Leopoldo

Tuesday evening brought what may be promising news from Venezuela. The National Assembly, which since January 6 has been dominated by the anti-chavista opposition, passed a law ordering the release of political prisoners. President Maduro vowed to veto. We’ll see what happens. We’ll have to keep an eye on the Venezuelan media, because outlets like the New York Times and CNN can’t always be relied on to pay attention to such developments.

It’s not as if the international news media have entirely ignored what’s been going on in the Bolivarian Republic, but it does seem to us that, with few exceptions, they’ve failed to recognize just how remarkable the current situation is in that tortured country.

This failure, if that’s the right word, is not entirely a puzzlement, of course, given that many of the aforementioned media were, not so very long ago, eager stooges and vociferous cheerleaders for Hugo Chávez, the father of Venezuelan socialism, otherwise known as chavismo. Chávez, with his brazen and unapologetic anti-Americanism, embodied the hopes of certain Americans and Europeans for a smashingly successful socialist Latin America, led by the example of the fearless Hugo and wonderfully free of the baleful influence of the nefarious norteamericanos.

Instead, Venezuela has turned out to be an extraordinary dramatic – indeed tragic – textbook example of the sheer folly of socialism. The rapidity with which the country’s economy has collapsed, and the terrifying particulars of that collapse, provide – for those too young to remember the Soviet Union and too foolish to recognize that the Castros’ Cuba is not a charming vintage-auto museum or 24/7 salsa party but a well-nigh unlivable everyday reality for 11 million people – a vivid picture of the disaster that is Communism.

That in itself is dramatic enough. But add to that the singular case of Leopoldo López. The chavista regime’s most eloquent critic, the opposition’s most charismatic leader, he has been in prison for over two years now, for no other reason than that he is – quite obviously – by far the most potent threat to the power of Chávez’s hapless, fatuous successor, Nicolás Maduro. López is so manifestly everything that Maduro is not, so completely the Gallant to his Goofus, that it seems almost too tidy a scenario; if this were a film script, the producer would almost certainly order the writer to make the villain at least somewhat less buffoonish and corrupt and the hero somewhat less noble and courageous.

Venezuelan acting President Nicolas Maduro raises his fist during a campaign rally in San Carlos, Cojedes State, on April 4, 2013. The presidential campaign to replace Venezuela's Hugo Chavez formally kicked off Tuesday, with Maduro -- Chavez's hand-picked successor -- battling opposition leader Henrique Capriles for the forthcoming April 14 vote. AFP PHOTO / JUAN BARRETOJUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images — Nicolás Maduro

But on rare occasions, reality is simply better than fiction – and this is, quite simply, one of those times. López – a collateral descendant of Simón Bolívar, the George Washington of South America – studied economics and government at Kenyon College in Ohio and public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Elected mayor of Chacao, one of the five administrative districts of Caravas, by a slim margin in 2000, he was re-elected four years later with 81% of the vote.

leopoldolopezprisonervenezuela-670x472 — With his wife, Lilian Tintori

The glowing success of his mayoral tenure and the thoroughgoing spotlessness of his record were attested to by Transparency International, which gave him its first-prize award in 2007 and again in 2008 for running his country’s most honest and efficient city government. In 2008, he came in third in the World Mayors contest for the planet’s best mayors. He’s a remarkable, almost incredible combination: a learned student of economics and statecraft, a staunch, eloquent defender of human liberty, a highly competent and incorruptible administrator, and an inspired, practical-minded reformer of local government on every level.

venezuela_supermarket_empty_shelves — Just a reminder of those empty Venezuelan grocery shelves…

Since his unjust arrest, he has also proven to be a man of extraordinary bravery. Pretty much every major international human-rights group has declared him a political prisoner and called for his immediate and unconditional release. So have the New York Times and Washington Post. Polls show that if he were to run for president today, he would win easily. It’s clear that the main reason he remains behind bars is that Venezuela’s current leader, a grotesquely inept, ill-educated, and economically illiterate former bus driver, knows that Leopoldo is everything he isn’t and that more and more of the Venezuelan people – who are suffering increasingly from the tragic everyday consequences of chavismo – realize that Leopoldo is exactly what they need to pull their country out of its hole.

…and ridiculously long lines to get into those grocery stores

The present state of affairs, in short, could scarcely be more striking: Venezuela has what may well be the worst government on earth right now, and López, if chosen to replace Maduro, would, upon his installation, immediately become one of the world’s most thoughtful, ethical, and skillful heads of government. Every day that he continues to languish in prison is a lost day for the Venezuelan people, who have waited long enough for rescue. Let’s hope they’re able to finally spring him from the joint – and turn the grim winter of Venezuela’s discontent into a Venezuelan spring.

