Tag Archives: communism

Politics

J. Edgar Hoover

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I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It covered so many aspects of U.S. history and filled in a lot of blanks for me about key characters.  Here are some random observations.

While the author tilts to the Left politically and clearly doesn’t like Hoover (and not without many good reasons), his thorough analysis can’t help but show the many foibles and evils of Democrats as well as Hoover and Republicans.  It was FDR that expanded Hoover’s powers greatly, and FDR, Kennedy and Johnson loved how Hoover provided them with gossip and blackmail material.  He also noted the vote-stealing of Kennedy and Johnson and the manufactured images of the Kennedy family.

Hoover provided irrefutable evidence of what a fraud the “Reverend” side of MLK was, but the media and politicians chose to ignore it.

He pretended for years that significant organized crime didn’t exist, perhaps because they had something on him and/or because the difficulty of the cases would impact his success rate for solving crimes.   But when it became public just how real it was and when Attorney General Robert Kennedy pushed him on it in the 1960’s , he went after it with a vengeance and made great progress.

All over the United States crime families discussed this sudden, astonishing turn of events—they were especially stunned to find that the FBI even knew the family infrastructure—and agreed there should be no recurrence. But mob leaders in Youngstown, Ohio, didn’t get the message. The agents overheard them discussing which of their three available hit men to use to kill an FBI agent they particularly disliked. Some twenty of the area’s biggest and baddestlooking agents barged into the Mafia chieftain’s penthouse apartment, “accidentally” knocked over expensive vases, dropped cigarettes and still-lit matches on the Oriental carpets, urinated on a favorite potted palm. “You may have three hit men,” they told him, “but Mr. Hoover has thousands.”54

After that, no one again referred to FBI agents on overhears as Boy Scouts.

But the Mafiosi didn’t blame FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had left them alone for so many years. They were sure that he was only a reluctant warrior, acting on the orders of Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

He was also a racist who stood to the side on various KKK issues, but again, when finally pressed into action, he made great strides against the KKK.  Whether legal or not, actions like sending postcards to KKK members (that others were sure to read) noting how they were known members and such helped shame people into leaving the group.  The FBI would even send fake letters to spouses telling them that their KKK-member husbands were having affairs.  The idea was to distract them at home to keep them from terrorizing others.

Here’s an example of how they worked to pit the Communists and Mafia against each other:

In November the director [Hoover] informed selected SACs [Special Agends in Charge] about the Bureau’s inspiration for a Klanzi party COINTELPRO [COunter INtelligence PROgrams]: “We created the impression that the Klan and the American Nazi Party might form the Klanzi Party…for the purpose of ridicule and to provoke certain Klan leaders to an attack on the ANP.” A month before, someone suggested a rather similar plan to disrupt the Communist party and La Cosa Nostra by “having them expend their energies attacking each other.” A supposedly Communist leaflet attacking the working conditions at a mob-owned business was to be the first fruit of Operation Hoodwink.

If you ask most Lefties who the Vietnam war hawks were they would probably blame Republicans, but it was Kennedy and Johnson who drove it.

The un-checked power of someone who had the power to dig up dirt on everyone except Jesus made for a dangerous combination.  He could blackmail just about anyone, including Presidents.

It was interesting how many times homosexual issues came up in the book.  The government would screen for that, because it opened people to potential blackmail.  But what was interesting is that most of the evidence was from police records where individuals had been caught in parks, restrooms, etc.  What is it with that deviancy that leads people to such reckless behavior?

And then there were the “special requests,” as in November 1969 when H. R. Haldeman asked for a list of known or suspected homosexuals in the Washington press corps. Within hours, a detailed report was delivered to the White House, indicating that the FBI director had this particular information close at hand.

The author also noted that “Much has been made of Nixon’s “enemies list.” Every administration had had such a list.”

Sadly, Hoover spent so much time self-promoting and covering for the bureau that they could have accomplished much more.  They missed out on some important opportunities because of his foolish pride.  And he engaged in and allowed a lot of petty embezzlement while he should have set the best example.

