“This Government Does Not Torture” ~ George Waterboard Bush

George “Waterboard” Bush and Crew

Remember when GWB explained to the world that “this government does not torture“? I bet most of you believed him, right? Just like the Fox News slurping jarhead I had a conversation with not long ago. When I said that it embarrasses me that my country has reverted to what we once prosecuted others for, he asked me what I was talking about. I explained that Iraqi prisoners were tortured. He said I didn’t know what I was talking about. You see, he’s “been there” and there was no torture.

I asked, “What about the waterboarding?”

He laughed and said, “I’ve been waterboarded, have you? That isn’t torture, they did it to us in the Marines.”

Of course, what he went through was hardly torture, even though some ex-marines and Seals say it was. Is it torture if you are doused with water for 10-15 seconds? By your friends and fellow Marines that you know damn well don’t have ill intent for you? When you know it is practice training in case you get caught behind enemy lines?

Well, I would think that IF it were a scared Muslim dude who is held down by steroid laden monstrosities, cursing you, slapping your nuts with batons, causing sleep deprivation by chaining your hands to the ceiling, not allowing you to rest for up to 40 hours or more at a time, being threatened with death and mock executions, threats of killing your loved ones if you don’t “confess”… that it might be a tad bit different than the comparable love-fest initiated by your fellow jarheads.

But to people like him its the same, because, you know, he’s so bad ass and all.

Even the wikipedia tells us that its not the same:

The difference was in the manner in which the detainees’ breathing was obstructed. At the SERE school and in the DoJ opinion, the subject’s airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency interrogator … applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee’s mouth and nose. One of the psychiatrist / interrogators acknowledged that the Agency’s use of the technique is different from that used in SERE training because it is ‘for real’ and is more poignant and convincing.

It appears that we did, in fact, torture others (according to the Constitution Project). In a recent 577 page report (that you can read HERE), the bipartisan committee of 11 (led by Asa Hutchison, ex-DHS undersecretary/DEA Head, and James Jones) explains that we did (this is a death knell for those who that we never tortured).

Let’s review what was done to these people in our name:

The OLC issued a second memorandum signed by Bybee in August 2002 (hereinafter Bybee Techniques Memo) that concluded 10 specific “enhanced” techniques were not torture, and could be used lawfully by the CIA. The techniques were: “(1) attention grasp, (2) walling, (3) facial hold, (4) facial slap (insult slap), (5) cramped confinement, (6) wall standing, (7) stress positions, (8) sleep deprivation, (9) insects placed in a confinement box, and (10) the waterboard.”

In finding that the 10 techniques were not torture, the Bybee Techniques Memo relied not only on a narrow legal definition of torture, but on factual representations about how the techniques would be implemented that later proved inaccurate. To give one example, the OLC memorandum stated the volume of water used to waterboard a suspect would be carefully controlled, and that while enhanced techniques might be used more than once, “repetition will not be substantial.” In fact, one detainee was waterboarded 83 times, and another detainee 183 times, by interrogators who “continuously applied large volumes of water.”

So the report shows that we did torture and that it:

“damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.”

Yeah. No shit. And we killed and maimed many that confessed to stuff they never did in the first place.

The New York Times tells us:

The task force found “no firm or persuasive evidence” that these interrogation methods produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. While “a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information,” much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says.

One key issue that you ObamaBots need to realize is that your favorite murderer in chief wanted to “look forward, not backward” when he had the chance to hold the Bush criminals responsible. (You two party pukes make me sick.) Nevermind that he didn’t want these torture regimens stopped, because sure as hell, he uses the same schemes.

Hutchison didn’t want to believe it and had to be convinced, but finally had to admit that he now has no doubts about what the US has done:

“This has not been an easy inquiry for me, because I know many of the players.”

Mr Jones chimed in:

“I had not recognized the depths of torture in some cases,”

“We lost our compass.”

A Song For 9/11

Elvis has obviously left the building:

Another parody by DC Dave regarding the real culprits of 9/11.

Based on Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You”

Wise men say
Only fools rush in
So why are we so quick in solving major crimes?

Pigs fly high
Santa’s sleigh flies higher
And buildings fall down from a kerosene fire.

Like the water flows
From a high place to a low
The laws of science don’t change
When shills tell us what’s so.

Just this once
Think it all the way through
And ask yourself, “If not them, then who?”

Like the water flows
From a high place to a low
The laws of science don’t change
When shills tell us what’s so.

Just this once
Think it all the way through
And ask yourself, “If not him, then who?”

http://www.dcdave.com/poet15/130407.htm

Video and vocals by BuelahMan

We Are Doomed

Pass it on…

Falling To Pieces For Israel

New parody by DCDave:
http://www.dcdave.com/poet15/130405.htm

Falling To Pieces For Israel

(to Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces”)

You fall to pieces
At just the sound of their name.
You fall to pieces,
Now we’ve wised up to their game:

They want us to think that you work for us
Because we wanted you,
Went to the polls for you.
Well we’re sorry we see what you say and do:
They say “boo,” and you fall to pieces.

You fall to pieces.
We see what you’re all about.
You fall to pieces.
You’re only there to sell out.

You know who puts butter upon your bread.
You’ll jump through hoops for it.
Do loop de loops for it.
If you get out of line just a little bit
They flash cash and you fall to pieces.
They flash cash and you fall to pieces.

Featuring new singing sensation, Liz Dilling

Video by BuelahMan

History Repeats (Now Will America Do Something About It)

Ernst Zundel’s prediction when interviewed by a Jew. You tell me, is he correct?

Ernst Zundel Warns The Jews About Doing To America What They Did To Germany.

Too late, I say.

Snordster thinks its too late. And it may be. You can bet your ass they own all the media which has brainwashed way too many of us. They own the government, which is totally subservient to them. They own all the major corporations which have off-shored your jobs (and influence the others to send them away, as well). They own Big Meds and Big Ag or manipulate them into providing their disease creating “food”. They control your money and are stripping YOU of your wealth with every passing day.

