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Fifth Column
"Anti-war" fascists battle to remain relevant
2010-09-06
EFL.
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.
Under the bus, folks, there's room for all ...
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 former President George W. Bush are straining to raise the money and attention to fight what they see as Obama's military entrenchment in Afghanistan.
I don't recall a half million protesting the war anywhere.
"We don't have a very vibrant anti-war movement anymore," lamented Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Codepink and treasonous bitch, 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."
And the Democrats didn't even leave any money on the nightstand for you, Medea ...
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 on orders from above, 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.
Aww, damn.
Leslie Cagan, UFPJ'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."
And without the adoring media and the Soros money it just wasn't fun anymore ...
Liberals demanding an immediate withdrawal from Iraq after the 2003 invasion were largely ignored by the Bush administration, but their influence with Democrats and independent voters grew between 2004 and 2008, the height of the war -- and the time of Obama's emergence as a presidential contender. By 2008, the anti-war sentiment had fueled a surge in voter registration, while anti-war activists openly embraced Obama, whose early momentum was based largely on opposition to Iraq.

Now, that energy has all but vanished, leaving Obama and embattled congressional Democrats with one less ally when they need all the help they can get.

Paradoxically, the anti-war movement has grown weaker even as public opposition to the Afghanistan war has grown stronger. A recent Gallup poll found that 43 percent of those surveyed think the Afghanistan war was a mistake, compared with 30 percent in January 2009. But an anti-war rally in Washington in March 2009 drew fewer than 10,000 people -- a fraction of the 500,000 activists who attended an anti-Iraq war rally in Manhattan in 2003.
Even liberals worry about the economy, even if they don't know what to do about it ...
It wasn't 500,000 that attended the rally; it was less than 300,000 and that was a leftist estimate. And the protest took place in February, 2003, an important date because it prceded the start of the liberation of Iraq by about 30 days. This is important because despite the claimed 300,000 protesters no one was ever able to muster anything close to those numbers again in the US.
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.
Thus demonstrating their true principles, or lack thereof ...
The staggering economy has hit the movement hard: Just a few years ago, some groups raised millions of dollars in donations and mobilized legions of supporters to rallies in Washington and New York; now, UFPJ -- which had a full-time, paid staff and a budget of more than $1 million -- relies on volunteers working without a headquarters and with less than $100,000 to spend.
Mr. Soros has found other ways to spend his money?
Nevertheless, many activists believe that momentum is building against the continued military presence in Afghanistan. In July, 102 House Democrats voted against the $33 billion emergency war supplemental bill, compared with 32 who voted against it last year -- a sign, activists say, that Congress is responding to falling public support for the Afghanistan war. Activists took heart when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not whip progressive members to support this bill, and when House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey said he had "profound skepticism" about spending more money on combat in Afghanistan.
Then again, perhaps they saw the poll numbers and decided that they needed to rally their single remaining bastion of support for the election ...
As Democrats in Congress begin to put pressure on the White House to leave Afghanistan, some say that move could help the anti-war movement regain some of its lost strength. Still, if outside groups can't build on that momentum, "it would be a problem," said Bob Borosage, founder and president of Institute for America's Future.
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Home Front: Politix
Red on Red in Obama support groups
2009-03-30
President Obama went on CBS News' "Face the Nation" Sunday to make the case for his great big war in Afghanistan.

The good news is that Obama says, "What I will not do is to simply assume that more troops always results in an improved situation."

The bad news is that Obama is dispatching more troops to a country that has never taken well to occupation.

So where is the MoveOn.org blast condemning the ramping up of an undeclared war and the president's refusal to rule out an even more dramatic expansion of that war to Pakistan? Where is the memo from the Center for American Progress outlining the case against giving the president "a blank check for endless war"?

Don't hold your breath, says John Stauber, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and the co-author of Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq and The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq, two of the most scathing books on the Bush-Cheney administration and its war in Iraq.

In a no-holds-barred critique of groups that earned their reputations as critics of the rush to invade and occupy Iraq, Stauber argues that the Obama administration has effectively co-opted some of the nation's most high-profile anti-war groups.

Here's what Stauber writes in a piece titled: "How Obama Took Over the Peace Movement," which appears on the CMD website:

John Podesta's liberal think tank the Center for American Progress strongly supports Barack Obama's escalation of the US wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is best evidenced by Sustainable Security in Afghanistan, a CAP report by Lawrence J. Korb. Podesta served as the head of Obama's transition team, and CAP's support for Obama's wars is the latest step in a successful co-option of the US peace movement by Obama's political aids and the Democratic Party.

