FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Trump Meets Abbas, Says of Peace: ‘We Will Get It Done’ In meeting with the Palestinian leader, the president says the U.S. would serve as a mediator By Carol E. Lee and Rory Jones in Tel Aviv See note

Posted By on May 4th, 2017

OH PULEEZ! BACK TO THE SWAMP OF FAILED POLICIES WHICH ONLY ENCOURAGE AND RATCHET UP ARAB DEMANDS FOR THE SLOWER BUT SURER ERADICATION OF ISRAEL……RSK

President Donald Trump raised expectations for a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians as he met with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday, saying he would do whatever is necessary to broker a deal and pledging, “We will get it done.”

Mr. Trump was dismissive of the notion that a foreign-policy knot that has vexed his predecessors for decades is the “toughest deal to make.” He said he hoped to invite Mr. Abbas back to the White House to mark progress in an effort that Mr. Trump’s administration has been working on only for a few months.

“Let’s see if we can find the solution,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s something that I think is, frankly, maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years.”

Mr. Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank, said he looked forward to working with Mr. Trump to achieve a “historic deal to bring about peace.” But his remarks also underscored challenges faced by the effort. Palestinians, he said, are “the only remaining people in the world that still live under occupation,” a term Israeli officials dislike.

Mr. Trump’s confidence drew skepticism, as former Israeli-Palestinian mediators believe the two sides are as far apart as they have ever been.

“I’m an optimist by nature. But goodness gracious!” Daniel Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel in the Obama administration, tweeted from his official account in response to Mr. Trump’s comments.

Fundamental differences between Israelis and Palestinians have prevented a peace deal from being reached for decades. “In my mind, as someone that has worked on this for the last 30 years, I don’t think we have ever been at a lower point,” Dennis Ross, former peace negotiator for multiple U.S. administrations, said Monday. “The level of disbelief between the two sides has never been greater.”

White House press secretary Sean Spicer argued that the difference between previous attempts to reach a peace deal and the one undertaken by the Trump administration is “the man.” He said Mr. Trump’s style of building relationships with world leaders gives the process more of a chance for success.

Under Mr. Trump, the U.S. has smoothed over ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that had become strained during former President Barack Obama’s time in office.

Mr. Trump also is considering moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move that would be welcomed by Israelis as effectively recognizing the city as their capital.​Palestinians have said the status of Jerusalem should be determined in negotiations.

However, Mr. Trump also has made clear that it is up to the Israelis and Palestinians to reach a peace deal, and was harshly critical of Mr. Obama for trying to pressure the Israelis into policy concessions.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

With Liberty and Pizza for All HHS issues a pepperoni calorie count reprieve.

Posted By on May 4th, 2017

Some good news for readers who enjoy personal freedom and eating pizza: The Trump Administration this week delayed calorie rules that carried criminal penalties for errant pepperonis. Now Congress should rework the idea in legislation.

The Food and Drug Administration announced on Monday that the agency would delay a May 5 enforcement date for a rule that requires restaurants with more than 20 locations to post calorie counts on menu boards, ostensibly to encourage healthy choices and prevent a patchwork of state labeling schemes. The mandate was included in the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

But the resulting regulation has been thrice delayed because it required pizza chains to display per slice ranges for an estimated 34 million topping combinations. Imagine a sign that reads “200-800 calories per slice of one-topping medium pizza” with lists of individual accoutrements that span from 0-400 calories, with each one varying based on whether you add other toppings. Do you feel edified about your food choices?

The displays would be ripped up and replaced for every limited-time special. Franchisees—that is, local business owners, not Mr. Moneybags—would sign affidavits that “reasonable” efforts were made to ensure the accuracy of the placards. That’s an invitation for trial lawyers to drag every last pizza to a lab for verification. The penalties for noncompliance include a year in jail, and who knew that a job at Papa John’s could lead to a life of crime.

