Useful Idiot of the Day: Nir Rosen

Gaza: the logic of colonial power:

Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.

Justice is the advantage of the stronger. -Thrasymachus, Plato's Republic

Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an 'eternal law.' -Karl Marx, The German Ideology

It gets worse, and much dumber:

It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.

"Attacked without provocation"? It's funny, Iraqis themselves have more nuanced views than the supposedly learned, nuanced questions the useful idiot Nir Rosen is presenting here, cleverly forgetting the most important and obvious part of the equation: SADDAM HUSSEIN AND HIS REIGN OF TERROR.

"Journalists" like Rosen are half-baked, intellectually illiterate scum, and a healthy America, educated in its own "revolutionary principles," would ignore them.

Reality on Hamas, Iran

From Michael Ledeen:

It follows from this that you cannot “solve” Gaza by fighting in Gaza alone, you have to win the terror war. And to do that, you must accomplish regime change, just as Netanyahu said. But the crucial regime change must be accomplished in Iran. Whatever Israel accomplishes in Gaza (and the same holds for our battles in Iraq and Afghanistan), it is only a matter of time before the mullahs reorganize, rearm, and return to battle. And the next battle may involve nuclear weapons.

Paradoxically, those people who fume at the very idea of challenging the Iranian regime are actually making a truly terrible war more likely, not less. Those few of us who believe that support for Iranian democratic dissidents could bring down the mullahs are almost universally scorned, and even accused of seeking war. It is just the opposite. The same accusations were directed against us when we supported Soviet dissidents, and called for regime change in Moscow. And yet the Soviet Empire came down. The Iranian regime is far weaker than the Soviet state. An overwhelming number of Iranians oppose the regime, and are dreaming of the day when we finally embrace their cause. Perhaps there are still some brave men and women in the Democratic Party who understand that America is a revolutionary country, and that we are bound by our honor, our principles, and our national interest to support the democratic forces in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, the three leading terror masters, along with those in Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia, now scurrying to jump on the bandwagon of Islamic tyranny.

The reality is that despite all the talk of "cowboy diplomacy" and bullying, unilateral America, for the most part we will not act until we feel severely threatened, at which time the Michael Ledeens of the country will emerge to lead the way. Until that time we are content to hide our heads and feed on empty platitudes. Just seven years after 9/11, the reality of the world situation, briefly and incompletely part of the public consciousness, is forgotten.

We are a bovine people, and need gadflies like Ledeen to bite us.

Sophisticated, Delicate, Sensitive Useful Idiot of the Day

Joel Stein. Sorry, calling people "useful idiots" is what we do here. If you don't like it, you're probably not reading.

I don't love America. That's what conservatives are always telling liberals like me. Their love, they insist, is truer, deeper and more complete. Then liberals, like all people who are accused of not loving something, stammer, get defensive and try to have sex with America even though America will then accuse us of wanting it for its body and not its soul. When America gets like that, there's no winning.

You're sooooooooo cute, Joel.

But calling your wife fat isn't love. True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for. I'm more in "like" with my country.

Giggles!

When a Democrat loses the presidential race, real lefties talk a lot about moving to Canada. When Republicans lose, they don't do that. Though, to be fair, they don't have a lot of nearby conservative options

Well, that's kind of the point of why America is so great, isn't it?

This doesn't mean I'm not fascinated by American history, impressed by our Constitution or don't appreciate our optimism and entrepreneurial spirit.

Fascinated, really? Wow. But just as a thought-experiment, right? You don't actually belong to any country, do you? That would be, like, weird.

I'm convinced that people like Stein are liberal because to be otherwise would be unsophisticated and simple. Unless it's ironic. In which cause it's a secret masochism. Which is a damn shame.

So I wrote a heartfelt letter to pretty boy here. I doubt he'll read past the first sentence, so I post it here so my half-hour was not wasted:

Mr. Klein,

I feel sorry for you. You have learned one half of a truth (people love what is their own) and are unable to move past it. You are, for me, at least (one of your simplistic, patriotic Republican rubes), emblematic of the half-baked, half-learned peoples that philosophers from Socrates to Tocqueville lamented as the future of all free societies, instead of the beautiful twin-inheritance of religious temperance and political rationalism. It would be one thing if you were a brave intellectual unfit for some backward, restrictive, tribalistic society which knows nothing but tyranny, and thus cried out in vain for some truth beyond the brutalizing forms of power possessed by local chieftains, cowardly elders, and ignorant priests.

But you are a citizen of the most free, most justified, best-considered, most truthful and most honest society known to man, a beacon of possibility and hope for all the world's oppressed (often oppressed by the idealist internationalists you probably admire), and yet you harp on nothings, spitting out the venemous inspidities of dimestore Marxism (probably unknowingly but nevertheless merely the boiled down and tired language of "bourgeouis" and "revolutionary spirit," rephrased to meet the accepted leftist-academic, Harper's-style phraseology of the day, but still recognizable to my people as the hateful propaganda of the murderous ideology of Communism) and being lauded by your equally half-baked colleagues as "thought-provoking," "challenging," and "progressive." It is the same nonsense as always, repeated endlessly in an echo chamber of useless idiots until all who consider themselves "sophisticated" accept it without a fight.