Even if America were to send them packing (what the real “Holocaust” was about), it may be too late to save the revolutionary spirit Ernst talks about. Its a question of numbers. Far too many of you have become brain dead or you fight against the wrong entities, just as the Jews have organized and hoodwinked you into doing, just like puppet masters.

Yeah, it may be too late already.

April Fools!

Your Government Is A Joke

Article by horse237:

https://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/april-fools-your-government-is-a-joke/

Graphics by David Dees:

http://www.deesillustration.com/index.asp

Video clip (for illustration and education purposes):

Video and narration by BuelahMan:

http://buelahman.wordpress.com/

It’s Time To Stop Being Israel’s Bitch

Cyprus Ripoff First, Then Euro Collapse

You’ve probably heard about the Cyprus ripoff going on. Apparently, the banking cartel wants to squeeze payment out of the citizen’s bank accounts by simply TAKING a certain percentage (initially somewhere around 6.5% ~ over 9%, depending on how much one has). In other words, they are holding the citizens accountable for the bad bets the bankers made and can’t repay. (If you don’t think something like this can happen here, you need to wake up).

Mike Rivero covered the issue and it appears that the amounts will be even higher. He also believes that this will be the collapse of the Euro, because the Jewish Central Banking cartel is just getting started with Cyprus and it will go after several other countries next. He believes that the Euro will collapse within two weeks:

All is breaking loose over Cyprus situation – Turning into crisis. Air date 3-22-2013, 1st hour
http://www.justin.tv/michaelrivero
http://whatreallyhappened.com
http://republicbroadcasting.org
*Note none of the material used herein is copyrighted by ClearChannel, et al.

Elia Kazan, American Hero by DCDave

Elia Kazan, American Hero

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elia_Kazan

Ben and Norma Barzman were Hollywood screenwriters and unapologetic members of the Communist Party.  As such, they became victims of the Hollywood blacklist and lived and worked in exile in Europe, mainly in France, from the late 1940s to the late 1970s.  The following passage is from Norma’s 2003 book, The Red and the Blacklist: The Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate (p. 442):

proud Communist Party member
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk

In March 1999, ten years after Ben’s death, the Writers Guild restored screenplay credit to Ben for El Cid and solo original screenplay credit (“Written By”) to me for Luxury Girls.  At the same moment, the Academy announced their intention to bestow an honorary Oscar on Elia Kazan.  Along with Abe Polonsky, Bernie Gordon, Jean Butler, Bobbie Lees, and the other surviving blacklistees and their offspring, I was goosed into action.  I’d been comparatively quiet, attending blacklist retrospectives, promoting Tender Comrades at bookstores and universities.  But I was energized once again.  I collected money for ads in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, picketed outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with my grandson, Matthew, Daniel’s son; spoke on radio and TV.  A big demonstration greeted Oscar-goers, most of whom did not stand or applaud Kazan.

And what was it about belatedly honoring perhaps the greatest director the American motion picture industry has ever seen that had Ms. Barzman so exercised?  Here, by way of explanation, is how The New York Times began its March 22, 1999, article entitled “Amid Protests, Elia Kazan Receives His Oscar:”

Elia Kazan said ”thank you” tonight at the Academy Awards, and then walked off stage slowly to sustained applause.

It was, in some ways, a bittersweet finale to the controversy over the honorary Oscar for the 89-year-old filmmaker, a controversy dating back to 1952 when Kazan, the director of ”On the Waterfront” and other classics, named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee investigating Communist influences in Hollywood.

After an all-too-sketchy summary of Kazan’s many accomplishments, The Times gave Kazan’s detractors the last word with this conclusion:

But critics of the award to Mr. Kazan said that the director should not be forgiven for the decision he made in 1952. A full-page ad in Daily Variety, signed by some members of the entertainment world as well as lawyers and academics, said that Mr. Kazan ”validated the blacklisting of thousands” and that ”his action did enormous damage to the motion picture industry.”

Only a handful of the hundreds of signatories were well known, among them the actors Sean Penn, Ed Asner and Theodore Bikel.

CNN, in its coverage before the event, even went so far as to publicize the Kazan attackers by printing the Hollywood Reporter ad in its entirety:

“There is the story in our history of a man who was proclaimed a hero of the American Revolution. In one of the battles against the British he suffered a mutilating leg wound. Sadly, after the revolution he became a traitor. It was ruled that for treason he be hanged. But before they hanged him, the leg that was wounded was amputated so that the better part of him be not dishonored.

“Elia Kazan too was a traitor. Some of those betrayed were his close friends. Their lives and futures were destroyed. He became ally and accomplice to an infamous committee which shamed his country. There is no way for the films of Kazan to be amputated from the rest of him. Yet, if there were any decency left in him he should have refused the award so as not to once again sow discord and bitterness among those whose lives and devotion are given to cinema.” Signed, Jules Dassin.

Not to be outdone, in 2003 PBS had this to say about Kazan and his Congressional testimony:

One of Kazan’s defenders is Arthur Miller, much to the disappointment of many on the left. Miller is one of the heroes of the McCarthy Era. He defied the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1956, and refused, unlike Kazan, to name those whom he knew to be “fellow travelers.” For this he was held in contempt of Congress, fined, and sentenced to jail time.

Miller, who struggled at the time so mightily with his personal moral failing, emerged as the exemplar of courage in face of the Red scare. He has even taken on an aura of saintliness over the years. Kazan occupies the other end of the spectrum: a man defined almost entirely by his decision to name names. For many, Kazan’s brilliant career-all that he contributed to the theater, to film, to letters-will be tainted by a single decision he was forced to make some fifty years ago.

The Continuing Communism Whitewash

What in the world is going on here?  At the time that Kazan gave his testimony, we only knew a small part of the evils of Soviet Communism under Joseph Stalin.  Nikita Khrushchev had not yet made his famous speech on the cult of personality and its horrible consequences.  The Soviet historian Roy Medvedev hadn’t published his exposé of Stalin entitled Let History Judge.  Most importantly, The Gulag Archipelago and the other great writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn were still in the distant future.  On the American political scene, the revelations of a number of former Communists had been published in the form of a book entitled The God That Failed three years before, in which the insidiousness of the Communist Party in the United States was put on full display.  Former Communist spies Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers had given their Congressional testimony, and one of the people Chambers accused of being a Soviet spy, Alger Hiss, had been convicted of perjury, but there were still a lot of people who believed that he, Lauchlin Currie, Owen Lattimore, and other high level Communists and Communist sympathizers were just victims of a witch hunt.  Allen Weinstein, previously a Hiss defender, had not yet written Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, showing to the satisfaction of almost everyone in the history community how right Chambers was about Hiss and the Communist infiltration of the government.