A bill in the House would eliminate the fines and hard time, as well as allow pizza places to display information online, where customers can already find it. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who deserves credit for the stroke of common sense, voted for an earlier version of the legislation. Congress should move on it before next year’s new enforcement date arrives, though the FDA could also revise the rule.

The FDA’s final guidance is riddled with amusing introspections on what constitutes a “combination meal” or how to label pumpkin lattes, but the less funny reality is that the pizza industry has spent years and millions of dollars fighting this insane rule-making. The Trump Administration is right to put those resources back in the productive economy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Health Reform’s House Breakout The GOP needs to show the country—and Trump—it can govern.

Posted By on May 4th, 2017

Against the odds, House Republicans have regained momentum on health-care reform, and they’re nearing a majority coalition. While there may be more swerves before a vote, they ought to appreciate the importance of demonstrating that a center-right Congress—working with President Trump —can govern.

There are still holdouts and others are undecided in the GOP’s moderate and conservative wings, but their differences are narrowing. More members are also recognizing their political mistake in trashing the original ObamaCare repeal and replace bill. The House now has a rare second chance, and a generational opportunity to start to solve some U.S. problems.

On Wednesday Fred Upton of Michigan and Billy Long of Missouri worked out the latest compromise, meant to assuage concerns about insurance for pre-existing medical conditions. The amendment would add $8 billion over five years to a 10-year, $130 billion fund to create risk pools to protect people in the individual insurance market who need high-cost treatments.

Pre-existing conditions are an understandable concern, but the critics traffick in demagoguery, not substance. Their opposition has less to do with vulnerable patients than preserving ObamaCare. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed that risk pools are “like administering cough medicine to someone with stage 4 cancer,” which exploits cancer victims and shows he knows nothing about risk pools.

By targeting funds at the sickest patients, states can make insurance markets more affordable and stable. These subsidies siphon off some of the costs that contribute to rising premiums in the overall market, and the idea is that the resulting cheaper plans for everyone else will encourage more people to enroll.

In Alaska, ObamaCare premiums rose 40% annually over multiple years, one of the two participating insurers exited the business, and the other was on the brink. So the state received a federal waiver last year to create a risk pool. Premiums rose 7.3% on average for 2017.

Opponents say risk pools are underfunded, but the Alaska rescue mission cost merely $55 million (albeit in a low-population state). The results came despite ObamaCare’s restraints, and the GOP’s American Health Care Act promises more regulatory flexibility to experiment. Opponents also argue that risk pools are ghettos for the sick, but the Alaska payments are “invisible,” meaning that all consumers use regular insurance.

We’ll learn soon if risk pools are enough to win over GOP moderates, but they should know that Democrats will demagogue the pre-existing conditions issue in the 2018 election whether the bill passes or not. Better to pass the bill, and explain to their voters why their reform is better for patients, than defend a failure. HillaryCare’s crash didn’t save vulnerable Democrats in 1994—though unlike Democrats, this time Republicans have a good product to sell.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Michael Galak The Method in Their Madness

Posted By on May 4th, 2017

Assad, Putin, Iran, North Korea — what they have had in common is the West’s perception that all are madmen who will stop at nothing if pushed beyond the limits of their tolerance. Donald Trump’s recent barrage of Tomahawk missiles has now called that long-successful bluff.
We habitually think about events, especially significant international ones, in terms of their own dynamic merits, without considering the psychological traits and defense mechanisms of the individual leaders or nations involved. Were we to do so the resulting insight might help us gain a better understanding of bristling autocrats, tyrants and international outlaws.

Begin by considering the gradual deterioration of the relationship between the West and Putin’s Russia. Mostly, this has come to be determined by Russian actions — Moscow’s “acting out” on the international stage. This is one tough, ruthless customer, we conclude, a man who may well have no limits on the lengths he is prepared to go in order to achieve his ends. Such determination can strike observers as a madness, but it also has guaranteed him respect. Who wants to provoke a madman waving a gun?

