Who are Russia's enemies?

RIA Novosti's poll results are intersting: "The results of the poll of 1,600 Russian adults were given wide coverage in Russian media, but it will take some time to analyze them because the new list of enemies is a bombshell. Respondents named Latvia (49%), Lithuania (42%), Georgia (38%) and Estonia (32%) as Russia's greatest enemies, while the list of friends includes Belarus (46%), Germany (23%), Kazakhstan (20%), India (16%), and France (13%). The first striking thing is the absence of the United States, the archenemy of yesteryear. Compared to the recent past, public hostility to the U.S. has plummeted. Most Russian analysts of the poll's results have not even noticed this: America does not interest them either, although just a few years ago most Russian and American political scientists predicted a rapid growth of anti-American sentiments in Russia "

Cuban-Americans Infiltrate Castro's Washington, DC Party

Agustin Blazquez sent us the following news:

In fulfillment with one of the primary objectives of The Domino Network, education, Maria Teresa Arguelles joined a group of Cuban Americans and Americans who infiltrated a gala hosted by the organization Pros in the City and the Cuban Interest Section at the former Embassy of Cuba in Washington DC this past Saturday evening. The infiltration was the brainchild of Maria Werlau, a prominent activist from the New York/ New Jersey area and a fellow activist from the same area.  Younger generation Cuban Americans comprised the group of infiltrators along with liberty loving Americans. The diverse group lives in various cities, including Chicago and the New York, New Hampshire, South Florida, and Metropolitan Washington areas, and belongs to various generations. 

The group that penetrated the Cuban Mission was able to bypass the security apparatus of the Cuban regime even though all guests had to be cleared by a Cuban security team before entering the party. Among the group were key individuals who recently had spoken publicly in the Washington area about the violations of human, civic, political and labor rights inside Cuba.  During the gala, the group distributed cards with photos of the Cuba enjoyed by tourists, contrasted with photos of the terrible conditions in Cuba and the sad reality of oppression and injustice. Surrounded by the vigilant eye of the Cuban security group, the group bypassed the vigilance and was able to interact with the guests, even able to converse with them. 

[NetforCuba.org authorize the reproduction and distribution of this E-Mail as long as the source is credited: http://www.netforcuba.org]

A Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy?

That's the phrase that comes to mind after reading Paul Farhi's article about the politics of public broadcasting in today's Washington Post.

Yet as the House of Representatives prepares to vote on the biggest federal cutback ever for public broadcasting, there isn't much diversity to be found among the people on either side. The battle lines over public broadcasting have been drawn in sharply partisan fashion: Democrats in Congress and liberal organizations have emerged as public broadcasting's most visible and vocal supporters, while Republicans and conservatives have stayed mostly silent.

Among the groups that have been petitioning Congress on behalf of public broadcasting are a number with a history of liberal advocacy. These include People for the American Way, FreePress, Media Matters and MoveOn.org, which last year raised millions of dollars for ads critical of President Bush's reelection.

We report, you decide . . .

The Case for De-Funding Public Broadcasting

For more on this kerfuffle, see Cliff Kincaid's report for Accuracy in Media . . .

Big Red Dog Wants Ken Tomlinson's Head!

This photo
from the NY Times shows the Public Broadcasting Lynch Mob on the march:

Jamie Rose for The New York Times

Clifford the Big Red Dog, with Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and others, headed to a Capitol Hill news conference to protest proposed financing cuts for public broadcasting.

Here's the NY Times article that says 16 Democrats want Tomlinson out for giving a grant to a conservative.

Are the Democrats any more serious about this than the Republicans? The best way to get rid of Ken Tomlinson is to ZERO OUT THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING. Then, he won't have a job! So, the Democrats can solve their problem by joining with the Republicans on this one--if they mean what they say . . .

Mississippi Klansman Convicted

Newsday.com: Guilty in Miss. - 41 years later:

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. -- On the 41st anniversary of the murders that came to define their state as an outpost of racial hate, Mississippi jurors yesterday convicted former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen of manslaughter in the 1964 deaths of three civil rights workers.

At least Killen didn't get away with his crime forever. Better late than never...

And some lessons for President Bush's "Global War on Terror." Namely, the KKK and the Islamist terrorist groups share similar community ties, social patterns of connection, and even the belief that their organizations were doing good. Most interesting in this regard was the testimony on Killen's behalf that the KKK was a charitable group that did many good works. We've heard the same sorts of things about Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and other racist, supremacist, and violent terrorist outfits. Fear of the Klan protected Killen for two generations. Only when the Klan had been sufficiently weakened could he be convicted. This was not accomplished by working to bring the Klan within the system--it was achieved by crushing the Klan and making membership a shameful secret rather than a badge of pride.