The urban legend of Hoover being a cross-dresser wasn’t even noted.  I hate when those things seep into the public consciousness.  But the author frequently alluded to the potentially homosexual relationship of Hoover and his long-time (and also single) 2nd in command, Clyde Tolson, even though he never made a definitive conclusion.

 

Politics

Thoughts on “Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956”

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As previously noted, I saw this fascinating historical fact in a book I’m reading about the Cold War.  The book was published in 2012, so it predates Antifa by many years.  The author was describing the spread of the secret police (the NKVD / KGB) into Eastern European countries and how they relentlessly went after fascists, or more specifically how they called anyone they didn’t like a fascist as a pretext to imprison or kill them.

But in every country occupied by the Red Army, the definition of “fascist” eventually grew broader, expanding to include not only Nazi collaborators but anybody whom the Soviet occupiers and their local allies disliked. In time, the word “fascist,” in true Orwellian fashion, was eventually used to describe antifascists who also happened to be anticommunists. And every time the definition was expanded, arrests followed.

Some of these “fascists” had been identified in advance . . .

But the book had so much more about Communism in Eastern Europe that you don’t often hear about.  The parallels to current Leftists is chilling but not surprising.  Political correctness — that is, making people say things they know aren’t true – isn’t new.

The loss of freedom, tyranny, abuse, hunger would all have been easier to bear if not for the compulsion to call them freedom, justice, the good of the people … Lies, by their very nature partial and ephemeral, are revealed as lies when confronted with language’s striving for truth. But here all the means of disclosure had been permanently confiscated by the police. —Aleksander Wat, My Century

The “progressives” in the U.S. are mostly useful idiots who will be eliminated first.  They have no idea how Communist states will restrict the freedom and creativity that these people take for granted.

In order to buy paints and brushes, artists had to have a tax number issued by the association and a membership card confirming the tax number. Anyone who wanted to paint, in other words, had to conform at least enough to remain a member of the association. Choosing not to join could mean choosing not to work as an artist at all.

The current Commies have been successful at destroying the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts and other social organizations, just as their predecessors were.

At several points in 1947, Polish authorities considered shutting the Scouting movement down altogether. They worried, however, that a ban would send thousands of young people into the arms of the underground, or into the woods with the partisans. So they waited. And eventually, they adopted the tactic which, as noted, would become a standard tool in the Eastern European communist arsenal: they resolved to destroy the movement from within.

From the “sound familiar?” category, the campus snowflakes who shout down opposing views are nothing new.

Although his party allegedly controlled a third of the seats, whenever he spoke—or when any of his deputies spoke—the whole room would erupt in boos and catcalls, making it impossible to hear a word.

And one more “sound familiar?” bit:

Although they didn’t necessarily say so in public, most communist leaders shared Lenin’s loathing for small business.

The good news is that no matter what they Commies tried – and they tried everything from propaganda to murder – they could never accomplish their goal of making everyone support the regimes.

Like the CIA, the KGB, Khrushchev, and Dulles, Arendt had come to believe that totalitarian regimes, once they worked their way into the soul of a nation, were very nearly invincible. They were all wrong. Human beings do not acquire “totalitarian personalities” with such ease. Even when they seem bewitched by the cult of the leader or of the party, appearances can be deceiving. And even when it seems as if they are in full agreement with the most absurd propaganda—even if they are marching in parades, chanting slogans, singing that the party is always right—the spell can suddenly, unexpectedly, dramatically be broken.

The bad news is that unlike parts of the Eastern European churches that gave in to Communism, the “Christian” Leftist in the west volunteered for the mission to oppose the real Gospel and to spread Communism.

All quotes from Applebaum, Anne. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

 

Politics

The Left’s trick of labeling opponents as fascists is straight out of the KGB playbook

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We are used to seeing Antifa — aka AntiF(irst)A(mendment) — reflexively label anyone they disagree with as fascists.  If the topic wasn’t so serious and if Antifa wasn’t so violent you could just laugh them off.  Yeah, we conservatives are such fascists that we want citizens to be armed, we want limited government, less regulations, etc.  Seriously, we were the original anti-fascists.  If we used a fraction of the tactics that Antifa does it would be in the news 24×7.