There are those in this world who would detroy you, your human dignity, your lifestyle, your children, everything. There will come a time when you or your children or your children's children will have to accept slavery, or virtual slavery, or extermination at the hands of barbaric peoples. And then what will your careful, considered duplicity, your sophisticated opinions and dainty ironies, be worth? They will be nothing.

So I exhort you to use that half-learnedness as a steppingstone to what is greater. Your knowledge is but vanity, a bauble you can use to show that you are smarter. But I urge you to consider Pascal's hierarchy of faith. The simple people believe because it is what they have always known; it is their own, and they love it. The half-learned reject the simple people's faith because it is ignorant. Don't they know that their faith is merely one among a catalogue of faiths, that their own is arbitrary and incidental, and thus to be knowledgeable is to consider in turn the value of each, without clinging to one that is nearby through circumstance alone? But the truly wise know that the faith of the simple is best, more truly human, and thus really more true.

This would be true even if America were not a unique country in the history of the world, one that was formed by a revolution that did not turn to tyranny and bloodshed a thousand times worse than what came before (apres moi, le deluge), and delicately balanced by both classical and modern political rationalism, democracy and aristocracy, radical religious individualism and unrestricted market freedom, a force for freedom in a world otherwise marked by tyranny, a place where tired, weary, oppressed peoples risk all to reach. But it is that place. And nothing you leftists say ("But America propped up Pinochet in Chile!" or "Oppressed people? Hello, slavery!" will change that.

We say "God Bless America." It is a prayer with all that prayer entails-- hope, faith, and yes, love.

Hopefully we will meet some day at a cool hipster bar and enjoy an ironic Miller High Life together, and then we can talk about it.

Today's Idiots: Code Pink

End the war, disarm, and surrender to the enemy. Criticize your own country to no end but always praise the countries of your enemies. Also get invited to the countries of your enemies so they can use you as a propaganda tool:

[Code Pinkers] Benjamin and Evans wrote daily accounts of their trip to Tehran on their blog — and wasted not a word on poor Fatemeh or on the tragedy of women’s rights in Iran under the mullahs and their Sharia laws. Benjamin and Evans portray a rosy and unrealistic situation, where Iranians of all social classes and political persuasions welcome them enthusiastically, share their anti-war sentiments, and desire for peaceful and loving relations with the U.S. and all nations. Medea Benjamin, who lived for seven years in Cuba calling the Castro dictatorship “a paradise on earth,” notices that in Tehran “public transportation is priced right — 20 cents for the subway and 2 cents for the bus.” She fails to mention that the Iranian currency sustained 700 percent devaluation since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and that inflation is at 23% according to governmental statistics and significantly higher than that according to World Bank estimates.

But of course to connect this overt idiocy to the more subtle idiocy of the Party these idiots support, would be unfair "guilt by association."

It is revolting to even consider the self-aggrandizement of these women in contrast to the self-stifling required of Iranian women today. Benjamin and Evans should have stayed in Iran, where they might learn something about freedom.

Well that's always the problem with these idiots, isn't it?

Gold Mine of Useful Idiocy

I thought it was a joke. It is not a joke. It is what the idiot left in America hopes for. Seriously.

It is not satire. Satire uses a form of expression to ridicule a target. There is no ridicule here; only desire.

It's just mind-boggling.

A comment from a Powerline reader sums it up perfectly:

The best part of this is that left-wing wish fulfillment is the same thing as right-wing humor. Noodle that for a moment.

The scary part is that these lunatics are actually representative of the movement that got Barack Obama elected. These insignificant children feel powerful and influential. That's scary.

Discovering WikiScanner

Of course I plugged in The New York Times.

I especially enjoyed the edit of The New York Times' entry's section on "Accusations of liberal bias." This:

Many readers believe that the Times hard news and soft news reportage have a consistent and pronounced liberal slant, particularly on social issues.

became this:

Some conservatives believe that The Times has a liberal slant, particularly on social issues.

In the interest of fairness, I have to admit that the Times edits generally improved the grammar of entries. (However, the change from "the Times" to "The Times" was incorrect, it seems.)

Someone from the Times also (appropriately) edited a section called "Self-examination of bias," from which it excised the sentence:

Because of this liberal bias, in certain sections of the Westchester County suburb of New Rochelle the Times has now come to be known simply as "Pravda."

Probably with no hint of irony.

One could explore this stuff forever. Here's just one more fun link: Check out these Washington Post edits. In this one, "contributors" is changed to "vaginas." Others are more creative.

Dobrokhotov Heckles Medvedev

This is making the rounds:

It's not every day that Kremlin gets a heckler.

President Dmitry Medvedev was giving a speech to scientists and bureaucrats Friday marking Constitution Day when a young man stood up and started yelling.

TV footage showed the man yelling "Why are you listening to him?" and "He's violated the rights and freedoms of people and citizens!" for a few seconds before security agents grabbed him.

The audience looked startled and murmured while Medvedev kept speaking. The Russian president then smirked, telling security agents to wait to whisk the man away.

Medvedev said to applause that "the purpose of the Constitution is to allow everyone to voice his opinion" before the man was taken away.

The man was later identified as a well-known youth activist, Roman Dobrokhotov. It wasn't immediately clear how he gained access to the famously secure Kremlin.

Dobrokhotov could not be immediately located for comment.