And there are many madmen, or those who a happy to be perceived as mad. Assad, Iran and the North Korean chieftain with that unoriginal name (let’s just call him Kim Junior) comport themselves in the international arena as barely sane, quite deliberately projecting attitudes of dangerous unpredictability. One of Putin’s mouthpieces even declared a readiness to activate nuclear weapons during the Crimean crisis. That kind of talk prompted Angela Merkel to describe the Russian leader as “living in a world of his own”.

By appearing for all the world to see as perpetually peeved and barely controllable, Putin has won a considerable degree of freedom of action. Who of right mind would tangle with a man who speaks so loosely of using nuclear weaponry? There is profit in this kind of systematic madness. Consider Putin in terms of his actions towards Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Ossetia, Crimea and Syria, plus his veilled threats to Baltic States. Peeps of protest from the rest of the world have been barely audible.

The Iranians repeatedly and provocatively launch ballistic missiles while forever stating and re-stating their intention to one day blanket Israel with mushroom clouds. Obama did not intervene, other than to ship pallet-loads of bank notes to Tehran in return for the regime’s laughably bogus “promise” not to be naughty with the nukes it continues to build. Assad was openly gassing his domestic enemies, yet all the UN and Obama could manage in response was another impotent finger-wagging and pleas that he a good boy in future.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Augusto Zimmermann :‘Cultural Feminism’ Betrays Women

Posted By on May 4th, 2017

British hospitals report an average of fifteen cases of female genital mutilation each day, yet despite the practice being illegal since 1984 there have been no successful prosecutions. Where are the feminists on this and other issues such as forced marriages and ‘honour’ killings? Nowhere, it seems.
“Islam is the world’s most feminist religion,” the Australian Muslim woman Yassmin Abdel-Magied claimed on the ABC’s Q&A on February 13. Her controversial thesis has been shot down as ridiculous by conservative writers and politicians across the nation. However, her claim that Islam is “the most feminist” of all religions is not entirely wrong, if one considers it through the lens of a particular variant of radical feminist ideology—cultural feminism.

Abdel-Magied’s observation about women under Islam is typical of cultural feminists who demand that individual members of “societal cultures” be endowed “with meaningful ways to live across the full range of human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational, and economic life, encompassing both public and private spheres”. Since cultural identity is said to play a more pervasive role in the lives of certain minority groups, cultural feminists argue that the individual members of such groups should be accorded special rights (privileges) lest their minority status be endangered by the dominant culture. Any criticism of cultural or religious practices—including female genital mutilation and forced marriage—is summarily dismissed as a form of “colonialist imperialism”, one which is disrespectful of the more deep-seated traditions of non-majoritarian ethnic and religious groups.

Above all, cultural feminism advocates that special consideration must be given not just for the legal status of individual women in Western societies, but also for the position of individuals belonging to minority groups. Since the alleged deprivation experienced by certain minority groups is regarded primarily as a result of “white male oppression”, cultural feminists generally support state-imposed measures which attempt to correct “past injustices” in the workplace and other spheres of social activity.

From a human-rights perspective, however, there are serious problems with the ideology of cultural feminism. By prioritising collective rights at the expense of the basic rights of the individual, cultural feminists risk themselves justifying the ill-treatment of individual women, both within and outside Western societies.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

“Palestine” is Already a “Failed State” Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on May 4th, 2017

The impending visit of Mahmoud Abbas to Washington on Wednesday coupled with moves on Capitol Hill to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a result of Palestinian terrorism makes this a good time to focus on Palestinian governance.Once the Trump administration does, it will find Palestinian governance has not gone well — despite or perhaps even because of the billions in foreign aid, including American money, pumped into the PA. For example:

The authority’s 2016 budget shows estimated expenditures of $4.25 billion but revenues of only $2 billion. That includes more than $1 billion in contributions from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the European Union and the United States. In perspective, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the territory under supervision of Mr. Abbas‘ PA (the West Bank and Gaza Strip, population estimated at more than 4 million) is about $12.1 billion; Vermont’s GDP (population approximately 625,000) is $29 billion. The PA was established in 1994 as a result of the Oslo Accords. The international community — led by the United States — provided funds to the nascent administration to help it create self-government for the vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs.

