Category: AMI Newswire

Eighty years ago today the camera’s flashed as the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain stepped out of 10 Downing Street and uttered these infamous words, “My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time…Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” It was on September 30, 1938, and those words would hang in the air, forever; they would linger like an unwanted ghost in the halls of statecraft, decade after decade. (Within eight months Chamberlain would resign and be replaced by the great man who served God, Winston Churchill.)

History depends on the actions of great men. There is no sentence in the English language more out of favor among historians than this one. Actually, there is only one worse – history depends on the actions of great men who serve God. This idea is also amplified in reverse: history’s tragedies are amplified by small men, and such a man was Neville Chamberlain.

“It is a price which enables a dictator who would willingly destroy the last vestige of democracy in Europe to claim with justice that he scored over the democracies of Europe the greatest diplomatic triumph of modern times,” The New York Times wrote disapprovingly of the policy known as appeasement. Some in the British press and public approved appeasing Hitler. Many thought the horrors of the First World War would be avoided and the only sacrifice had been the liberty and freedom of the people of Czechoslovakia. Others protested the agreement in London’s Trafalgar Square.

Many who write about the Chamberlain policy of appeasement focus on the statement and discuss its folly in light of the Second World War. In March 1939, Hitler had annexed all of Czechoslovakia, and the war the West so desperately did not want was given to them under Hitler’s terms on September 1. Chamberlain, (and to a lesser degree the then French President Daladier), became the poster-boy for foreign policy appeasement: the policy that is willing to grant concessions in order to forestall conflict. The term appeasement became a slander used by realist and conservative statesmen, academics, and journalists who understood that dictators are fed by such victories.

By 1938 Hitler had scored a pile of bloodless victories starting with the withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933 (akin to withdrawal or ignoring of U.N. or other international agreements today), the unilateral rejection of the disarmament in 1935 (similar to the research, development or sale of WMD today), the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936 (likened to spending on military modernization when other aspects of your country are in poverty), and the annexation of Austria in 1938.

We have seen this in the contemporary era with variations on appeasement with the USSR during parts of the Cold War, Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in the 1990s, and North Korea and Iran during the last administration.

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” then President George W Bush said in a speech in Jerusalem in 2008, “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Bush was alluding to Senator William E. Borah, an Idaho Republican in the 1930s who was many proponents of appeasement.

Even in Germany there were opponents of Hitler. In 1938, a small group of anti-Nazi activists had begged the West to pursue a different policy. This German anti-Nazi opposition made numerous attempts to inform the British and French governments of their plans, asking only that they stand-up to Hitler over Czechoslovakia.

By May 1938 a group of Germans within the Army, Foreign Office, and intelligence services had come to the decision that Hitler and the Nazi regime must be overthrown. This part of the German resistance was not the dissenters, protestors, student activists, or religious figures that often had great qualms against violence. This group was primarily made up of conservative Christian nationalists who differentiated between treason against the government, which they knew they were committing, versus treason against Germany and the German people. In other words, the loyalty they had to Germany justified treason against the Nazis. In an amazing memorandum, Chief of the General Staff, General Ludwig Beck, wrote in 1938, “Your military duty to obey [orders] ends where your knowledge, your conscience, and your responsibility forbids the execution of an order.” We might remember that the American revolutionaries made parallel arguments in the Declaration of Independence. There is a higher duty to God and righteousness than any manmade construct. These men, motivated by honor, duty, and obligation, created a plan to dismantle the Nazi regime by using the German army to take over the country and neutralize the SS.

We know of course the coup plot was a failure but, proud Germans continued to resist Hitler (two others by German military officers in 1943) with the more famous July 1944 Valkyrie plot.

Hitler, like modern-day tyrants, played both the belligerent and the peacemaker when it served his interests. Similar to the 1930s, today’s leaders in the West question their own systems, values, and civilization. The prospect of war was a greater horror than the prospect of evil or the protection of innocent lives. The arguments about saving lives in the short run ended up costing the lives of millions in the long run – the most colossal failures in all of human history.

The Western acceptance of the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia ensured the abject failure of the one attempt that had the greatest amount of success to rid the world of Hitler and Nazism. Had the allies stood up to Hitler, the resistance would have removed him from power. The result of this is beyond calculation, but it is not without credibility to suggest that there would have been no Second World War, no Holocaust and no Soviet enslavement of Eastern Europe.

The eightieth anniversary of appeasement writ large should cause us to reflect. There can never be accommodation with evil for it always ends in more innocent lives destroyed.

Lamont Colucci is a former diplomat with the U.S. State Department and a professor of international relations.

This piece originally ran on AMI Newswire on 30 September, 2018.

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, ‘If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,—
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;”

There was a time that every schoolboy and girl knew that poem but, those days are sadly gone. American cultural myths are an important part of American nationhood especially at a time those values are under siege.

