a policy of war and ethnic hatred and extermination on a frightened but generally unwilling German populace. According to this myth, the real story of genuine ethnic hatred can be found among Jewish people and gentiles who lived in Poland, whose alleged long-standing animosity pre-dated the War, and extends beyond the end of the War to this day. The myth-speakers claim that the Polish nation was the true anti-Jewish state, and that atrocities perpetrated on countless Jewish people on Polish soil in German-occupied Poland were carried out with great relish by a willing Polish populace that was tired of dealing with a Jewish sub-culture that had been already relegated to ghettos prior to the War. The existence of the myth of non-support by the German people of the actions of the Nazi regime even motivated the title and thesis of a recent doctoral dissertation turned into book by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1996.) Goldhagen documents the involvement of ordinary Germans in carrying out what today are referred to as Nazi atrocities.
As Goldhagen was clarifying the role of the Germans, others were perpetuating the myths. In April, 1996, propagation of the anti-Polish myth was advanced by the film “Shtetl,” shown on Public Television in the United States. The film falsely suggests Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Through its own baseless and malicious claims about Polish people, the film is unwittingly a study of the encouragement of ethnic hatred by Jewish people toward Polish gentiles. Israeli students in the film are shown making a series of claims, sometimes gleefully, about alleged Polish involvement in the Holocaust, including attempts to shift the blame for Nazi crimes from German people to Polish people. The students even mocked Polish rescue efforts, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Germans punished Polish gentiles collectively for providing any form of assistance to Jewish people, or even for not turning them in.
The film “Shtetl” focused negatively on the local Catholic church and priest several times. In actual well-documented fact, Polish gentiles helped Jewish people in Poland extensively during World War II. This assistance included the hiding of tens of thousands of Jewish people in the homes of Polish gentiles, which put the gentiles’ entire families at risk of death. Several thousand Polish gentiles, including men, women, and children, were burned alive or otherwise summarily executed for the crime of hiding or assisting Jews. As an example of local Catholic Church involvement, it is ironic that the wartime pastor of the very Catholic church that was featured in the film was murdered because he was assisting Jews. His name was Father Henryk Opiatowski of Bransk. Yet, Father Opiatowski was never mentioned in the film! In no other country during the war were people subjected to death in this way for providing assistance to Jewish people. These students of the Holocaust were certainly taught how anti-Semitism produced six million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust; apparently they did not also learn how anti-Polonism produced three million Polish gentile deaths during the occupation–the Polish aspect of the Holocaust. Since the students in the film Shtetl were not eyewitnesses to the horrors of the Holocaust, they may very well be a window into the way the Holocaust is being taught in some Jewish homes and schools. If the purpose of teaching about the Holocaust is to never forget how ethnic hatreds can be nurtured to the point of destroying a people (and it should be), then Holocaust teaching will fail if along the way it teaches young Jewish people to hate Polish people.
There is another example of an obstacle to Jewish-Polish goodwill that is perhaps more significant and potentially longer-lasting in promoting ethnic hatred by Jewish people towards Polish people than the film Shtetl. It is an exhibit in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., that falsely presents events that occurred in Kielce, Poland in 1946 as part of the Holocaust. It refers to the clearly Soviet-staged violence in Kielce as a “Polish pogrom.” [The Museum has changed the text since this writing.] To many visitors of the Holocaust Museum, the exhibit by its very inclusion seems to suggest that after the end of World War II, a liberated Polish populace chose to continue Hitler’s work of exterminating Jewish people. The study you are now reading examines these events in Kielce, and shows that the suggestions of a Polish-led extension of the Holocaust are patently false. The Kielce Pogrom had nothing to do with the German-engineered Holocaust. It had everything to do with the Soviet-engineered strangulation of the Polish nation.
Like all effective myths, those related to World War II have some elements of truth underlying them. In conjunction with the construction of these myths, though, actual facts and events have been distorted or misrepresented, and certainly the contexts within which they occurred have been falsely stated. Sadly, the distortions, misrepresentations and falsehoods are sometimes purposely and systematically advanced by those who feel a need to humiliate the Polish nation and members of the Polish ethnic group from around the world. Those who today seek to humiliate or destroy people because of their ethnic association are kindred spirits to those who sought to humiliate or destroy people because of their ethnic association in the World War II era. Let me say unequivocally: anti-Semitism in the World War II era or now is wrong and it is evil. On the flip side of the coin bearing the image of anti-Semitism is the image of anti-Polonism. The coin of anti-Semitism cannot be melted down and destroyed without also melting down and destroying anti-Polonism.