Friday marks the 15th anniversary of the adoption of Russia's post-Soviet constitution.

What strikes me about this is the similarity with Code Pink-style anti-war protesters and left-wing moonbats screaming protests at McCain rallies or trying to "citizen arrest" Karl Rove. They too are taken away by security.

One should note that whenever we hear of such a protest it means that there is not a systematic and complete fear of personal political expression. In the case of Code Pink-style nonsense, it is run-of-the-mill organized leftism, railing against imaginary crimes. In the case of Dobrokhotov, it is he, the organizer, doing the protesting, and it is an exceptional case. This would not have happened in the USSR and if it had, we would not have heard about it. (This doesn't mean the current Russian regime doesn't deserve the criticism.) In the West, the legions of idiots do the protesting, and their cries are normal and expected.

Also, in the West the protesters who are removed by security do not face long imprisonment or interrogation. What reason would we have to imprison them or even to hear their idiotic, robotic opinions? In Russia, there is no such assurance.

When Dobrokhov says "He's violated the rights and freedoms of people and citizens!" it's true. When the moonbats declare that Bush and his cabinet have committed war crimes, it's a bunch of nonsense born of a double standard, years of demoralization, and knee jerk anti-Americanism.

It's the difference between these idiots (I can't find the one with the kids screaming "This is a free state, not a police state!" as the police treat them respectfully and remove them from the oncoming motorcade, saving their idiotic lives, but you get the picture) and this.

No, I Do Not Think

Rebecca Martin, "We're Alike, Don't You Think?":

"I'm sorry to hear comments on Russian news about Ms. Palin," says my friend Tanya. "Looks like the States is making a clown out of itself."

Regarding clowns, my student Sergey asks why I think Georgian president Saakashvili, whose country is so tiny, would fire on a huge country like Russia, with all its military hardware.

Answer: "Bush told him to."

Whatever George said, everyone here knows it wasn't about "democracy." When, on September 3, Azerbaijani president Aliyev turned down Dick Cheney's proposal of a gas pipeline that would bypass Russia, Cheney (according to the Moscow Times, September 8) "was so disappointed that he did not attend an official dinner in his honor."

And:

She touches her fingertips, accordion-style. "Of course, we have more stability now than 10 years ago. But in a couple of years I wouldn't be surprised if 40 percent of our people are out of a job.

"Because we still have war. Everywhere," she says.

She pauses, shoots me a sly grin. "Our two countries are alike, don't you think?"

No, they are not alike. America is a free country. Russia is not. Georgia acts to defend its interests, not in response to your imaginary neocon conspiracy. And Azerbaijan wants to bypass Russian control of oil pipelines.

Here we have a perfect example of lies and nonsense perpetrated through a cultural/intellectual channel.

We are NOT alike.

On Islam

Andrew C. McCarthy:

These legal proceedings, then, are simply theater. For the Left, that means projecting shopworn themes under the guise of thoughtfully pondering the purpose of the jihadists’ procedural maneuvering. Is KSM scheming to challenge our new president’s redoubling of Islamic outreach? Is he daring Obama to kick off the promised era of good feeling by executing Muslims, even as the new administration backpedals from campaign commitments to shut down Gitmo and withdraw from Iraq forthwith? Or is he, as the ACLU speculated for the New York Times, trying to draw attention to the asserted folly of abandoning the 1990’s model of civilian terrorist trials in favor of “a failed commission process”?

Yes, it’s the silly season.

What we don’t yet seem to grasp, even after all that’s gone on these last two decades, is that our politics and our law are of interest only to us. They matter nothing to jihadists. It’s a fatuous exercise in self-absorption to suppose otherwise — and a foolish one since it demonstrates for all to see that we still don’t get it. The delusion that we can change our enemies by changing ourselves is what makes the useful idiots useful.

Indeed.

For radical Islam, it’s not about us; it’s about them. KSM isn’t about us. He’s about KSM. There is no system we can devise, nothing we can do or not do, no one we can elect or anoint, that will alter how we are perceived by the millions who share the jihadist worldview, if not jihadist methods.

Why are there not more commentators like Mr. McCarthy?

Useful Idiot of the Day: Gideon Rachman

Gideon Rachman: "And now for a world government."

No, he's not joking.

A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged.

The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them.

Yes, because UN "peacekeeping" has worked out so well in the past! And UN counter-terrorism, what a great idea! It's not like the UN has any member countries who actively fund, support, and fund terrorist activity, or anything. And a legally-binding climate change agreement! So we can sacrifice our economic sovereignty and willingly weaken ourselves based on shoddy PR-science and eco-fascism!

Great ideas, all!

The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.

Who are these idiots? I wrote Mr. Rachman en e-mail:

Dear Gideon,

The sovereignty of my country, the United States of America, belongs to the people of the USA. Our elected leaders, who are the administrators of our will and not a sovereign power unto themselves, have no authority to surrender our sovereignty to a "world government." Your dream, and the dream of the useful idiots at Center for American Progress, is a dream for which many freedom-loving and God-fearing people have died trying to stop. Because people like you think that people like them are merely a "problem" to be "cracked." Indeed.