CAP and the five million member liberal lobby group MoveOn were behind Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), a coalition that spent tens of millions of dollars using Iraq as a political bludgeon against Republican politicians, while refusing to pressure the Democratic Congress to actually cut off funding for the war. AAEI was operated by two of Barack Obama's top political aids, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, and by Brad Woodhouse of Americans United for Change and USAction.

Today Woodhouse is Obama's Director of Communications and Research for the Democratic National Committee. He controls the massive email list called Obama for America composed of the many millions of people who gave money and love to the Democratic peace candidate and might be wondering what the heck he is up to in Afghanistan and Pakistan. MoveOn built its list by organizing vigils and ads for peace and by then supporting Obama for president; today it operates as a full-time cheerleader supporting Obama's policy agenda. Some of us saw this unfolding years ago. Others are probably shocked watching their peace candidate escalating a war and sounding so much like the previous administration in his rationale for doing so.

Ouch!

Stauber's piece has circulated widely in recent days, stirring the same sort of dialogue that his previous criticisms of MoveOn inspired.

The truth is that important players in the anti-war movement are speaking out against Obama's Afghanistan buildup.

Peace Action is petitioning Congress to oppose Obama's Afghanistan plan. Peace Action executive director Kevin Martin has compared the president's moves with those of John Kennedy in Vietnam. "It's a shame President Obama believes he can pursue the same militaristic strategy as his predecessors and produce a different result, While President Obama has made some good statements on increasing diplomacy and economic aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the emphasis is clearly on military operations. John F. Kennedy was in a comparable situation when he was elected. He chose to escalate then as well, and the consequences of his decision left our country mired in an unwinnable war."

The Friends Committee on National Legislation, which maintains the largest peace lobby in Washington, says: "More troops won't bring more peace in Afghanistan. Instead, the U.S. should invest in long-term diplomacy and development assistance."

United for Peace and Justice, of which both Peace Action and FCNL are member groups, is organizing coordinated local actions on April 6-9 to pressure Congress to oppose the Afghanistan escalation.

But Stauber's broad point is an important one.

There is significant discomfort with the expansion of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, and opposition has been expressed by political leaders abroad and at home (including Democrats and Republicans in Congress). This is a time when genuine anti-war groups could be expected to harness that discomfort and build a stronger movement to shift U.S. policy.

As such, it is a time of testing for organizations that came to prominence opposing not just George Bush and Dick Cheney but the wrongheaded war-making of the White House -- no matter which party happened to occupy the Oval Office. And that makes Stauber's J'accuse a particularly stinging one.
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Home Front: WoT
Pro-Palestinian rally in New York turns violent
2009-01-12
At least nine protesters were arrested in a pro-Palestinian rally Sunday afternoon in New York that injured seven police officers, authorities said. The extent of injuries varied from minor to serious, New York police said. Two officers sustained head injuries.

Detective Cheryl Crispin said the protesters taken into custody faced charges ranging from disorderly conduct to reckless endangerment. In a statement, the NYPD said the officers were injured when trying to break up a fight between two demonstrators.

"While attempting to separate the males, several others joined in and began to assault the officers," the statement said.

The demonstrators had gathered on Manhattan's West Side on Sunday afternoon to protest the Israeli incursion in Gaza. The rally began peacefully, but skirmishes between police and demonstrators eventually broke out.

Steve Sherman, coordinator of security for United for Peace and Justice and a demonstrator at the rally, said police maced demonstrators.

"The police pushed us out onto the avenue, and as we were walking down the avenue ... they charged with horses on the sidewalks and they charged with their own bodies and pushed in, and a riot started," he said.

Mike Eilenfeldt, another demonstrator, said confrontations between the police and protesters appeared to escalate after a police officer had fallen to the ground.

"He's laying on the street, and from that point on it's a police riot where they start attacking the young people," Eilenfeldt told CNN.

Police denied the allegations of mace being used on protesters.
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Home Front: WoT
U.S. antiwar protests shrink
2007-10-04
Hat tip Gateway Pundit. Read a little and you'll find an astonishing admission by the AP.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Crowds at antiwar rallies in Washington have dwindled even as U.S. opinion has turned against the war in Iraq, as organizers feud and participants question the effectiveness of the street protests.

Rival antiwar groups, which in years past jointly sponsored massive rallies on the National Mall, have promoted separate protests recently or decided to steer clear of the capital altogether. The thinning crowds stand in contrast to the antiwar protests of the Vietnam era, which grew as the war progressed.

