Is Hugo Chavez Dying?

As the eternal optimist, we can hope for the best, and reports trickling out seem to indicate the Venezuelan psychopath may be in much worse condition than has been reported.

Venezuela's voluble and ubiquitous President Hugo Chávez hasn't returned to the public eye after a surgery in Cuba that has friends and foes alike speculating about the state of his health and the future of his rule.

Mr. Chávez has been in Cuba since June 8, when he was felled by a pelvic abscess for which he underwent an operation two days later. Soon after, Venezuelan officials said the flamboyant leader was in good health but would recuperate in Havana for a "few days."

Those few days have stretched to 11, punctuated by false alarms over the date of his return. On Monday, a ruling party lawmaker said Mr. Chávez was hours from touching down in Caracas and urged his supporters to prepare a "tremendous" welcome for him. The claim was quickly refuted on the Twitter account of Venezuela's Communications Minister Andres Izarra.

On Tuesday, Mr. Chávez made another virtual appearance. In a statement posted on Mr. Izarra's Twitter account, he lamented the death of another Venezuelan official who had sought medical treatment in Cuba.

"We don't know very much about [Chávez's] health, there is no official news, only partial reports," said Chávez critic Teodoro Petkoff, a former presidential candidate and current editor of the opposition newspaper Tal Cual.

Mr. Chávez raised concerns when he said, during a call to a Venezuelan television station two days after his operation, that there were no "malignant" signs found, a former top Venezuelan health official said.

The former official, who asked not to be named, pointed out that a pelvic abscess—a pus-filled cavity that can result from injury or infection—is a reaction to a condition. "His choice of words was a red flag," the official said.

The former official also said there was a possibility that Mr. Chávez would be hospitalized when he returned to Venezuela, another potential sign of the severity of his ailment. If it was a matter of simply treating an abscess, Mr. Chávez would likely not need a hospital at that point, the official said.

Once a slender tank commander and would-be major-league baseball pitcher, Mr. Chávez has cultivated an image as a health-conscious sportsman. But 12 years in power have taken their toll.

Mr. Chávez, 56 years old, has gained a lot of weight since his days on the mound, works long hours and is known for drinking quarts of coffee daily. Nevertheless, he seemed poised to resume a full schedule in early June after a knee injury had sidelined him, when he left Venezuela for visits to Brazil, Ecuador and Cuba.

In Cuba, he suffered acute pain during a meeting with former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and was rushed into surgery.

Since then, Mr. Chávez has been nearly invisible, except for a phone call into a Venezuelan television station on June 12, two days after his operation, and photographs of Mr. Chávez wearing a tracksuit in the colors of the Venezuelan flag as he is flanked by Fidel and Raul Castro, published in the state newspaper Granma on June 18.

In a three-paragraph note, Granma assured its readers that Mr. Chávez was in close communication with top Venezuelan officials and was "on top of the principal issues of his country."

The mystery surrounding Mr. Chávez's health is a throwback to the Cold War secrecy which persists in Cuba, one of the last Communist governments left standing.

Imagine how dreadful medical care must be in Venezuela when this maggot has to go to a hellhole like Cuba to have surgery. Here's hoping whatever treatment he's getting is botched and he soon joins his Marxist idols for a permanent dirtnap.

It's a shame our administration here has no clue what it's doing with foreign policy. Sure seems to me like this is a golden opportunity to some some damage to the Chavez regime. But that would be assuming Obama was opposed to Chavez and his reign of terror.

Code Pink Crank Laments: 'We Don’t Have a Very Vibrant Anti-war Movement Anymore'

What's a Castro-loving psychopath to do when things go bad for her guy?

As President Barack Obama formally declared an end to combat operations in Iraq this week, the anti-war movement that helped sweep him into office — and that worked for seven years to bring U.S. troops home — finds itself struggling for survival.

Several factors — war fatigue; a deep, lingering recession; and the presence of a Democratic president they helped elect — have drained the energy from organizations that led the fight against the Iraq war. Some of the most influential anti-war activist groups that once summoned half a million people to march against the Iraq war and the policies of President George W. Bush are straining to raise the money and attention to fight what they see as Obama’s military entrenchment in Afghanistan.

“We don’t have a very vibrant anti-war movement anymore,” lamented Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, one of the anti-war movement’s most visible organizations. “The issues have not changed very much. … Now we have a surge [in Afghanistan] that we would have been furious about under George Bush, yet it’s hard to mobilize people under Obama. We have the same anti -war movement and not the same passion.”