I just saw this fascinating historical fact in a book I’m reading about the Cold War.  The book was published in 2012, so it predates Antifa by many years.  The author was describing the spread of the secret police (the NKVD / KGB) into Eastern European countries and how they relentlessly went after fascists, or more specifically how they called anyone they didn’t like a fascist as a pretext to imprison or kill them.

But in every country occupied by the Red Army, the definition of “fascist” eventually grew broader, expanding to include not only Nazi collaborators but anybody whom the Soviet occupiers and their local allies disliked. In time, the word “fascist,” in true Orwellian fashion, was eventually used to describe antifascists who also happened to be anticommunists. And every time the definition was expanded, arrests followed.

Some of these “fascists” had been identified in advance . . .

Applebaum, Anne. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

So there is more evidence that Antifa and their apologists on the Left are just running the Communist playbook.  They disingenuously call their opponents fascists to deflect attention from their Communism.  And make no mistake: If they had the power of the KGB they’d start arresting and punishing conservatives today.

Politics

Useful idiots

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A friend shared a link on Facebook about the Tennessee school district that pushed Islam on children and a Leftist responded with this: “Seriously??? Do you actually believe this?”

Yes, my friend believed it, and so do I, because it is true.  I am very selective about the media I consume and I long ago dismissed sources that over-sensationalize things or have many mistakes (or any uncorrected mistakes).

The useful idiots on the Left only consume the Leftist mainstream media, go to Leftist educational institutions, watch Leftist entertainment, etc. They are embarrassingly poorly informed. Meanwhile, all the conservatives I know get plenty of news from the Left and the Right. That doesn’t make us correct — though we usually are! — but we are much, much more thoroughly informed. As in this example, Leftists are in such denial about what Islam does around the world.

I don’t say “useful idiots” as a random pejorative, it was a phrase used by Communists describing those who would unwittingly help destroy the U.S. from inside and then get killed anyway. This is a fascinating interview that shows just how effective they have been.

Leftists think these things couldn’t be happening because their media/education/entertainment cocoon is hiding them from it — sort of like the ISIS intelligence information that got edited to suit the Obama narrative. And sort of like the Planned Parenthood videos that people aren’t hearing about — or if they do hear about them, they believe the convenient lie that they were “edited” (as if every video isn’t edited). Because you can totally trust people who kill unwanted children for a living!  Nothing to see here, folks . . . just blame Bush, racism, etc. and never mind the child-killing, and violent ideologies, etc.

Economics

Five times the Internet speed, for free. Because capitalism.

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speedtest

Why did my Internet get so fast for the same price?  I’m really not sure.  Well, Google Fiber is coming to town.  And in a completely unrelated event [cough, cough], Time Warner Cable decided to dramatically increase access speeds with zero price increases.

You do NOT get this with Socialism or Communism.  And Crapitalism is only marginally better than those.  Regional monopolies sound better than country-wide monopolies, but for the end user they are still monopolies.  You need real free-market competition to optimize things for everyone.

That is all.

Christian worldview

Roundup

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Two good iPhone apps recommended by my 83 yr. old father — Appygraph (send cards via text, with your pictures pasted in) and Heart Rate (you put your finger on the camera lens and it takes your pulse).  Apparently he’s the go-to guy for high tech.  And my 78 yr. old mom had him text a picture of something to her in a store.  Glad to see they are up on the latest things!

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‘Revealing Heaven:’ Episcopal Pastor Details Hundreds of Near-Death Experiences, Backs Rob Bell — I know the author and have done prison ministry with him. I’m very disappointed at the direction he has taken. Rob Bell?! Ugh. I can’t see how he missed the obvious, namely that these things are demonic. Who would want to reassure people that everything is swell and they are definitely going to Heaven and don’t need to repent and believe?

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The Post Resurrection Behavior of Jesus Eliminates the Possibility of an Imposter — a good refutation of a false theory about the resurrection.