Take your "world government" to the dustbin of history, where it belongs. How many people have to die before you people realize that your efforts toward an "evolved," "enlightened" human being working together across the planet "to solve common goals" paves the way for totalitarianism at home and the most brutal barbarisms abroad? When will you realize that there is not and will never be a paradise on earth, a perfect man, or a unified human race? That representative sovereignty, complete with a national identity and a willingness to fight to defend it, is the best hope we have on this Earth?

-A "Stubbornly Local" US Citizen

May God save the USA from these morons.

Searching for Yuri: Part Two

I found a number of other references to Bezmenov through Google Book Search under "Tomas Schuman" and "Yuri Bezmenov." (Also search with quotation marks around the names, and "Tomas D. Schuman.")

He is mentioned in The Sword and the Shield, by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, in the context of KGB accusations of CIA "abductions" of KGB officers. Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB, in a letter dated May 21, 1970, to Leonid Brezhnev, then head of the Soviet Union, referenced "the disappearance without a trace of a Novosti correspondent in Delhi, Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, on March 9, 1970" (quotation from Andrew/Mitrokhin, not the letter). Andrew writes:

Some FCD officers realized-- as Andropov did not-- that "abductions" were convenient fictions used by residencies to conceal the shameful reality of defection. Such was the case, for example, in the disappearance of Bezmenov. Anxious to save face, the Delhi residency had reported that he had been abducted, and his son (the closest surviving relative) was given financial compensation. In reality, as Bezmenov later admitted:

I decided to stay in India to become a kind of hippie and get to [know] the country. Unfortunately, I started reading [the] local newspaper and found out the Indian police were looking for me. I panicked. I tried to make a deal with smugglers to take me out of the country, but they either wanted too much money or didn't trust me.

Eventually Bezmenov approached the CIA, who exfiltrated him first to Greece, where he was debriefed, then resettled him in Canada. The KGB abandoned the myth of Bezmenov's abduction after he was seen visiting an exhibition in Montreal in 1974, and ordered his bewildered son to return all the money they had paid to him.

This account differs from Bezmenov's in the Griffin interview, though only slightly. In this telling he was "exfiltrated" by the CIA, but in Bezmenov's account he managed to escape the country on his own. I chalk it up to typical KGB bravado.

The book references "Rob Bull, "Defector Bares 'Secret' Past," Vancouver Sun (April 5, 1976)", which I don't have access to at the moment.

Other references to Bezmenof/Schuman include: Soviet Analyst, a bimonthly publication which seems to have referenced him multiple times; Litaunus and Baltic Bulletin (see Part One of this post); Why the Soviets Violate Arms Control Treaties, published by Pergamon-Brassey's International Defense Publishers (which also published Ladislav Bittman's The KGB and Soviet Disinformation); Target America: The Influence of Communist Propaganda on U.S. Media by James L. Tyson in 1981; The World & I, apparently some kind of serial publication of Washington Times Corp.; an "Annual Report" of "Academic and Professional Programs for the Americas," in which he is listed as a "Program Director," though for what I do not know; Sûrya India, a serial publication; Billionaire: The Life and Times of Sir James Goldsmith; The African American Voice in U.S. Foreign Policy Since World War II, where he is cited: "Tomas D. Schuman, "Disinvestment Movement in the U.S.-- A Proven Soviet Active Measure," Family Protection Scoreboard (Special Issue on South Africa, 1987): 52-53"; Traitors: The Labyrinths of Treason (Chapman Pincher, 1987); and others.

In "Cry of the Pheonix," a bizarre publication if there ever was one:

Russian defector Tomas Schuman says of the Soviet elite: "They are not government-- they don't govern anything-- they are a bunch of self-imposed dictators, very dangerous criminals, and they are unwanted in my country, and the worst thing you Americans can do to my country, to 270 or more citizens of the U.S.S.R., is to keep on negotiating with their oppressors."

The book Soviet Defectors: The KGB Wanted List lists "Yuri Bezmenov," Age: "31," Occupation: "Dipl[omat]," Date of Defection: "2/9/70," Country of Defection: "IN" [India], Country of Residence: "CA" [Canada], Identifying Data: "Press Officer." (For some reason they have February, not March, in the date of defection.)

He is also referenced in the bibliography of Defectors: "Bezmenov, Yuri. "Confessions of a Subverter." Our Canada (Toronto), October 1980. See also Schuman, Thomas. And "Schuman, Thomas [Bezmenov]. "My Role in the Subversion of India." Speak Up, April 1981. Interview with Keneko Magayoshi of Sekai Nippo, Japan. --- "Soviet Defector Tomas Schuman." Review of the News 20 (March 7, 1984): 31-35, 37-40.

I also found references to Bezmenov/Schuman through the Amazon Online Reader. In The OPS Story, Adolph Saenz quotes Bezmenov in a reference to Roger Morris, a fringe muckraker type:

A former KGB Officer named Yuri Bezmenov, AKA Tomas Schuman, analyzed the articles written by Roger Morris. "The author (Morris) consistently used the same methods of disinformation, the same semantic manipulation, and the same type of propaganda I had been instructed to use during all my years with the KGB." Was Morris trained in Novosti? Well he was in Moscow, in the USSR, for one year.

It seems there is some sort of personal feud between Saenz and Morris regarding a New Mexico prison incident, and the accusation that Morris was a KGB agent of some sort should be taken in that light. More likely, Morris is just a useful idiot.

