In honour of the Soviet KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov I bring you Bill Maher:

And you know what? I realized listening to this rhetoric that it reminded me of something. It reminded me of Tiger Woods’ text messages to his mistress that were made public last week, where he said, and I quote: “I want to treat you rough, throw you around, spank and slap you and make you sore. I want to hold you down and choke you while I f*** that ass that I own. Then I’m going to tell you to shut the f*** up while I slap your face and pull your hair for making noise.” Unquote. [laughter]

And this, I believe, perfectly represents the attitude the Democrats should now have in their dealings with the Republican Party. [applause]

Yes, it does. That’s what they should be saying to the Republicans: “Shut the f*** up while I slap your face for making noise! Now pass the cap-and-trade law, you stupid bitch, and repeat after me, ‘global warming is real.’” [applause]

The Democrats need to push the rest of their agenda while their boot is on the neck of the greedy, poisonous old reptile. Who cares if cap-and-trade bill isn’t popular, neither was health care. Your poll numbers may have descended a bit, but so did your testicles.

So don’t stop. We need to regulate the banks, we need to overhaul immigration, we need to end corporate welfare including at the Pentagon, we need to bring troops home from everywhere, we need to end the drug war, and we need to put terrorists and other human rights violators on trial in civilian courts — starting with Dick Cheney. [applause]

Democrats, in conclusion, Democrats in America were put on earth to do one thing: Drag the ignorant hillbilly half of this country into the next century, which in their case is the 19th. And by passing health care, the Democrats saved their brand.

But of course, it’s Ann Coulter who should be locked up for hate speech.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org

Like every self-appointed messiah before them, these militant environmentalists view with chill contempt those others who cannot see their truth, who won’t bow to their self-assigned imperatives. It’s not just that they won’t abide those who differ from them. They want them actively punished.

Rex Murphy, National Post, April 17, 2010

On the Goldman Sachs SEC charges:

Goldman has become the focus of demonization by the Obama administration at a time when the Democrats want to introduce yet another massive “reform” package. But reform does not always mean improvement, and the massive bill as now structured could turn banks considered “too big to fail” into taxpayer-backed public utilities, and lead to bureaucrats overseeing lending policies.

Peter Foster, April 27, 2010

Every murderous totalitarian government of the 20th century began with some insulated group of faux-intellectuals congratulating each other on how smart they are, and fantasizing about how, if they could just install a dictatorship-for-a-day, they could right all the wrongs in the world.

It is the ultimate fantasy of the narcissist. And we’ve got whole generations of them, in control of our media and our government, all intent on “remaking America.”

Elizabeth Scalia, May 24, 2010

The FLQ Manifesto is undeniably part of Quebec’s history. It is a text that evokes a particular time — one that, in fact, does so splendidly, evoking the feverish, fetid atmosphere of the late Sixties with a suddenness and a brutality that makes one glad those days were so long ago. It is perfectly proper that the manifesto should be recited as part of a general airing of important historical texts, as it was once recited to help save the life of James Cross, the still-living British diplomat kidnapped by the Front de liberation du Quebec on Oct. 5, 1970.

Source.

I too, support the argument that we must not forget our past.

To understand the FLQ and it’s violent actions, it’s important to first understand the ideology they were loyal to. The FLQ were first and foremost a radical Marxist movement. For the FLQ and most Marxist groups, the primary objective is to defeat capitalism – using any means possible. For the FLQ, the goal of Quebec sovereignty provided the “noble” cover to their part in the much wider global struggle against capitalism.

Much of the FLQ Manifesto reads as though it were lifted directly out of Marx’s A Communist Manifesto:

We are the workers of Québec and we will continue to the bitter end. We want to replace the slave society with a free society, functioning by itself and for itself; a society open to the world.

Our struggle can only lead to victory. You cannot hold an awakening people in misery and contempt indefinitely. Long live Free Québec!

Long live our imprisoned political comrades. Long live the Québec revolution!

Long live the Front de liberation du Québec.

In addition to capitalism, the other enemy of Marxism is organised religion. In this passage the FLQ takes a swipe at both enemies in one sentence:

We are terrorized by the capitalist Roman church, even though this seems less and less obvious (who owns the property on which the stock exchange stands?)

In fact, there is very little reference to Quebec as a “distinct society” in the FLQ Manifesto. Instead it is quite clearly a call for “workers” to rise up against their “bosses”. Quebec nationalism is merely a smokescreen.

This pattern of seeking out what appear to be noble causes can been seen throughout history in the Marxist battle against capitalism. The most recent example of this wolf in sheep’s clothing is the battle over how to deal with climate change, which is rather ironic considering the environment records of the communist world.

