Posted on 03/19/2004 1:32:13 AM PST by kattracks
EACH MID-MARCH THE BUZZARDS RETURN to Hinckley, Ohio, and radical Leftists return to the streets for their militant spring offensive to protest, spread propaganda and seduce new prey.
In this election year, the Left has redoubled its efforts to mobilize anti-war protests as a way to help their Democratic comrades defeat incumbent President George W. Bush.
This Saturday, March 20, anti-American marches and rallies were scheduled for dozens of cities in 50 countries around the world, and in the U.S. from Manhattan to Los Angeles. (In picking this date for antiwar protest, did they notice that the month of March was named for the Roman god of War?)
Purportedly chosen to mark the one-year anniversary of America’s incursion into Iraq, March 20 this year also happens to be the Spring Equinox (one of two annual days when day and night are equal), the day when spring officially begins.
Millions of pagans, as their forebears did at Stonehenge, go to parks to celebrate the Equinox as Mother Nature’s own “Earth Day.” (The first unnatural Earth Day, April 22, 1970, was deliberately set for Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin’s 100th Birthday and has been gleefully celebrated as Earth Day by Marxists and their red-green fellow travelers on this mass murderer’s birthday ever since.) These pagan nature lovers, brought out by spring fever instead of feverish anti-Bush activism, will doubtless be used to falsely inflate media tallies of rallying Leftist protesters.
Foremost among the groups planning and coordinating this March 20 hatefest is International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). Even hyper-Lefty economist Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, admits that this organization “can be described fairly as Marxist.”
To trace ANSWER’s ancestry, first came the Communist Party USA, puppet front group of the Soviet Union. From it schismed the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). But the SWP itself then split because hardcore members declared it not sufficiently loyal to the Soviet Union when Russian tanks crushed the 1956 uprising in the Soviet colony of occupied Hungary. These chauvinists for Soviet colonialism broke away from SWP and formed the Workers World Party (WWP), which embraced North Korea’s totalitarian dictator Kim Il Sung (and thereafter his son Kim Jong Il) as the Marxist messiah. International ANSWER is the chief front group, the mask used to disguise its real motives, concocted by the Workers World Party.
Such details can be tedious, but they are where the devil hides. And these seasonal protests, like baseball, are more fun to watch when you know the rules, tactics, strategies and secret agendas behind the game.
Recognizing International ANSWER’s puppet-masters behind the March 20 anti-war protests also helps us to understand why FBI Director Louis J. Freeh warned Congress that “Anarchists and extreme socialist groups – many of which, such as the Workers’ World Party…have an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the United States.”
Among these eye-opening details, consider what can be gleaned from ANSWER’s own published list of endorsers for its March 20, 2004, “Global Day of Action.” Most of the listed organizations, we can assume from nearly a century of Communist Party front group activity, are little more than a handful of radicals who printed their own letterhead to create several noble-sounding organizations. But even so, look at what is scheduled to march Saturday under ANSWER’s red banner.
More than any other cause, 22 nominally pro-Muslim and/or anti-Israel groups sit prominently near the top of this endorser list. These include the San Francisco group QUIT! (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism), the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (Al Awda), the Palestinian Solidarity Committee and the Free Palestine Alliance. Every computer-downloadable flyer that ANSWER’s website offers to promote the March 20 protest in different cities includes some clear photo of Palestinian protest – except, oddly, the flyer for Los Angeles.
ANSWER also offers these flyers in Spanish to tell those in Washington, D.C. how to catch buses to the big march in New York City, where Leftists can also get flyers in Spanish. But, again oddly, in San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles, ANSWER offers no downloadable flyers in Spanish but all are available in Arabic!
One might logically infer that secret Muslim oil money provides a large share of ANSWER’s funding – or, to paraphrase their rhetoric, that this anti-war campaign is being fought for oil bloodmoney.
But even without money, ANSWER has become a dirt magnet for every sort of Israel-hating anti-Semitic kookery. Ultra-Leftist Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine and onetime spiritual advisor to Senator Hillary Clinton, found this out when ANSWER banned him from speaking at its February 15, 2003, antiwar rally in San Francisco. Lerner was banned, ANSWER proclaimed, because it will not allow a “pro-Israel” speaker on any stage it controls.
(Rabbi Lerner is, in fact, a pseudo-Solomon who would split the land of Israel down the middle and give half to the Palestinians, thereby leaving the Jewish State in mortal peril – but nothing short of Israel’s immediate extermination and another Shoah will satisfy the anti-Semitic Lefties of International ANSWER.)