In The World and Europe: A Hidden Agenda Behind The Hall of Mirrors there are a number of references to Bezmenov/Schuman:

So the agenda is softening the concept of Communism. In another field of entertainment Soviet defector Tomas Schuman exposed Communist entertainer Yves Montad as a groomed Soviet infiltrator who like many others in the literary field had passed through the Novosti Press Agency.

In a more lengthy excerpt, apparently from Love Letter to America:

To end my evidence of Marxist policy of diversion I quote from an up to date version given by Soviet defector Tomas D. Schuman, who detailed the subversion process to demoralise a population over a twenty year period. The target and policies can be summarised as follows;

Religion; politicise, commercialise, entertain, remove religious observance from schools.
Education; inculcate permissiveness and relativity.
Media; monopolise, manipulate, discredit, focus on false or divisive issues such as homosexuality, rather than defend sexual morality.
Culture; create false heroes and role models.
Law and Order; introduce a legislative rather than a moral code.
Social Relations; promote rights rather than obligations.
Security; attack intelligence agencies, the police and armed forces.
Internal politics; Generate disunity through party antagonism.
Foreign Relations; repeated capitulation to Soviet strategies and disharmony between Western powers.
Family and Society; break up and induce disloyalty.
Health; promote sporting entertainment rather than individual participation, unrealistic ideals of socialised Medicare and junk food.
Race; promote hatred and division through environmental rather than genetic arguments, and promotion of racial issues and enforced legislation.
Population; control through urbanisation, and eliminate patriotism and independence based on land ownership.
Labour; pit trade unions against society.

By the way, A Hidden Agenda is full of nonsense about a global Masonic plot and similar malarkey.

It also cites another book of Schuman's of which I had not heard, Black is Beautiful, Communism is Not.

In The New Economic Disorder: Strategies for Weathering Any Crisis While Keeping Your Finances Intact, there is a chart of the familiar "disinformation process" which was "prepared by Tomas Schuman, who defected to the United States after having served as a KGB disinformation agent." The book was originally published in 2001; it is unclear where and when the author got the chart from Schuman.

A WorldCat search also reveals "Soviet ideological subversion of America in four stages[:] Elizabeth Clare Prophet interviews Tomas Schuman, Novosti Press, Soviet defector," "Malibu, CA : Summit University, 1984," "Audiobook on tape." (As well as all four books. I wish I had thought of WorldCat earlier.)

So there you have it. More references you could ever want to Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, AKA Tomas D. Schuman. I'll post on this subject again when I read his "books" (more like pamphlets) and check out those newspaper articles.

Searching for Yuri

On the ninth (of nine) YouTube videos for the Yuri Bezmenov interview, "drowsypanda" wrote:

There is no mention of this guy on the Internet outside of his appearance in this video.

Take that to mean whatever you like.

I had the same reaction. In all my searching for Yuri Bezmenov references, I just kept getting to more and more insane web pages and forums referencing this video. Because paranoid types across the spectrum are always looking for evidence of a conspiracy, the Bezmenov interview plays right into their deranged minds, even if they completely misinterpret it.

Because I have a nascent amateur interest in intelligence operations and specifically, the very subtle form of intelligence called "ideological subversion," which in Bezemnov's era of the KGB seems to have involved a kind of cultural manipulation (as opposed to counter-intelligence wary of "ideological subversion" by the enemy in the Motherland, as was the case in the Stalinist era). But because this topic involves very subtle manipulation, plots and conspiracies, one has to be wary of unjustified paranoia, and of course, trusting anyone or anything that backs up one's beliefs, fears, and prejudices.

So paying heed to this Bezmenov interview is different from, say, heeding the words of The Mitrokhin Archive books, which are well-established, accepted, and reviewed. The Mitrokhin books concern themselves primarily with the FCD, or First Chief Directorate of the KGB, the archives of which Mitrokhin had access to.

I'm not sure which part of the KGB Bezmenov worked for. He said of Novosti Press Agency that "75% of the members of the Novosti are commissioned officers of the KGB. The other 25 are, like [me], co-opted agents who are assigned to specific operations." I'm not sure what the real difference is between an "officer" and an "agent," because certainly Bezmenov was a direct part of the KGB (even if he worked under diplomatic cover in India). My best guess is that Bezmenov worked primarily for Service A (Disinformation, Covert Action) under the FCD; however, since the FCD was concerned with foreign intelligence, Bezmenov must have worked for some other KGB Directorate, Department, or Service under the KGB in his capacity as a press officer for Novosti.

Anyway, it's strange if no reference can be found to Bezmenov anywhere else besides this interview, which was itself conducted by a fairly bizarre person with some loony theories of his own (G. Edward Griffin) and is now cited and referenced by a gamut of crazies from 9/11 truthers to white supremacists. (The "Zionist" people too.) A Google search on "Bezmenov" serves to do little more than discredit anyone who references him.

But what if we look for his pseudonym, as he says, "Tomas Schuman"? (The spelling I determined through trial and error.) Well, now we get somewhere. The first thing of substance we get is the text of the Spring 1985 issue of Litaunus, the "Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences." It seems Bezmenov gave the same presentation to these people as he gave to Griffin (and us):

Tomas Schuman, former editor of Novosti Press Agency (a front for disinformation and organized within the KGB's intelligence network), reported to the Baltic American Freedom League on Soviet methods of influencing American public opinion through the manipulation of the American press. "Soviet propaganda is too boring to be effective", said Schuman, "the greatest successes of Soviet propaganda are achieved thanks to American mass media."