Posted on March 31, 2016April 2, 2016 by usefulstooges 5

Natalie Morales, foe of Tinseltown stooges

Natalie Morales is a 31-year-old Cuban-American actress, writer, and filmmaker. Born in the Miami suburb of Kendall, she’s appeared in such movies as Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and in such TV series as CSI Miami, Girls, and Parks and Recreation. She’s obviously an attractive young woman and a gifted actress. But recently she showed that she’s also no dummy. In an absolutely terrific and powerfully written essay, she provided a definitive response to the useful stoogery that has spiked among bien pensant Americans in the face of the new rapprochement between Washington and Havana. It’s such a splendid and authentically felt piece of writing that the best tribute we can pay to it is to quote from it at length and to bow before its intelligent, gutsy, and forthright author.

In the piece, entitled “Please Stop Saying You Want to Go to Cuba Before It’s Ruined,” Morales recalled that a week earlier, she’d dropped off “a bag of stuff” at the house of a friend. The friend’s husband was about to visit Havana and had agreed to deliver the “stuff” to Morales’s relatives on the island prison.

What “stuff” was Morales sending to her family? Well, the list began with “two packages of Cuban coffee.” Morales acknowledged the apparent absurdity: “Yes, that’s right: I’m sending Cuban coffee to Cuba.” Why? Because “Cuban coffee is too expensive for the average Cuban to buy in Cuba. So they make do – Cubans always make do – reusing old coffee or grinding in some split peas if they have to get their fix. I, on the other hand, buy it for three bucks at Target.”

Every month or so, Morales went on to explain, she and her family in the U.S. send what we might call CARE packages to family members still living on the island. There’s money, of course. And clothes, shoes, food. Morales’s family, she wrote, “cannot survive without our help. For many Cuban-American families all over the States, this is just a regular part of life, another bill to pay each month.”

After all these decades, this appalling situation should be common knowledge among educated Americans. Yet at dinner parties and Hollywood shindigs and press interviews (or, as she puts it, “pretty much any situation where someone who considers themselves ‘cultured’ finds out I’m Cuban”), she always has to deal with the same inane gushing over the island – “as if the country itself were somehow a sexy woman or delicious food” (bingo!) – and the same declaration that: “I have to go there before it’s ruined!”

She tries to be polite to such people, “because I am aware that, oftentimes, people who think they are very thoughtful are the least thoughtful.” (Yep.) But the truth must be honored.

So depending on the situation (and how dumb I would like to make that person feel), I will say some version of this: “What exactly do you think will ruin Cuba? Running water? Available food? Freedom of speech? Uncontrolled media and Internet? Access to proper healthcare? You want to go to Cuba before the buildings get repaired? Before people can actually live off their wages? Or before the oppressive Communist regime is someday overthrown? Make sure you hurry and go observe these human beings in the time bubble that was created especially for you so that you could post a #nofilter photo of it on Instagram.”

In her piece, Morales acknowledged that “part of me gets it.” After all,

I appreciate good art direction just as much as anyone else, and I see that Cuba looks like a beautifully destroyed photo op. But it’s not your photo op. The old cars are not kitschy; they are not a choice. It’s all they have. The old buildings are not preserved; their balconies are falling and killing people all the time. The very, very young girls prostituting themselves are not doing it because they can’t get enough of old Canadian men, but because it pays more than being a doctor does.

And speaking of Cuban health care, that magnificent system that has been praised countless times in the West:

Hospitals for regular Cuban citizens are not what Michael Moore showed you in Sicko. (That was a Communist hospital for members of the Party and for tourists, and I, for one, think Moore fell for their North Korea–like propaganda show pretty hard.) There are no janitors in the hospitals because it pays more money to steal janitorial supplies and sell them on the street than it does to actually have a job there. Therefore, the halls and rooms are covered in blood, urine, and feces, and you need to bring your own sheets, blankets, pillows, towels, and mattresses when you are admitted. Doctors have to reuse needles on patients. My mom’s aunt had a stroke and the doctor’s course of treatment was to “put her feet up and let the blood rush back to her head.” That was it. And this is in Havana, the big city. I can’t be sure, but I’d imagine things there are a lot better than they are in more remote parts of the country.

Morales concluded her piece by encouraging readers to visit Cuba if that’s what they want to do. But, she added:

Be aware of what’s going on there. Try, if you can, to stay in people’s homes—casas particulares—instead of hotels. They’ll take much better care of you, the food will be much better, and you’ll be putting a little less money into Castro’s tourism pocket. When you go, ask the people to tell you what’s really going on…not the version they’re supposed to tell you. Things are changing in Cuba, and maybe instead of seeing it before the change, you can actually be a part of the change for the better. Also, for God’s sake, please don’t wear a fucking Che t-shirt.

Brava.

Posted on March 30, 2016March 27, 2016 by usefulstooges 3

Chris Cuomo: not exactly a descamisado

During the next couple of days, in the wake of President Obama’s highly touted sojourn in Cuba, we’re going to make a brief return visit to that long-suffering island – and to the useful stoogery of those in the West who now dread the prospect of a Cuban populace living in freedom and prosperity. Or who, at the very least, in the name of some perverse concept of sensitivity, subtlety, and/or solidarity, refuse to explicitly acknowledge the black-and-white distinction between liberty and tyranny.