Other endorsers of this protest include Cuba Education Tours and No War on Cuba, Washington, D.C. The Communist Party USA’s Frederick Douglass Club is listed, as are two Irish socialist parties and the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic (Irish Section). [International ANSWER is among the world’s biggest supporters of Marxist mass murderer Milosevic.]
And so the list of endorsers goes for page after page – from the usual suspects, including organizations identified as Communist front groups since the 1950s to public employee unions, environmental organizations, groups supporting convicted cop-killer Mumia Abdul Jamal, Transgenders United for Equality (TRUE), and individual soulmates of the Democratic Party representing MoveOn.org and other extreme Leftist groups.
Many of these groups and individuals are hard-core, anti-American, Leftist and radical. Others may be mesmerized and idealistic, the “useful idiots” the Left has always used as fig leaves and cannon fodder. And all enjoy something in the United States they would be denied in the very Marxist countries they find so admirable – constitutional rights to gather, march and speak freely.
(To be fair, let’s remember the old joke: an American tourist boasts to a Soviet citizen that “I have the right to say aloud ‘I hate the President of the United States,’” and the Soviet replies “I, too, have the same right to stand here in Red Square and say ‘I hate the President of the United States!’”)
International ANSWER would dismiss these as bourgeois rights that will no longer be needed in Marxist utopia. Ah, but these American rights can be exploited as political weapons to help weaken the capitalist United States this weekend.
One Leftist website promoting the March 20 “Global Day of Action” showed the Left’s hidden cards, its use of manipulative tactics and techniques, in a guide for activists titled “Using Media Effectively.” Its very title should warn reporters that Leftists are out to “use” them, not merely to convey an honest story.
In addition to some common-sense public relations hints and tips – e.g., find sympathetic subjects, use costumes for visual interest, appeal to peoples’ self-interest – this Leftist media guide cynically advises activists: “Attempt should be to give illusion of mass involvement to get media interested.” [Emphasis mine.]
So the aim of these Leftists in “using” the media is not truth but illusion, the creation of a false image that the Left is really bigger, wider, deeper, and more numerous and powerful than is actually true.
It’s rather like Senator John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) pointing to his high victory percentage in primary wins, not the more relevant fact that voter turnout for Democratic primaries is much, much lower than in previous presidential elections because few voters actually like or want Mr. Kerry.
On March 20 expect to see lots of banners claiming to represent important-sounding different groups in these marches – but take time to notice how few actual marchers are carrying all those banners. (You might, as the old joke goes, also be able to hear the International ANSWER drill sergeant chanting: “To the Left, Left, Left, and Left, Left….”)
“Prevent media’s departure prior to achievement of an effective solution to the problem,” says the Leftist Using Media handbook. “Try to equate media success with the social change you want, so that when you win, the media feels it is they who’ve won. Give them the credit, and make them see they are to be credited. This way you’ll make a media ally.”
The Left’s great advantage is that most establishment journalists not only lean leftward themselves but also feel pressure from their peers to do likewise. Saturday’s activists will, as usual, be exploiting this to gain more favorable coverage. Reporters typically get into the business out of ego – to see their byline in print or face on TV – and then become jaded and cynical. This handbook cunningly teaches Leftists to stroke a reporter’s ego at the same time they appeal to his or her dormant idealism and desire to make a difference.
“A reporter’s agenda should be known in full right from the start,” advises the Leftist Using Media guide. “When an unfamiliar reporter comes, ask what angle she/he is pursuing. Reporters refusing to divulge their purpose in seeking your comments may harm you more than help you. Examine the reporter’s prior coverage of similar issues. Strengthen your relationship with sympathetic reporters by giving them exclusive [sic].”
The press is supposed to be the watchdog over our society, but Democratic politicians have for decades been able to turn reporters into lapdogs. The usual tactic, reflected in this guide, is the use of carrots and sticks.
If a reporter writes an unfavorable story, an elected politician punishes him by giving his competitors more access and advance information than he gets, thereby making his rivals seem to be more on the ball than he is. If a reporter does favorable stories, the politician rewards him with scoops, exclusive tidbits and interviews, story ideas, and other favors that make the reporter look good in his boss’s eyes.
These rewards and punishments usually produce a symbiotic relationship that benefits both politician and reporter – even as it betrays the citizenry who depend on the press to be its watchdog.