MoveOn.org, which produced a 2007 anti-war newspaper ad labeling Gen. David Petraeus “General Betray Us” for the surge in Iraq, has largely been silent, despite a similar U.S. strategy in Afghanistan with Petraeus at the helm. Cindy Sheehan, perhaps the most famous anti-war protester, believes the peace movement is over. And United for Peace and Justice — once the largest of three major anti-war coalitions — has practically dissolved.

Leslie Cagan, UPJ’s founder, resigned last year after nearly seven years leading the group.

“I was totally exhausted,” said Cagan, 63. “I have a long history of anti-war activism — about 45 years — but the last eight or nine years have been totally intense. In a post 9/11 world, it’s just nonstop.”

Fighting your own country all these years can really take a toll, huh? What a washed-up Communist to do? Well, now their battlefield has shifted. Rather than supporting America's enemies, their primary mission is propping up the people they helped elect.

After fighting the Bush administration for the better part of a decade, the anti-war movement can barely draw public attention to Afghanistan because of kitchen-table issues like the worsening economy, the increasingly unpopular health care overhaul and high unemployment. Meanwhile, the leaders have kept their grumbling about Afghanistan mostly to themselves, to keep Obama’s sagging poll numbers from sinking further or jeopardizing the Democratic majority in Congress.

“A lot of the people who were part of this movement have retreated,” Code Pink’s Benjamin said. “They wanted to give up on the timetable [for withdrawing from Iraq]. Some are still reluctant to criticize a Democratic president now with the midterms coming up.”

So it was never about the troops and all about politics.

Thanks for clearing that up, Medea. All this leaves Cindy Sheehan very confused.

“I basically think that it’s over,” Sheehan said. “And the reason that it’s over is that so many of those same groups that you’re talking about supported Obama. … I just don’t think that if you’re anti-war you can support somebody who is for war.”

Mother Sheehan is still a diehard. She thinks Obama's a war criminal.

Bay Area IVAW Jerkoffs Celebrate Independence Day By Burning American Flag

A shame none of these assholes caught fire themselves.

IVAW, woooo!

This group of alleged "veterans" is merely a socialist front group.

H/T CollegePolitico.

Stunner: East German Communists 'Funded' British Miner Strike

I'm astonished to discover communists have been working hand in hand with leftist union leaders. Next thing you know we'll find out the unions in this country are helping run the Democratic Party

East German communists helped fund the British miners' strike in the 1980s, historians claim.

Newly discovered documents showed substantial sums of money in hard currency were secretly transferred to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the major industrial action.

They also stated that the former German Democratic Republic offered free holidays to the country for striking miners and their families in 1984 and 1985.

Food parcels and clothing were also shipped to those taking part in the strike, which ended in a historic defeat for the miners.

Professor Stefan Berger, from the University of Manchester, and Dr Norman LaPorte, from the University of Glamorgan, detail the documents in their new book, Friendly Enemies: Britain And The GDR 1949 to 1990.

Prof Berger, who is based at Manchester's School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, said: ''My research finds that the NUM and the East European communists wanted to keep the affair secret and had some consequential problems getting the money to the NUM.

''The documents talk about the possibility of using a 'go-between' from the French communist union CGT who would deliver the money straight from Eastern Europe to representatives of the NUM.

''They also allege that the East German FDGB union (Free German Trade Union Federation) helped the miners by providing free holidays for the families and children of British miners in the German Democratic Republic.

''The FDGB, the documents say, also co-ordinated the shipping of food parcels, clothing and so on to British miners.''

He added: ''The communists perceived the NUM as an ally in the international class struggle against capitalism - hence the close interest in the strike.

God is a 'Bolivarian'

Whatever happened to the separation of church and dictatorship?

President Hugo Chavez is confident that God and nature will pull Venezuela out of a power crisis battering both the economy and his popularity.

Rationing and blackouts have afflicted the South American oil exporter since late 2009, due mainly to a drought that has cut water levels at hydroelectric installations normally supplying more than two-thirds of power needs.

The crisis may cause a second year of economic contraction in Venezuela and is also weighing on Chavez's approval ratings ahead of a legislative election in September that he and opponents are casting as a referendum on his rule.

"The squalid ones are hoping it won't rain," Chavez said late on Tuesday, using his usual term for the opposition.

"But it's going to rain, you'll see, because God is a 'Bolivarian.' God cannot be squalid. Nature is with us," the socialist leader added during an event with athletes.

Pretty desperate for the Communist thug to be praying to God now, isn't it?

I just hope Spicoli doesn't read this or he might want to imprison me. Speaking of Spicoli, is it just me or does he sound an awful lot like his whiny traitor character Daulton Lee from The Falcon and the Snowman here?