One would think that in 1999, a decade after the collapse of the Soviet empire, Kazan would be the vindicated one and all those long-time promoters of the Soviet Union like Norma Barzman and her friend Polonsky—who, demonstrating his unreconstructed Stalinist tendencies was quoted as saying on the eve of Kazan’s award, “I’ll be watching, hoping someone shoots him. It would no doubt be a thrill in an otherwise dull evening.”—would be the ones slinking away with their tails between their legs.  Rather, it is the contrary, and they are given reinforcement by our national opinion-molding mainstream.  They are now the unvarnished heroes, while Kazan, politically at least, is the villain.

Consider the shallow and contradictory attacks they make on the man.  He “validated the blacklisting of thousands,” they say.  They don’t say that he supported the blacklisting, which he certainly did not, as he showed with his professional assistance of the pro-Communist Zero Mostel:

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Mostel

It was not until 1950 that Mostel again acted in movies, for a role in the Oscar winning film Panic in the Streets, at the request of its director, Elia Kazan. Kazan describes his attitude and feelings during that period, where, according to biographer Arthur Sainer, “MGM blacklisted Zero Mostel way before the days of the blacklist.”

Each director has a favorite in his cast, . . . my favorite this time was Zero Mostel—but not to bully. I thought him an extraordinary artist and a delightful companion, one of the funniest and most original men I’d ever met. . . I constantly sought his company. . . He was one of the three people whom I rescued from the “industry’s” blacklist. . . For a long time, Zero had not been able to get work in films, but I got him in my film.

Perhaps by choosing the word “validated” they mean that he confirmed that there were, indeed, members of the Communist Party, which he, himself had been for a short time, working in the entertainment industry in key positions.  He named eight former associates who were also Communists.  One of them, the playwright Clifford Odets, he noted, had left the Party the same time as he did.  All of them, as it happens, were already known by the committee to be Communists.  PBS is simply wrong, then, to call them “fellow travelers,” suggesting that they were just sympathizers with some of the things that the Communists purported to stand for and it is doubly wrong to put the expression in quotes, which implies that it might just be someone else’s characterization of them.  Kazan’s critics can’t have it both ways.  He either validated the hunt for genuine Communist Party members in show business or he did not.

Who Was the Traitor?

Jules Dassin’s use of the word “traitor” to describe him is also quite interesting.  The most common understanding of “traitor” is “one who commits treason,” that is, one who betrays his country.  Could one find a better word to describe those who remained loyal to the American Communist Party throughout the Stalin period than “traitor?”  As Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley has put it so succinctly in his very revealing book Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s, “…the essence of American Communism was loyalty to Stalin.” (p. 287)  Anyone who was a member of the party for any length of time could see that that was the case, but one hardly had to be a party member to see it.  Just watching how quickly the Communists turned from being the biggest opponents of American involvement in the war in Europe to being the biggest proponents when Hitler turned on his Soviet allies should have been education enough.  In the national loyalty sense of the term, then, the word “traitor” comes a lot closer to describing the people Kazan fingered, with the exception of Odets, who had ended his membership in the Party.

Dassin must mean, then, that Kazan was a traitor in the sense that he betrayed either his cause or his friends and associates.  Since he had long since parted company with the “cause” of the American Communist Party, the charge boils down to his ratting out some of his former comrades, who, unbeknownst to him, had already been effectively ratted out.  For that, the sweeping conclusion is reached that by that deed this great contributor to the film-making art somehow did “enormous damage to the motion picture industry.”

It really is hard to take people seriously who speak in such absurd hyperbole.  Clearly there can be no connection between his confirmation of the Communist Party membership of those few individuals and any damage to the quality of movie making in America.  Maybe it’s somehow just the principle of the thing that they’re talking about.  But when it comes to the question of the principles involved, there is no better authority than Kazan himself.  Here, in the full text of an advertisement he purchased in The New York Times on April 12, 1952:

In the past weeks intolerable rumors about my political position have been circulating in New York and Hollywood. I want to make my stand clear:

I believe that Communist activities confront the people of this country with an unprecedented and exceptionally tough problem. That is, how to protect ourselves from a dangerous and alien conspiracy and still keep the free, open, healthy way of life that gives us self-respect.

I believe that the American people can solve this problem wisely only if they have the facts about Communism. All the facts.

Now I believe that any American who is in possession of such facts has the obligation to make them known, either to the public or to the appropriate Government agency.

Whatever hysteria exists — and there is some, particularly in Hollywood — is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it.

The facts I have are sixteen years out of date, but they supply a small piece of background to the graver picture of communism today.

I have placed these facts before the House Committee on Un-American Activities without reserve and I now place them before the public and before my co-workers in motion pictures and in the theatre.

Seventeen and a half years ago I was a twenty-four-year old stage manager and bit actor, making $40 a week, when I worked.

At that time nearly all of us felt menaced by two things: The depression and the ever growing power of Hitler. The streets were full of unemployed and shaken men. I was taken in by the Hard Times version of what might be called the Communists’ advertising or recruiting technique. They claimed to have a cure for depressions and a cure for Naziism and Fascism.

I joined the Communist Party late in the summer of 1934. I got out a year and a half later.

I have no spy stories to tell, because I saw no spies. Nor did I understand, at that time, any opposition between American and Russian national interest. It was not even clear to me in 1936, that the American Communist Party was abjectly taking its orders from the Kremlin.

What I learned was the minimum that anyone must learn who puts his head into the noose of party “discipline.” The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed. They attempted to control thought and to suppress personal opinion. They tried to dictate personal conduct. They habitually distorted and disregarded and violated the truth. All this was crudely opposite of their claims of “democracy” and “the scientific approach.”