Take CNN reporter Chris Cuomo. He’s the son of late New York governor Mario Cuomo and the brother of the Empire State’s current honcho, Andrew Cuomo. On March 21, Cuomo (the reporter) appeared briefly on a CNN morning program, New Day. He was not in the TV studio but out in the Havana sunshine, covering the presidential visit. Asked by the in-studio hosts about the shirt he was wearing, Cuomo announced, with palpable delight, if not outright pride, that it was a Cuban guayabera, presented to his father many years ago by Fidel Castro.

What Cuomo then went on to say was rather puzzling. Having explained the shirt’s provenance – which was obviously the whole point of wearing it – Cuomo hastened to deny that the garment meant anything, either to himself or his father, “because it came from Fidel Castro necessarily.” No, he insisted, it was important “because it marked conversations going on decades ago that were the same as those today.”

Huh? Cuomo explained, or pretended to:

The concern was the freedom of the people. What is the point of this communist regime if it is not to truly make everyone equal — not at the lowest level; not by demoralizing everyone; but lifting everyone up? My father, generations of politicians, have been fighting this. So, I wear this shirt as a reminder of that, and of my pop.

(FILES) In this 04 September1999 file photo, Cuban President Fidel Castro discusses his request to the president of the International Olympic Committee in Havana for an investigation into the treatment of certain Cuban atheletes. Castro said the communist nation is not afraid of dialogue with the United States -- and not interested in continued confrontation with its powerful neighbor. The comments came as a group of US lawmakers visited Cuba this weekend to try to end nearly half a century of mutual distrust and amid reports that President Barack Obama was planning to ease economic sanctions on the island, including travel restrictions on Cuban-Americans. "We're not afraid to talk with the United States. We also don't need confrontation to exist, like some fools like to think," Castro, 82, said in an article on the Cubadebate website on April 5, 2009. AFP PHOTO/ADALBERTO ROQUE /FILES (Photo credit should read ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images) Original Filename: Was672139.jpg — Fidel Castro

What exactly was Cuomo trying to say there? He certainly wasn’t serving up a categorical condemnation of Communism. Such a condemnation would have been easy to put into clear, unmistakable words. No, what Cuomo was giving us was something that came off as incredibly murky. On the one hand, he was affirming the importance of freedom and equality. On the other hand, it sure sounded as if he was suggesting that Communism, when properly implemented, might actually have the capacity to provide freedom, engineer equality, boost morale, and lift everyone up.

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo

We may be reading him wrong. But if we are, it’s his fault – because he seemed to be deliberately out to obfuscate. Perhaps the fairest thing to say is that he was loath to denounce Communism unreservedly – but, at the same time, quite understandably disinclined to praise it too full-throatedly.

It seems fair, in any event, to say this: if he did mean to put down Communism, doing so while wearing a shirt presented to his dad by a Communist dictator sent exactly the wrong signal.

We’d have loved to see him douse the camisa in gasoline and set fire to it: that would have made the right point and done it beautifully. But of course who would ever expect any member of the mainstream U.S. news media to do anything so gauche?

Posted on March 29, 2016March 28, 2016 by usefulstooges 1

It’s the totalitarianism, stupid

The New York Times hasn’t always been a totally loyal participant in the struggle against totalitarianism – note that our poster boy for useful stoogery is the Times‘s own shameless apologist for Stalinism, Walter Duranty – but now and then it comes through. It certainly did so on March 26, when it ran a splendid op-ed, entitled “Please Cancel Your Vacation to North Korea,” by Marie Myung-ok Lee.

otto-warmbier-north-korea-detainee — Otto Warmbier

Lee, who teaches writing at Columbia University, began by referring to the case of Otto Warmbier, which we’ve already discussed here. Warmbier, it will be remembered, is the American college student whose ill-advised New Year’s vacation in Pyongyang turned into a nightmare after he was caught on closed-circuit camera taking a propaganda sign off of a wall in the hotel where he was staying. This innocent attempt to snag a souvenir resulted in a 15-year sentence at hard labor in a North Korean prison.

“In photographs from the trial,” writes Lee, Warmbier “seemed utterly shocked that he was being prosecuted.” Lee adds: “I was not shocked.”

The reason? Lee’s parents fled North Korea in their teens and settled in America. Lee knows how brutal the Kim regime is. After leaving the Hermit Kingdom, Lee’s father “tried several times to return to visit his homeland, including with a medical group bringing in supplies.” He was denied entry every time. Lee, however, was able to visit in 2009 as part of a group of teachers and students. She was also able to take her mother on the trip.