Novosti Press Agency was created in 1961. Seventy-five percent are KGB intelligence officers and the other 25% are co-opted by the KGB. "Within the KGB there is a department cynically called the Department of Disinformation. We worked directly under that department," said Schuman. He continued, "I escorted thousands of Western journalists through the Soviet Union... the American press treated us as ordinary journalists. At times, I risked my own career and freedom to try to explain that they were actually talking to an intelligence officer."

As an example of the simple and primitive but effective use of disinformation, Schuman displayed a 1967 issue of Look magazine on which he had personally worked while editor for Novosti. This particular issue covered the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution—"from the first page to the last page, it is a bunch of lies but it is presented as a collection of opinions and research by American journalists."

In concluding, Schuman said, "This selection of propaganda clichés is so simple and primitive it does not take an expert in propaganda to see through these lies, but big monopolized media like the LA. Times, New York Times, the TV networks keep lying to the people... The result is a change in the perception of reality. The majority of American public do not perceive the real danger of the Soviet Union."

(Baltic Bulletin)

This "Schuman" is obviously Yuri Bezmenov.

Another interesting item in the Google results is "Tomas Schuman | brainGuide - THE EXPERTS’ PORTAL India." As we know, Bezmenov worked for the KGB in India. Unfortunately, we just get "Tomas Schuman is registered at brainGuide as an author/speaker. Unfortunately, there is currently no further information available about his or her expertise." We do not know when this empty profile was created, but the site began in 2003. I think, however, that we get the "India" domain is incidental, and this is in fact a different Tomas Schuman.

Other items: Schuman was apparently at the some time between 2000 and 2001 (when this web page was made) a member of the "Council for National Policy," a social conservative think tank. The Council has a sparse web site, and has hosted very prominent conservative thinkers and pundits such as David Horowitz, Grover Norquist and William Kristol; as well as politicians like John McCain, Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee. Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic called CNP "the most powerful conservative group you've never heard of."

This item, labeled "ARIZONA NEWSLETTER; Doctors for Disaster Preparedness" (DDP; later, it seems, "Physicians for Civil Defense"), dated September 1985, references Schuman:

The annual meeting of TACDA, The American Civil Defense Association, will be held on November 4 and 5, following the DDP seminar.

[...]Tomas Schuman, former member of the Novosti press agency, will tell of his "Life as a Soviet Propagandist."

This was probably the same talk or some version of it.

And I found this item:

Deseret News, The (Salt Lake City, UT) - March 7, 1990

EX-KGB AGENT TO DISCUSS CHANGE IN SOVIET BLOC AT S.L. HILTON TONIGHT
Yuri Bezmenov, a Soviet defector and ex-KGB agent, will discuss "Soviet Show Biz," his views of changes in the Soviet bloc under Gorbachev, at the Salt Lake Hilton, 150 W. 500 South, Seasons North Room, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 7.Bezmenov's six-state speaking tour, which has included Utah stops in St. George, Manti and Provo as well as Salt Lake City, is sponsored by local chapters of the John Birch Society. Admission to his lecture is $5 per...

Six-state speaking tour?

He is referenced in a 1984 article about the Los Angeles Olympics from the Christian Science Monitor:

The coalition is also concerned about Soviet intrigue during the games. Another coalition figure is Tomas Schuman, a Novosti press agency editor and Soviet Embassy officer in India before defecting in 1970.

Mr. Schuman now writes for a Russian-language newspaper in Los Angeles. In 1967, he toured the vessel the Soviets were sending to Expo '67 in Montreal, a sister ship to the one headed for Los Angeles this summer.

The lower deck, he says, was full of radio sets, scanners, and recorders -- not to listen to secret conversations but to assess local communication capability. The Soviet ship in Los Angeles will be put to the same purpose, he surmises. Further, it will be a ''floating prison'' to keep potential defectors safely aboard, he says.

Someone referenced Bezmenov (totally non-sequitur, like usual) in a Hot Air post and "Azked responded":

Hey thanks for the memory! I spent a day witih that guy. He went by the name Tomas Schuman or something similar. Very cynical guy, thought that we were basically toast and that was 25 years ago.

Yea, I'd imagine it would get tough spending a day with a guy as strange and cynical as Bezmenov, seemingly a dark and paranoid person even by ex-KGB standards.

I also found this (note, again, the weirdo domain), apparently notes from a lecture that Bezmenov (as Schuman) gave to the "News Word International correspondent's seminar Feb. 22 - 24 (1979?)." Here we have a somewhat different formulation of the "stages of subversion," as well as a notably different prescription for America, one from which he seems to have backed down in the later interview:

It takes a unified national effort. Any democratic nation should cultivate such attitudes as devotion to one's country, patriotism, moral strength, working ethics, resurrection of all national traditional values.