To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but it is bitter and unforgettable. It is diluted because you can walk out.

I got out in the spring of 1936.

The question will be asked why I did not tell this story sooner. I was held back, primarily, by concern for the reputations and employment of people who may, like myself, have left the party many years ago.

I was held back by a piece of specious reasoning which has silenced many liberals. It goes like this: “You may hate the Communists, but you must not attack or expose them, because if you do you are attacking the right to hold unpopular opinions and you are joining the people who attack civil liberties.”

I have thought soberly about this. It is, simply, a lie.

Secrecy serves the Communists. At the other pole, it serves those who are interested in silencing liberal voices. The employment of a lot of good liberals is threatened because they have allowed themselves to become associated with or silenced by the Communists.

Liberals must speak out.

I think it is useful that certain of us had this kind of experience with the Communists, for if we had not we should not know them so well. Today, when all the world fears war and they scream peace, we know how much their professions are worth. We know tomorrow they will have a new slogan.

Firsthand experience of dictatorship and thought control left me with an abiding hatred of these. It left me with an abiding hatred of Communist philosophy and methods and the conviction that these must be resisted always.

It also left me with the passionate conviction that we must never let the Communists get away with the pretense that they stand for the very things which they kill in their own countries.

I am talking about free speech, a free press, the rights of property, the rights of labor, racial equality and, above all, individual rights. I value these things. I take them seriously. I value peace, too, when it is not bought at the price of fundamental decencies.

I believe these things must be fought for wherever they are not fully honored and protected whenever they are threatened.

The motion pictures I have made and the plays I have chosen to direct represent my convictions.

I expect to continue to make the same kinds of pictures and to direct the same kinds of plays.

For anyone who might still believe that Kazan’s attackers hold the moral high ground, I suggest that they just go back and read his statement again, perhaps a little more carefully the second time through.  Who can honestly take issue with a single line in it?  If that doesn’t work, then watch this powerful scene in the Kazan-directed On the Waterfront.

It is hardly noble or admirable, Kazan is telling us, to protect the secrets of murderous, power-lusting thugs in the name of loyalty to one’s associates.  And when it comes to murderousness and power lust, the mobsters who controlled the New York docks in the movie were very small timers compared to the controllers of those he informed on for HUAC.  As he wrote in his autobiography, “On the Waterfront was my own story.  Every day I worked on that film, I was telling the world where I stood and my critics to go **** themselves. (Elia Kazan: A Life, p. 529; quoted in Billingsley, p. 244).

The political climate has changed now so drastically, it is very hard for most Americans to appreciate how powerful and insidious the American Communist Party was in the Red Decade of the 1930s and well into the 1940s.  In his statement Kazan says, “I have no spy stories to tell, because I saw no spies,” but the main reason for that is that spies had no reason to infiltrate his line of work, but subversives certainly did.

“Of all the arts, the cinema is the most important,” is the quote from Vladimir Lenin that Billingsley uses to lead off his Part I.  Consonant with that dictum, burrowing into Hollywood and taking it over was as important to Stalin’s Communist Party as controlling the docks was to the mob in On the Waterfront.  And it was very successful.  Contrary to the popular notion we might have now that one was taking great risks for his ideals to be a Communist, at the height of the party’s influence, it was actually a career advantage in Hollywood:

For the cinema revolutionaries, wrote Eugene Lyons, Communism was “an intoxicated state of mind, a glow of inner virtue, and a sort of comradeship in super-charity,” a way for the wealthy to posture as proletarian wage slaves.  On the other hand, the Party triumphalist mind-set, the notion that they automatically write better screenplays and belonged to the victorious army of the future, led some to use ideology as a substitute for talent or even effort.  According to Louis Berg, longtime Hollywood journalist Max Youngstein of Universal circulated a memo informing all personnel that being a Communist was no longer sufficient reason to be employed there, and that doing a bit of work would also be required.

Former Communist screenwriter Roy Huggins says that there were a number of “awful writers” who wouldn’t have worked without their politics.  For this type of person, Huggins said, becoming a member of the Communist Party “was just another way of being Sammy Glick,” the hero of Budd Schulberg’s novel, What Makes Sammy Run? (Billingsley, pp. 58-59)

Misplaced Indignation

When it comes to the Hollywood blacklist, nothing could be clearer than that no finger of blame should be pointed in the direction of the great director, Elia Kazan.  Contrary to a popular belief that is perpetuated by people who are at odds with the truth, the blacklist had nothing to do with the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy.  The blacklist was begun by the major studio heads in 1947.  That was the year Senator McCarthy took office.  He exhibited no public interest in the Communist subversion issue until he made his famous speech in 1950 in Wheeling, West Virginia, about Communists in the State Department.  Throughout his investigations, his entire focus and that of his committee staff was on Communists in the federal government.  He never had anything to do with Communists in Hollywood.  Inquiries into that subject originated with the House Un-American Activities Committee.  HUAC was formed in 1938, and its original concern was with Nazi subversion.  Under Chairman Martin Dies, Democrat of Texas, it could not help discovering, though, that Communist subversion was a far bigger problem.

As Billingsley in his book makes abundantly clear, HUAC’s interest in Communist infiltration of Hollywood was hardly an idle one.  There was ample reason for their interest.  The Hollywood blacklist began with the denial of film industry employment to the members of the industry, known popularly as the Hollywood Ten, who refused to cooperate with the committee in October of 1947.

It is wrong to point the finger of blame at HUAC, though.  Perhaps it is a novel idea these days that the United States Congress should show public concern over the subversion of American institutions by a foreign country, whether the subversion be of the government or the opinion-molding industry, but that is precisely what the HUAC inquiries were about.  HUAC was not responsible for the Hollywood blacklist, though.  That was entirely the work of the heads of the major studios, who had a vise-like grip on employment in Hollywood at that time. Seeing how the molders of public opinion have come to characterize everything concerning Communists and Hollywood as just the manifestation of paranoia by grandstanding politicians, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Hollywood moguls’ blacklist was nothing but a ploy.