I will state up front that I have a vested interest in the truth about World War II and its aftermath being clearly illuminated. I am a veteran of 64 months of imprisonment in Gestapo prisons, concentration camps, and death marches. My own ordeal, and the suffering and death of many of my Polish and Jewish friends and prison-mates, not to mention the sacrifices made by the young men who fought and died as soldiers, will have been rendered meaningless if the hatred of Jewish people by the Nazi leadership and various members of the German nation are simply replaced by hatred of Polish people by Jewish people, or vice-versa. Those who even today perpetuate myths and misconceptions about animosities associated with World War II and its aftermath are not merely bearing false witness–they are willing accomplices to the spirit of hatred of World War II, a frightening spirit embodied in its purest evil form by Adolf Hitler.
I have seen, first hand, the disgusting, murderous results of ethnic hatred. I have devoted the latter part of my life to writing about the long-term coexistence of Polish Jews and gentiles within Poland, and am committed to trying to help diffuse animosities stemming from World War II. In this spirit of friendship and respect, I wrote and had published earlier this decade a documentary history entitled “Jews in Poland: The Rise of Jews as a Nation From Congressus Judaicus in Poland to the Knesset in Israel.” If World War II presented any lessons to the people of the world, it showed what can eventually happen if ethnic animosities are allowed to fester and grow.
The study you are now reading is a quest for Polish-Jewish reconciliation. For it to be successful, those who would join this quest must have one thing in common: respect for the truth. As part of this quest, I will address how Jewish-Polish animosities have been cultivated in the aftermath of the War, and in particular how Soviet actions and Soviet-induced events and situations contributed to or drove the process of cultivating the animosities. In particular, I will take the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Kielce Pogrom to discuss this event in detail and use it as a basis for discussion of the larger geopolitical situation. This study deals primarily with the results of Soviet-institutionalized hatred and the Soviet crime of provoking situations purposely designed to sour Polish-Jewish relations. In general, the public in Western countries knows very little about the specifics of these types of Soviet misdeeds……..
A “pogrom”, a Russian word that translates to “devastation, ” is defined as “an organized massacre, especially of Jews in Russia, such as 1881, 1903, and 1905.” (The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language, 1989.) Anti-Jewish violence in Russia was usually started with ‘a false accusation that a ritual murder had been perpetrated on Christian children by local Jews. Violence directed against Jewish people that occurred on July 4, 1946, in the town of Kielce, referred to as the Kielce Pogrom, is aptly named for several reasons. For one, it was indeed organized. And as it will be explained in detail, it was organized by the Soviet-controlled terror apparatus in Poland, a captured country which was under Soviet occupation at the time. This pogrom, although not on Russian soil, was arranged by a totalitarian leadership centered in Russia and it was started with the same technique of planting a false accusation that a ritual murder had been perpetrated on Christian children. And as even the common dictionary definition shows, this is not the first time Russians have instigated this type of activity.
In the Kielce Pogrom, an uprising occurred over the span of many hours that resulted in the death of 41 Polish citizens: 39 Jews, and two gentiles. It was a horrible crime, and regrettably, there was some complicity among a very small number of gentile Poles in this inexcusable violence. These Polish criminals, as will be pointed out, were tried and convicted for their crimes. The reports, however, of the involvement of a mob of 15,000 cheering Polish citizens are completely untrue. Also, the idea that the uprising was of a spontaneous nature is also untrue. As it will be shown in this study, this event was carefully provoked and staged by the Soviet occupiers at that time. This event was staged to achieve specific political purposes dictated by Moscow’s global strategy including Europe and the Middle East.
THE SOVIET-NAZI PARTNERSHIP
Why would Soviets want to stage an uprising that would embarrass Poland? After all, didn’t both Poland and the Soviets fight alongside of Britain and the other allies in World War II? Didn’t Hitler’s German army invade both Poland and the Soviet Union, and isn’t “the enemy of my enemy my friend?”
There is general public awareness that the United States and the Soviet Union were World War II partners in the Allied fight against Nazi Germany. Many fewer, however, are aware of the nearly two-year Nazi-Soviet partnership embodied in the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, which was signed on September 28, 1939. It divided all of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union and contained secret provisions for the mutual extermination of potential Polish opponents of both Germany and the USSR. Both Germany and the USSR agreed to control their respective parts of Poland. This meant taking all necessary measures to contain and prevent the emergence of any potential Polish actions toward either Germany or the USSR, and then communicating with each
other on the progress made toward the goals of the treaty. The treaty lasted until Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Soviet hostility toward Poland and the desire of the USSR to control as much Polish territory as it could continued beyond the German invasion of Poland.The Soviets implemented their part of the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty by executing 21,857 members of the Polish leadership community, including many Jewish people. Katyn, in what is now Bielarus, contained the graves of 4443 such men and became a symbol of the mass execution of members of the upper echelon of Polish society in the Spring of 1940 At the same time Germany ran a parallel operation with the code name Aktion AB [Auserordentliche Befriedungsaktion, which translates to "extraordinary pacification"], culminating in the execution of about 20,000 Polish professionals.