Sean Penn on Chavez
by burghnews

Whatever the pathetic Chavez wants to use as an excuse, the lack of electricity isn't his only concern.

President Chavez, who until recently avoided talking about violence and rampant crime, went as far as to admit that the situation “has become a risk for the Bolivarian revolution”.

“Chavez has the idea that the revolution must break structures and continues to believe that violence is part of the class struggle, the conflict of the poor against the rich. But what we have in Venezuela is the poor killing the poor” said Roberto Briceño-León, head of the ONG Venezuelan Violence Observatory.
According to the ONG in the last three years, 91% of murders have gone unpunished.

Chavez Hits the Red Carpet, Blows Kisses To Obama

So nice to see another of the Hollywood elite kissing the fat tush of Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez.

Hugo Chavez stole the show at the Venice Film Festival, where he walked the red carpet with director Oliver Stone for the premiere of the documentary "South of the Border."

Hundreds of admirers, some chanting "president, president," gathered outside of the for the leader's arrival. A few held up Venezuelan flags and a banner in Spanish that read "Welcome, president."

Chavez threw a flower into the crowd and touched his heart, and at one point took a photographer's camera to snap a picture himself. Security outside the Casino was tightened in advance of his arrival with military police checking bags

The leftist leader is getting a chance to hob-knob with the Hollywood elite as the central focus of Stone's film "South of the Border" — a look at what Stone calls the "truth" about Chavez's role in the sweeping changes in South America.

Chavez has been an outspoken critic of U.S. policy and often made headlines for likening President George W. Bush to the devil. The film, which is a series of interviews and clips from U.S. media reports, tells the story of Venezuela's so-called "peaceful revolution" since Chavez came to power in 1998. Chavez is portrayed as a hero of the people who refuses to be bullied, Reuters reported.

Stone says the U.S. media — including FOX News — and the government have demonized Chavez and other leftist South American leaders.

"You can't get a fair hearing for Chavez. It's an outrageous caricature they've drawn of him in the Western press," said Stone told Variety.

Yes, such a pity he hasn't been able to shut down our media as he's largely done to any opposition media in Venezuela. I guess Stone will do a sequel covering that.

Meanwhile, Stone's new buddy gushed about Barack Obama, short one Communist buddy since Van Jones departed in the dark of night over the weekend. Maybe the two can pal around and have a beer at the White House.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy who once called George W. Bush "the devil," said on Monday he hoped to be able to work more closely with President Barack Obama.

The leftist 55-year-old leader added in an interview in Italy that despite the global economic crisis and signs of a slowdown in growth in Venezuela, he did not expect his country to fall into recession.

Chavez was in Venice for the world premiere of "South of the Border," director Oliver Stone's sympathetic portrait of a leader he says has championed the poor and who has been unfairly demonized by the U.S. media.

"I have no reason to call him (Obama) the devil, and I hope that I am right," Chavez told reporters in Venice.

"With Obama we can talk, we are almost from the same generation, one can't deny that Obama is different (from Bush). He's intelligent, he has good intentions and we have to help him."

I guess building a "nuclear village" with Iran can be a topic of discussion.

Van Tossed Under the Bus

Can't say we didn't see this one coming. I was a bit premature, however.

The Washington Post says the resignation of Obama's Communist Truther pal comes after weeks of controversy. Hmm. Then why did most of the media ignore this controversy?

White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned Saturday after weeks of controversy stemming from his past activism.

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones, special adviser for green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement announcing his resignation just after midnight Saturday. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."

A historic fight for clean energy? What the hell is this maniac babbling about?

He continued: "I have been inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."

Across the political spectrum? What, from the far left to the hardline Communist?

More fallout here.

Radical Right-Winger Bob Beckel Says Van Jones Has To Go

Oh, Bob Beckel isn't one of those rabid, frothing, evil right-wingers out on a witch-hunt to get Van Jones? Well, he's on Fox News, so I guess that immediately disqualifies him in certain circles.

Transcript via NewsBusters.

VALERIE JARRETT, OBAMA AIDE: We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. We've been watching him.

ROSEN: That Valerie Jarrett, one of the president's closest aides, expressed such enthusiasm for Jones less than a month ago, suggests Mr. Obama was also aware of Jones' hiring. Yet congressional Republicans have begun calling for Jones to resign and for hearings. And by week's end, such sentiments were not confined to the GOP.

BOB BECKEL, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: My guess is that the resignation letter is being written as we speak.