Like the Soviets, who airbrushed Trotsky and other foes of Stalin out of official photographs, the Hollywood Party replaced fact with legend.  The Communist Party and its involvement with Hollywood was simply left out.  The story only begins when the Committee, a group of black-hatted inquisitors, rides into town tarring anything that moves with a red brush, persecuting noble idealists, censoring artists, and launching the “dark epoch” of the blacklist, part of the “McCarthy era.”  That template, plus the appealing plot of [Dalton] Trumbo, [Michael] Wilson, and others who duped the studios by working through fronts, simply overrode the long and complicated story of the Communist Party’s cultural offensive, the front groups, and the studio labor conflicts.

As for “the industry,” it was not up to admitting that it had played the role of what Lenin called “useful idiots,” duped and bilked by militant Communists.  Though it was the industry, not the government, that blacklisted writers and performers, the blacklist legend allowed the studios to pose as victims themselves, a cover-up too intoxicating to pass up. (Billingsley, pp. 272-273)

Had the movie moguls been really sincere in their newfound anti-Communism we would have seen them producing at least an occasional movie that reveals the truth about the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and afterward.  More than half a century has passed and we have not yet seen anything out of Hollywood that might counteract the impression they left with 1940s movies like Mission to Moscow, Song of Russia, and The North Star.  That has certainly not been for lack of good potential dramatic material.  Solzhenitsyn alone, we know, has stories galore, but there have been lots of others like Eugenia Ginzburg’s Journey into the Whirlwind or the sad stories of Americans in the Soviet Union like Thomas Sgovio, Victor Herman,* or Robert Robinson, whom we mention in our recent review of The Forsaken.  While Hollywood never seems to tire of movies that vilify the Nazis and, more recently, the Arabs and the Muslims, it is yet to produce anything about the Soviet bloc that begins to compare to the French movie, Est-Ouest (East-West), or the German movie, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others).

Rather, Hollywood still seems to prefer to romanticize Communism with movies like The Way We Were and Reds and to save its greatest opprobrium for those who called attention to the Communist subversion and infiltration problem.  The most recent example of the latter that comes to mind is George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck. 

Sen Joe McCarthy

This negative focus upon the Hollywood blacklist in the one instance and upon Senator Joe McCarthy in the other suggests that what we are seeing in action here in both cases is nothing less than the thirteenth of the Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression.  Our opinion molders have successfully changed the subject by creating a distraction.  So now, just as the story of Hollywood subversion by Communists begins with HUAC, the story that M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein recount with their new book Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government, as far as the dominant creators of national opinion are concerned, begins with Senator McCarthy’s presumed overly vigorous inquiries into that highly successful subversion.

There is ample reason to feel a sense of indignation at this whole sorry episode of American history.  If it must be directed at one particular American, it should be at the person responsible for consciously allowing Stalin’s subversion to go as far as it did.  Our previous writings have amply demonstrated who that person is.  His profile can be found on the dime, and he is currently being worshipfully portrayed by Asner in a one-man show.

________________________________________________________________________________

*CBS did air a rather poorly done movie version of Herman’s tragic but inspiring epic, Coming out of the Ice, in 1982.

David Martin

March 19, 2013

Must Be Time To Remove Soetoro

I wrote about the fake birth certificate a few times when it first came out and caught a lot of grief for my calims that these documents can be manipulated. It has always been my contention that this is one of several pieces of dirt that the real controllers of this country have on the figure-head-teleprompter-reader-in-chief. It is my belief that virtually every electedappointed official has some sort of dirt that keeps them in line.

Now, one CBS station in Arizona, where Arpaio (the Sheriff who began the investigation) lives is spilling the beans and its not just coming from the alternative freaks like me.

So, apparently, its time to take Obama out of office. Wonder who the next clown will be?

h/t lifeforce

B’Man’s POS Watch: TN Sen Bob Corker

‘Bail-out’ Bob Corker can’t seem to grasp math except for his paying controllers and banker buddies. He was on Fox News Sunday lamenting about how atrocious Americans are that they are only paying a third of the costs of Medicare. Poor Bob and his American public funded health care. What an outrage he must feel.

His attack against the American public and especially health care is long standing:

On September 30, 2009 Corker opposed the health-care reform amendment that would legally allow Americans to buy cheaper Canadian drugs. Corker opposed President Barack Obama’s health reform legislation; he voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in December 2009, and he voted against the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.

In late February 2010, Corker took a decidedly less bipartisan turn when he became the sole senator to back retiring Senator Jim Bunning

of Kentucky in filibustering a 30-day extension of expiring unemployment and COBRA benefits.

You see, Mr and Mrs Tennessean, at a time where you deserve all the help (and more) that his banker and war-mongering buddies receive, he wants to kick you in the nuts.

Bob, let me point this out, you ravenous war-hungry chicken hawk: Americans are paying 100% of the illegal and immoral wars you support with every vote, including your continued defense of the disastrous Iraq War:

Corker has become a defender of the Iraqi war since taking his seat in the 110th Congress. Despite frustration by the public, any further reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq must be based on improved conditions in the country, Corker said. He urged ultimate success will be determined by the Iraqi government, over which the U.S. has limited control, and the withdrawal of some of the troops that were added in 2007 has created some pressure on the Iraqi government, but warned

that further cuts now could destabilize the country.

Corker denied Democrat’s Afghan war strategy which boosts civilian efforts to rebuild the impoverished country and places nuclear-armed Pakistan at the center of the fight: “I have no idea what it is, other than sending additional troops. I hope we dig a lot deeper,” said Corker. He expected that the United States is having to build the economic and

governmental structure of Afghanistan after decades of war.

You see how that works, right? He wants to take away your healthcare and fights to stop the extra help needed for the unemployed, but has no problem spending $BILLIONS on shit holes of his making. People, will you ever wake up to this smarmy redneck who is spitting in your face and laughing at you on behest of his paymasters? He believes you are involved in “generational theft” because you have paid into and must use Medicare. As a matter of fact, he wants all social services cut to the bone or completely done away with. He has fought against you and good paying jobs many times, but expects even more money out of you to pay for his idiotic boondoggles of Empire and subservience to the Jewish banking cartel.