This year marked the 200th anniversary of American patriot Paul Revere’s death. Revere was called to a different light when he passed on May 10, 1818 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Modern historians, often motivated by left-wing political ideology, seem to celebrate “myth-busting” American iconography, especially that of the Founding Fathers. Like many pop-culture movements, this phenomena swings in cycles targeting specific individuals to serve contemporary political fashion. Thomas Jefferson was a target for a long time, Abraham Lincoln goes in and out of vogue, and the most unlikely of them becomes heroized, the ultra-Federalist Alexander Hamilton (who was an enemy of the neo-Marxists for decades).

There are two primary methods by which this “myth-busting” is conducted, though the results are similar. The first is to take prevailing and contemporary mores and apply them to American historical figures with little or no attempt at explaining the context. A second, more subtle method is to attack the authenticity of the myth itself. If the actual history is different than what was outlined in the myth, the heroic nature of the person can be put into question.

This is second route is the case with the story of Paul Revere. It used to be commonplace for school children to learn the poem: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1860. It was written to unite the country on the side of the Union by illustrating how one person’s contribution can change history.

The poem depicts Revere as the sole champion, the only rider, who saw the signal in the North Church steeple and warned the colonials at Concord. Additional mythology also includes Revere yelling through the roads the famous catchphrase, “The British are coming, the British are coming.” The actual history is much different, but if anything it should enhance our admiration rather than diminish it.

The real story is an example of an early American espionage victory. The signal in the North Church was not for Revere but set up by Revere two days before in order to warn the thirty patriot horse riders Revere had selected, to warn the colonials at Lexington, and Concord the method by which the British were traveling to arrest colonial leaders and seize arms and supplies. He never made it to Concord but succeeded in warning the men of Lexington allowing them the time to prepare the militia which delayed the British in getting to Concord and losing the first major engagement of the American Revolution. Revere rode with two others, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. Revere ended the evening by being captured and interrogated by the British, though he was later released.

Thus, instead of a story of a nighttime ride of a single rider, we have an example of what planning and forethought can do to change history. Revere, a silversmith by trade, was an ardent member of the Sons of Liberty, the Freemasons (ultimately becoming Grand Master of Freemasons in Massachusetts), and was one of the “Indians” involved in the Boston Tea Party. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, Revere was part of a group with the nickname, the “Mechanics” who formed a rudimentary intelligence agency making it the first intelligence “service” in American history. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel during the Revolution and afterward became involved in politics as a Federalist.

It is important to reflect on what binds a society together. Americans must be exceptionally careful that “myth-busting” does not become deconstruction. Unlike any other nation on earth Americans cannot unify using ancestry, blood, race, religion, or ethnicity. Americans work with the double-edged sword of political creed. The sword has the one edge of positive universalism.

Anyone, regardless of ancestry, blood, race, religion, or ethnicity, can become an American. This is the one value that many on the left like to amplify. However, the sword has another sharper edge. It is the edge that defines Americans. In political philosophy, this is the belief in life, liberty, and property under the natural law emanating from God. It is expressed visually in the Greco-Roman architecture of Washington D.C. It is also grounded in American myths, based in truth, such as the steadfastness of Washington, the idealism of Jefferson, the honesty of Lincoln, and the courage and tenacity of Paul Revere.

From the University of Michigan in the United States to Tokyo, symposiums and conferences are being held around the world this month to not just commemorate but celebrate Karl Marx’s 200^th birthday.

As the last communist superpower, China has been particularly active. It hosted the World Congress on Marxism advocating for Marx’s “relevance” to the 21^st century and donated a 14-bronze statue of the philosopher which was unveiled in his hometown of Trier, Germany on May 5.

One thing was missing from celebrations – a full appreciation that more than one hundred million human beings have been murdered in the name of Marxism and communism. This monstrous genocide is the real legacy of the man whose 200th birthday is being observed this month, Karl Marx.

The youngest generations in the west, lacking in basic historical and philosophic knowledge have, at best, vague, yet often positive views of Marx and Marxism.

There have been a number of pieces written on the occasion of his 200^th birthday, but most fail to capture the enormity of his impact. If someone had been able to take a geo-political snapshot of the earth in the second half of the 20^th century, it would have appeared that most of the globe was Marxist or going that way. The USSR, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, North Korea, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Benin, Congo, Somalia, Benin, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Cuba, South Yemen,  and all of Eastern Europe. This does not even count those that were mixed Marxist states.

In addition, Marxism and neo-Marxism took over a large swath of western academia, media, and entertainment, and dominates 21^st-century ideologies under the broad umbrella of neo-Marxism. All left-wing political ideologies, regardless of the label, must willingly or not bend the knee to Karl Marx’s basic ideas. In fact, one can argue that aside from Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammed, few have come close to the impact of Marx.