“Our group,” writes Lee,

was briefed several times about the things we could and couldn’t do. We were not allowed to bring Bibles, satellite phones, cameras with telephoto lenses, notebooks, pornography. We were told to expect that our group would probably be spied on and to not bad-mouth any of the regime’s leaders, past or present, even in private.

On arriving in North Korea, as Lee puts it, “you lose control.” They take your passport. They control your movements. They select your meals. They decide whom you get to meet. And they house you in a Pyongyang hotel that’s located on an island by itself, separated by water from the rest of the city. Of course there’s no possibility of making a phone call to the family back home or sending them an e-mail.

Kim-Jong-un-Secret-Life_HD_768x432-16x9 — Kim Jung-un

The reality of North Korean tyranny is no secret in the rest of the world. But for many Americans, tyranny is simply not a reality. They can’t process the idea. Living all your life in freedom can make it difficult to realize what it really means to live without freedom. As Lee writes, “reports of ‘drunken high jinks’” on the part of Americans visiting Kim’s realm “are becoming more common.” As we’ve noted previously on this website, the travel agency Warmbier used, Young Pioneer Tours, encourages a frivolous attitude toward totalitarianism.

Lee warns fervently against such attitudes. She recalls that during her North Korean visit, a tour bus she was riding on “stopped in the middle of the countryside” and she “noticed a bicycle leaning forlornly against a tree and felt that would make a compelling photo.” But before she could take a picture, “the bus was stormed by soldiers.” Another tourist, it emerged, had already snapped a photo – which was a particularly serious offense, because, unbeknownst to the passengers, they were in the middle of a military installation. The offender, a fellow student of Lee’s, was removed from the bus. A Warmbier-like situation was averted – but only because the student was a citizen of China, North Korea’s only ally.

Posted on March 28, 2016March 27, 2016 by usefulstooges 1

Romanticizing Che at The Guardian

During the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara was Castro’s military advisor and a troop leader; after Castro’s victory, Guevara was appointed Cuba’s Minister of Economics (in which capacity he quickly ran the value of the Cuban peso into the ground). He was also put in charge of La Cabaña Fortress prison, which has been described as the Communist Cuba’s equivalent of Stalin’s notorious Lubyanka Prison. At the same time, he acted as Fidel’s chief executioner, ordering – at a bare minimum – several hundred firing-squad executions of opponents and potential opponents of the regime. (The real number is probably in the five figures.) Given Cuba’s small population, this was equivalent to liquidating millions of Americans. The point of all this bloodletting was not just to exterminate the victims but to terrorize everyone else – to make it clear to all of Cuba that Castro & co. meant business and were not to be trifled with.

Why are we revisiting all this half-century-old history? Because the Western media still write about Che as if he were a romantic hero, a virtuous figure, a symbol of humanity and brotherhood. One of the latest examples: a March 18 profile by the Guardian‘s Jonathan Watts of Guevara’s son Camilo. The angle of the piece: Guevara junior was reacting with “wary optimism” to President Obama’s planned March 20 Cuba visit, and, more broadly, to the improving relations between Cuba and the U.S.

Watts referred to the U.S. as “the world’s capitalist powerhouse” and to Che as “one of the Cuban revolution’s most famous figures.” Camilo, wrote Watts, “is dedicated to protecting Che’s legacy and ensuring that his father’s words – and not just his famous portrait – are remembered around the world.” He noted that Camilo was trying to be philosophical: “Maybe we can influence the US in a positive way.” But his main hope was that “our principles, our ideals, our national project” would not be poisoned by increased contact with the U.S.

chefans — The Che cult, still alive and well on the island prison

That Camilo holds such views is no surprise. Our concern is with Watts. With the exception of a brief paragraph acknowledging Cuba’s mistreatment of political prisoners, its restrictions on Internet access, and its lack of basic freedoms, Watts presented Cuba throughout – its leaders, its political system, its revolution, and its longstanding conflict with the U.S. – exclusively through Camilo’ eyes. Yes, it’s one thing for a journalist to give a fair account of an interviewee’s perspective; it’s another thing to serve up pure propaganda without providing anything remotely resembling a reality check. Indeed, Watts’s implication throughout the article was that Camilo’s view of things was, quite simply, factual.

Want facts? Here are a couple: Cuba is a Communist dictatorship; since the Castro revolution, over a million of its people have fled to the United States to live in freedom. But you wouldn’t know this from reading Watts. How did he describe today’s Cuba vis-a-vis the U.S.? As “a small country that has resisted its superpower neighbour for more than half a century.” And no, he wasn’t quoting or paraphrasing Camilo here, or trying to frame the situation as Camilo sees it. No; this was pure Watts, acting in his capacity as a supposedly objective reporter.

Watts’s chat with Camilo took place at a place called the Che Guevara Study Centre. In addition to interviewing the tyrant’s son, Watts explored the Study Centre’s archive. Of all the items he looked at, the one he decided to highlight in the article was “a short goodbye message that Che wrote to his children in the knowledge that he could soon die.”