But, Bob, it is far deeper than just those two issues, you tainted SOB. They are paying 100% of the banker bailouts you vote for. They are paying 100% of your salary, including your benefits and healthcare.

You must know that the elections are rigged or most of your constituents are too ignorant for you to be able to say such things right now when your rich ass has little to worry about, but the rest of us are suffering and need all the help we can get. It doesn’t matter that most of your political career is stained with illegal property sales, missing records (just like your ‘nemesis’, Barack Obama), conflicts of interest galore.

He votes yes for warrant-less searches, additional funding for wars, increasing military spending, free trade agreements, continued IMF funding, cash for clunkers and the Patriot Act extensions. He voted no to auditing the Fed.

In other words, he votes AGAINST you, Mr and Mrs Tennesseans, and FOR his money providers. A true POS.

Some day, Bob, I hope people wake up and see you for the shill you are. You are despicable and those who vote for you are morons.

Showtime Honors An American Hero

The World According To Dick Cheney Trailer

Proctologist Shortage in DC During AIPAC Convention

Richard Noggin’ Saturday: Senator Lindsey Graham

The smile rendered after kissing Jew ass.

“We’ve killed 4,700. Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we’re at war, and we’ve taken out some very senior members of Al-Qaeda.”

So Lance Lied. So What?

So Lance Lied.  So What?

[We must] organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat. –  Willi Münzenberg

Leave it to the practitioners of the modern junk-science substitute for religion (Bring in the grief counselors.) that calls itself “psychology” to attempt to put an acceptable face on the contemptible actions of disgraced bicycle racer, Lance Armstrong:

Though we profess to hate it, lying is common, useful and pretty much universal. It is one of the most durable threads in our social fabric and an important bulwark of our self-esteem. We start lying by the age of 4 and we do it at least several times a day, researchers have found. And we get better with practice.

In short, whatever you think about Lance Armstrong’s admission this week that he took performance-enhancing drugs to fuel his illustrious cycling career, the lies he told may be no more persistent or outsized than yours, according to psychologists and others who study deception. They were just more public. And the stakes were bigger.

So begins the article entitled, “Like Lance Armstrong, we are all liars, experts say,” by Melissa Healy in the January 19, 2013, Los Angeles Times.

The psychologists are at it again, trying to live up to the assessment that H.L Mencken made of them many years ago.  The following is a complete reprint of an article that I put up on my web site on September 10, 2000:

Mencken on Psychology

I know, I know, Mencken was writing three quarters of a century ago, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Indeed so. We now know that Mencken greatly over-estimated Freud.

I provided no elaboration on that last point.  You can read a bit of that in an article with the unrestrained title of “Sigmund Freud, Anti-Christ Devil,” by Eustace Mullins, a sample of which follows:

Freud’s reputation as the great inventor of an entire new science rests solely on his discovery that he could get his patients to talk about themselves without the use of hypnosis. Nevertheless, much of the mumbojumbo of psychotherapy was invented in order to create a hypnotic atmosphere. Freud’s discovery freed him from the stigma of the charlatans of hypnosis, and put a great distance between him and his discredited predecessors such as [Franz] Mesmer, the father of Mesmerism. Nevertheless, the practice of psychoanalysis depends heavily on creating and maintaining a pseudo-hypnotic atmosphere in the psychiatrist’s office.  The patient must be persuaded to relax, to place himself completely in the power of the psychiatrist, and to reveal his innermost self. Thus the pseudoscience of psychotherapy functions only because it is pseudohypnosis.  No wonder that Freud is pronounced Fraud!*

Lance Armstrong vs. Bill Clinton

For psychologists to weigh in publicly justifying the miscreant’s behavior in the wake of a scandal involving a prominent public figure has precedents.  I have commented upon it on two occasions, involving the same public figure, President Bill Clinton:

So He Lied, So What?

Last night the people at ABC’s Twenty-Twenty came up with the ultimate fall-back position for our verity-challenged president. They found us a psychiatrist, whose name I can’t recall, who assured us that there is not a thing wrong in the world with lying, that we are all taught to lie at an early age, that we all lie about one thing or another almost all the time, and that it serves the very psychologically useful purpose of making us all feel better. People don’t like to face unpleasant truths like the fact that, as he strongly implied, life has no meaning at all and we are all going to die, not to mention such smaller unpleasant truths that not many of us are all that virile, attractive, or intelligent.

So what if the priapic razorback lies almost every time he opens his mouth, implied the good doctor. It beats having us feel bad about the man we voted for because that would make us feel bad about ourselves, which is practically the worst thing that can ever happen in the value system of today’s psychology profession.

At this very minute there is a trial going on across the river from me in Maryland in which former U.S. Senatorial aspirant, Ruthann Aron, stands accused of arranging to have a hit man kill her husband and his lawyer. She doesn’t deny making the arrangements because she was caught in the act. The “hit man” was an agent of the state. But her lawyers have found members of the psychiatry profession to testify that she was so badly wounded psychologically from having been abused as a child that she is not responsible for her actions. Never mind that if the hit man had been the real McCoy, and good at his work, Dr. Aron and his lawyer would have ended up quite dead and Ruthann would have gone on playing the grieving widow and the upstanding member of the community. No psychiatrists would ever have been likely to have been needed to regale us with tales of Ruthann’s childhood trauma.

Similarly, it was not difficult to find psychiatric “experts” to tell us why the Menendez brothers were driven by their scarring upbringing to shotgun their parents to death as they sat watching TV and eating ice cream, and then to make up a cock and bull story about how they discovered the bodies.

We have also been treated recently to the spectacle of the “suicidologist” Dr. Alan L. Berman, in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, telling us for Kenneth Starr that “to a 100 percent degree of MEDICAL certainty, Vince Foster committed suicide.” That conclusion, in turn, was based to a large degree upon recent psychiatric literature that concludes that “perfectionist types,” presumably like Foster, are inclined to do themselves in. One of those so concluding is Yale professor Sidney Blatt.