ROSEN: As an aide to President Carter, Bob Beckel is a White House veteran, and he's urged the current president to drop the ax soon.

BECKEL: Obama has been accused during the campaign of associating with people who were radical, whether it be Bill Ayers or Reverend Wright. He has to do with Jones what he did with Wright, which is to cut his relationship off.

ROSEN: A White House official told FOX NEWS today what is obvious by now, that Van Jones, quote, "wasn't fully vetted prior to his appointment."

But Valerie Jarrett's statement last month that "we've been following him for as long as he has been active out in Oakland" suggests that Jones' views and style, Bret, have long been known to the president and to his advisors.

Emphasis mine.

It's gotten so bad even the rather liberal New York Daily News says it's time for Jones to go.

Here's the mea-kinda-culpa Jones put out yesterday: "If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize. As for the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."

Wait: Did he sign it or not? If he doesn't agree with the views and did sign it, what could possibly have possessed him?

It was troubling enough that the White House was prepared to give an environmental volunteering effort a massive megaphone on Sept. 11, which should be reserved for a solemn remembrance of lives taken by terrorist thugs. It was more troubling when it turned out Jones gave credence to 9/11 lies.

And it is still more troubling that the man can now only muster a half-hearted, nondenial denial.

We're Jonesing for a real reckoning. If it doesn't come from the green-jobs guru, it'll have to come from his boss.

Obama's been in hiding the past several days and in some respects we should be thankful since his ubiquitous presence in every facet of our lives has grown to be more than tedious. But it's time to man up, Barry, and send yet another extremist pal of yours packing.

Van Jones, meet Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers. Although I'm assuming you're all well-acquainted.

Hot Air links. Thanks!

Peaceful Leftists Celebrate May Day in Berlin, 273 Police Injured

Maybe they ought to take a cue from Tea Party protesters on how to get your message out without resorting to violence.

Then again, these are leftists we're talking about. They're not interested in peace.

More than 270 police officers were injured in this year's May Day riots in the German capital, prompting criticism Saturday of Berlin security officials and calls for more officers.

Though the majority of the 273 officers suffered only minor injuries Friday, 14 were badly enough hurt that they will need to take time off work, said Berlin police chief Dieter Glietsch. He did not have more specifics.

In all, 5,800 police officers were on hand to try to keep a lid on the violence that has become a yearly ritual in Berlin. They used tear gas, pepper spray and water cannon as some of the roughly 5,000 leftist demonstrators, marching under the motto "capitalism is war and crisis," threw stones and bottles.

Dozens of demonstrators were injured but there were no exact figures; 289 were arrested. A bank and a fire station had windows broken.

This year's demonstrations turned violent earlier than in previous years, leading to more injuries and arrests. Last year, 112 police officers were hurt and 150 demonstrators arrested.

Rainer Wendt, chairman of one of Germany's national police unions, criticized Berlin interior minister Erhart Koerting's handling of the operation, saying protesters were allowed too much time to get out of hand and urging that a "no tolerance" policy be adopted in the future.

"Whoever throws a stone or wears a mask must be immediately taken out of play," he told the Neuen Osnabruecker Zeitung newspaper.

Fire away.

Confessions of a Spy: 'Now I Know It Was an Illusion'

The hardcore leftists and defenders of the Rosenbergs will never want to admit it, but a man convicted along with them for spying has now admitted it at age 91.

A few years ago, I asked Morton Sobell an impertinent question. Sobell is the only living American defendant in the Rosenberg atomic spy case. The reason he’s the only survivor is because the other two, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were put to death in the electric chair at Sing Sing in 1953.

The Rosenbergs were formally charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, but were accused by prosecutors and the judge of stealing a sketch and other secrets to the atomic bomb, delivering them to the Russians and being all but responsible for the Korean War.

Sobell was Julius Rosenberg’s classmate at City College. He was an electrical engineer. He was never implicated in atomic espionage, but was charged in the conspiracy with stealing other military and industrial secrets.

He was sentenced to 30 years. He served more than 18. He always professed his innocence. So, a couple of years ago, after the Soviet Union imploded and Communism collapsed, I tried a trick question: If he had been guilty of espionage, would he ever admit it?

“I can’t answer that,” Sobell replied.

Now, I know why.

The other day, Sobell confessed to me that he had spied for the Soviets. He’s 91 and lives in the Bronx. He is ailing, but insists his long-term memory is sound.

He told me that over the summer he reached out to his nemesis, the man whose testimony helped convict him. He also said he was working on an article [with the author Walter Schneir] that amounted to a semiconfession.