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The Atlanta Public School cheating scandal was immense in its breadth and duration, not to mention its recklessness.  This shouldn’t be a surprise, though.  Unionized bureaucrats and teachers rarely have the interests of the children at heart.  It is one more reason the “No Child Left Behind” and all other Federal initiatives are doomed to cause more problems than they solve.  Education funding and incentives should be as local as possible.  Federal initiatives are a waste that just lead to more corruption like this.

Fulton County prosecutors announced that a grand jury had indicted the Atlanta Public Schools’ ex-superintendent and nearly three dozen other former administrators, teachers, principals and other educators of charges arising from a standardized test cheating scandal that rocked the system.

Former Superintendent Beverly Hall faces charges including conspiracy, making false statements and theft because prosecutors said some of the bonuses she received were tied to falsified scores. Hall retired just days before the findings of a state probe were released in mid-2011. A nationally known educator who was named Superintendent of the Year in 2009, Hall has long denied knowing about the cheating or ordering it.

During a news conference Friday, Howard highlighted the case of Juwanna and another student, saying they demonstrated “the plight of many children” in the Atlanta school system.

Their stories were among many that investigators heard in hundreds of interviews with school administrators, staff, parents and students during a 21-month-long investigation.

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Hmm. Turns out Karl Marx was just as smelly and personally useless as his modern-day acolytes!  The NY Times is honest about what Marx is like but doesn’t seem to get the current correlation:

The Karl Marx depicted in Jonathan Sperber’s absorbing, meticulously researched biography will be unnervingly familiar to anyone who has had even the most fleeting acquaintance with radical politics. Here is a man never more passionate than when attacking his own side, saddled with perennial money problems and still reliant on his parents for cash, constantly plotting new, world-changing ventures yet having trouble with both deadlines and personal hygiene, living in rooms that some might call bohemian, others plain “slummy,” and who can be maddeningly inconsistent when not lapsing into elaborate flights of theory and unintelligible abstraction.

Still, it comes as a shock to realize that the ultimate leftist, the father of Communism itself, fits a recognizable pattern.

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Global warming: Still a hoax.  And the notion that it was man-caused was a bigger hoax.

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Socialized Medicine: Money for Fake Boobs as Patients Starve — The title says it all, but it left out the part about gender-reassignment surgery (i.e., self-mutilation) being covered as well:

Why are capitalist countries wealthy and socialist countries poor? Because the free market allocates resources more wisely than bureaucrats. This is how healthcare resources are allocated under Britain’s regime of socialized medicine:

Britain’s National Health Service, the NHS, recently spent £4,800 — about $7,200 — on enormous breast implants for an aspiring model while nearly 1,200 patients starved to death in hospitals over the past four years. Critics say the deaths were caused by neglect due to understaffing.

The NHS provided Josie Cunningham with 36DD implants in January after she told her doctor that being flat-chested was causing emotional distress.

It gets worse:

In addition to the breast implants, the NHS has also spent £25,000 — about $37,000 — on a sex-change operation for a 19-year-old male diagnosed with “gender identity disorder.”

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Wow, check out the anti-gay hate speech from all of these . . . Democrats?!?!  Not shocking at all, really.  And not hate speech, of course.  They just said whatever would optimize their votes, just like most Republicans do.  But their words at the were true, even if they didn’t believe them.  They have no substantive reasons for their change other than public opinion.

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Child’s complaints of sexual abuse by gay couple were ignored by social workers — political correctness yields many victims.

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University Compares Pro-Life Students to White Supremacists — But of course!  Abortions kill blacks at a rate 3 times that of whites, and the taxpayer-funded abortion portion of the Democrats’ platform will increase that, so of course the pro-choicers are like white supremacists or worse.  Oh, wait, what’s that? They said the pro-lifers were like the supremacists?!?!  Wow.

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Abortion kills unwanted innocent but human beings.  It is a scientific fact and basic common sense that a new human being is created at fertilization.  So if someone calls you anti-abortion, don’t get defensive.  Embrace it!  Would you apologize for being anti-slavery?

Politics

A terrific summary of politics in the U.S.