By this time everyone has probably already heard the three reasons why lawyers are being used to replace laboratory rats:

As you reflect on the examples I have given of modern psychiatrists at work and the following, which concludes part 3 of my four-part series, “America’s Dreyfus Affair, the Case of the Death of Vincent Foster,” you might think of substituting “psychiatrists” for “lawyers” in the joke, especially with respect to that third qualification.

Actually, it’s probably even worse than circular reasoning because Dr. Berman seems to have made a bit of a leap to make a warped Felix Ungar type out of a man who simply exhibited high standards. The likely circular reasoning is explained by a letter that I sent to the student newspaper of Yale University on February 8, 1996, with an information copy to the psychologist whose work is the subject of the letter. It was not printed, but I did get a response from the psychologist who simply thanked me for the information. I reproduce the letter to the editor here almost in its entirety. As you read it, bear in mind as well the opening quote from Edward Zehr. It is not just the propagandistic press that concerns him, but the “decay of our basic institutions.”

I might also note that while this long essay began with comparisons between current developments in the United States and those in France a century ago, comparisons to our late lamented cold war superpower rival can hardly be avoided.

In the case of this most recent report of the misleadingly-named Office of the Independent Counsel, as with the newspapers that reported on it, it is certainly a good deal easier to believe.

So He Cheated. So What?

ABC News and the psychology profession are continuing their all-out assault upon the Ten Commandments and national standards of decency and honor in the country. Before, it was a middle-aged, male, father-like psychiatrist on 20-20 telling us that lying is okay because it is commonplace and because the alternative would often make us feel bad. This time the interview, an exceptionally long one on ABC’s Sunday Evening News, right at the dinner hour of God’s special day for most Christians, was of the still rather youngish and exceptionally self-assured female “director emeritus” of the Kinsey Institute. Her message—though she would never use these words for it—is that adultery, cheating, tom-catting, marital infidelity, serial womanizing and the like by married men is also okay because it is commonplace. It is especially commonplace historically among American presidents and the sort of people who have that type of ambition, so that makes it especially okay for them to do it. Also mitigating any disapproval that should accrue to them for their wayward ways is the fact that power is attractive to women, so that the leaders’ increased opportunity to indulge their sexual appetites makes their willingness to do so, regardless of the social strictures that apply to the rest of us, all the more understandable and forgivable.

In sum, the message being conveyed could not have been clearer, “Even if every allegation about Bill Clinton’s womanizing that you have heard is true, what’s the big deal?” That essential message was not challenged by her female interviewer. Rather, she played “straight man,” as it were, appearing only to challenge the exculpating assertions by interjecting, “But this is the president who should set an example and be held to a higher standard, shouldn’t he?” giving the smug psychologist the opportunity to explain that, no, such lusty, larger-than-life leader types really ought to be held to a lower standard in the sexual realm. That was also the between-the-lines message to be gleaned from Primary Colors, the book, and probably from the movie as well. One could almost believe that it would be wrong for such men to deprive American womankind of their favors. “Let’s be realistic and adults about this,” said the Kinseyite in so many words.

Now I am among the first to say that there is something essentially phony about the current media frenzy surrounding the latest revelations about Bill’s sex life. This is the same press that will not tell us about much more serious crimes connected to the Clinton administration, the Waco Holocaust, the Oklahoma City bombing, the murder of Vincent Foster, the cover-up of the real causes of the downing of TWA 800, the ongoing complicity of the CIA in drug smuggling, etc. One must wonder why they should consider these sexual matters so important by comparison. Be that as it may, that certainly does not mean that the sex-related charges related to Bill Clinton are of no consequence. Let us take a critical look at what the Kinseyite psychologist, with her ABC megaphone, was telling us.

Completely lacking was any discussion of concrete specifics, though the subject was indisputably Bill Clinton. The deductive approach that dominates modern social science was very much in evidence. Once the general principle was established to the satisfaction of the speaker—thence presumably the audience—that sexual license among leaders is the American and the historical norm, looking at the dirty details became unnecessary. I saw the method on display at its worst in my profession, economics, with regard to the national debate on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Economists went on record overwhelmingly favoring it because they favor the principle of free trade. Not only do most of them know nothing about Mexico or the history of U.S.-Mexico relations, they don’t even think it necessary to know anything about that to render a judgment on this public policy issue. What is worse, I would venture to say that most of those economists weighing in on the NAFTA didn’t know very much about the actual details of the NAFTA itself, or even thought it necessary to know them.

When we look at the details of Bill Clinton and sex what we see immediately in every case is gross abuse of power, personal corruption shading over into corruption of the office, itself. Should we really think that such a thing is okay? Let’s take some of those we know about and proceed upon the Kinseyite-conceded premise that the allegations are true:

It gets worse.

Concrete Facts Versus Theoretical Fiction

The pitiful defense by psychologists of Lance Armstrong’s cheating and lying crumbles just as fast when one examines the actual facts of the case.  Listen here to former cycling teammate Frankie Andreu and his wife Betsy talk about the lives that his lies ruined.  And here is a representative excerpt from a Sports Illustrated interview of his former bike mechanic, Mike Anderson:

SI: You’re one of a number of people who were telling the truth and who Armstrong tried either to intimidate or ruin. There has been speculation as to whether he’ll address that with Oprah.

Anderson: And doing it! Not trying, but doing it. He certainly ruined me, and [Greg] LeMond, and Frankie [Andreu], and Emma [O’Reilly].  Professionally. Financially. He did a really good job of polarizing the cycling fans in the U.S. against Greg. He ruined Greg’s bike company. He told me he was going to do it when I worked for him! It’s a cautionary tale, I think, of what happens when people get too much power.

SI: A lot of media figures are now piling on Lance, but when you were in the newspapers after Lance sued you, that certainly wasn’t the case.

Anderson: It really sheds some light on what people in your profession and what readers and the public view as journalistic integrity. So many journalists took the party line. The Sally Jenkinses of the world, the list goes on and on and on. How many just let it go? That was one of the hardest things to deal with. No journalists bothered to contact me [for my side of the story], they just reported. The local paper never bothered to contact me or my lawyers, they just spouted what came from Bill Stapleton. [Lance's team] took a page from Karl Rove’s book on how to deal with detractors. That made my life very uncomfortable in a place like Austin.