Did that mean he was, in fact, a spy?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Sobell replied. “Call it that. I never thought of it in those terms.”

“I haven’t considered myself a spy,” he said. “Isn’t that funny? You use that word ‘spy,’ it has connotations.”

Was Julius Rosenberg a spy?

“He was a spy, but no more than I was,” Sobell replied. “He gave nothing, in the end it was nothing. The sketch was negligible and the government lied in presenting it as the secret to the atomic bomb. They never harmed this country, because what they transmitted was wrong.”

Sobell, like the Rosenbergs, was a Communist. He was a true believer when a rose-colored view of Russia idealized Communism as a welcome antidote to capitalism — which, after all, had failed many Americans during the Depression — and to anti-Semitism, which was prevalent even in cosmopolitan places like New York, but was supposedly banned in Russia.

“Now I know it was an illusion,” Sobell says. “I was taken in.”

So, it turns out, were all those supporters who believed he was innocent.

Ace links. Thanks!

Latest AP Puffery on Obama Omits Key Fact About His Hawaii 'Mentor'

After a week of being bruised and battered in the polls, we're back to fawning puff pieces on Barack Obama, this time from the Associated Press. It goes into great detail about the relationship between a young Obama and the writer Frank Marshall Davis, who sounded angrier than even Jeremiah Wright.

Frank Marshall Davis had his opinions. He once argued that the public schools of his youth prepared neither blacks nor whites for "life in a multiracial, democratic nation." He called hypocrisy "a national trait of American whites." Advocating civil rights amid segregation, Davis wrote in 1949: "I refuse to settle for anything less than all the rights which are due me under the Constitution."

The depth of the influence Davis had on the presumptive Democratic nominee is a question. While Davis' leftist politics could allow the candidate's critics to group Davis with Obama friends and acquaintances with allegedly anti-American views, those who knew Davis and his work say his activism was aimed squarely at social injustice.

The bells start ringing whenever I see that social injustice canard tossed around.

So a simple search on Davis reveals the fact he was a card-carrying Communist.

Shocka!

However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his "poetry" and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just "Frank."

The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.

Of course, since Marshall is long dead, he won't feel any pain when thrown under the bus.

The communists knew who "Frank" was, and they know who Obama is. In fact, one academic who travels in communist circles understands the significance of the Davis-Obama relationship.

Professor Gerald Horne, a contributing editor of the Communist Party journal Political Affairs, talked about it during a speech last March at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University. The remarks are posted online under the headline, "Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party."

Horne, a history professor at the University of Houston, noted that Davis, who moved to Honolulu from Kansas in 1948 "at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson," came into contact with Barack Obama and his family and became the young man's mentor, influencing Obama's sense of identity and career moves. Robeson, of course, was the well-known black actor and singer who served as a member of the CPUSA and apologist for the old Soviet Union. Davis had known Robeson from his time in Chicago.

As Horne describes it, Davis "befriended" a "Euro-American family" that had "migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago."

It was in Chicago that Obama became a "community organizer" and came into contact with more far-left political forces, including the Democratic Socialists of America, which maintains close ties to European socialist groups and parties through the Socialist International (SI), and two former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), William Ayers and Carl Davidson.

Will the empty-headed media ever call the empty suit on any of this?

You know that answer.

Update: In the comments, we received this:

As the son of Frank Marshall Davis, I am fighting the right-wing disinformation campaign that exaggerates my father's radical influence over Barack Obama in Hawaii.

OK, so I guess he had some sort of radical influence on Obama, but we right-wingers are just exaggerating it.

And in a stunning coincidence, he's got a MyBarackObama page.

Thanks to Gateway Pundit for the link.

Kooky Commies: Cate Blanchett a 'Running Dog of the CIA'

Seems like Cold War paranoia and delusions never quite ended on the Russian side. Apparently, these knuckleheads are having a difficult time distinguishing between reality and fiction. As in Cate Blanchett is an actress (by the way, from Australia, morons) and she's playing a role in a movie.

Come to think of it, these guys might have a future in comedy.

LEADERS of Russia's Communist party have condemned Australia's Cate Blanchett as a "second-rate actor" and a "running dog of the CIA", for her role in the new Indiana Jones film.

They say the movie is crude anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history and have called for it to be banned from Russian screens.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull stars Harrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers.

"What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathised when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame," said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia's second city of St Petersburg.

The comments were made at a local Communist party meeting and posted on its internet site www.kplo.ru.

The film, the fourth in the hugely successful Indiana Jones series, went on release in Russian cinemas yesterday. Russian media said it was being shown on 808 screens, the widest ever release for a Hollywood movie.