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Via Oleg Atbashian Founder of ‘The Peoples Cube’: “The Current Truth About Socialism and The Unions” at Ironic Surrealism v3.0 –

America is capitalistic and greedy yet have of the population is subsidized.

Half of the population is subsidized yet they think they are victims.

They think they are victims yet their representatives run the government.

Their representatives run the government yet the poor keep getting poorer.

The poor keep getting poorer yet they have things people in other countries can only dream about.

They have all this stuff people in other countries can only dream about and yet they want America to be like those other countries.

I especially liked this one: “Their representatives run the government yet the poor keep getting poorer.”  Just look at inner cities and their schools.  Democrats have had virtual monopolies on their politics and education for over 50 years and what do they have to show for it?  Detroit, anyone?

It is always interesting to get the perspectives of those who lived under full-fledged Communism.  If only we had history classes in public schools that taught the truth about what Communism does to people.

Oleg Atbashian is a writer and graphic artist from the former USSR. Born and raised in Ukraine, he used to be a teacher, a translator, a worker, a freelance journalist, and at one time a propaganda artist, creating visual agitprop for the local Party committee in a Siberian town. In 1994, he emigrated to the USA hoping to live in a country that was ruled by reason and common sense. Ironically, he now lives in New York City. He is the creator of  ThePeoplesCube.com, a satirical website where he writes under the name of Red Square.

Financial, Politics

Atlas Shrugged, the movie

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This should be interesting.  I’m not a big movie fan but I may go see this– Atlas Shrugged Part 1 Trailer.  I finally got around to reading the book last year.

Mini-review: Ayn Rand did a magnificent job of identifying the failure of Liberalism and how destructive it is.  If I wasn’t so familiar with the people represented by the characters she skewered I would have accused her of creating straw men. But many decades later the same horrific thinking dominates academia and much of politics and “religion” (the fake kinds).

Her solution is better, but far from good enough.  Ironically, she was ahead of her time in identifying the intellectual bankruptcy of postmodern thinking but fell prey to a bit of it herself.  Even if her economic worldview was better than her ideological enemies — and it certainly was — she still had no universal grounding for her ideals.  And of course I oppose her pro-legalized-abortion stance, though I wonder if she would have changed her views if she had seen how abortion rights played out after Roe v Wade.

I hope that the movie stimulates discussion about the key economic concepts that it rightly advances.  And I do know of one blogger who has probably purchased multiple advance tickets to the show . . .

Financial, Politics

Free advice for Communists, Socialists and general anti-business types

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I came across a pro-Communism blog when the owner commented here.  He basically encourages people to do all manner of evil to fight: evil.  How consistent.

My advice to people like him: Hey, if you and your comrades are so smart, why not form your own corporations and run them by your definition of good ethics.  Then you’ll have such a swell place to work that you can hire away the best and brightest from your evil competitors, right?  You can put them out of business and do it legally!  You don’t even have to resort to violence.  (Disappointed?)

If you think that the evil insurance companies charge too much, then pool your resources and start your own insurance company.  Beat them at their own game!  You’ll either drive them out of business or force them to reduce prices and increase benefits to compete with you.  Not only are you more righteous than your competition but you are smarter as well, right?  You can’t lose!

You know you have the skills to know your markets, follow all the tax, financial reporting, environmental, labor and other laws, keep your employees safe, make payroll, create and run efficient business processes, and so much more.  And you can do all those things better than your enemies.  Beating them will be so easy.

Or do you know how to do any of that?  Would that be too much work?  Isn’t it easier to plot how to take down “the man” and then release some endorphins?

And what is your plan once you take down the evil corporations and trash everyone’s retirement accounts?  Who will be left to pay taxes to support all your dreams?

I know a little bit about business and how jobs are formed, and it is tragic that Obama’s cabinet has, by far, the least business experience of any administration. I know what sends jobs overseas. They have no idea what creates real, lasting jobs — the ones that ultimately fund the government.

As I’ve said before, capitalism has its rough edges but it beats out every other “-ism” in a serious way.  Its critics never seem to realize that their plans bring the “killing the goose that laid the golden eggs” story to life.