The authority also was to conduct negotiations with Israel over “final status issues,” namely Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security and borders. The job was to be completed by 1999.

Oslo did not mandate an independent Palestinian state, but rather “recognize[s] [Israeli and Palestinian] mutual legitimate and political rights.” That could be independence or nonsovereign self-rule. It also stated that “negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973)” under which Israel is entitled to “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force,” among other things.

In 2000, 2001 and 2006-08, the United States and Israel offered Palestinian leadership statehood directly. The first two offers were made regardless of the so-called “second intifada” — the Palestinian terror war against Israel — that killed 1,137 Israelis and wounded 8,341 from 2000 to 2005. (The U.S. equivalent would be 45,480 dead, 333,640 injured — a factor of 40.)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said of the negotiations that started just after relative calm was restored, “From the end of 2006 until the end of 2008, I think I met with [Mahmoud Abbas] more often than any Israeli leader has ever met any Arab leader. I met him more than 35 times. They were intense, serious negotiations.”

Mr. Olmert’s offer included 97 percent of the West Bank, resettlement of some — by no means all — Palestinian refugees, territorial exchanges, and rights in Jerusalem. Mr. Abbas verified as much in a 2009 interview and confirmed that he declined the offer.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Is Western Civilization a Racist Construct? Edward Cline

Posted By on May 4th, 2017

New York Magazine says yes. In April, ran a long, long article on the “Alt-Right,” “Beyond Alt: The extremely reactionary, burn-it-down-radical, newfangled far right,” authored by seventeen contributors (!). The magazine, being one of the leftist persuasion, attempted to cover the whole gamut of what is called the “Alt-Right,” (or the Alternative Right), that is, what are considered by the Left to be “extreme” individuals, publications, and memes that oppose the welfare state and statism and the Progressive path to full-scale socialism. Racists and anti-Semites were stuffed into the same bag, which I think the writers would have been happy to tie and toss into the East River. The Alt-Right carries a lot of unasked-for baggage, to judge by Wikipedia’s discussion of the subject:

The alt-right, or alternative right, is a loose group of people with right to far-right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in the United States. White supremacist Richard Spencer appropriated the term in 2010 to define a movement centered on white nationalism, and has been accused by some media publications of doing so to whitewash overt racism, white supremacism, and neo-Nazism. Alt-right beliefs have been described as white supremacist, frequently overlapping with anti-Semitism and Neo-Nazism, nativism and Islamophobia, antifeminism and homophobia, white nationalism, right-wing populism, and the neoreactionary movement. The concept has further been associated with multiple groups from American nationalists, neo-monarchists, men’s rights advocates, and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

Quite a grab-bag of groups in an artificial homogeny concocted by the leftwing political world view. The New York Magazine’s article and Wikipedia perform a scatter-shot drive-by shooting intended to discredit and smear legitimate, responsible spokesmen for reason and Western civilization together with the screaming meemies, such as Richard Spenser, Dilbert, and Jack Donovan.

NY Magazine also deigned to quote the National Review, which, as a conservative publication, somehow does not earn its enmity and sarcasm:

In National Review in April 2016, Ian Tuttle wrote,

The Alt-Right has evangelized over the last several months primarily via a racist and anti-Semitic online presence. But for Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right consists of fun-loving provocateurs, valiant defenders of Western civilization, daring intellectuals—and a handful of neo-Nazis keen on a Final Solution 2.0, but there are only a few of them, and nobody likes them anyways.

National Review does a more economical job of painting the Alt-Right in almost psychedelic colors than does New York Magazine.

Curiously, I have not received any solicitations or invitations via email from any of the groups mentioned in either the New York magazine article or in Wikipedia, even though in the ineffable ignorance of Left and Right, my blog columns could easily be labeled one or the other. I am certainly familiar with Milo Yiannopoulos and Paul Joseph Watson, but not at all with Allum Bokhari or many of the people mentioned, such as Rebekah Mercer or Peter Thiel. I have never heard of half the individuals, organizations, and blog sites mentioned by New York Magazine’s authors.