Among other drastic measures: restriction of liberties of self proclaimed anti-democratic, militant, radical and amoral groups. Re-elections. Chose [sic] responsible, not "charismatic" leaders. Reform your currency and cancel (not "freeze"') all the assets of the subverter country. Expel all the agents of the subverter without any apology or explanation. Re-establish friendly relations with the moderate and non-aggressive dictatorships as long as they are anti-communist. Preach self-restraint and moderation to the population. Explain to the people, that the situation is serious, and that some small liberties have to be sacrificed for the sake of survival and basic freedom[.]

What he says here sound like nascent fascism, but it's really quite normal. Under the Reagan administration (as yet in the future) the United States did begin to take a tougher line toward the Soviet Union and Soviet-bloc countries in regard to canceling assets, expelling spies, and canceling trade deals and civilian worker exchanges (which always favored the Soviets). It was also much more willing than previous administrations to support dictatorial and non-ideal regimes and factions as long as they were anti-Communist/socialist, sometimes mistakenly but ultimately resulting in a successful conclusion to the Cold War.

As for "small liberties" being "sacrificed for the sake of survival and basic freedom," that is a formulation that no American would choose, and rightly so, for we are eternally vigilant about our freedom, to the point where we accuse the government of tyranny and systematic violation of civil liberties when in reality nothing extraordinary is happening (see Bush, George W.). I think the "small liberties" Bezmenoff referred to would be something like the absolute assurance of privacy in all electronic communications from wiretapping. (This cannot be guaranteed anyway, because foreign intelligence has far more reason to intercept U.S. communications than the U.S. government, and certainly does so when possible.) Anyway, that absolute assurance does not exist, because such things have always been the prerogative of the executive in the interests of "national security," it's just that we find that trade-off distasteful and are eternally vigilant about the abuse of that power.

As for "restriction of liberties of self proclaimed anti-democratic, militant, radical and amoral groups," again, an American would not formulate what he means in that way. An example of a (perfectly Constitutional) application of this prescription would be the prosecution of those who quite literally incite people to rebellion and violent overthrow (see Students for a Democratic Society, Weathermen, etc.) Groups like this often actually commit crimes of incitement to violence and actual physical and financial aiding and abetting of foreign powers who are the enemies of the United States (i.e. treason). However, they are usually not prosecuted for a couple of reasons. First, the federal government does not want to be accused of violating free speech or accusing "radical groups" of treason in "McCarthyite" fashion. And second, prosecution of said groups requires exposure of information-gathering techniques, which isn't usually worth it.

And this is one of those strange quirks of international politics. Leftist groups and socialist groups are the most totalitarian and oppressive of all, and when they come to power often attempt to silence completely their enemies, commit brutal atrocities and stifle civil liberties and economic freedom. Yet, they mostly get a pass (see Soviet Union). Yet the more conservative governments (see United States) are accused of neo-fascism upon the slightest mention of national identity, patriotism, and the need to repel foreign enemies, even if those governments (like the U.S.) are extremely vigilant about civil rights.

The answer to this conundrum, I think, is that leftists aren't really interested in free speech and freedom of religion and free markets. For them, these "negative freedoms" are vested in a weird cult of self-determination and responsibility that is ultimately bound up with God-worship, something extremely distasteful to the left.

Instead, the left is far more impressed with "positive freedoms": a "right" to health care, shelter, food, and education. Thus, even if the system in which all of these things are guaranteed also makes these things more scarce and of a lower quality, and even if that system becomes brutal and repressive and begins to systematically execute its enemies and squash all free speech and opinion, they will still celebrate that system more than capitalism with its "inhumanity." That's why leftists are almost always secularists, because they seek meaning and value from the State, and not God.

As Pushkin wrote (and Solzhenitsyn quoted in Live Not By Lies), "Why should cattle have the gifts of freedom? Their heritage from generation to generation is the belled yoke and the lash." Or, in the words of Samuel Adams:

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Moving on now. It seems that "Tomas D. Schuman" has written three four books: World Thought Police, Love Letter to America, No Novosti is Good News, and Black is Beautiful, Communism is Not.

At Amazon, World Thought Police and Novosti are under "Tomas Schuman". Love Letter and Black is Beautiful are under "T. Schuman." I ordered Love Letter and World Thought Police from used book sellers, but can't find Novosti or Black.

Continued in Part Two.

Oleg Kalugin

I might transcribe this interview:



Kalugin mentions that he came to the U.S. with a group of "students" from the USSR, the first such group after World War II. Of the 18 students 17 were either KGB agents like Kalugin, or co-opted agents. The only exception was Alexander Yakovlev, who later was the Soviet ambassador to Canada and the "godfather of glasnost." Yuri Bezmenov in his interview with G. Edward Griffin accused Yakovlev of getting him fired from the CBC:

I started working for [the] overseas service of [the] CBC, which is similar to Voice of America, in Russian language, and of course [the] monitoring service in [the] USSR picked up every new voice—every new announcer they would make it a point to discover who he is—and in five years, sure enough, slowly but surely, they discovered that I am not Tomas Schuman, that I am Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, and that I am working for Canadian broadcasting, and undermining [the] beautiful détente between Canada and [the] USSR. And the Soviet ambassador Aleksandr Yakovlev made it his personal effort to discredit me; he complained to Pierre Trudeau, who is known to be [a] little bit soft on socialism, and the management of CBC behaved in a very strange, cowardly way, unbecoming of representatives of an independent country like Canada. They listened to every suggestion that [the] Soviet ambassador gave, and they started [a] shameful investigation, analyzing [the] content of my broadcasts to [the] USSR. Sure enough, they discovered that some of my statements were probably too... would be offending to the Soviet politburo. So I had to leave my job.