In the message Che wrote: “Above all be sensitive, in the deepest areas of yourselves, to any injustice committed against whoever it may be anywhere in the world.” Watts quoted this without comment – choosing not to point out the outrageous irony that this plea for sensitivity to injustice was composed by a man who executed hundreds of political opponents in cold blood.

Watts’s piece ended with these sentences: “There is no chance he [Obama] will visit the Che Guevara Study Centre for a lesson in revolution. For Guevara that is a shame: ‘If Obama comes, he might learn something.’” For a journalist to close a piece like this with a quote like that is tantamount to handing over his article to the guy he’s writing about. It’s pretty disgraceful – but, then again, hardly an unprecedented move for The Guardian.

Posted on March 25, 2016March 19, 2016 by usefulstooges 3

George Blake, KGB

George Blake is 93, a former MI6 agent and convicted KGB mole now living in Russia. Last year his story was told in a BBC documentary, George Blake: Masterspy of Moscow, by George Carey. Yesterday we examined Blake’s colorful early years and his conversion to Communism, an ideology that he regarded as “an attempt to create the kingdom of God in this world.” Taken custody by the North Koreans after the outbreak of the Korean War, Blake was “freed” after three years in their custody and returned along with other captured Brits to the U.K., where he was hailed by the Fleet Street press – and by his colleagues in MI6 – as a hero.

A list of six ìdangerous agentsî of British intelligence in a file kept by the Stasi, the feared East German secret police. Credit: George Carey *** MUST CREDIT *** ONE TIME USE ONLY *** — A list Carey found in the files of the Stasi, the East German secret police, listing six MI6 agent exposed by Blake

But Blake was no hero – not for the West, anyway. He was now a counterspy. Based in London, and later in Berlin and Lebanon, Blake proved to be a highly reliable Soviet asset, photographing classified British and American documents that crossed his desk and handing them over to KGB contacts on a regular basis. This went on for several years, and ended only after a Polish intelligence officer – who was himself a double agent, working for the Brits – turned over information to MI6 showing what Blake was up to.

Summoned to London, Blake was interrogated for two days, during which he repeatedly denied being a KGB mole. On the morning of the third day, however, when his questioners suggested that he’d switched sides as a result of torture or blackmail while in Korea, he insisted defiantly that he’d never had any such motive: he’d offered his services to the KGB, he said, “of my own free will.”

Hans Mohring: Hans Mˆhring, an official on the GDR state planning commission and an agent for MI6, spent 17 years in a Stasi prison after he was betrayed by George Blake. Credit: George Carey *** MUST CREDIT *** ONE TIME USE ONLY *** — Hans Möhring spent 17 years in a Stasi prison for spying for Britain after being betrayed by Blake

His case made headlines. Sentenced to 42 years in prison, he was incarcerated at Wormwood Scrubs in London. In 1966, with the help of friends on both the inside and outside, he escaped, and managed to make his way to Russia, where the KGB were “good to him.” “Showered with medals,” he was given a nice apartment in central Moscow and a prestigious job in a think tank. He’d left behind a wife and children in Britain, but he found a new wife in the USSR and had more children.

blakephilby — Blake with fellow traitor Kim Philby

“George has never had any regrets,” a cousin of his said on the BBC documentary. This, even though the information he supplied to the KGB resulted in the arrest of about 100 Soviet officials who were secretly working for the West. Six MI6 agents he fingered for the KGB “were imprisoned for up to 17 years inside East Germany, serving time in jails notorious for torture and psychological intimidation of inmates,” reported the Telegraph. One is now believed to have been taken to Moscow and executed.”

Programme Name: Storyville - TX: n/a - Episode: George Blake: Storyville (No. n/a) - Picture Shows: at his home outside Moscow George Blake - (C) George Carey - Photographer: George Carey — Blake today, at his home near Moscow

“I’m still a Communist,” Blake said in the late 1980s. Not long afterwards, the USSR collapsed. One wonders whether he was surprised to find out just how few of his fellow Soviet residents actually believed in the ideology that was their government’s excuse for controlling their lives.

georgeCarey — George Carey, documentary maker

The irony is rich: the Iron Curtain came down, and Russia and its satellites joined the family of nations, their people finally able to speak their minds, run their own lives, travel the world. But Blake, a convicted spy, had no choice but to stay in Russia, a living relic of another era. To avoid re-imprisonment in Britain, he lived in Russia, in a prison of his own making. Anecdotal evidence suggests that he’s less than delighted by this fate; according to an old friend, Blake, somehow unable to grasp that his past couldn’t be “forgiven and forgotten” as easily as he would like, has actually looked into the possibility of returning to the Netherlands.

And so he remains in Russia, a nonagenarian who’d “believed that his fate was to do God’s work on earth” – but whose destiny, it turned out, was to spend his old age as a living reminder of his own dead, twisted dream, a dream, as Carey’s documentary pointed out, “for which he’d done so much damage to Britain.”