How has such a murderous ideology and failed economic system persisted? One popular idea among western “elites,” especially American left of center “elites” is that all actual Marxist experiments went awry, and by deviating from pure Marxist theory, the outcome became polluted. It is the ultimate self-delusion, allowing the advocate to avoid the brutal realities caused by Marxism. In classrooms and dinner parties the declaration always starts out the same, “If only Marxism were allowed to work as Marx wanted…..” This chant is often followed by unholy oaths among the confederates about how they would desire to be in a classless, equalitarian society without the shackles of corporations, government, or God. And depending on the personality of the speaker, it is probably a universal truth that the very people stating this would either be the first victims of the death camps set up by the Marxists or, rise to become Marxist administrators.

The truth, as anti-Marxists understand, is that the “experiments that went awry” were the organic outcome of Marx and his philosophy, not aberrations, especially the fate of genocide. The natural outgrowth of Marxism was always violence, chaos, destruction, and death. That is inevitable whenever an ideology admits a single truth to which all must submit.

Marx attacked every foundation of western civilization that advanced humankind from barbarism. He unleashed forces for evil that are unparalleled.

Marx corrupted human outlook by not only arguing that all of history was a class struggle, but that the struggle was always violent and impossible to avoid. He raised the consciousness of countless generations to believe that the way you should understand class is not based on your behavior, manners, speech, and education, but on your economic condition. This would have been bad enough as this is now what most people on the planet believe how class is measured. But, Marx took these two steps farther. He argued that this economic disparity led to violence and that all human actions were designed to enhance one’s material condition. He reduced human beings from one made in the image of God to an economic unit, and a biological commodity.

Marx’s most insidious and devastating influence was in the area of morality and religion. Marx’s rabid atheism and his virulent attack against the Church ensured “total liberation.” Once humankind was “liberated” by any standard of God’s judgment or God’s laws, he was free to do anything to anyone at any time. According to The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stéphane Courtois,Andrzej Paczkowski, and Karel Bartosek, Marxism led to the deaths of almost 100 million people to genocide in every place that tried it. There has never been a greater number of people killed because of political ideology, including Hitler’s National Socialists, which was heavily indebted to Marx.

This is what relativism reaps. Marx envisioned a communist utopia free from God, class, and need. And if in order to get utopia, people needed to die, it is a small price to pay.

Marxism dictated the struggle of the 20^th century would not only be bloody, but ideological. The differences the United States has had with Russia and China were made manifold by the ideological expansion and militaristic drive that both nations embarked on to create Marx’s utopia. It was well that they spent almost as much time attacking each other’s Marxist purity, as they did the United States.

Marxism’s impact on Western Europe and America was more subtle.  It was and is the devastation of tradition and manners in pop culture, the faith in relativism, anti-Americanism, and victimization in higher education, and the creation of distrust over property and wealth. Marxism sowed discord among the American family by radicalizing the youth to rebel against parents and convention, though never as bad as awarding medals to children for informing on their parents who could be sent to the death camps as in the USSR.  Marx and his neo-Marxist contemporaries have attempted to subvert orco-opt almost every American institution.

Currently, Marxism itself is getting a new lease on life in the same country that donated the statue. China’s dictator, Xi Jinping told a Politburo session in April that they need to “grasp the power of the truth of Marxism.”

We must give the devil his due; Marx was a genius if by that we mean an original thinker whose ideas shook the world. It was a kind of genius from which we have never made a full recovery. Marxism also ensured that multiple generations of anti-communists would hone their skills and polish their swords knowing that the abyss could take real form. Civilized people owe it to the victims of this most sinister philosophy, a philosophy that has caused more pain and suffering than any other, to ensure that Marx’s birthday, does not go unnoticed or untold.

View the article on AMINewswire.Org

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A new U.N. report identifies 40 “previously unreported shipments” sent between 2012 and 2017 from North Korea to Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre — the Syrian governmental organ that handles chemical weapons.

The report shows that the North Korea has shipped material for ballistic missile production and chemical weapons development.

This evidence contradicts Syria’s promise in 2013 to abandon its chemical weapons program by agreeing with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2118. At the time, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the resolution as a “strong, enforceable, precedent-setting” effort that showed how diplomacy “can peacefully defuse the worst weapons of war.”

The report issued, last month, is taking on new significance as President Trump works to gather international support and for action against Syria in response to it claims was the Assad regime’s recent use of chemical weapons against its civilian population. The U.S. is also in “detailed” talks to arrange a meeting between Trump and North Korea’s President, Kim Jong-un.

State Department spokesman Heather Nauert said, “Whether we like it or not, there are countries around the world that are cheaters [but that] doesn’t mean that we can’t deal with them.”