Activists and experts say divisions among peace groups, along with other factors like the lack of a draft, fatigue about the war and the rise of the Internet, have all contributed to the declining turnout.
Not to mention that Americans generally like winners, and we're winning in Iraq.
Sparse turnout -- fewer than 1,000 at a rally on Saturday, according to local media reports -- could undermine the goal of forcing an end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, participants say. "When you have demonstrations in which the turnout is not terribly impressive, that gives politicians the sense that people may oppose the war but nobody's really going to pay a price," said Peter Kuznik, an American University history professor and antiwar protester.
The 2006 elections didn't send a message about getting out of Iraq. The message instead was, get serious about winning or get out. Bush got serious: he moved Gates in, started the surge, and got the right leadership in the region. Americans are responding to that.
Antiwar rallies drew hundreds of thousands of people at the war's start in 2003, although only 23 percent of Americans then said the invasion was a mistake, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll. That figure is now 58 percent.
Depending on how you ask the question, of course.
Saturday's protest, sponsored by the Troops Out Now Coalition, came two weeks after an antiwar event sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition, which drew roughly 10,000 people. ANSWER also sponsored a rally in March.

The groups' agendas are similar, opposing what they call "imperialist" U.S. policy not only in Iraq but toward countries like Cuba and Iran -- which has alienated some supporters. "There's all of these peripheral issues that you're going to be associated with, whether you want to or not," said Hamilton College history professor Maurice Isserman.
And here's the amazing AP revelation:
Both groups' leaders were associated with the Workers World Party, which advocates a shift toward a Soviet-style planned economy. But a 2004 dispute prompted some members to form the splinter Party for Socialism and Liberation. Members of the splinter group stayed active in the ANSWER Coalition, and the remaining members of the Workers World Party formed the Troops Out Now Coalition, Troops Out Now spokesman Dustin Langley said.
Whoa! You mean the people pushing hardest for defeat in Iraq are communists?
Another antiwar group, United for Peace and Justice, has refused to work with ANSWER since a joint rally in 2005. The event drew well over 100,000 people, media reports said, but the two groups clashed over speaking time and other issues.
UPJ is no prize, either, being funded by the usual Soros-influenced foundations and the like.
United for Peace and Justice, which has tried to focus on ending the Iraq war, drew 100,000 people to a January protest. The group plans 11 regional demonstrations later this month, but none in Washington. "The base that we work with was saying to us, 'We've been to Washington a lot in the last four years, we don't want to go to Washington again,"' national coordinator Leslie Kagan said.
Because Washington is only the national capital.
ANSWER has called for antiwar groups to join forces for a large rally in the spring, but Kagan and Langley said their groups have not decided whether to participate.

Antiwar leaders say recent smaller protests reflect new tactics, not disorganization. Smaller activist groups like Code Pink have been a colorful, disruptive and useless presence at congressional hearings and appearances by Bush administration officials.
And remember, Code Pink was founded by Medea Benjamin, a hard-line communist Stalinist type. She's a nasty piece of work who's managed to 'coordinate' the anarchist plunder (if one can coordinate anarchists) of the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. She has lots of nice things to say about Cuba but none about her own country.
"There's times when we've had half a million people out in the streets, and there's times when it's important just to be there," Langley said.

But others said it is less likely they'll head to Washington at all. "People are tired, they are frustrated because they didn't expect this to go on so long," said Laura Bonham, a spokeswoman for Progressive Democrats of America, which lobbies lawmakers to support a withdrawal. "It's like, well, we can stay home."
They didn't expect Bush to fix things and get us back on track, either.
Largely absent from the actions are young people, who were the majority of Vietnam-era protesters -- perhaps because they do not risk being drafted into the military or from a sense that they can express their opposition to the war on the Internet, rather than on the streets, Isserman said.
And the young people have more sense than their moonbat elders.
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Fifth Column
New Yorkers say give peace a chance
2006-04-30
Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters have flooded New York streets to demand an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. About 300,000 people marched through Manhattan on Saturday and stretched for about 10 blocks as they headed down Broadway. The event was organised by the group United for Peace and Justice. Cindy Sheehan, a vociferous critic of the war whose 24-year-old soldier son also died in Iraq, joined the march, as did actress Susan Sarandon and the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

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Fifth Column
Anti-War Movement Casualty of In-Fighting
2006-03-15
(CNSNews.com) - With new polls showing that more than half of Americans believe the war in Iraq is going badly and that Iraq will never become a stable democracy, you might think that anti-war groups in the U.S. would be trumpeting their influence. Instead, the groups appear to be caught in their own brand of civil war, criticizing each other for management styles, sympathizing with Communist dictators and pandering to the media. They have bickered over alleged racism and even over issues like who would get more microphone time and pay for the portable toilets at anti-war rallies.