In past episodes Indiana Jones has escaped from Nazi soldiers, an Egyptian snake pit, a Bedouin swordsman and a child-enslaving Indian demigod.

"Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country," said another party member, Andrei Gindos.

Though the ranks of the once all-powerful Communist Party have dwindled since Soviet times, its members see themselves as the defenders of the achievements of the old Soviet Union.

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones outright to prevent "ideological sabotage."

"Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957," St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.

"They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war."

"It's rubbish ... In 1957 the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the US. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?"

Have another drink, Sergei.

Where History Comes Alive

Anti-communist rebel Milan Paumer honoured by prime minister

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek awarded Milan Paumer, the third member of the so-called Mašín group, with a medal of honour on Tuesday. Last week, during a trip to Washington, Mr Topolánek broke one of the greatest Czech taboos by awarding medals to the two Mašín brothers, who along with Milan Paumer and two other anti-Communist fighters made a daring escape from Czechoslovakia in 1953, killing six armed men in the process. For decades the group were demonised by Communist propaganda, and Czechs are still deeply divided over the legitimacy of their actions.

Radio Prague spoke to Milan Paumer after Tuesday’s ceremony – how does he respond to those who say he is a murderer?

"I don‘t pay attention to it anymore because I am no murderer. Many people know that. If I was a murderer, the U.S. military would not give me appreciation for my service in the American army. I don’t pay attention to those communist idiots at all.”

You came back to the Czech Republic in 2001, unlike the Mašín brothers. Why did you decide to come back?

“Well, I am not married; those two boys have families. I have a brother over here so I decided to come back to see my brother, to go to the cemetery to see my parents’ grave. I also thought it would be a good chance to approach young people at schools and start explaining to them what the situation was here in the 1950s when the communists were killing people left and right. And they have the nerve to call us murderers. So I just got involved, I didn’t even know how, but I just slid into it. It was a good idea to start this thing because I think we are getting new intelligentsia from these informed people. I am going to do it until I can walk!”

You have been awarded a medal by the prime minister. Do you consider it as recognition? How important is it to you?

“Of course it is important to me as recognition but I get even more satisfaction from talking to those young people, and I see that people are beginning to understand the situation that was here in the 1950s. They are finally informed and they see it in a little different way now. Now they know the truth about what was going on, and they are reacting to it.”

Do you ever have any regrets over what you did in the 1950s?

“Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because what the communists did, they were killing people! They don’t like to hear it but it’s a fact.”

Jirí Dolejš was unavailable for comment.

Via Radio Praha

Pining Away For Paradise Lost

Proposal to abolish Czech totalitarian regimes institute at court

Brno- The Czech Constitutional Court (US) has received a proposal to abrogate the law on the basis of which the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has been established, CTK has learnt.

The proposal to abolish the state-established facility that is to research into Nazism and communism in Czech history was signed by 57 opposition deputies from the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM).

They say the institute could politically influence the interpretation of history.

By all means, let us not forget about the influences that stem from the political interpretation of history.

They also object to labelling the whole period of communist rule as totalitarian, it ensues from the proposal.It is difficult to say when the Constitutional Court will rule on the proposal.

The left-wing deputies fear that people will consider the results of the research conducted by a state-established institution as the "official" and sole possible interpretation of history.

"This will factually restrict the constitution-guaranteed freedom of scientific research," the proposal says.

This is beginning to smell of George Soros.

The deputies also object to what they call ideological terminology.

"The law authoritatively describes the section of Czechoslovak history between February 25, 1948 [when Communists seized power in then Czechoslovakia] and December 29, 1989 [end of communist regime in Czechoslovakia] as a period of communist totalitarian power. It does not consider the fact that the period was changeable from the point of view of ways of exercise of state power and was not compact in this respect," the deputies write.

They write that the 1950s saw a real totalitarian regime while in the 1960s the regime was gradually democratised, and they say that it did not fully return to the repressive practices from the times of the cult of personality in the 1950s even after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968.

That's why so many Czech ex-pats returned home; overwhelming the borders, just to see the 5000-7000 Soviet tanks that were now in the Czech Lands to guarantee their freedom.

"This state also carried out a number of measures that were generally positive for society, particularly in the social sphere," the deputies write.

They use as "a partial example the deepening of the practical equalisation of women in political, economic and family life, as well the abandoning of the practice of making differences between children according to their origin."

The left-wing deputies recommend to the Constitutional Court to abrogate the law as a whole, or to at least delete the words "totalitarian" from a number of passages of the law.

Nácek a komunista svině would work.