Posted on March 24, 2016March 17, 2016 by usefulstooges 2

“The spy who got away”

George Blake on returning from his internment in North Korea

He’s been called “the most damaging British traitor of the Cold War,” “the spy who got away.” His name is George Blake, and he’s 93 years old. Today he’s a doddering, harmless-looking old coot living in Russia. Half a century ago, however, he was a very slick character indeed who, to quote an interviewee in a recent BBC documentary, was “responsible for getting people killed.”

The documentary, entitled George Blake: Masterspy of Moscow, aired on the BBC last year. Made by filmmaker George Carey (not to be confused with the former Archbishop of Canterbury of the same name), it recounted Blake’s exceedingly curious and colorful early years: born in Rotterdam in 1922 with the last name of Behar, he grew up in the odd position of being unable to communicate with his own father, an Egyptian Jew, hard-working businessman, and British subject who, though he lived in the same house as his son, spoke English and French but not Dutch, which at the time was the only language the son spoke.

After the father died, in 1936, leaving the family in financial difficulties, it somehow came to the attention of his widow and children that he had a rich sister in Cairo who lived in a palace, no less. George, then in his early teens, came into contact with his aunt and presently relocated to Cairo, where he moved into the palace, enrolled at the English School, and learned both French and English. (One presumes he must have picked up at least some Arabic, although there is no mention of this in the documentary.)

The German ultimatum ordering the Dutch commander of Rotterdam to cease fire was delivered to him at 10:30 a.m. on May 14, 1940. At 1:22 p.m., German bombers set the whole inner city of Rotterdam ablaze, killing 30,000 of its inhabitants. (OWI) NARA FILE #: 208-PR-10L-3 WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 1334 — Rotterdam after the Nazi bombing in May 1940

He was visiting his family in The Hague when World War II broke out, and a year later was in Rotterdam for the Nazi air raids of May 14, 1940. Returning to The Hague to discover that his mother and sisters had fled for Britain, George joined the Dutch Resistance, found his way (a rather spectacular feat) to the U.K. via Spain in 1942, and, after arriving in London, managed to parlay his remarkable personal story into a job with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known as MI6, which sent him to Cambridge to learn Russian.

Cambridge-ClareCollegeAndKingsChapel — Cambridge University

It was there, in a class taught by a professor who inspired in him “a romantic admiration for everything Russian,” that Blake, according to the documentary, first began to sympathize with Communism. (Blake himself has testified otherwise: when he’d first moved to Cairo, he’d met one of his cousins, Henri Courel, a Communist whose views, he said years later, “had a great influence on me.”)

Sent to Seoul by MI6 in 1948, Blake was apprehended by the Communists after the Korean War broke out. They could’ve executed him, but instead he allowed himself to be turned – to accept the role of a double agent, spying on the British for the North Koreans’ Soviet masters. By this point, he was not a tough sell: “I felt I was on the wrong side…that it would be better for humanity if the Communist system prevailed, that it would put an end to war.” Indeed, Blake, who had once aspired to be a pastor, would later say that he “viewed Communism as an attempt to create the kingdom of God in this world.”

What happened next? Tune in tomorrow.

Posted on March 23, 2016March 17, 2016 by usefulstooges 1

YPT: one-stop propaganda for tyrants

Yesterday we started looking at Young Pioneer Tours, a firm that conducts tours to North Korea – and one of whose recent clients, an American college student named Otto Warmbier, was sentenced on March 16 to 15 years at hard labor for stealing a propaganda banner from his hotel in Pyongyang.

You might think an American tourist in North Korea would know better than to commit even so minor an offense as stealing a propaganda banner from a hotel wall. After all, doesn’t everybody in the West know how monstrous the Kim regime is? The answer to this is that when you combine the ignorance about the world (and especially about Communism) that is common among young Westerners nowadays with the wall-to-wall B.S. on YPT’s website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, and Instagram account, all of which repeatedly insist that North Korea is a safe, fun country that loves tourists, it’s not hard to believe that Warmbier thought he was doing something innocuous.

Certainly YPT didn’t rush to take responsibility for Warmbier’s action. How exactly, you ask, did YPT respond to his sentencing? With the following statement, posted online by YPT representative Rowan Beard:

Young Pioneer Tours are fully aware of the recent sentencing of Otto Warmbier that was announced by KCNA on Wednesday the 16th March 2016. This should be viewed in similar context of previous cases of Americans being sentenced in the DPRK. We are continuing to work closely with relevant authorities to ensure a speedy and satisfactory outcome for Mr Warmbier. Thus for obvious reasons we cannot currently make any comments related to what is an ongoing case.

