Democrats are corrupt? Come on, everyone knows that it is Republicans who are corrupt! This stretches credulity, sir!

Wrong video.

Here is the correct one: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-23074567...

As the world's foremost expert on Yuri Bezmenov (not really, but close), I think it is my duty to point out that calling him a "KGB operative" is highly misleading and sort-of wrong. "Operative" is non-specific, but Bezmenov was neither a KGB agent or a KGB officer; he was an employee of Novosti Press Agency, a news service in the Soviet Union like Reuters, AP, or Groupe Press. The difference, of course, is that Novosti is state-controlled and its objectives are entirely controlled by the KGB's ideological departments.

The West naively treats Novosti (for they are still around today, called "RIA Novosti") as an independent news service. They are not. Every employee of Novosti (or any major newspaper in Russia for that matter) can be considered a "co-opted agent" of the KGB, but most are not in any real sense "KGB operatives." Their work is far less exotic and far more mundane than what that suggests.

The problem with attributing current attitudes in the West to Soviet propaganda, or what Bezmenov calls "ideological subversion," is that the process is long, drawn-out and vague; no direct causation can be seen. it just sounds paranoid to say it. Of course, that doesn't mean it's false. We just have nothing but anecdotes and feelings to back it up.

For instance, where are the movies decrying the evils of socialism, Communism, and statism? They don't exist. Instead, "Nazis" stand in for state-power bogeymen; and if they are looking for something else, "capitalists" will do. Evil intelligence agency? Easy-- the CIA, even though the KGB is and was hundreds if not thousands of times larger, with infinitely greater resources relative to the state and of course no sanctions or prohibitions on its scope and function. How is the KGB portrayed? As comical and non-threatening.

"Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t believe that somebody’s sexual preferences should define them."

I agree with this wholeheartedly (minus the grammatical error). It is the single most important but most undiscussed aspect of the gay marriage question.

I'm concerned about trolls too! Good post!

Lenin would be disappointed.

nice

I'm kind of disappointed that the lefties didn't have more plants-- people posing as venemous right-wingers with disturbing signs, committing acts of violence and screaming unsavory things. I mean, do they want to undermine the counter-revoluton or not?

Gorbachev was part of a strategic deception that allowed the USSR to control their own inevitable demise internally without any Western intervention. There is no logical comparison here.

And homeless people. EVERYWHERE.