The feuding appears to have precluded any kind of nationally coordinated anti-war rallies from happening on March 19, the third-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Small, local protests are planned by various anti-war groups around the country.

"The souring of the political atmosphere is largely due to ANSWER, which, in our experience, consistently substitutes labels ('racist,' 'anti-unity') and mischaracterization of others' views for substantive political debate or problem solving," reads the open letter issued last Dec. 12, by the group United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). It marked the opening salvo in a war of words that has been fought on the groups' individual websites and all over the blogosphere. In announcing that it would no longer coordinate activities with International ANSWER, UFPJ criticized ANSWER's links to the Workers World Party (WWP), a group that allegedly had supported atrocities committed by Communist regimes around the world.
Gee, somebody finally noticed
ANSWER also "has a history of seeking to dominate coalitions and many embarrassing ultra-hard line positions," according to UFPJ supporter Bill Weinberg, whose column was published in the November/December issue of the magazine Nonviolent Activist.

International ANSWER's leader - former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark - was also singled out for criticism after providing legal help to some of the world's most notorious ousted leaders. "Ramsey Clark, the visible leader of the International Action Center, is a founder of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, and has also provided legal representation for some accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He has more recently volunteered for Saddam Hussein's legal team," Weinberg noted in his column late last fall.
Chortle
UFPJ's complaints about ANSWER also delved into areas not related to ideology. UFPJ claimed that ANSWER monopolized the microphones during the groups' joint Sept. 24, 2005, anti-war rally in Washington D.C. "ANSWER did not honor the agreed-upon time limits for its sections of the pre-march Rally, going more than an hour over in one section," the open letter from UFPJ's steering committee alleged last Dec. 12. The letter added that "ANSWER did not turn out many volunteers to provide for fundraising, security and media operations for the March and Rally."

In a Jan. 10, 2006 article entitled "The War within the Antiwar Movement," published on CounterPunch.org, anti-war activist Lenni Brenner defended International ANSWER against the attacks. Brenner, who is not a spokesman for International ANSWER, questioned why UFPJ had aligned itself with "demagogues" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

"Demagogues use prevailing fanaticisms. Jackson & Sharpton meet that dictionary definition. Their party's leaders would swim across oceans of snot, stark naked, chasing after Zionist money."
They're equal oportunity panderers. They'd do the same for any money
"They adapt to it. Black congressional Democratic panderers vote for US weapons to Israel," Brenner explained. "UFPJ's leaders certainly had no idea of Jackson & Sharpton's cons. But, after they read this, they must, as all great philosophers say, s*** or get off the pot."

International ANSWER's steering committee issued its own response in a Dec. 16, open letter, accusing UFPJ of repeatedly attempting to break up the anti-war movement and behaving in a "petty" manner. "The justifications cited in their December 12 split declaration are embarrassingly petty and astonishingly trivial for a U.S.-based antiwar movement, especially given the gravity of the war itself and the monumental human suffering in the Middle East," the Dec. 16 letter from ANSWER's steering committee alleged.

ANSWER also claimed that it was UFPJ that had dominated the stage at the anti-war rally. "UFPJ had the stage first at the joint rally. They went over their time. They advised A.N.S.W.E.R. to take an equal time. UFPJ then retook the stage and began telling the crowd to march, even though A.N.S.W.E.R. still had its second segment left," the letter from ANSWER charged.

ANSWER rejected criticism that it had failed to provide enough volunteers for the Sept. 24, 2005 rally. "UFPJ provided not one volunteer," ANSWER charged while noting that it paid "the full cost for the stage, sound, porta-Johns, back-stage set-up and other expenses for the joint rally." "UFPJ did not pay one cent," the open letter stated.

When contacted on Tuesday, Hany Khalil, the coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, declined to comment on the split between his group and ANSWER. Shawn Garcia, the national organizer for ANSWER said the feud between his group and UFPJ was "a bad thing." "Obviously it's a bad thing. We are not unified and stuff like that and they are breaking up the anti-war movement," Garcia told Cybercast News Service. "They refuse to work with us, and that is what they are putting out there. So we will see what develops in the next couple of months. We said we want to work with them. We think that is the best way to go about things," Garcia said.

A third anti-war group, Mobilization for Global Justice (MGJ), has now also entered the feud. Mobilization for Global Justice has accused UFPJ of "racism," for limiting the speech of Virginia Setshedi, a black South African woman who addressed the Sept. 24, 2005, rally in the nation's capital. Setshedi "was treated by UFPJ in a manner bordering racism," [sic] read an open letter from MGJ dated Dec. 1, 2005. "[Setshedi] is a truly visionary activist and a dynamic speaker, and yet was given only three minutes to speak after a long procession of well-known U.S. speakers who were given five minutes each - and often took longer than that," the letter claimed.