However, as Victor David Hanson points out in one NR column, “You Gotta Lie”:

Red/blue, conservative/liberal, and Republican/Democrat mark traditional American divides. But one fault line is not so 50/50 — that of the contemporary hard progressive movement versus traditional politics, values, and customs.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel’s economy surges against all odds Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on May 4th, 2017

Intel acquired Mobileye, Israel’s auto-tech giant, for $15.3BN (Globes, March 13, 2017). The British equity firm, APAX, acquired Israel’s medical equipment Syneron for $397MN (Globes, April 30). The New Jersey-based Becton-Dickinson, the medical equipment giant, acquired Israel’s CME for $250mn (Globes, April 5). Palo Alto acquired Israel’s LightCyber for $130mn. In 2014,, Palo Alto acquired Israel’s Cyvera for $112mn (Globes, March 1). The Washington, DC-based Danaher acquired Israel’s printing quality inspection AVT for $107mn (Globes, March 6). The New York-based event-ticketing giant, SeatGeek, acquired Israel’s TopTix for $56mn (Globes, April 20).

2. 155 Israeli hightech companies raised $1bn during the first quarter of 2017, compared to $1bn during the 4th quarter of 2016, $933mn – 3rd quarter, $1.7bn – 2nd quarter and $1.1bn – 1st quarter of 2016 (Globes, April 29). For example, China’s BOE invested $50mn in Israel’s medical equipment startup, CNoga (Globes, March 6); the Dallas-based LS Health Science Partners invested $30mn in Israel orthopedic equipment Active Implants, in addition to $10mn invested by the Dallas-based View Capital and the Memphis-based River Street Management (Globes March 14); The British auto parts giant, Delphi, led an investment round of $25mn in Israel’s Otonomo, joined by Menlo Park-based Bessemer, New Jersey-based Maniv and London-based LocalGlobe (Globes, April 9); etc.

3. Fitch credit rating reaffirmed Israel’s credit rating at A+, based on the stability of Israel’s economy, balance of payment surplus, expansion of foreign exchange reserves, decline of debt-GDP ratio from 95.2% in 2003 to 62.2% in 2016, decrease of budget deficit, natural gas potential, etc. (Globes, April 26, 2017).

4. The Economist Intelligence Unit (April 1): “Israel’s recent strong overall economic performance…. Real GDP grew by 4% in 2016, set to persist for most of the forecast period…. Export growth will pick up in 2017-18. Further increases in gas output and a modest recovery in exports, particularly in new and established markets in Asia…. The Israeli Shekel’s strength against the Dollar will continue to pose challenges for policymakers…. The Shekel remains strong against the Euro and the British Pound…. Trade deficit will narrow steadily…. The opening of new production facilities by Intel will further boost technology goods exports, and natural gas exports will begin by the end of the forecast period.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: THE APRIL OF MY DISCONTENT

