Communist

Political Folk Music in America from Its Origins to Bob Dylan

by Lawrence J. Epstein

Red Conspirator

J. Peters and the American Communist Underground

Left-wing groups convened the “One Nation Working Together” rally on the National Mall on Saturday, October 2, hoping to counter Glenn Beck’s well-attended “Restoring Honor” gathering in August.  They also wanted to energize their base before the November elections, hoping to counter Tea Party enthusiasm.

The BBC World Service recently broadcast a two-part investigative documentary, hosted by John Sweeney, on the useful idiot, a concept that Lenin didn’t invent so much as expropriate to denote the semi-witting accomplices of Western imperialism.

Kim Jong Il is reportedly back in Pyongyang after concluding an unofficial, semi-secret trip to China last week. After spending a couple of days in the northern Chinese industrial city of Dalian, where he reportedly drove around in a $400,000 Maybach limousine and stayed at a 5-star hotel, he traveled to Beijing to party with his fellow travelers on the Communist road.  State-run television showed the diminutive Dear Leader, resplendent as always in olive green zipper jacket and matching pants, kissing, hugging and toasting (Kim Jong Il is reported to favor expensive Bordeaux wine) Chinese President Hu, but commentators also noted that Kim appeared to have lost weight and a substantial portion of his infamous pompadour hair style.

Reuters has an interesting story up on Robert Mugabe's birthday celebration, hosted by the new soft imperialists, communist China. Last year, the Zimbabwean dictator's 85th birthday was globally mocked as an embarrassing Marie Antoinette moment (one of many, really), as Mugabe spent a huge sum on a lavish party while his once prosperous population starved. Seems he learned his lesson this year, letting China foot the bill.

It wouldn't be the first time. China was instrumental in Mugabe's rise to power, supplying his ZANU forces with resources, advisors, and weapons during the Rhodesian Bush War. When Mugabe --after having successfully adopted Mao's population centric insurgency strategy-- came to power, he made the mistake of adopting Mao's approach to economics as well.

One of the few moments of relief during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the tour de force performance of "Baghdad Bob" - AKA Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf -- the Iraqi Minister of Information who provided ludicrous statements about the status of Saddam Hussein's regime (always praise, he told us) and the progress of the American and coalition forces (who he claimed were committing suicide en masse at the city gates!).

Well, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has just deployed their own version of this guy.  During the Foreign Ministry's February 11 daily press briefing, spokesperson Ma Zhaoxu was asked about a court decision denying the intermediate appeal of Chinese literary critic Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison on Christmas Day for his role in writing and circulating a petition for democratic reform in China.  His response: "There are no dissidents in China."  The Foreign Ministry then handed out stuffed tigers to all the journalists in attendance, wishing them all a Happy Lunar New Year.

On Christmas Day 2009, the Chinese regime sentenced writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for "incitement to subvert state power."  His crime was co-authoring and circulating on-line a manifesto for democratic change in China called Charter 08, an intentional homage to the Czech dissident movement's Charter 77.  Charter 08 got Mr. Liu into trouble because it challenged the legitimacy of one-party rule by the Chinese Communist Party.