Because of the German-Soviet Treaty to divide Poland among themselves, the Eastern half of Poland was under Soviet, not German, rule from September, 1939 to mid-1941. During that time, there were many Jewish people who collaborated with the Soviet terror apparatus against the conquered Polish state. Among the many eyewitnesses to those events is the famed Polish courier Jan Karski, who was made an honorary citizen of Israel for his efforts to worn an unresponsive West about the fate of Poland and Polish Jewry. In February, 1940, Karski reported: “Jews are denouncing Poles to the secret police and are directing the work of the communist militia from behind the scenes. Unfortunately, one must say that these incidents are very frequent.” (Report to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London.)
Hundreds of published accounts, including Jewish ones, confirm that Jews were involved in the roundups of Polish soldiers and officials (e.g., at Rozyszcze and Kowel), the jailing and executions of Poles (e.g., at Lwow and Czortkow), and in policing the deportation of Poles, in cattle cars, to the Gulag (e.g., from Gwozdziec). By the time the Germans attacked their erstwhile Soviet ally in mid-1941, over one million Poles had been deported to distant and probable deaths from towns like Bransk. All of this occurred before the Jewish Holocaust got underway. Naturally, these events had a significant impact on Polish attitudes, though that was not the only factor influencing them…..”
State Terrorism: The Ukrainian Genocide, 1933
The Ukrainian genocide at the hands of Stalin was as great as the Holocaust engineered by the Nazis, but is much less well known. The silence of prominent Western journalists is one reason why. Walter Duranty of The New York Times, a Pulitzer prize-winner, admitted privately that ten million or so peasants had been intentionally starved and/or killed, but in public he dismissed reports of this as exaggeration and anti-Soviet propaganda. It turned out later that Duranty was being sexually blackmailed by the KGB.
“Estimates of how many people died in Stalin’s engineered famine of 1933 vary. But they are staggering in their scale – between seven and 11 million people.
But despite the horrific number of people who died, the world is relatively unfamiliar with this grisly chapter in Soviet history which claimed lives on the same scale as the holocaust. One of the main reasons is that the Germans were eventually defeated, and thousands of eyewitnesses told their stories about concentration camps and massacres. The experience was also captured unforgettably in photographs, film, and written accounts, and many of those responsible for the genocide were captured and put on trial………
British historian Robert Conquest is an expert on the period and his 1986 study of the famine, “Harvest of Sorrow,” brought much information about the tragedy to Western audiences for the first time. Conquest said another contrast between the famine and the holocaust is that while Adolf Hitler had written down much of what he intended to do, Stalin did not go on record about the famine.
“In the first place, [the Germans] were caught, so it ended and they had themselves got into an operation where they said what they were doing. Stalin never said he was trying to starve anyone to death. He just took away their food. He never went on record. It was all done under the auspices of humanist talk, socialist talk — or else denied altogether. The operations were different. And in other ways they were different, too. Hitler did many horrible things but he didn’t torture his friends to tell lies. The operation was a different one.”
Conquest is in no doubt that the famine was primarily aimed at Ukrainians and that Stalin hated not only the country peasants but even senior Communist leaders, like Mykola Skrypnyk, who eventually killed himself…………
“[Stalin] was trying to break the Ukrainians, as you know, with the leading Ukrainian Bolshevik Skrypnyk committing suicide under the pressures that were put on them when they tried to defend just the ordinary alphabet of the Ukrainians. Here [Stalin] was trying to alter it, things like that. I think he also proved he never trusted Ukrainian Communists. The whole Ukrainian Central Committee was totally purged in 1937, even the ones who supported him. He had this terrific distrust of everybody, but particularly of Ukraine.”
Luciuk of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association has a different theory for why news of the famine never reached the West. He blamed a number of Western journalists based in Moscow at the time who knew of the forced starvation but chose not to write about it or deliberately covered it up.
The journalist he says played the most influential role in the cover-up was “The New York Times” correspondent Walter Duranty. A drug addict with a shady reputation, Duranty was also an avid fan of Stalin’s, whom he described as “the world’s greatest living statesman.” He was granted the first American interview with the Soviet leader and received privileged information from the secretive regime.