In this regard, pictures of President Bush holding hands with the Islamist Saudi monarch a few months ago were the equivalent of Lyndon Johnson hugging a grand Kleagle in 1964. It's not the way to go.

The war on terror will be won the same way the war against the Klan was, through zero tolerance for terrorists and their apologists. There is no other way.

Mazo de la Roche

Our family affair was held at a Canadian inn frequented by the authorMazo de la Roche, who wrote about the Whiteoaks of Jalna, in a Galsworthy way. Our cousins had heard of her, and read her books, but we hadn't.

Off we went to visit her grave at St. George's Church in Jackson's Point, Ontario. Now, we're just a little bit interested in yesterday's best-selling author, known to us only as a throwaway line in Simon Gray's play, "Butley."

Bolton Will Go to the UN

Although he is having a hard time getting through the Senate, Bolton will go to the UN, possibly as a recess appointment this July. That gives him a year to build a record. My guess is that John Bolton will do a good job, and be confirmed after a year--if he's not confirmed before July.

POLITICAL FALLOUT: If the Senate doesn't confirm Bolton soon, Republicans can make the cloture vote an equivalent of Bolton's Up or Down confirmation -- and use it in 2006 Senate campaigns against vulnerable Democrats...

When is an Ad not an Ad?

When it airs on PBS, according to Paul Farhi's Washington Post article Public Broadcasters Air Ads Against Federal Cutback.

What's wrong with this picture?

1. Public broadcasting isn't supposed to air ads;

2. Public broadcasting stations are prohibited by law from airing "calls to action" -- yet reportedly that is exactly what these ads do;

3. Public broadcasting must by law treat all matters of public controversy with "balance and objectivity"--yet these call to action ads are only giving one side of the issue.

Let alone the legal constraints on lobbying Congress resulting from campaign finance reform laws. So, if anyone had an interest in investigating public broadcasting in this regard, it probably would reveal a number of legal and financial scandals (ads cost money), some of which might result in Elliot Spitzer-like prosecutions, even some RICO provisions might apply.

Put Big Bird behind bars! (But I fear he might have more "protection" than Martha Stewart...)

NY Times Exposes -- a Conservative Grant Recipient at CPB . . .

The headline says it all: Public Broadcasting Monitor Had Worked at Center Founded by Conservatives.

IMHO the fact that it seems to be headline news when a conservative gets a CPB grant is evidence that something is rotten in public broadcasting.

A Shameless Plug for a Relative's Paintings . . .

At a family affair this weekend, I learned that my cousin Louise has a website for her paintings at louiselinkrath.net. She did the cover art for Ann Robinson's collection of stories, Ordinary Perils.
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Public Broadcasting's Never-Ending Hoax

Even Amy Harmon of The New York Timesrecognizes that MoveOn.org is passing on an old "Save NPR and PBS" web hoax, even though there is no way the networks could possibly go off the air (NPR alone recently received a 200 million dollar bequest from McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc).

If the regulators at the FTC had any principles, they'd go after public broadcasters and their flacks at places like MoveOn.org for false, misleading, and deceptive marketing practices.

Of course, I'm not holding my breath...

Maybe Peggy Noonan Wants Another PBS Show...

Last time PBS faced a big funding cut, the network gave her a television show. Now, unsurprisingly, Peggy Noonan says she wants Republicans to save PBS.

I'm not saying that the Wall Street Journal has gone soft on this issue since they got their own PBS series, but once upon a time the editors used to ask me to write op-eds on the topic. Now, they don't.

PBS Back in the News

Phones started ringing again, after some 9 years, from people who want to know what I think about Republican threats to cut PBS funding. PBS, meanwhile, is engaged in a PR campaign that has led to stories like this on: PBS Updates Editorial Standards, Adds Ombudsman in the Washington Post today:

Amid conflict over the political content of its programming, the Public Broadcasting Service yesterday unveiled editorial standards intended to ensure balance and fairness in its news, science and documentary shows.

Separately, Alexandria-based PBS also said it would hire an ombudsman for the first time to review controversial programs after they air.

Actually, Jim Lehrer began his national PBS career as an ombudsman almost 30 years ago. He was hired to oversee balance and fairness when the network was under attack from Richard Nixon. It worked out OK for him--but not so well for President Nixon, when Lehrer hosted PBS's coverage of Congressional impeachment hearings.