While the FLQ now appears to be a historical footnote, it’s important to understand that it’s underpinnings are still very much alive and kicking today.

A month ago, the heroic leaders of Eastern Europe got down on their knees and begged Obama not to renege on George W. Bush’s promise to give them a missile defense system and not to give in to Russian threats and remonstrations, which were obviously designed to keep the former Soviet slave states within Russia’s imperial reach. Having seen Russian tanks rolling into Georgia, who can doubt that the Putin regime has long-term goals of reacquiring the “sphere of influence” that brought so much terror and loss of life to Eastern Europe just a few decades ago?

Source.

With the financial means to exert meaningful influence on the international stage now significantly compromised by out-of-control domestic spending programs, combined with this administration’s apparent desire to apologize for past “American imperialist sins”, historical Western allies do have reason for concern.

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Update: Eastern European concerns go unheard:

WARSAW, Poland – Poles and Czechs voiced deep concern Friday at President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense shield planned for their countries.

“Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back,” the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama’s new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous “gray zone” between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.

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If you haven’t already done so, you really should read this book.

David Horowitz recently turned 70. Below is a video from his birthday celebration and “roast”. There are some excellent clips of some of his admirers that spoke at the dinner, but hearing him speak of his own journey is certainly the highlight:

The following point cannot be stressed enough; whilst the U.S. remains in Afghanistan, economic and social development will not occur much beyond current levels. This in turn means that the Taliban, as a broad-based movement of poor farmers and lower clergy, is the face of anti-imperialist resistance in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.

To put it another way, if we, as avowed anti-imperialists, intend to wait around for a resistance movement that agrees with us on every issue, including the need to fight the oppression of women, gays, racial and religious minorities, etc., we’ll be waiting a long time. The Taliban is the resistance in Afghanistan and we must support it, critically, but unreservedly.

Source.

In previous posts I have wondered out loud about the silence of the left on issues of women’s rights and democratic reform in the middle east and elsewhere, and I have always maintained that the real struggle of the radical left is not about easing the plight of women and the oppressed; rather it is focussed on fighting against imperialism. These “revolutionaries” are truly blinded by their devotion to that very destructive cause, and I’m pleased to see that at least one of them has fessed up.

h/t to Terry Glavin and to Kate.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which revealed not only the economic failures of the totalitarian socialist state but also the censoring, imprisonment, and even execution imposed on it’s own dissenters, the left has had to turn elsewhere to find a “struggle” to champion. The latest socialist poster boy is Hugo Chavez.

Judy Rebick writes:

I am not crazy about Chavez cadillio style of leadership but Venezuela is alot more democratic than Canada. … As you will read in Transforming Power, we should be studying Venezuela to see how we can deepen our democracy but instead in a throw back to the cold war, our media paints Chavez as a autocratic and a right-wing populist manipulating the people. I’ve been to Venezuela and the people there understand exactly what they like and don’t like about Chavez.

Available here.

Related:

Houston Obama campaign office manager hangs a Che Guevara Cuba flag behind her Obama campaign office desk.

Oliver Stone will continue his infamous tradition of films about real-world political figures with a new documentary about Hugo Chavez, the flashpoint Venezuela president whose influence the United States has publicly tried to subdue in recent years.
The news comes after Stone blithely weathered the fallout from his breezy Bush biopic W. and a wave of publicity after the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, turned down his request to make a documentary about him. (Ahmadinejad acknowledged Stone’s rebel status in his profession but said he was still part of “the Great Satan,” to which Stone famously said he hoped that the Iranian “experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours.”)

True to form, Stone will focus his Chavez documentary on the leftist president’s vast opposition, and he will have plenty of material: Chavez recently introduced legislation that would allow him to remain in office until 2019. Stone has already spent considerable time with Chavez over the last several months, and his film is slated to be finished this year.

Source.

Stone’s project is also discussed by Oleg Atbashian:

Thus, Oliver Stone is reportedly making a documentary about Hugo Chavez, whom he describes as an “energetic, principled champion of change in Latin America” and hopes, in Stone’s words, to “capture the spirit of his drive to roll back U.S. influence.” The ability to claim originality while working for decades from the same moth-eaten template makes Mr. Stone an Oscar-winning genius. Is there a chance that in the process of glorifying what he calls the region’s “liberation from the United States,” the legendary director might display authentic originality by interviewing, not a leftist, but a hero of anti-Marxist resistance? Can the devastation inflicted on Latin America by socialist policies persuade Mr. Stone to look beyond the worn-out clichés? We can only wish.

Source.