Duranty confided to a British diplomat at the time that he thought 10 million people had perished in the famine. But when other journalists who had traveled to Ukraine began writing about the horrific famine raging there, Duranty branded their information as anti-Soviet lies. Conquest believes that Duranty was being blackmailed by the Soviet secret police over his sexual activities, which reportedly included bisexuality and necrophilia.
The year before the famine, in 1932, Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize, America’s most coveted journalism award, for a series of articles on the Soviet economy. Luciuk says members of the Ukrainian diaspora, as well as Ukrainian politicians and academics, earlier this month launched a campaign to have Duranty’s award posthumously revoked. He said he hopes the campaign will make more people in the world aware of the famine….”
“Compassionate” Conservatism: Statist Propaganda
Let me put this as bluntly as possible. A state cannot be “compassionate.” Policies might have well-intentioned goals, but they are policies - that is, legal and administrative enactments, often backed by force, that must be followed by whoever falls under their jurisdiction, regardless of their state of mind.
On the other hand, compassion is a quality of heart and intention. An involuntary A non-voluntary action consequent to a policy cannot be compassionate. Obedience to a legal requirement cannot be compassionate. Compassion can be understood only by the context and the state of mind of an individual.
Libertarianism is not..should not be…and cannot be… compassionate.
Instead, it is the attitude to government policy and law that best allows human beings to act with the compassion each is capable of. To force “compassion” on people who don’t want to be “compassionate” is simply force, just as surely as if you were forcing anything else on them that they didn’t want. What looks like “compassion” to you might, after all, look like “expropriation” to me.
“Compassionate” policies might indeed achieve some immediate goal that makes some group of people more satisfied than they previously were. But it surely makes another group unhappy in order to do so. Now, the trade off might..or might not…be worth it. But the entity making that utilitarian calculation isn’t an individual, it’s at best a committee of hacks, at worst, a mafia of thugs….or worst of all, some economic model cooked up in a Harvard professor’s study.
By transferring “compassion” to the state, “compassionate conservatism” encourages people to become less compassionate personally. People actually become meaner. Why wouldn’t they? They’re already being taxed at a third to half their money, effectively. Even the good lord only asked for ten percent.
More on the subject by Robert Ringer, The Tea Party Goes Docile:
(Note: I don’t necessarily agree with Robert Ringer’s other views on defense. I don’t see a necessity for the US to be on a perma-war footing that involves aggressive wars overseas and an extensive network of bases. As a libertarian, I endorse a strong defense but one that’s decentralized and limited to volunteers, not mercenaries. It would be based on universal ownership of and training in firearms and would refrain from interfering in foreign internal affairs. This would go along with a decentralized government, supported by state and citizen militias. Most of all, I endorse economic freedom and prosperity as our greatest defense. The more attractive the US is as a trade partner, the less foreign states are going to hurt their own economic interests by turning hostile.
Far from strengthening the country, anti-market economic policies and a perpetually intrusive foreign policy are draining money, time, and energy from it.
(Nonetheless, I don’t think we can disarm unilaterally “at one fell swoop,” without opening up a can of worms, now that the government has actually created multiple foreign threats by its belligerence).
“I repeat what I said earlier: If anything, I believe the tea-party rally on tax day was far too docile. It once again demonstrated just how intimidating the far left can be. Not only intimidating, but clever.
How so? The BHO oligarchy has managed to change the Big Question from ”Is Obama a socialist?” to ”Is the tea-party movement dangerously immersed in racism, hate speech, and violence-prone affiliations with paramilitary groups?” Never sell the Saul Alinsky crowd short when it comes to turning every negative around and pointing it in the direction of its accusers.
I honestly believe that Der Fuhrbama believes his verbal skills are so powerful that he can embarrass the tea-party people into submission. He may be a lightweight in most respects, but he’s a lightweight with an abundance of (over)confidence. The tea-party people had better take a page from Rules from Radicals and press down twice as hard on the accelerator, lest they lose their momentum long before November 2.
Docile simply doesn’t cut it. Just ask the compassionate conservatives who are now in the process of going down in flames.”
SEC’s Goldman Action: Democrat Political Theater?
Politico raises the ‘timing’ question about the SEC’s Goldman suit:
“The Commission approved the Goldman suit in a vote that spit along party lines – a rare occurrence for approvals of enforcement litigation.
–Before the Commission had released its announcement, the New York Times published on its website a story describing the suit.
–Less than half an hour after the Times story’s publication, Organizing for America, the successor organization to Obama for America and now a project of the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”), sent millions of supporters an e-mail message from President Obama urging support for “Wall Street Reform.”