MGJ also accused UFPJ of being obsessed with press attention. "The grassroots has no role in determining the political vision of the coalition; the vision and message are driven by the needs of getting on CNN and the New York Times," the letter stated. MGJ acknowledged that the anti-war movement might be hurt by the growing bitterness among its most prominent groups. "We know that fracturing and factionalism weaken the movement - and that is not what we seek - but it is equally true that conformity, unwillingness to engage in real debate, and a refusal to air real differences when they exist can stifle and eventually kill a movement," MGJ stated.

UFPJ fired back at MGJ in a Feb. 10, 2006 open letter, claiming to have been "surprised" by the allegations regarding the September 2005 rally and blaming International ANSWER for the problem involving speaking time. "When ANSWER ran significantly over their allotted times it had a negative impact on our speakers," UFPJ explained.

UFPJ also found itself the target of the D.C. Anti-War Network (DAWN). Earlier this month, DAWN passed a resolution declaring that it would never pay any money to UFPJ for anti-war activities. The group cited dissatisfaction with UFPJ's management style and suppression of local anti-war voices. "The peace movement is falling apart," declared Raoul Deming, a member of the District of Columbia chapter of Free Republic, a conservative group that supports the Iraq War and frequently clashes with the anti-war activists.

"The major leaders of the anti-war movement are totalitarian, Stalinist or Marxist. They just mistreat the smaller groups that come to support them. They don't listen to them, they don't provide them funding. ANSWER and UFPJ, through their totalitarian management, have aliened a majority of the peace groups," Deming told.
Next: to publicize Teresa Heinz Kerry's support for ANSWER through the TIDES foundation.
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Science & Technology
Is Your Printer Spying On You?
2005-10-19
Imagine that every time you printed a document, it automatically included a secret code that could be used to identify the printer - and potentially, the person who used it. Sounds like something from an episode of "Alias," right?

Unfortunately, the scenario isn't fictional. In a purported effort to identify counterfeiters, the US government has succeeded in persuading some color laser printer manufacturers to encode each page with identifying information. That means that without your knowledge or consent, an act you assume is private could become public. A communication tool you're using in everyday life could become a tool for government surveillance. And what's worse, there are no laws to prevent abuse.

The ACLU recently issued a report revealing that the FBI has amassed more than 1,100 pages of documents on the organization since 2001, as well as documents concerning other non-violent groups, including Greenpeace and United for Peace and Justice. In the current political climate, it's not hard to imagine the government using the ability to determine who may have printed what document for purposes other than identifying counterfeiters.

Yet there are no laws to stop the Secret Service from using printer codes to secretly trace the origin of non-currency documents; only the privacy policy of your printer manufacturer currently protects you (if indeed such a policy exists). And no law regulates what sort of documents the Secret Service or any other domestic or foreign government agency is permitted to request for identification, not to mention how such a forensics tool could be developed and implemented in printers in the first place.

With no laws on the books, there's nothing to stop the privacy violations this technology enables. For this reason, EFF is gathering information about what printers are revealing and how - a necessary precursor to any legal challenge or new legislation to protect your privacy. And we could use your help.

In the preliminary research paper linked below, we explain what we've observed so far, briefly explore the privacy implications, and ask you to print and send us test sheets from your color laser printer and/or a color laser printer at your local print shop. That way, we can watch the watchers and ensure that your privacy isn't compromised in ways that harm your fundamental consitutional rights.

In addition to documenting what printers are revealing, EFF has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and we will keep you updated on what we discover.
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Fifth Column
A Taste of the '60s
2005-09-30
What do modern war protesters want? In the Vietnam War era, they clearly favored the Communist way of life to our own -- not for themselves, mind you, but for the millions we'd have freed had they and their media accomplices not forced a political end to what would have been a military victory.

Recently I wrote of the left's hypocritical claim of supporting the troops while decrying both their method and their mission. As if we needed further proof of the real aim of those using dead soldiers to protest our actions in the War on Terror, the Commies have officially checked in. Their goal, as always, is to work for the defeat of American interests.

Lenin's term, "useful idiots," was used during the Cold War to describe unwitting dupes of the Soviet Union and its Communist Party. During '60s, the American "peace movement," in its desire to aid the Party, prolonged the war by giving hope to the bedraggled North Vietnamese Army, causing further deaths of U.S. soldiers. Said former NVA Colonel Bui Tin:
Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
Today, the political and economic theories of Lenin and Marx lie crushed beneath the ashes of millions of souls who perished under their tender ministration. Yet their American wing continues to thrive, promoting an ideology banished to the ash heap of history. Just as the NVA could not have defeated us on the battlefield, they know also that we will eventually crush al Qaeda and friends. And so comes another "peace movement."