Posted By on May 3rd, 2017

The New York Times has a new op-ed contributor named Marwan Barghouti. His op-ed “Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons”– is a screed to make Thomas Friedman proud.
The Times described Barghouti as a “Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.”
Oops! The Times somehow forgot to mention that Marwan Barghouti is a terrorist serial killer whose savagery earned him five life sentences. It’s like describing Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibal serial killer, as a “culinary innovator.”
The New York Times must like the name Barghouti. Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the BDS movement and author of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights is also a favored contributor. In a January 2014 op-ed he explained “Why Israel Fears the Boycott” listing the usual litany of lies and accusations. In May 2015 he wrote an op-ed “Israeli Extremism Will Encourage Global Boycott” quoting a poll by J Street to bolster his bias. On March 16th, 2017 in a letter to the editor, he compares BDS to the civil rights movement, quotes a questionable Brookings Institute poll on American support for sanctions against Israel, and spells out the agenda of BDS:
“Since its inception in 2005 by the Palestinian grass-roots civil society coalition, B.D.S. has consistently called for ending Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; granting full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are discriminated against by dozens of laws; and recognizing the United Nations-stipulated right of Palestinian refugees to return to lands from which they were forcibly displaced during Israel’s establishment in 1948.” He could have said it in one sentence: BDS calls for the end of Israel….period! And has anyone told him that Gaza is not “occupied” since 2005?
Other mainstream papers contribute to anti-Israel bias by ignoring relevant stories.
To paraphrase George Berkeley about a tree falling in the woods, if the media doesn’t report it, did it happen?
In France, on April 3, an Orthodox Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, a doctor aged 66, was thrown out of a window to her death by an African neighbor who shouted “Allahu akbar!” The mainstream media ignored it.
On April 21 a speeding car driven by an Arab rammed into a bus stop at the Gush Etzion bus stop injuring an elderly man. The Gush Etzion spokesperson said the incident marks the second such attack in the last month. Earlier this month, Sgt. Elchai Teharlev was killed in a car ramming attack while guarding a bus stop just outside the West Bank settlement of Ofra.
The mainstream media ignored these events. Maybe they did not happen? CONTINUE AT SITE

MEDIA Comments turned off

Celebrating Communism at the New York Times A century after the Bolshevik Revolution, Vivian Gornick is still a fan. by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on May 3rd, 2017

On Sunday night I was up late writing, and so on Monday I slept right up until the moment I was awakened, sometime around midday, by the blaring sound of a marching band in the street. I didn’t need to look out the window to know what was going on. The music was The Internationale. The date was May 1. In the small Norwegian town where I live, the May Day parade was passing by.

The New York Times commemorated the Communist holiday in its own way – with an essay by Vivian Gornick, now eighty-one, a card-carrying member of the old New York intellectual crowd and author of a 2011 biography of anarchist heroine Emma Goldman. The piece – entitled “When Communism Inspired Americans” – is the latest example of what has long since become a genre all its own: the fond look back at American Stalinism.

The essay isn’t Gornick’s first contribution to the genre. Her 1977 book The Romance of American Communism, a collection of interviews with old Party members, was described by Commentary reviewer Marion Magid as an “adoring account” that depicts their perfidy “as a romantic episode in American history.” In the book, Gornick portrayed these old Communists as “the golden children called to Marxism” and claimed that they “feared, hungered, and cared more” than other people and possessed a “wisdom passion alone can purchase.” Noting that most of Gornick’s interviewees were Jews, Magid quite rightly challenged the idea that there was any “wisdom” in their “slavish support of the Soviet Union throughout the long period of Stalinist treachery and the calculated destruction of Soviet Jewish life.”

Nor was there anything “golden” about their ability to keep their Communism intact despite (this is Magid’s list) “The Moscow Trials, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Doctors’ Plot, the takeover in Czechoslovakia, the Slansky Trial, the murdered writers, the labor camps, and all the rest.” Not only did American Communists accept all these abominations, noted Magid, “they justified it, those wonderful couples, ‘hungry for justice,’ rushing off to protest meetings and ‘peace’ rallies and picket lines while supper cooled on the stove at home and bullets met their mark in the cellars of the Lubianka. To read this book along with, say, the memoirs of Nadezhda Mandelstam is to become almost physically ill. The romance of Communism, indeed. It is an apology that is required—not an elegy.”

One can understand Magid’s disgust. Back when it was first published, The Romance of American Communism was part of a new wave of books, movies, articles, and other material that treated that subject with sympathy. In The Cause that Failed: Communism in American Public Life (1991), Guenter Lewy cited Gornick’s book, along with films like The Front and Lillian Hellman’s memoir Scoundrel Time (both 1976), as part of a “new attitude” and “revisionist history” that represented American Communists “as persecuted defenders of American democracy.” Lewy quoted historian William O’Neill: “One would not know from seeing such films as The Front or reading books like The Romance of American Communism…that the heroes in them were apologists for Stalin’s death machine.”