In an upcoming post I think I will explore the question of why it is always kooks and outsiders like Griffin and Howard Phillips, who interviewed Kalugin here, who take the time to talk to these Soviet defectors and ex-spies.

Sean Penn: The Very Picture of a Useful Idiot

Mountain of Snakes:

As Americans, we are citizens of a complex society, and the aspiration, at least, is to think with the complexity that will match it. In the best of times, in my life as an American, there have been several Americas. There is the America of the wealthy and corporate elite. An America of the middle and lower middle-classes. And there are the millions of poor, plagued by joblessness, inadequate education, inadequate or no healthcare, racial prejudices, and a trickle down philosophy of economics, where what trickles is caught and recycled before it ever reaches bottom. It is what, in my first meeting with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, he referred to as "an unsustainable society." Should our country fear socialism, while blindly advocating capitalism? Are there models of sustainable societies? Do we prefer unsustainability to change if any aspect of that change could be defined as "socialist?"

Just your first meeting? I'm sure he wants to talk to you because you are a talented, sober-thinking intellectual, and not an influential useful idiot or anything.

Enthusiasms. I'm enthusiastic about exploring socialism. Personal achievement. Well, in this case, I hope to achieve the reader's continued interest.

Moron.

Castro had read pieces I had published in the San Francisco Chronicle from my trips to Iraq and Iran. We talked for three or so hours, and the passion of this dynamic figure of walking-breathing history had intensified my growing interest in Latin American history. Before we parted ways, we all took a few pictures together, and with Fidel standing in his signature green fatigues and cap, one arm around my son and the other around my daughter with their beaming smiles, I said, "Commandante, when people see this picture, they're going to joke that I'm raising my children to be revolutionaries." He said, "This is the second best thing you could do. The first best is to put them into the white coats of doctors." I chose not to write about that meeting until the puzzle of my own interest became clearer.

Oh, and you met with Castro too? What a sensitive, far-sighted individual you are! Able to see the murderous inhumane thug Castro as a "dynamic figure of walking-breathing history." Yay, socialism!

This is very, very long. It is truly valuable evidence of useful idiocy in its most obvious form: a naive celebrity who thinks he is important and intellectual being received by murderous heads-of-state and used for propaganda purposes. And here the idiot writes at great length an account of what he think are his heroic and even-handed travels and thoughts, which surpass the simple-minded and bigoted cliches believed by ordinary Americans with their phony patriotism and American values.

To a half-learned half-bake like Penn, the truth, that he is a useful idiot and an intellectual traitor to America, and that those simple Americans he disparages are right to distrust and dislike charlatans and murderers like Chavez and Castro, is just unfathomable.

Cubans are particularly warm and hospitable people. Our hosts took us around the city. I noticed that the number of 1950s American cars had diminished even in the few years since my last trip, giving way to smaller Russian designs. On a sweep by the invasive-looking U.S. Interests Section on the Malecon, where waves breaking against the sea wall shower passing cars, I noticed something almost indescribable about the atmosphere in Cuba. The palpable presence of architectural, and living human history on a small plot of land surrounded by water. Even the visitor feels the spirit of a culture that proclaims, in various ways "This is our special place."

What the hell is he talking about? Who are these people? The spirit of a culture? Yes, with its backs broken by the murderous ideology of Communism? This, somehow in the perverted mind of Sean Penn, is a rustic and charming vision of a life with meaning, not this empty consumerist American life with its obsession with celebrities! Oh wait...

Still, as a proud American, I'm infinitely aware that, were I to write such an article as this, with as many dissenting opinions as a Cuban citizen speaking of Cuba, as I have the US in these pages, I may well be jailed.

No, you won't. You will be celebrated by people even more idiotic than you. You fucking moron.

America's Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama's "Story of Race and Inheritance"

Useless Dissident is always interested in underground, distasteful publications. I am looking forward to reading Steve Sailer's book. Go there and you can read the entire book for free.

John Derbyshire on Half-Blood Prince:

While Steve’s book is destined for life in a plain brown-paper wrapper here in the Republic of Nice, I bet it will sell like hot cakes abroad. There is real value-added for foreign investors, businessmen, diplomats, military folk, commentators, and trouble-makers in understanding America’s president, and America’s Half-Blood Prince is chock full of rich understandings. There is value-added for Americans in such understanding, too; but white Americans are so terrified of talking about, or even being thought to be thinking about, “race and inheritance,” except in the desperately narrow terms dictated to us by PC commissars like the Obamas, that most whites will not touch Steve’s book with a barge pole. Possession of it on business premises will likely be a firing offense. Probably some black Americans will read Steve’s book with interest, but for whites it is a cargo of hot plutonium.

I therefore predict that, once the book has had a couple of years in which to circulate internationally, and be translated into a few languages, foreigners will have a much better understanding of our 44th president than we have.

Well, I find Sailer's obsession with race, racial factors in intelligence, and demographics distasteful, almost as distasteful as the PC race authority. Almost.