As it did during Vietnam War, the far left couches its anti-Americanism in a raft of crocodile tears. It is now campaigning to discourage Hispanics from speaking to military recruiters so they won't end up as "cannon fodder." Even though the statistics show that the percentage of Hispanic military recruits is under-representative of Hispanic population of the country, this doesn't stop the radical left as it targets minorities for "help" to keep them despondent, dependent, and Democrats.

Of course it would never occur to these "military-supporting" leftists that Hispanics love this country just as much as other Americans and would lay down their lives to protect her. So while the left still cries that minorities are under-represented in nearly all walks of life, it thinks there are too many in the most crucial job of all; protecting the American people.

The leading organization behind this latest campaign is called Latinos for Peace, a gang of -- surprise, surprise -- '60s radicals. Chief among them is Rosalio Munoz, a member of the Communist Party USA and a contributor to its house organ, People's Weekly World.

CPUSA was funded by the Soviets from its founding in 1919 until the collapse of the USSR in the early '90s. One of its linked affiliates is United for Peace and Justice, a group headed by Fidel Castro aficionado and longtime Commie Leslie Cagan. UFPJ's member groups include all your favorite current "peace activists," including Cindy Sheehan's Code Pink pals and Moveon.org, who claim to "own" the Democratic Party.

So once again the circle is complete. Today's peace movement is a pathetic rehash of the same anti-Americanism that led to the deaths of millions after our ignoble abandonment of the people of Southeast Asia. And once again they are tied inexorably to the left wing of the Democratic Party.

The difference this time is that although these groups continue to wave the banner of a failed ideology, they are giving aid and comfort to a more insidious den of vipers; one that will not hesitate to slaughter even those who agree that the United States is indeed the great Satan.
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Home Front: Culture Wars
Who's Behind The "Anti-War" Protest Canard
2005-09-28
The best piece on the weekend shenanigans in D.C. was by Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate ("Anti-War, My Foot–the Phony Peaceniks Who Protested in Washington"). His point is that antiwar is the wrong word. The organizers are actually pro-war. They just want the other side to win. International ANSWER, one of the two groups supporting the demonstration, is run by the Workers World Party, which backs Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq. The WWP applauded the Soviet invasion of Hungary and China's massacre in Tiananmen Square. The main reason these people keep comparing Bush to Hitler is that Der Fuhrer is the only well-known fascist not approved of by ANSWER.

You probably never learned this from the Associated Press or your local paper, but ANSWER is frankly anti-American and pro-fascist. Many dupes at the demonstration apparently didn't know this or didn't care. As Hitchens notes, two radical left journalists, men of integrity and honesty–David Corn and Marc Cooper–exposed International ANSWER as a front for fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism. A dip into any database could have informed journalists about the groups they were covering, as Hitchens notes, but here's how the innocent Michael Janofsky of the New York Times described the sponsors: "The protests were largely sponsored by the two groups, the ANSWER Coalition, which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives, and United for Peace and Justice, which has a more narrow, antiwar focus." Either Janofsky is under age 21, with no knowledge at all of radical politics, or he works for a newspaper that is determined to sugarcoat leaders of the antiwar movement.

Probably the latter. I have referred twice to the Times treatment of Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice (Universal Press Syndicate column for March 5, 2003, U.S. News column May 9, 2005). She is a prominent old-time Communist who left the American Communist Party only in 1991 and only because of an ideological split. After the 2003 antiwar rally in Manhattan, the conservative New York Sun described her as "a longtime unapologetic Communist who has remained one of Fidel Castro's most tireless supporters." In the liberal New York Times, however, she was merely "one of the grandes dames of the country's progressive movement." The Times gave her favorable biographic treatment in its "Public Lives" column, where there was no room to mention her Communist roots or radical ideas.

When the mainstream press approves of marches and demonstrations, it can't resist gussying them up to make them seem more wholesome than they really are. The Times used to do that with gay pride marches, excising the nasty and crude contingents and the sex-with-children advocates but focusing on the stable and well-dressed gay neighbors next door. The media has a habit of doing the same thing with antiwar rallies. In February 2003, they offered a mainstream motherhood-and-apple-pie image of the marchers. But if you poked around the Internet, you could pick up images that didn't fit the press theme–hate-Israel cards, hammer-and-sickle flags, pictures of Che Guevara, the usual "Bush is Hitler" signs, and the huge banners of the sponsoring Stalinists at ANSWER. The usual excuse about coverage of the demonstrations is that it doesn't really matter who the sponsors are–the issue is the war, not the organizers. Blogger Andrew Sullivan said he has many questions himself about the war, but "anyone who attends rallies organized by International ANSWER deserves no quarter and no hearing."