This excerpt from the Sports Illustrated interview of Lemond’s wife, Kathy, informs us further about the fruit of behavior that the psychologists would have us believe is acceptable and commonplace:

SI: What about apologizing to Greg?

LeMond: If I don’t hear something tonight, I’m going to be really upset. I spoke with Oprah’s people and I would hope that they would ask that, because Lance did terrible damage to Greg’s reputation. He is owed an apology. The things he’s said, ‘Greg’s an alcoholic, Greg’s a drunk.’ I had a reporter tell me one time, the guy called me and asked if Greg’s a heroin addict. …I want him to address what he’s done to Greg. He didn’t have any problem saying the horrible things to the whole entire world.

SI: It’s thought that Greg’s brand with Trek would have been worth tens of millions if Armstrong had not pushed to have Trek drop Greg.

LeMond: Do you know what a loss that was for us? We lost our income. We lost our company. Greg lost his reputation.

SI: Do you think Greg will eventually take Armstrong’s call?

LeMond: Why would he want to? I mean, if Lance will actually say to him, ‘Yes, I hacked your e-mails. Yes, I had someone following you. Yes, we taped you.’ He has hounded us and harassed us.

SI: USADA head Travis Tygart recently talked on television about getting death threats. Did you get hate mail when Greg spoke out?

LeMond: It’s absolutely terrifying. The fans, you get letters that say, ya know, ‘you better not be riding your bike by yourself on the road.’ It’s scary.

And how about Armstrong’s one-time masseuse, Emma O’Reilly, as told by London’s Mirror?

But on Valentine’s Day in 2004 – when the 1998 Tour winner Marco Pantani, 34, died from heart failure after a drug overdose – Emma decided to speak out.

“It wasn’t about Lance,” she said. “When Marco died that was the catalyst for me. I didn’t want to see anyone else die. I got involved with the book LA Confidential and told my story.”

Just after the book was published later that year and during a Press conference to launch the new Discovery cycling team, Lance launched an attack that Emma will never forget.

She said: “I was sweeping the floor at home when he called me a prostitute and an alcoholic. I remember the Sky news headline.

“I just stood there shocked and angry. I then called my boyfriend Mike and told him to turn on the TV. He was horrified his girlfriend had just been called a drunk and a slapper in front of the world’s media.”

Lance then issued a legal claim against Emma and a Sunday newspaper for £1million.

She said: “I thought Lance was going to ruin me. Take everything I had away from me big-time. My house, my business.”

Now let us return to the professional lying enablers in psychology profession, as relayed to us by the journalist Healy in the Los Angeles Times:

People who are highly creative appear to have the vision and the flexibility of mind to find justifications for their deceptions, and quickly, [Duke University professor Daniel] Ariely said. For Armstrong, whose racing style suggests he was creative and flexible in taking advantage of openings to victory, those same qualities might have allowed him freer rein not only in concocting deceptions, but in justifying them to himself.

Imagine how much the Andreuses or the LeMonds or Mike Anderson or Emma O’Reilly might admire that creativity and flexibility at this point.  I can just hear the good Israeli-American Professor Ariely extolling Bernie Madoff’s or Jon Corzine’s talents in similar fashion, while interviews of their victims would be similarly revealing.

Now listen to Professor Robert Feldman, dean of social and behavioral sciences at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and a leading psychologist on lying:

It’s not easy to lie. Psychologists and neuroscientists have found that — initially, at least — deceit requires mental exertion for most of us. The effort to reconcile a lie with the truth — or with our notions of ourselves as good people — takes up so much brainpower that as we do it, we may actually forget to perform such effortless acts as blinking.

To sustain a lie over years, and against mounting evidence of its untruth, liars large and small must “develop an infrastructure around it,” Feldman said — a litany of justifications that makes it possible to cling to deception and convince ourselves that we are good people in spite of it.

“But as time goes on, it gets easier,” Feldman said.

“And it can be richly rewarding and therefore well worth the effort,” you can almost hear him say. Hollywood screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, who wrote the screenplay for Exodus after getting off the Hollywood blacklist, is one, like Armstrong, who seems to have put in the required mental exertion to lie convincingly and profitably.  He wrote in a letter to his son, “The important thing about a lie is not that it be interesting, fanciful, graceful, or even pleasant, but that it be believed … Let the lie be delivered full-face, eye to eye, and without scratching of the scalp. Let it be blunt and forthright and so simple that you can repeat it in detail and under oath ten years hence.”

Conspiracy to Corrupt

What’s with these psychologists, the Feldmans, the Blatts, the Bermans, the Arielys, the nine psychologists and psychiatrists that Ruthann Aron was able to marshal in her defense?  Here’s where our opening quote from Willi Münzenberg comes in.  It is taken from an article by Timothy Matthews entitled “The Frankfurt School: Conspiracy to Corrupt”  What he describes is a concerted movement to undermine what used to be called “Christendom,” which we now might call more broadly Western civilization.  It began after World War I in Frankfurt, Germany, as a form of Marxist revisionism that focused more directly upon the cultural rather than upon the economic foundation of society.  The concept of “political correctness” is part of the movement.  Within the larger category of political correctness is the method of teaching known as “values clarification.”

The underlying philosophy of Values Clarification holds that for teachers to promote virtues such as honesty, justice or chastity constitutes indoctrination of children and ‘violates’ their moral freedom.  It is urged that children should be free to choose their own values; the teacher must merely ‘facilitate’ and must avoid all moralizing or criticizing.

In such a world, clearly despicable behavior—cheating and lying—such as engaged in by Lance Armstrong and Bill Clinton is not to be condemned.  To condemn it is to impose your old-fashioned, culturally determined notions of right and wrong on others.  Such is the utterly reprehensible New Moral Order that these psychologists seem to be trying to create for us.

_____________________________________________________________________________

*For more on the father of modern psychoanalysis see Henry Makow’s “Freud’s Part in Our Satanic Possession.”

David Martin

February 7, 2013

Article originally published by DCDave.