The right justified the establishment of the institute by an effort to concentrate and process the written documents of all security forces of the communist regime.

It said the processing of data and making them available should contribute to the comprehension of the communist regime and at the same time to the prevention of a biased interpretation of history.

The institute's activities will be supervised by a council that has elected historian Pavel Zacek as the institute's first head. He will formally assume his post on January 1.

David Irving was unavailable for comment.

Via ČTK

How About Deporting Her to Zimbabwe?

In fact, send this Marxist swine anywhere, but please don't befoul the United States by letting her back in.

Pakistan to deport Code Pink protesters

Pakistan authorities today ordered the deportation of the leader of the feminist U.S. antiwar group Code Pink, who was in Lahore to join protests against the emergency rule imposed by President Pervez Musharraf, according to a spokeswoman for the group.

Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the group, said she was arrested at a student demonstration by agents of the Pakistan Inter-Service Intelligence and detained for about four hours before being released with orders to leave the country tomorrow morning. Pakistan officials told Ms. Benjamin that she was being deported for joining illegal protests.

"I'm OK — a little shaken up," Ms. Benjamin told The Washington Times by telephone from her hotel in Lahore. "They mistreated us."

Ms. Benjamin said she feared for her life as the agents held her at gunpoint in a car speeding through the city to the police station.

"I thought I was going to die in the car," she said. "They totally terrorized us."

From being mistreated to terrorized in one breath.

It's a shame Pakistan can't keep her.

Hillary's Communist Ties

The New York Sun has been looking into Mrs. Clinton's radical past (someone has to do it, since the networks won't touch this) and has a couple of interesting stories.

Hillary Clinton's Radical Summer: A Season of Love and Leftists

In a life marked largely by political caution, one entry on Senator Clinton's résumé stands out: her clerkship in 1971 at one of America's most radical law firms, Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.

One partner at the firm, Doris Walker, was a Communist Party member at the time. Another partner, Robert Treuhaft, had left the party in 1958, several years after being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and labeled as one of America's most "dangerously subversive" lawyers. The Oakland-based firm was renowned for taking clients others rejected as too controversial, including Communists, draft resisters, and members of the African-American militant group known as the Black Panthers.

To this day, Mrs. Clinton's decision to work at the unabashedly left-wing firm is surprising, even shocking, to some of her former colleagues there and to those supporting her bid for the presidency. To the former first lady's enemies and political opponents, her summer at the Treuhaft firm is yet another indication that radical ideology lurks beneath the patina of moderation she has adopted in public life.

Then today they have Hillary Clinton's Left Hook, describing her relationship with one of the firm's partners.

After Hillary Clinton clerked in the summer of 1971 at an Oakland, Calif., law firm run by attorneys with ties to the Communist Party, she never returned to work there. But she stayed in touch with one of the firm's partners and his wife, and they stayed in touch with her, until they died. The decades-long correspondence illustrates the complicated relationship between Mrs. Clinton and radical activists who were often frustrated by the failure of Mrs. Clinton and her husband to side with them.

Much of the correspondence concerns a crisis that Bill Clinton faced involving the Arkansas prison system soon after he became governor in 1979. Hollywood, the courts, and liberal activists joined forces to pressure Mr. Clinton over allegations that inmates in Arkansas were subjected to inhumane conditions and that guards were corrupt and abusive. The campaign's centerpiece was a movie, "Brubaker," which starred Robert Redford as an Arkansas warden bent on reform.

One key player in the tumult over the Arkansas prisons was a satirical writer, social critic, and former Communist, Jessica Mitford. The daughter of a British baron, Mitford was the wife of Robert Treuhaft, one of the founding partners of the firm where Mrs. Clinton summered in 1971, Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.

Read both of these pieces, for they are most enlightening.

If a candidate for President of the United States has ties to Communists, be they current or former, we need a complete airing of this.

Will the rest of the media turn a deaf ear to this? Do they even care?

Here is the text of the correspondence between her, Treuhaft and Mitford.

It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again

And how prophetic Yogi's famous pronouncement remains.

Czechoslovakia's biggest disinformation ops now on web

Ask any Czech who is old enough to remember the Communist years what comes to mind when they hear the name Cerne Jezero, or the Black Lake. They will tell you that it is in Bohemia's Sumava region and the place where several chests containing Nazi secret police documents were found. The fact that the chests were actually placed there by Czechoslovakia's own secret police, the StB, only came to light after one of their agents defected and wrote a book about the operation. But now, the original StB documents with detailed information about the plan can be found on the web.