The mainstream press doesn't seem to notice–or mind–that America-hating fascists are doing the organizing. But you can bet that if the demonstrations were being run by a tobacco company or the Augusta National Golf Club, the press would be awash in moral dudgeon.

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Home Front: WoT
Hitchens: Anti-War, My Foot
2005-09-28
Saturday's demonstration in Washington, in favor of immediate withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq, was the product of an opportunistic alliance between two other very disparate "coalitions." Here is how the New York Times (after a front-page and an inside headline, one of them reading "Speaking Up Against War" and one of them reading "Antiwar Rallies Staged in Washington and Other Cities") described the two constituenciess of the event:

The protests were largely sponsored by two groups, the Answer Coalition, which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives, and United for Peace and Justice, which has a more narrow, antiwar focus.

The name of the reporter on this story was Michael Janofsky. I suppose that it is possible that he has never before come across "International ANSWER," the group run by the "Worker's World" party and fronted by Ramsey Clark, which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to volunteer as attorney for the génocidaires in Rwanda. Quite a "wide range of progressive political objectives" indeed, if that's the sort of thing you like. However, a dip into any database could have furnished Janofsky with well-researched and well-written articles by David Corn and Marc Cooper—to mention only two radical left journalists—who have exposed "International ANSWER" as a front for (depending on the day of the week) fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism.

The group self-lovingly calling itself "United for Peace and Justice" is by no means "narrow" in its "antiwar focus" but rather represents a very extended alliance between the Old and the New Left, some of it honorable and some of it redolent of the World Youth Congresses that used to bring credulous priests and fellow-traveling hacks together to discuss "peace" in East Berlin or Bucharest. Just to give you an example, from one who knows the sectarian makeup of the Left very well, I can tell you that the Worker's World Party—Ramsey Clark's core outfit—is the product of a split within the Trotskyist movement. These were the ones who felt that the Trotskyist majority, in 1956, was wrong to denounce the Russian invasion of Hungary. The WWP is the direct, lineal product of that depraved rump. If the "United for Peace and Justice" lot want to sink their differences with such riffraff and mount a joint demonstration, then they invite some principled political criticism on their own account. And those who just tag along 
 well, they just tag along.

To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus.

Some of the leading figures in this "movement," such as George Galloway and Michael Moore, are obnoxious enough to come right out and say that they support the Baathist-jihadist alliance. Others prefer to declare their sympathy in more surreptitious fashion. The easy way to tell what's going on is this: Just listen until they start to criticize such gangsters even a little, and then wait a few seconds before the speaker says that, bad as these people are, they were invented or created by the United States. That bad, huh? (You might think that such an accusation—these thugs were cloned by the American empire for God's sake—would lead to instant condemnation. But if you thought that, gentle reader, you would be wrong.)

The two preferred metaphors are, depending on the speaker, that the Bin-Ladenists are the fish that swim in the water of Muslim discontent or the mosquitoes that rise from the swamp of Muslim discontent. (Quite often, the same images are used in the same harangue.) The "fish in the water" is an old trope, borrowed from Mao's hoary theory of guerrilla warfare and possessing a certain appeal to comrades who used to pore over the Little Red Book. The mosquitoes are somehow new and hover above the water rather than slip through it. No matter. The toxic nature of the "water" or "swamp" is always the same: American support for Israel. Thus, the existence of the Taliban regime cannot be swamplike, presumably because mosquitoes are born and not made. The huge swamp that was Saddam's Iraq has only become a swamp since 2003. The organized murder of Muslims by Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan is only a logical reaction to the summit of globalizers at Davos. The stoning and veiling of women must be a reaction to Zionism. While the attack on the World Trade Center—well, who needs reminding that chickens, or is it mosquitoes, come home to roost?

