Reds (Part Two)

(Part one is here.)

A Fuzzy Pink Jackboot

Here's another book I think I'm fortunate to own: Winter in Moscow, by Malcolm Muggeridge. I say fortunate because Like Steven Vincent's Red Zone, the book is increasingly difficult to find - but they share other commonalities. Both tell the story of one man standing against the accepted narrative to reveal the true brutality of reality that others would prefer remain hidden - even though most would rather not see it anyway.

Let's draw a line from one to the other...

As to the unquestionably repressive nature of the regime, Mrs Eardley-Wheatsheaf thought that visitors from more civilized countries ought to keep their heads and to see things in proportion. It was true, as she explained at many subsequent lectures, pursing her lips tightly, perhaps a little venomously, that Soviet officials sometimes disappeared (she accentuated the word "disappeared" to give it its full significance); and naturally she deplored such goings-on, just as she deplored the press censorship and the suppression of all opposition opinion. A the same time she had to admit that, given the peculiar conditions prevailing in Russia, administrative disappearances carried with them certain advantages which she for one was not going to overlook.
- Malcolm Muggeridge, Winter in Moscow, 1934

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever.
- George Orwell 1984 (1948)

We might reasonably have expected that with the demise of the U.S.S.R. the Useful Idiots would have shut down their operations, even if they could not bring themselves to actually apologize for having shilled for the most monstrous tyrannies in human history. Not a bit of it.
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With the centenary of Lenin’s revolution looming on the far horizon, and after all the horrors of our age—mountains of corpses, oceans of lies—these fools are still with us. Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.
- John Derbyshire, May, 2000

Let’s go back to the Iraq before we invaded, there was a good education and health care system, food for everyone. That system didn’t belong to Saddam it belonged to the Iraqi, it belonged to years of creating what a civilization needed. If your parents didn’t send you to school they could be put in jail.
- Code Pink founder Jodie Evans - August, 2006

An amazing statement, given that a mere three years previously even the "liberal media" acknowledged the nature of the free education provided in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Time Magazine, July 2003:

Reared on paeans to Saddam Hussein and forced to chant "Long live Saddam" whenever a teacher strode into the room, Iraq's kids will never learn quite the same way again. The Coalition Provisional Authority governing Iraq has ordered that the country's textbooks be stripped of pro-Saddam propaganda. Iraqi Education Ministry officials can't rewrite everything before school starts in September, but they're fixing what they can. Some items slated for pruning:
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--Questions like this, from a second-grade textbook: "Who leads our great revolution?" Answer: "The person we are ready to sacrifice our lives for: Saddam Hussein, may God protect Him."
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--Geography books that say, "Before the Baath Revolution landowners were dictators controlling the land and the people, and that's why we produced so little. After the revolution, everything went perfectly."
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--Maps depicting Kuwait as a territory of Iraq.

''We had to include him in every lesson plan or we'd be in trouble with the Baath Party,'' said Nada alJalili, an elementaryschool teacher at the Tigris School for Girls in Baghdad. ''When we taught about bacteria in biology class, we explained that Saddam brought antibacterial soap and drugs into Iraq. Whenever his name was mentioned, it had be followed with 'God protect him and keep him our president.' ''

Whenever an adult entered the classroom, the students would stand up and recite in unison, ''Long live the leader Saddam Hussein.'' Then they would sit down while reciting, ''Long live the heroic Baath Party.''
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In music classes, they learned new lyrics for traditional melodies. The beginning of one popular children's song was changed from ''The daughter of the merchant has almond eyes'' to ''We are the Baathists. We have heavy weapons.''

During a flag-raising ceremony every Thursday morning, students would chant ''Saddam Hussein!'', ''One Arab nation with an eternal message!'' and ''Unity! Freedom! Socialism!'' Then a teacher or an older student would fire a round of blanks from an AK-47 rifle.

Who could make such a claim? The same person who the year previously said this...

Were we as anti-war activists in the US really resisting? And if not, what would have to change?
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We must begin by really standing with the Iraqi people and defending their right to resist. I can remain myself against all forms of violence, and yet I cannot judge what someone has to do when pushed to the wall to protect all they love.

These days Jodie Evans has taken a break from defending the boot eternally smashing the human face and encouraging terrorists to slaughter women and children and has turned her energies to fundraising for Barak Obama (an effort at which she has enjoyed significant success). But as he explained in his book, in 2003 Steven Vincent met her at a party in Iraq.

More to follow...