–Within hours, the Democratic National Committee had purchased AdWords advertising from Google, Inc. The DNC’s Google campaign fundraising advertisement, headed “Fight Wall Street Greed,” appeared whenever a user ran a Google search for the phrase “Goldman Sachs SEC.” It read, “Help Pres. Obama Reform Wall Street and Create Jobs. Families First!” and included a link to www.BarackObama.com, the website of Organizing for America.
–Democrats in Congress and the Administration have heralded the Commission’s suit against Goldman as a welcome boost to their case for the legislation.
–Members of the media have already begun to question the timing of the Commission’s suit and the actions of the Democratic National Committee.
As supported by the Commission’s canons of ethics, and as frequently reiterated by you and other Commissioners, the unqualified independence of financial regulators is crucial to the health of the financial system and the U.S. economy. For this reason, doubts about whether the Commission has scrupulously guarded its independence from the Administration’s partisan political agenda and concerted efforts to manipulate Congressional action are very serious, and should be addressed with full transparency.”
John Paulson: Market Fraud, Not Market God
John Paulson - more crooked than clever, says The Big Money:
“What emerges from the SEC’s charges against Goldman Sachs (which, it should be noted, the investment bank is strenuously denying) isn’t a story of Paulson seeing a crisis coming when others are still happily buying up housing derivatives. No, it’s a story of reluctant buyers manipulated into buying more collateralized debt obligations when it was already clear that the market was falling apart.”
Ron Paul Smeared As Muse Of Anti-Semitic White Supremacist Killers
Update:
“President Clinton weighed in that “legitimate” comparisons can be drawn between today’s grass-roots anger and resentment toward the government and the right-wing extremism 15 years ago.”
Actually, I think the Clinton statement was a pretty fair one, all in all. It didn’t equate “right-wing extremism” with tea-party goers and anti-government activists (as the SPLC did) and it did give room for people to voice their opinions, without having to “be nice.” It cautioned, correctly, that people should stop short of advocating violence.
Any discussion of the Confederacy, said the ex-Prez, should always include a mention of slavery, which doesn’t sound like an onerous requirement to me. So too any discussion of “Islamicism” should also include a complete list of US interventions in the said Islamicist state, right?
In short, more balance and less polemics. I hope I’ve always tried to do that on this blog.
The only thing is, can we hope the government will live up to this standard and stop short of advocating violence, say, in Iran, or in Michigan…or anywhere else?ORIGINAL POST
Thanks to David Kramer at LRC blog, for this slimy listing by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of Ron Paul among the “enablers’ of the “Patriot” movement, which, if you didn’t know by now is code to our dear leaders and their cohorts for “Nazi right-wing (definitely Christian) loons-who-share-milk-shakes-’n-training-manuals- with- OsamaJohnPatrickBedellDavidKoreshRandyWeaver-bin Laden” :
1. Michele Bachmann 2. Glenn Beck 3. Paul Broun 4. Andrew Napolitano 5. Ron Paul
On the page following, you can see what a smear this is. There’s a list of incidents making up a “Patriot” timeline (love those quotation marks) that starts with President Bush’s “New World Order” remark. (He said it, didn’t he?) and is dotted with references to anti-Semitism, white supremacy and violent acts.
Note that when “cultists” or militia members are murdered, the word used is “killed” or “left dead.” When a federal agent is killed, the term is “murdered.”
Feds Blame Former Marine For Alleged Hutaree “Christian Militia” Conspiracy
Michael Isikoff at Newsweek has posted on the non-story de jour, which apparently is that the federal government has filed a court document in the Hutaree case. The document is a brief in opposition to the defendant Michael Meeks’ motion to revoke the detention order against him.
We are looking forward to the day when a defendant’s every legal filing also becomes the subject of such prompt attention. I’ve italicized the federal government designation of the “crime” that Isikoff has adopted as established fact:
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“A former U.S. Marine rifle expert and veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War supplied the extremist Christian “Hutaree” militia with a “hit list” of federal judges and elected officials and served as the group’s “heavy gunner” who was responsible for providing a “significant volume of firepower” against designated law-enforcement targets, according to a court document released by federal prosecutors.
In a new court filing, federal prosecutors for the first time portray the former Marine, Michael David Meeks, 40, as a key figure in the Michigan-based Hutaree’s alleged conspiracy to trigger an “uprising” against the U.S. government by plotting to assassinate law-enforcement officers with improvised explosive devices.
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Meeks, the prosecutors allege, used his four years of U.S. military training to become a member of the Hutaree’s “inner circle” and participated in “military-style training exercises ” with the group on a dozen occasions between October 2008 and February of this year.”
As far as I can tell from this, the only thing the federal government has got on them so far is hearsay and some combat-style exercises.
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