BrookesNews.Com
Monday 28 June 2004
Rush Limbaugh was certainly taken aback when he learnt that Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) had proudly announced on 16 June that he had sneaked in an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2005 Defence Authorization bill: an amendment designed to drive the Rush Limbaugh Show off the American Forces Radio and Television Service.
Although Rush Limbaugh's show is only one of the 1200 programs that the Armed Forces Radio Network provides the troops, this one program, 0.08 per cent of the total number of programs broadcast, was just too much for leftwing Sen Tom Harkin.
To justify his sordid attempt to censor Rush Limbaugh Tom Harkin hypocritically claimed that he only wanted the Armed Forces Radio Network to "make a greater effort to provide balanced representation of political viewpoints on its airwaves to American service members around the world."
Harkin is a liar. Backed by the totalitarian-minded groups Media Matters for America and Democracy Radio, both of which are Democratic fronts funded by freedom-loving rich Dems, Tom Harkin is really attempting to manipulate the news and commentary that American troops can receive by censoring any conservative alternative.
His sleazy efforts at censorship were rendered transparent by the fact that leftists dominate the news and
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| Sen. Tom Harkin celebrating at the Institute for Policy Studies, a pro-Soviet Marxist-Leninist organisation |
Harkin's attempted censorship of the Rush Limbaugh show is no surprise to those of us who are acquainted with his liking for totalitarian states, so long as they are of a Marxist-Leninist persuasion.
Back in 1984 Harkin, along with presidential candidate John Kerry, flew down to Nicaragua to meet with the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, a fanatical Marxist-Leninist. At the time Ortega and his fellow communists were busy trying to turn the country into a Soviet satellite.
To do this they needed sympathetic senators like Harkin and Kerry to frustrate the Reagan policy of rolling back the Soviet empire,
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| Tom Harkin giving the America-hating Marxist-Leninist Daniel Ortega an admiring look while Senator John Kerry shakes his hand |
It says much about Harkin and Kerry that they were willing to collaborate with an aspiring communist dictator whose brother, Humberto Ortega had stated several years before hand that "we [the Sandinistas] are anti-Yankee, we are against the bourgeoisie . . . we are guided by the scientific doctrine of the revolution, by Marxist-Leninism." For good measure, he also said that the Sandinistas intended to "crush" all internal dissent.
Notwithstanding Sandinista intentions to turn Nicaragua into a Soviet satrapy, Harkin not only instructed his aids to cooperate with Sandinista representatives he also personally urged the brave Violetta Chamorro, editor of La Prensa, to accept Sandinista censorship. (We can now see that Harkin is no stranger to censoring those who oppose leftist views).
In the early '80s the IPS set up a radio commentary service called In the Public Interest that was supposed to concern itself with human rights. Being run by Marxist-Leninists it could find no human rights violations in any communist country, including North Korea, Vietnam or Cuba.
According to the IPI human rights violations only happened in countries allied with the US, a view with which Tom Harkin apparently concurred. In 1983 Harkin went on the IPI to falsely claim that it was a lie that "the government of El Salvador is making remarkable progress toward greater respect for the human rights of its own citizens." The lie was his.
What vexed Harkin and his IPS pals was that Reagan was supporting the El Salvador army in its struggle against the Soviet backed Marxist-Leninist FML terrorist organisation, the same one that murdered US marines, US businessmen and even a retired American Jesuit priest. I found no record of Harkin condemning these murders.
In appreciation of Harkin's support and progressive views the IPS put him on the board of the Interlink Press Service, another IPS front that manufactured anti-American and pro-Soviet propaganda dressed up as honest commentary. (Remember that Tom Harkin is the same joker who wants to drive Rush Limbaugh of the air because of his conservative views).
Desperate to stop Reagan from turning the Soviet tide in Central America, the IPS literally concocted a lying document called In Contempt of Congress
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| KGB officer Valeriy Lekarev on duty at the IPS |
In 1984 the IPS released Changing Course: Blueprint for Peace in Central America. This was another pro-Soviet document that made no mention of Soviet arms, Cuban meddling or that the groups that the IPS were supporting were Marxist-Leninist thugs. Marxist-Leninist thuggery must have a peculiar lure for Harkin because he also eagerly embraced this document.
It's no surprise therefore that Harkin was a strident opponent of strengthening national defence, a ferocious critic of Reagan's anti-communist policies and a strong supporter of the attempted Marxist-Leninist takeover of Central America.
Any American who values his life and liberty must ask himself the straightforward question: "Is the country really in safe hands with the likes of Tom Harkin sitting in the Senate?"
As for the IPS, which was complicit in torture and murder in Nicaragua, I leave the final word to Brian Crozier, a highly respected commentator on KGB operations and a fellow of the prestigious Institute for the Study of Conflict:
"The IPS is the perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB."
Given the above should we really wonder that the ever so patriotic Senator Tom Harkin abused his position to try and censor the Rush Limbaugh Radio Show.
Gerard Jackson is Brookes' economics editor