Back in 1964, four chests believed to contain secret Nazi intelligence documents were found at the bottom of the Black Lake. They were retrieved by a group of divers during the making of a Czechoslovak TV documentary. Since it was believed that the Nazis had sunk a number of chests with stolen treasure and secret documents in the lake, the Czechoslovak intelligence was called to the scene. The chests were taken to Prague and the interior minister at the time proudly declared that a list of all Gestapo collaborators was amongst other secret documents in the chest.

At the time, nobody even suspected that the chests had been put there just a few weeks earlier - naturally not by the Nazis but by Czechoslovakia's own intelligence service. Together with the KGB, they had been in possession of documents on Nazi collaborators since the end of the war but were waiting for an opportunity to make them useful. The time was ripe in the 1960s as the documents proved that West Germany's secret service was still using a network of agents that also served the Nazis and that influential government officials had already served under Adolf Hitler. Interior ministry historian Petr Cajthaml: "It was the Cold War and the goal was to re-awaken interest and discredit West German politicians. Another goal was to have the statute of limitations for war criminals, which would have expired in 1965, extended. Following the extensive media coverage, the countries that suffered during WWII demanded that the statute be prolonged. Germany eventually extended it and then agreed that there be no limited time in which their war criminals could be tried."

The divers that retrieved the chests were actually led to them by a man named Ladislav Bittman, who in reality was an StB agent specialising in misinformation campaigns. To make the chests look authentic, the corrosion process was studied carefully so that the rust on the metal parts looked like the chests had been in the water for twenty years.

"The chests that were put there contained normal white paper as the real documents that were later shown at the press conference got to Czechoslovakia from the Soviet Union weeks after the chests were retrieved. The first time that the disinformation campaign came to light was in 1972. Ladislav Bittman, who himself ran the operation emigrated in 1968 and made the operation public a few years later in a book called 'The Deception Game' that came out in the United States."

Details of the operation can now be found on the internet. The Czech civilian intelligence has posted the original StB files on the operation dubbed "Neptune" on its website.

Dan Blather would be proud.

audio

Castro Skips May Day Parade

Shocking, isn't it?

Hundreds of thousands of cheering workers marched through Cuba's Revolution Plaza on Tuesday but Fidel Castro was nowhere to be seen.

The place where Castro would have watched the festivities - a raised platform under a towering statue of Cuban colonial independence hero Jose Marti - was instead occupied by his brother Raul.

Castro had attended the annual International Workers' Day march for decades. But the 80-year-old communist leader has not been seen in public since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to step down temporarily nine months ago and temporarily cede his duties to his 75-year-old brother.

Nine months is quite a long time to be considered temporary, no?

Meanwhile, another Communist swine, Hugo Chavez, continues apace with the destruction of the Venezuelan economy.

President Hugo Chavez's government took over Venezuela's last privately run oil fields Tuesday, intensifying a struggle with international firms over the development of the world's largest known petroleum deposit.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez declared that the Orinoco fields had reverted to state control just after midnight. Television showed oil workers in hard hats raising the flags of Venezuela and the national oil company over a refinery and four drilling fields in the Orinoco River basin.

Chavez, a strong critic of U.S.-style capitalism and a leader of the leftist movement in Latin America, planned a more elaborate celebration later on May Day, the international workers' holiday, with red-clad oil workers, soldiers and a flyover by Russian-made fighter jets.

Islamist/Communist Alliance

Counterterrorism Blog calls it strange, but is it really? Both ideologies are enemies of freedom, so an alliance seems natural.

Democrats Under Siege

The networks won't be reporting much of this, but it's fun to watch the Democrats unraveling.

GOP Forces House Democrats To Pull DC Voting Bill (Via Drudge)

House Democrats pulled a bill to grant voting rights to Washington, D.C., after Republicans offered a motion that would repeal the gun ban for the District.

The move is a clear signal that Democrats have lost control of the House floor on the voting rights issue after minority Republicans presented the Democratic majority with a politically unpalatable motion that their conservative members would be forced to support for fear of angering the gun rights community.

Fifty-two Democrats voted with Republicans on a similar measure to repeal the gun ban in 2004. That would be more than enough support for Republicans to add a repeal to the voting rights bill - something a majority of Democrats would vehemently oppose.

Republicans have taken great pride in offering motions to recommit during their time in the minority, an often over-looked legislative procedure that has allowed them to amend various bills on the House floor.

Meanwhile, the Communist hags from Codepink, who recently camped outside Nancy Pelosi's home, now plan to invade her office. Doesn't this idiot have any security?

Allahpundit seems to be enjoying things.