Pretty lame. That awkward sentence about how Warmbier’s case “should be viewed in similar context of previous cases,” etc., comes off as a feeble attempt to absolve YPT of any responsibility. Otherwise, Beard’s statement isn’t really saying anything. One might have expected that a company with a greater sense of responsibility and/or more of a sense of shame at its relationship with such a regime would, say, decide to call off all tours to North Korea until Warmbier is released. But YPT, of course, made no such decision.

gareth — Gareth Johnson, British founder of YPT, who on the firm’s website declares his “love for the people and culture of the DPRK”

James Kirkup of the Telegraph had a few choice things to say about YPT’s shameful stoogery. Noting that the firm’s site “makes North Korea [look] like just another delightful tourist destination,” with its “numerous photographs of young tourists having a jolly time around North Korea, marvelling at various monuments to the regime and giving (presumably ironic) salutes in the style of its soldiers,” Kirkup reminded readers that the people of North Korea “have seen every basic freedom and dignity stripped from them by the world’s worst and most oppressive regime….When it comes to human rights abuses, North Korea isn’t so much in a different league as a different planet.” Precisely.

shanehoran — YPT’s Shane Horan, of Ireland: “I’m passionate about travel to so called ‘rogue nations’ and changing people’s often incorrect perceptions of them”

Kirkup quoted a UN commission’s 2014 determination that “abuses in North Korea were without parallel in the contemporary world,” with prison camps housing some 200,000 regime opponents who experience “torture and abuse, starvation rations, and forced labor.” On one occasion, prison officials cooked an inmate’s baby and fed it to their dogs. North Korea, Kirkup concluded, isn’t a country; “it’s a prison camp and a torture chamber. Taking a tourist trip there means spectating on the murder and abuse of your fellow human beings, and putting hard currency into the hands of the people responsible for those crimes.”

Yep. But even in the midst of the Warmbier crisis, YPT has clung tenaciously to the line that North Korea isn’t as bad as you think. Just the other day, YPT retweeted an Al Jazeera video about three or four fake stories that have circulated recently about North Korea – the point obviously being to support the premise that the evils of Kim’s regime have been exaggerated.

By the way, YPT also conducts tours of other tyrant-run countries, including China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and Turkmenistan, and it hasn’t stopped whitewashing those regimes, either. On March 10, YPT posted the following statement on its Facebook page: “A lot has already been said about Turkmenistan’s repressive nature, and cult of personality surrounding the leader. There’s more to the country than this.” On February 25, YPT posted on its blog an interview with an 86-year-old Red Army veteran that was pure propaganda, whitewashing Mao’s atrocities and attributing China’s recent economic success to Communism.

Despicable. How do these stooges find one another? And, having found one another and gone into such a disgusting business, how do they live with themselves?

Posted on March 22, 2016March 21, 2016 by usefulstooges 1

North Korea, land of fun

On March 16, North Korea’s highest court sentenced a 21-year-old American tourist, University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier of Wyoming, Ohio, to 15 years at hard labor. His crime? Stealing a propaganda banner from his hotel in Pyongyang. The U.S. State Department called the sentence “unduly harsh”; the White House called it politically motivated. Warmbier had come to the Hermit Kingdom for a five-day New Year’s Day group tour, and when he was at the Pyongyang airport about to leave the country, he was taken into custody. Charged with subversion, he was found guilty at a trial that lasted less than an hour. The prosecution demanded a life sentence, but Warmbier’s lawyer managed to bring the punishment down to 15 years. Reporting on the conviction, the North Korean news agency called Warmbier’s offense “serious” and described it as “a bid to impair the unity” of the North Korean people. In a public statement, Warmbier insisted he had been “used and manipulated…lured by the United States administration to commit a crime in this country.”

YPL logo

How did Warmbier find his way into North Korea in the first place? He signed up for a tour package with a firm called Young Pioneer Tours (YPT), which arranges vacations for Westerners who want to visit Kim Jong-un’s dictatorship. What kind of outfit is YPT? We checked out its website. Featuring a cutesy-wootsie logo and written in a colloquial English plainly addressed to cool young backpacker types, it explains that the firm “started from humble beginnings as a group of expats living in China brought together by our love of being on the road.” The company’s founders “have tweaked and experimented with our tours to best fulfil what you guys out there are looking for, making a lot of new friends and having some interesting and bizarre experiences along the way.”

nkhotel — A closed-circuit camera image of Warmbier stealing the propaganda banner

Well, Warmbier has certainly had an interesting and bizarre experience, though we’re sure this isn’t exactly what the stooges at YPT are talking about.

The YPT folks go on to brag about themselves. They have a “great reputation for awfully fun guides who bring out the travel bug in people while ensuring that everything runs smoothly.” They nurse a noble belief in “going out of your way to help others on the road, share experiences and make friends wherever you can,” and say that “this attitude…has opened doors to us that can’t be opened in other ways.”

