Joshua S. Treviño confronts the Internet.

In which the Secretary General takes on an old actor over Hollywood’s ways.

Excerpted from the Gorbachev-Reagan Reykjavik Talks, 11-16 October 1986:

Secretary General Gorbachev: It is a shame, Mr. President, that you and I do not have enough time to discuss humanitarian issues. We have concrete ideas on this which we simply are not going to have time to discuss. I have to say that people in the Soviet Union are very concerned about the human rights situation in the United States. There is one other important subject. This is the importance of mutual information in our day. The situation now is this: the Voice of America broadcasts around the clock in many languages from stations you have in various countries in Europe and Asia, while we cannot present our point of view to the American people. Therefore, to achieve parity, we are forced to jam Voice of America broadcasts. I propose the following: we will stop jamming Voice of America and you will be able to broadcast what you consider necessary to us, but at the same time you will meet us half-way and help us lease, from you or in neighboring countries, radio stations that would allow us to reach the American people with our point of view.

President Reagan: The difference between us is that we recognize freedom of the press and the right of people to listen to any point of view. This does not exist in your press. Today in Washington there will be a press conference, and Americans will see it, and newspapers will publish the text of it. It is not that way in your country. Your system envisions only a government press.

Secretary General Gorbachev: But I asked a concrete question. I proposed that we can stop jamming Voice of America if you will meet us half-way and give us an opportunity to lease a radio station from you or lease or build a station in one of your neighboring countries.

President Reagan: I will consult about this when I return to the United States, and I will take a favorable position.

Secretary General Gorbachev: We are for parity in general. In the information field, for example, or in film. Almost half of the movies showing in our theaters are American. Soviet movies are hardly ever shown in the United States. That is not parity.

President Reagan: We do not have any ban on your movies. The film industry is a free business, and if someone wants to show your films he can do it.

Secretary General Gorbachev: I see that the President avoids this question and goes into talk about business.

President Reagan: Our government cannot control the film market. If you want to inundate us with your movies go right ahead. How our movies get to your country, I do not know.

Secretary General Gorbachev: It is an interesting situation, simply a paradox. In your country, the most democratic country, obstacles arise to showing our movies, while in our country, a totalitarian country, almost half the movies being shown are American. How can you reconcile this, that the Soviet Union is an undemocratic country but your films are being shown?

President Reagan: There is a difference between free enterprise and government ownership. You have no free enterprise, everything belongs to the government and the government puts everything on the market. In the United States we have private industry, and other countries have the right to sell their goods, movies and so on. You have the right to set up a rental organization in our country to distribute your movies, or to lease some theater. But we cannot order it.

Secretary General Gorbachev: One more question. There were two television bridges between the USSR and the United States recently. One involved the participation of the communities of Leningrad, Copenhagen, and Boston, and the other had Soviet and American doctors. In our country they were watched by 150 million people, but in the United States they were not shown.

President Reagan: The only thing I can answer is that the movie theaters and all belong to your government, and you show what you want in them. But our government cannot compete with private business.

But I want to tell you that your performing groups, such as the Leningrad Ballet, draw an enormous crowd in the United States, and they are shown on television too. But if you want to show other things too, please do. We have leasing companies, and theaters which show foreign films.

“These good Jews.”

From “Storm Over Syria,” by Malise Ruthven, in the June 9th, 2011, New York Review of Books:

In 1936, six Alawi notables [from what was then the French Mandate of Syria] sent a memorandum to Leon Blum, head of France’s Popular Front government, expressing their loyalty to France and their concern at negotiations leading to independence in a parliamentary system dominated by a Sunni majority. The memorandum includes the following points ….

“We can sense today how the Muslim citizens of Damascus force the Jews who live among them to sign a document pledging that they will not send provisions to their ill-fated brethren in Palestine. The condition of the Jews in Palestine is the strongest evidence of the militancy of the Islamic issue vis-à-vis those who do not belong to Islam. These good Jews contributed to the Arabs with civilization and peace, scattered gold, and established prosperity in Palestine without harming anyone or taking anything by force, yet the Muslims declare holy war against them and never hesitated in slaughtering their women and children ….”

One of the signatories to this document was Sulayman al-Assad, a minor chief of the Kalbiya clan and father of Hafez al-Assad.

Jane Hamsher vs. Reality.

One doesn’t expect the likes of Hamsher to have much knowledge of intra-conservative politics, but the declaration that Romney is the Tea Party candidate suggests the existence of a hitherto-unknown anti-knowledge. Chilling and fascinating all at once!

This brings us to our punchline. FireDogLake religiously posts its founder’s television appearances on its YouTube channel, and this one was no different. But look what was left out:

Good editing! We shouldn’t expect Jane Hamsher’s organization to publicize the humiliation of Jane Hamsher. We should simply note when they don’t.

Campaign address, Adlai Stevenson, 1952.

I have tried to educate, if I have not succeeded altogether, I have certainly educated myself about these questions and about these wonderful human beings that are Americans. 