Only now, a decade after the ascendance of Republican House and Senate majorities in 1994, are Left-leaning reporters beginning to recognize that their beloved Democrats might not regain control of Congress for a long, long time….and that friendships with the new majority must be forged. For most of these ten years, reporters continued to curry favor as if minority Democrats who shared their political views were still in charge….or were on the verge of regaining power.
This savvy Leftist Using Media guide proposes using just such carrots and sticks, protest after protest, to cultivate the kind of friendly reporters desired. Cooperative reporters are to be given help doing stories. Reporters who try to remain objective and do not cozy up to activists should get less cooperation. This may result in a bad story in the short run but will probably get the reporter pulled off the protest beat in the long run, making way for a more friendly and more pliable journalist.
With the national media full of Leftist friends and Republican foes, how will the news cover Saturday’s events? ANSWER’s Marxist bedfellow organization United For Peace and Justice declared that “over 250 U.S. events” are planned, along with “protests in more than 50 countries” on March 20 to mark the one year anniversary of America’s liberation – or as these Leftist groups call it, “occupation” – of Iraq.
Last September 27-28, while Saddam Hussein’s army tanks still smoldered and U.S. troops and allied troops were mopping up pockets of resistance in Iraq, International ANSWER launched a similar fall offensive of anti-American propaganda and protest. It, too, was backed by sophisticated media and organization. It, too, was a worldwide event. Estimated total antiwar protester turnout around the entire planet – a mere 35,000 to 45,000 marchers.
Divide this turnout by 300 cities and separate events and you get somewhere between 117 and 150 antiwar protestors per city or event.
Months earlier, before Saddam’s overthrow and before his torture chambers and mass graves with hundreds of thousands of victims began to be opened, a February 15 peace rally in London alone brought out 250,000 antiwar protestors. That’s five to seven times more protesters in one city in February than turned out worldwide seven months later, after the liberation of Iraq.
Chances are that the antiwar fervor over Iraq has faded, the fever has broken, and the “illusion” Leftists try so hard to conjure has lost much of its former power to deceive.
But spring is again in the air, and with it an election year that could set Leftists marching not to end war but to defeat President Bush. In San Francisco the Longshoremen, once a Communist-dominated union, reportedly will stop unloading ships, hold a morning union meeting, and then board buses to join the day of protest. No big deal, says the Pacific Maritime Association. The union merely rescheduled its usual monthly work stoppage for Saturday, and shippers were notified well in advance to avoid problems.
More than 2,000 protesters were arrested in San Francisco last year, but the city later dropped most charges. March 20, 2004, is expected to bring the usual street blockages, smashing of a few corporate windows, and nostalgic protests as for a few hours the 1960s return to town. The Bay Area baby boomers still take drugs – but nowadays mostly Metamucil and Vioxx.
In New York City it snowed this week, just as the groundhog warned. What if the protesters, following their own dull March Madness, see the shadows of their former selves, back when the Soviet Union was strong and one of every three humans lived under Marxism?
That “dream” is dead. As the great international economist Sir Peter Bauer said, by 2050 there will be only two True Believing Marxists left on the entire planet – and they will be two nuns in Brazil. If these protesters see their shadows this Saturday, it will mean at least another four years before it’s springtime for Hitler or Marx – or them.
And now Bush is picking off the tyrants and terrorists one by one. If Osama bin Laden is caught or killed before November, Bush’s re-election seems almost certain, especially against a Democrat as two-faced and untrustworthy as Senator Kerry.
The global war is ending, and capitalism has apparently won. As Marx himself knew, it would be a tough fight because the bourgeoisie are themselves a revolutionary class – the class that overthrew the kings, ignited the mighty engine of productive free enterprise, and liberated the potential of individuals.
Come what may, on March 21 the Hinckley Chamber of Commerce will host its annual Buzzard Sunday pancake breakfast at Hinckley Elementary School. Nobody will be eating crow or road kill – except the big birds that have feasted on carrion there, about 20 miles south of Cleveland, every March since 1818.
Mr. Ponte hosts a national radio talk show Saturdays 6-9 PM Eastern Time (3-6 PM Pacific Time) and Sundays 9 PM-Midnight Eastern Time (6-9 PM Pacific Time) on the Liberty Broadcasting network (formerly TalkAmerica). Internet Audio worldwide is at LibertyBroadcasting .com. The show’s live call-in number is (888) 822-8255. A professional speaker, he is a former Roving Editor for Reader’s Digest.
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