The U.N. report is not surprising. Substantial ties between Damascus and Pyongyang dated to the 1960’s when North Korean pilots assisted the Syrian Air Force and when then Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, the father of the current president, imported North Korean experts and armaments. North Korean pilots and other military “advisers” fought with Syria against Israel during the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

North Korea has also played a role in Syria’s clandestine nuclear weapons program.

In 2007 Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor suspected of creating the means to produce nuclear weapons. Former CIA Director Mike Hayden stated that this Syrian reactor was an exact copy of one in North Korea. According to news reports first from NHK, at least ten North Koreans were killed in that attack.

The U.N. report also identified other close ties between the two governments, including how the sale of weapons are facilitated by two North Korean front companies used to avoid sanctions, the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (KOMID) and Glocom. An official U.N. reports states, “KOMID representatives in the Syrian Arab Republic have also been importing military goods via commercial air cargo services and, in that regard, attempted in July 2016 to import military communications antennas of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from Glocom” [another front com

North Korea’s interest in the Assad regime is manifold. The North Korean regime seeks a partner in the Middle East to test weapons and it also believes that focus on the Assad regime draws American attention from East Asia. Finally, the armaments trade provides desperately needed funds to a regime that has little else to trade or sell.

“The DPRK and Syria are in one trench against a common enemy,” said Syrian parliamentary speaker Hammouda Sabbagh, according to a Syrian news agency. “The more terrorists that fall under the blows of the Syrian Arab Army, the faster the Zionist enemy, the United States and their agents in the region rush desperately to strike Syria, So the response to these attempts were qualitative and will be harsher and more qualitative if the enemy once again considers an attack on Syrian sovereignty.”

The UN report was released before the apparent chemical attack this past weekend on Douma, the final town in the Eastern Ghouta region still in the possession of anti-Assad rebels.

The attack and the UN report make clear that Syria rather than abandoning its chemical weapon and ballistic missile aspirations during its ongoing civil war has continued to develop its capacity regarding weapons of mass destruction.

President Obama colluded to prevent the arrest of a known Hezbollah terrorist. That is the bombshell dropped just last week in a story from Politico.

The story uncovered the Obama administration’s relationship to a DEA operation named Cassandra. Launched in 2008 the operation sought to document Hezbollah’s transformation into a narco-terrorist organization trafficking in cocaine. Cocaine that was sold in Europe and the United States.

“Terrorists have long been engaged in large scale criminal enterprises to finance their operations – this is well known to our law enforcement and intelligence communities,” said Daniel Gallington, former DOJ official in an interview with the American Media Institute, “ To exempt whole categories of these criminal activities from enforcement would require a persuasive explanation consistent with our national security. I can’t imagine what that would be, and I’ve heard just about everything!”

Politico reports that the Obama administration systematically blocked efforts to neutralize Hezbollah’s drug smuggling efforts, a clear national security threat, in order to preserve the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement. Under the terms of that agreement, Iran agreed to delay certain aspects of its nuclear energy program.

Then CIA Director John Brennan is mentioned in the article as appearing to believe that the U.S. could support “moderate elements” of Hezbollah and assist in their integration into the Lebanese political landscape. Hezbollah has been designated a terrorist organization by since 1997.

In light of the revelations contained in the article Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) & Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) are calling for a congressional investigation which may shed more light on the Obama administration’s role in nixing the operation aimed at Hezbollah

“I’ve long believed that the Obama administration could not have done any more to bend over backwards to appease the Iranian regime,” said congressman DeSantis in a statement, “yet news that the Obama administration killed the investigation into a billion dollar drug ring that lined the terrorist group Hezbollah’s pockets in order to save its coveted Iran deal may very well take the cake,”

Hezbollah’s ties to the Iranian state are well established. Experts say Hezbollah serves the interests of the Iranian MOIS (Ministry of Intelligence and Security).

Hezbollah emerged as a terrorist organization in the 1970s in Lebanon. Hezbollah mastermind Imad Mugniyah organized the 1983 attack on the United States Marine compound in Beirut that killed 241 American soldiers. However, since 2013 it has become increasingly involved in the Syrian Civil War where its military units have fought to support the dictatorship of President Bashir Al Assad.

To fund these and other operations, the report suggests that Hezbollah is increasingly relying on the international drug trade.

“…,[Hezbollah is] as an organization with capability and worldwide presence, is (al Qaeda’s) equal, if not a far more capable organization,” said then CIA director George Tenet in 2003.

Between 1995 and 2002 Hezbollah was involved with cigarette smuggling in the United States — buying in lower tax states and selling them in high tax states in order to fund terrorist activities according to the ATF.

This is not the first time that Iran has tried to use proxies to destabilize America’s national security. The United States attorney general prosecuted two individuals linked to the Iranian government who were planning to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir in 2011.

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View the article on AMINewswire.Org