Just remember who you are.
You are Americans. 

Your forbearers’ found a wilderness and they began to convert it into a fair land with only three weapons: 
with a Bible, 
an axe,
and the plow. 

Nothing stayed them, 
neither the perils of death, 
nor wounds,
nor savage mountains, 
nor wide rivers, 
nor the unknown in which they plunged. 

They were of every racial stock and every religious belief and they brought something of the old country to the new country. And different though they were, they became one. 

This is our heritage and this is our true glory. 

We are a people, I tell you, that is just beginning its high adventure on this continent. 

It is an adventure in which young though we are, we have done this: our people have had more happiness and prosperity over a wider area and a longer time than men have ever had since they began to live in ordered societies four thousand years ago. 

Since we have come so far —
Who shall be rash enough to set limits on our future progress? 
Who shall say that since we have gone so far, we can go no farther? 
Who shall say that the American dream has ended? 

For myself, I believe that all we have done on this continent so far is but a prelude to a future in which we will become, 
not only a bigger people, 
but also a wiser people, 
a better people, 
an even greater people. 

I believe that we not only achieve a higher standard of living, but also a higher standard of life. 

Never forget this, there is little that we Americans cannot do if only we can imagine ourselves wanting to do it. Power alone is not enough, either is faith alone equal to the task. The future is to those who take it. We shall strike off the shackles that still bind the United States. 

It is the duty of the leaders to lead, 
the creative to create, 
of the daring to do. 

The free world expects leadership from us. Its fate and our fate depends upon our leadership. The life or death issue of war or peace hangs upon it. 

We are 155 million strong. 
We are industrious, inventive, restless with the fires that burn within us. 
We are a free-striding people with a confident free-swinging stride that marks the American everywhere he goes upon this earth. 
We are conquerors of time and of distance, we have explored the awful jungles of matter and emerged with the powers of the exploding sun. 

Our cause is just, our heart is high, and let us then, I say, press forward, toward the new world that we can create in the name of America and of suffering humanity still in chains. 

Now you say words, beautiful words, but how do we do all of this, 
with a staggering budget of heavy taxes, 
surrounded by the communist menace, 
an enfeebled Europe, 
Asia in ferment, 
our boys in war, 
training for war? 

Well, I say nothing is easy, and the best things are the hardest. But consider what was done at Valley Forge, 
what was done in the dark days of dissension and disaster, 
in the Civil War, 
in the two World Wars, when the very survival of western civilization trembled, 
and in the Depression. 

There is nothing new, only different, and all our troubles, all our immense difficulties, now and in the future, can I say, be solved if we have the will, the courage, the boldness to face them squarely. To use Seneca’s phrase, “Man is more than a rational animal.” 

And invoking the guidance of providence, rational men, animated by the destiny of greatness 
can think 
and can act 
and can do 
greatly. 

Thank you.

On credit where it’s due.

All of this is to say that Nicole Gustafson really ought to have declined this opportunity to get a piece of the Arizona-massacre story. If her office approved it, it needs to be saved from itself. That is all.

In Which I Told You So.

From FlashReport, Just 1st, 2010:

That’s the problem with Fiorina as a prospective nominee. There’s an argument to be made that she’s our strongest contender — an argument aptly summarized as $$$$$ — but take the cash away, and she offers a stupefying array of weaknesses, flaws, vulnerabilities, and avenues of attack that Democrats are straining at the leash to exploit….

How, exactly, does Carly Fiorina propose to prevent what is all but inevitable: that the Democrats would react to her nomination with relief, knowing they could forget talking about issues — and start talking about her?

Sadly, we can predict the sequence of events … [T]he Democrat attack machine will dredge up every unhappy HP veteran on the planet … What started as a crusade to hold Barbara Boxer accountable will become a referendum on an unpopular fired CEO. Instead of Boxer suffering for being the face of liberal misgovernance, Fiorina will find herself the face of corporate malfeasance. A willing press corps will assist in the effort. At some point in November, everyone will wonder how the California Republicans could have talked themselves into this nomination.

From the Los Angeles Times, November 4th, 2010:

….Boxer’s aides believe that they were able to define Fiorina through their ad campaign in a way that made it difficult for her to recover.

They had roared into the fall campaign with a significant financial advantage — allowing them to air television ads for more than a week unchallenged by Fiorina. In mid-September, they launched the first of a series of scorching ads detailing the layoffs and outsourcing during her tenure at HP, as well as the millions of dollars in compensation she received.

Boxer’s campaign manager, Rose Kapolczynski, said at that juncture, many voters still did not know much about Fiorina: “That was an opportunity to define her,” she said.

Within a few weeks, polling showed that Fiorina had slumped by eight points.

Boxer’s pollster Mark Mellman said Fiorina’s business experience initially impressed voters but “when people understood what she really did at HP, it was devastating to her.”

Final: Boxer 52%, Fiorina 43%.