There are only two serious attempts at swamp-draining currently under way. In Afghanistan and Iraq, agonizingly difficult efforts are in train to build roads, repair hospitals, hand out ballot papers, frame constitutions, encourage newspapers and satellite dishes, and generally evolve some healthy water in which civil-society fish may swim. But in each case, from within the swamp and across the borders, the most poisonous snakes and roaches are being recruited and paid to wreck the process and plunge people back into the ooze. How nice to have a "peace" movement that is either openly on the side of the vermin, or neutral as between them and the cleanup crew, and how delightful to have a press that refers to this partisanship, or this neutrality, as "progressive."
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Home Front: Culture Wars
Sheehan Arrested During Anti-War Protest
2005-09-26
WASHINGTON - Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who has used her son's death in Iraq to spur the anti-war movement, was arrested Monday while protesting outside the White House. Sheehan and several dozen other protesters sat down on the sidewalk after marching along the pedestrian walkway on Pennsylvania Avenue. Police warned them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along, then began making arrests. Sheehan, 48, was the first taken into custody. She stood up and was led to a police vehicle while protesters chanted, "The whole world is watching." In your dreams
Sheehan's 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in an ambush in Sadr City, Iraq, last year. She attracted worldwide attention last month with her 26-day vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch. Sheehan was among several hundred demonstrators who marched around the White House on Monday and then stopped in front and began singing and chanting "Stop the war now!"

The demonstration is part of a broader anti-war effort on Capitol Hill organized by United for Peace and Justice, an umbrella group. Representatives from anti-war groups were meeting Monday with members of Congress to urge them to work to end the war and bring home the troops. The protest following a massive demonstration Saturday on the National Mall that drew a crowd of 100,000 or more or less, the largest such gathering in the capital since the war began in March 2003.

On Sunday, a rally supporting the war drew roughly 500 participants. Speakers included veterans of World War II and the war in Iraq, as well as family members of soldiers killed in Iraq. "I would like to say to Cindy Sheehan and her supporters don't be a group of unthinking lemmings. It's not pretty," said Mitzy Kenny of Ridgeley, W.Va., whose husband died in Iraq last year. The anti-war demonstrations "can affect the war in a really negative way. It gives the enemy hope."
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Fifth Column
Top Democrats won't attend anti-war rally in Washington
2005-09-23
But there will be plenty of bottomfeeders. Hat tip to Charles at LGF.
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - As the anti-war movement arrives in Washington this weekend, many top Democrats are leaving. Nationally known Democratic war critics, including Howlin' Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Sens. Hildebeast Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and John Frickin' Kerry of Massachusetts, won't attend what sponsors hope say will be a big anti-war rally Saturday in Washington. The only Democratic officeholders who plan to address the rally are Reps. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and John Conyers of Michigan.
Time to warm up the TiVo!
Today's poll-driven leading Democrats head a party divided not really over the war, and many leaders are scared shitless wary of standing with anti-war activists, who represent much of the party's looney base. The divide between anti-war activists and Democratic leaders underscores a challenge the party faces in the 2006 congressional elections and beyond. Some activists say that Democrats such as Clinton and Kerry who criticize the war but refuse to demand a timetable for withdrawal are effectively supporting the status quo - and may not merit future support.
Yeah, you guys pull the rug from under the Hildebeast. I dare you. I double-dare you.
En route to Washington for the rally, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan protested outside Clinton's New York office. "She knows that the war is a lie, but she is waiting for the right time to say it," Sheehan told about 500 cheering supporters. "You say it or you are losing your job."
Oh please, oh please, oh please ...
Spokesmen for the Democrats who are skipping the anti-war event all said they had pressing unavoidable schedule conflicts no, honest, really!. But some leading anti-war activists aren't buying it and neither am I. "There are a lot of people here who are wondering, where are the Democrats?" said Tom Andrews, a former Democratic House member from Maine who's now the national director of Win Without War, one of several neo-Stalinist groups that are organizing three days of protests against the war in Washington starting Saturday. "The Democratic Party has an identity crisis on this issue. We need voices. We need leadership," Andrews said. "But fear is driving them."
The fear that they might get voted out by citizens who see through them? That fear?
The rally comes at a time when a growing number of Americans want a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, a proposition that both President Bush and many leading Democrats correctly reject. Dean, who rallied anti-war activists with his fervent opposition to the war during his 2003-2004 presidential campaign, already was scheduled to spend the weekend meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, spokesman Josh Earnest said. "His views on the president's handling of the war in Iraq are well documented," Earnest said. The anti-war rally, he said, is "not something the party was involved with."
"I know nothing! Tell them, Hogan!"
Kerry planned to be in his home state this weekend, a spokeswoman said. Clinton also didn't plan to attend, a spokesman said. "Our job is to make them pay a price for continuing to support this war," said Bill Dobbs, a spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, another hard-left group that's organizing the anti-war weekend in Washington. Sixty-six members of Congress have formed an "Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus" that wants either immediate withdrawal or a timetable to withdraw. None of the party's congressional leadership and none of the likely candidates for president are members.
They're not as looney as the caucus, it seems.
Anti-war organizers said they pray for expected 100,000 people Saturday. A rival group plans a rally Sunday in Washington to show support for the war.
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