They also go out of their way to reassure us that North Korea isn’t anywhere near as bad as it’s cracked up to be. “How safe is it? Extremely safe! Despite what you may hear, North Korea is probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit. Tourism is very welcomed in North Korea, thus tourists are cherished and well taken care of. We have never felt suspicious or threatened at any time.” The last time we looked, this text hadn’t been removed from the YPT website, despite what happened to Warmbier.

To be sure, the YPT site warns against “having a debate with the guides.” Not because you might end up spending the rest of your life in prison at hard labor, but because “their beliefs are important to them” and should be respected. “Everyone has read or seen lots on North Korea,” the YPT sages tell us; “this is your opportunity to listen to the other side. If you’re quiet and listen you’ll be surprised just how much you can learn.”

Yes, shut up and listen to the propaganda. More about these appalling idiots tomorrow.

Posted on March 21, 2016March 17, 2016 by usefulstooges 4

Cherie’s turn

Tony Blair will warn of the risks to Britain of falling to Europe's margins. — Tony Blair

Thanks to author Tom Bower, whose new book, Broken Promises, is packed with devastating revelations about the post-political career of Tony Blair, we now have a rich, full portrait of a man who turned his generation’s most successful career in British politics into a formula for a massive money grab. We’ve spent the last week examining some of the more egregious examples of Blair’s stoogery.

But let’s not forget that behind every avaricious man is an equally money-grubbing woman. Well, sometimes, anyway. So it’s appropriate that one of the Daily Mail‘s illuminating excerpts from Bower’s book is devoted to Cherie Blair’s international cash-collecting activities. Bower notes that when first accused of having dealings with the government of Qatar, Blair denied it, because he naturally didn’t want to be tied in anyone’s mind to “a corrupt dictatorship that supported extremist Muslim groups, suppressed freedom of the Press and was accused of offering bribes to win the FIFA football World Cup in 2022.”

It’s true. Strictly speaking, as far as Bower has been able to determine, Tony Blair has had no dealings with Qatar. But his wife did. Since his retirement, their careers have been in remarkable parallel. When he left No. 10, she quit her barrister job, too; while he founded two charities, she started two charities of her own, the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and the Africa Justice Foundation. He established Tony Blair Associates; she created Omnia Strategy, through which she worked as a “consultant” to governments in the Middle East and Africa.

In her capacity as doyenne of Omnia, Cherie Blair collected a handsome sum from the wife of a Qatari sheik who wished to meet with Hillary Clinton, who at the time was the U.S. Secretary of State. After Cherie had pummeled Clinton with 19 e-mails, the former First Lady agreed to meet with Cherie’s Qatari client. Ka-ching! Cherie also made money off of the Albanian government. And Rwanda, too. In the case of Rwanda, the Blairs operated as an efficient tag team. Bower tells this charming anecdote about it:

Cherie had been due to meet the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, who was widely accused of being a mass murderer, to discuss the creation of a justice ministry in his impoverished country.

Paul Kagame

But she didn’t show up to their planned dinner in London. Instead she explained she had an “emergency.” “I can’t come,” she said, “but Tony says he’d happily join you.”

At the dinner, Blair set out his stall. “You are a man with a vision, a leader I’ve always admired,” he told Kagame. “Now you need advisers to show you how to run a government, and I’m your man.”

Kagame agreed to welcome Blair’s team. In return, he was also introduced to the international circuit of leaders’ conferences across America and in Davos, where Blair presented him as Africa’s “Mr Clean.”

No one mentioned the continuing massacre of Hutus in the neighbouring Congo by militia dispatched by Kagame….

Blair’s friend won the Rwanda election in 2010 – but the beheaded corpses of leaders of the small opposition party were found strewn about the countryside.

Blair ignored all this and hailed his protégé’s success.

Nor was Cherie out of the picture. Last year, when General Karenzi Karake, the head of Rwanda’s spy service, set foot on British soil, he was arrested on an international war-crimes warrant issued in Spain. Whom did he hire to fight extradition? Why, none other than Cherie, natch. With a straight face, she walked into a courtroom and described the repellent war criminal as a “hero.” Released on bail, he was let go on a legal technicality, whereupon he quickly flew back to Rwanda, and safety.

Cherie had earned her pay.

In a sentence that is a masterpiece of understatement, Bower sums up the former PM’s family business: “Today, with his tangled web of charity and private interests, Blair remains at the centre of a bewildering number of enterprises.” Yet amid all this bewilderment, there’s one fact that’s beyond doubt: almost a decade after Blair left office, he and his wife are truly rich. Bower reports that they’ve “spent more than £25 million on UK property alone.” Yet, like the Clintons, “Blair cannot resist seeking new deals.” More often than not, those deals involve ignominious Third World despots and hangers-on who amass fortunes on the backs of oppressed multitudes. Blair, who once promised to rid the planet of such leeches, is now getting his big, juicy cut of their purloined pies. Somewhere, Churchill is not smiling.

Posted on March 18, 2016March 12, 2016 by usefulstooges 3

Useful Stooges