Mao-tse Tung

TOPICS Video Cafe
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Why doesn't Lou Dobbs just move on over to Fox and get it over with? Dobbs does his best to emulate Glenn Beck and attacks another White House "czar" for quoting Mao-tse Tung, taking Anita Dunn's words out of context just as Beck did.

DOBBS: Well, another high-ranking White House appointee extolling the virtues of Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung. When White House manufacturing czar Ron Bloom was an executive at the United Steelworkers Union, he addressed a 2008 forum on the union role in bankruptcy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP-FROM YOUTUBE 2008)

RON BLOOM, UNITED STEEL WORKERS: Generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money because they're convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this is largely about power. That it's an adults' only, no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun, and we get it that if you want a friend, you should get a dog.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DOBBS: White House Communication Director Anita Dunn last June also cited Mao as one of the great political philosophers in her life. Mao was the leader of communist China from his founding to his death in 1976. His policies and purges believed to have caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, as many as 100 million.

Well to hear more of my thoughts on all the president's czars and their fascination with Mao Tse-Tung, please join me on the radio Monday through Friday for "The Lou Dobbs Show" 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. each afternoon on WOR 710 radio here in New York City. Go to loudobbs.com to get the local listings for "The Lou Dobbs Show", subscribe to our daily Podcast. Check out our store. Follow me on Twitter at loudobbsnews on Twitter.com.



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Glenn Beck continued his jihad against White House Communications Director Anita Dunn yesterday on his Fox News program, focusing his rage on remarks she made earlier this year at a D.C.-area high-school graduation ceremony. Here's what he played of her remarks:

"[T]wo of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa, not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most ..."

Not content to do it once, he ran the same snippet again, exactly like that. Twice he described Dunn as saying that Mao was one of the philosophers "she turns to most".

In other words, by running the quote thus, he's making it clear that Dunn admires Mao as one of her favorite political philosophers that she turns to most.

He ran this truncated quote, incidentally, in response to Dunn's earlier explanation for the remarks:

"The Mao quote is one I picked up from the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater from something I read in the late 1980s, so I hope I don't get my progressive friends mad at me," Dunn told CNN.

As for Beck's criticism: "The use of the phrase 'favorite political philosophers' was intended as irony, but clearly the effort fell flat -- at least with a certain Fox commentator whose sense of irony may be missing."

Beck thought that by playing the truncated quote, he could prove that Dunn's characterization didn't add up -- after all, she said Mao was someone she "turned to most"!

Except, of course, that wasn't what she said. You have to hear the rest of the sentence after Beck clips it off.

Here's the full original quote, which you can see at the original full video:

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"The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa -- not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is 'you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before."

In other words, she found their words handy to make a universal and fairly banal point about being true to one's self. That's all. No Mao-worship.

You also can hear laughter from the audience when Dunn couples Mao and Mother Teresa, so at least it's clear that some in the audience got the joke. Glenn Beck didn't.

Most of all, he doesn't get that crude and hamhanded dishonesty like this only proves Anita Dunn's point, in spades.


TOPICS Newstalgia

Red China's Greatest Hits - 1945

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(Mao-tse Tung - mistaken for harmless)

October marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China (October 1, 1949). The China of today bears little resemblance to the China of 1949, or even 1989.

In 1945, just days before the end of World War 2, Russia entered the war against the Japanese and declared a Treaty of Alliance with China. But the China of 1945 was under the control of Chiang-Kai Shek, regarded by some as a Military dictatorship more than a democracy, and the Communists, led by Mao-tse Tung had control of a very small section of Northwestern China. It was initially thought the treaty would bring about a peaceful coexistence between the Nationalist government of Shek and the Communist insurgents of Mao.

Or as the League Of Nations website explains it:

T.V. Soong, Premier of the Nationalist Chinese government, signed a Treaty of Friendship and Alliance with the Soviet government. In exchange for Soviet recognition of the Nationalist Chinese government, the Nationalist Chinese agreed to the independence of Outer Mongolia, gave the Soviets joint 30-year ownership of the Manchurian Railway and the port of Dalian (Darien), and agreed to the conversion of Lushun (Port Arthur) into a Chinese-Soviet naval base. This treaty formalized Nationalist Chinese consent to the Allied concessions granted to the Soviets at the Yalta Conference.

Continue reading »


TOPICS Newstalgia

Selling China - The Wal-Mart Effect - 2006

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(In a word, Mao would shit)

With the G-20 Summit going full blast, I ran across this great documentary produced by ABC Radio National Australia as part of their Background Briefing series from February 2006. It's a reminder that, as much as we complain of being flooded by goods from overseas, we're doing our level best to heap gobs of shameless consumerism all over the world as well.

We joke about MacDonalds' on the Champs-Elysees in Paris - but all the Wal-Marts popping up all over China are something else.

Stan Curry - Radio Australia Reporter: “Lined up in all their red uniforms, Wal-Mart workers begin their day with an ode to Wal-Mart. Ludwig Beethoven is probably turning in his grave. And Chairman Mao too, must be a little astonished at how his legacy is being spun.”

Clay Chandler (Fortune Magazine reporter): “ When you actually go see how they run their employees at their stores, what I was struck with was the similarities between the Chinese Communist Party Organizational pattern. They get these people together in groups, they organize them in very small cells, everybody is very aware of what everybody else is doing within their cell, and encouraged to kind of talk about each other. They sing songs together. They do little drills to create workers solidarity. They run around in red shirts. And they do Wal-Mart Company cheers. They look like nothing so much as the old Red Guard of the Cultural Revolution.”

It's interesting to see how increasingly Gordian our entanglements are becoming with the rest of the world on economic terms. We can't just assume the isolationists stance because it no longer is realistic and hasn't been for many years. Therefore, solutions to our economic situations are more complex than they ever were. Snap answers and judgments no longer need apply.

And then there's that issue of Immigration . . .

(I would urge you to check out ABC Radio Nationals website as well as streaming audio - they are one of the best and as I have said before, they offer information about our own country not generally available here. So in addition to the CBC and the BBC, add this one to your daily dial hopping for useful information).