IMHO the Republicans have been "all hat and no cattle" (Texas talk that Jim Lehrer and George Bush might understand) when it comes to zeroing out PBS and NPR. Useful for scare stories in the mainstream media to motivate the liberal donor base of the Democratic Party, but not much else. I'll believe they are serious the day I'm offered Jim Lerher's old job as PBS Vice-President for Balance and Objectivity.

Congress to Cut PBS?

The New York Times says Congress is cutting funding for PBS. Frankly, I don't believe it, since so far President Bush has been giving PBS and NPR more money than they got under President Clinton--his thanks has been a barrage of anti-American propaganda designed to defeat the United States in the Global War on Terror, as well as promote additional anti-Republican agenda items. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

As I've said before, PBS and NPR money might better be used to pay for armor to protect American troops in Iraq.

"Mikhail Khodorkovsky is not the only political prisoner in Russia"

So says The Russian Dilettante's Weblog:

It is clear now, even to me, that Khodorkovsky is a political prisoner. But quite a few other people have been arrested in the course of the YUKOS investigation. All of them, I believe, should be considered political prisoners.
Most of these people are former employees of YUKOS and its affiliated companies. Unlike Khodorkovsky, who knew what risks he was taking, whose supporters are plenty and whose wealth is still considerable, most of these people were simply employees, neither rich nor powerful. They are not persecuted for their political convictions or actions, yet their persecution is politically motivated; hence, they, too, are political prisoners.
The most outrageous case, I think, is that of Svetlana Bakhmina, a mother of two and a former deputy head of YUKOS' legal department. Svetlana was arrested on Dec. 7, 2004, on a YUKOS-related charge, and has been imprisoned since. Kept in a cell with nine other women, she was denied phone calls to her children (seven and three years old) and went on a hunger strike to protest the ban. Investigators interrogated her for hours on end; after an eight-hour interrogation session Svetlana, who suffers from a chronic heart disease, collapse and was taken to -- alas -- a prison hospital.

What is to be done in Uzbekistan?

Nathan Hamm answers Michael J. Totten's call to dump Uzbek president Islam Karimov, in a thoughtful discussion of the difficulties facing American policy towards this Central Asian nation in the aftermath of the Andijan massacre. Nathan's bottom line is handle with care:

Uzbekistan's success is as important if not more important to Central Asia's future as Afghanistan. It's worth taking plenty of time to figure out the best way to proceed.

German TV: Bush Planned 9/11

I found Tom Goeller's Washington Times story through a link on the Drudge Report.:

A fictional crime drama based on the premise that the Bush administration ordered the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington aired this week on German state television, prompting the Green Party chairman to call for an investigation.

'I think absolutely nothing of the conspiracy theory that has been hawked in this series. I hope this particular TV movie will be discussed very critically at the next supervisory board meeting of ARD [state television],' said Green Party Chairman Reinhard Buetikofer, who acknowledged that he had not seen the show.

Sunday night's episode of 'Tatort,' a popular murder mystery that has been running on state-run ARD-German television for 35 years, revolved around a German woman and a man who was killed in her apartment.

According to the plot, which was seen by approximately 7 million Germans, the dead man had been trained to be one of the September 11 pilots but was left behind, only to be tracked down and killed by CIA or FBI assassins.

The woman, who says in the program that the September 11 attacks were instigated by the Bush family for oil and power, then is targeted, presumably to silence her. The drama concludes with the German detectives accepting the truth of her story as she eludes the U.S. government hit men and escapes to safety in an unnamed Arab country.


As ludicrous as it may sound to most Americans, the tale has resonance in Germany, where fantastic conspiracy theories often are taken as fact.

Of course, this is so-called "black" propaganda, part of a "big lie" campaign against America.

My students in Uzbekistan believed this sort of nonsense, my students in Russia believed it, and I'm sure the Germans believe it also. That this sort of thing is being broadcast on German TV, in this day and age, is a troubling sign for the US, indeed...

Anne Bancroft, Bronxite

The New York Times has a nice obituary of Anne Bancroft today. What I really liked is that Bancroft was an Italian girl from The Bronx, born Anna Louisa Maria Italiano. She was a versatile and talented actress, and always projected a certain cool elegance. Underneath, she must have been a volcano... Bancroft was great as the Miracle Worker as well as Mrs. Robinson. Mel Brooks was lucky to have been married to her.

Vladimir Putin's Russia

Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser have an interesting article in today's in today's Washington Post about Putin's path to power, taken from their new book, Kremlin Rising. It seems pretty accurate.

This quote, for example, rings true: "'The Russian people,' Putin's chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, regularly told colleagues behind closed doors, 'are not ready for democracy.'"