text:
Was the Father of the A-Bomb a Communist and Soviet Spy?
Many conservatives have argued that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the A-bomb, was both a Communist and a Soviet spy. In 1954 — way after the war's end and the once top-secret Manhattan Project at wartime Los Alamos — the Atomic Energy Commission called Oppenheimer to answer questions about associations he had before the war, about which he had answered dishonestly. Despite his success in completing the bomb on time (giving the United States an atomic monopoly), the AEC took away his security clearance. As liberals of the time saw it, even America's most famous scientist was not immune to the wrath of the McCarthyites.
Liberals saw Oppie, as he was called, as a victim of guilt by association. Much of the Right saw him as a legitimate security risk. No one, it seemed, was immune to having his or her career halted, no matter what their accomplishments. So what is the truth? Was Oppie a Communist, a spy, or both? Or was he neither?
Now, in a scholarly but very readable and important article, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have answered the question. They do not satisfy either those who believe he was a Soviet spy — as did my friend the late Eric Breindel — or those on the left who believe he was a good liberal smeared by the right wing.
Two authors who take the latter point of view are Kai Bird and historian Martin J. Sherwin. Both won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2005, for their book American Prometheus. As the PW review of their book puts its theme, Oppenheimer "was branded a security risk at the height of anticommunist hysteria in 1954" and the authors claim that Oppie had only "'hazy and vague' connections to the Communist Party in the 1930 — loose interactions consistent with the activities of contemporary progressives."
One would think that the winners of America's top literary prize would know how to evaluate evidence. What Haynes and Klehr show, much to their embarrassment, is that Bird and Sherwin do not. Here is what Haynes and Klehr conclude, after sifting through all of the pertinent material:
Historical judgment is not based on casuistic hairsplitting, mind-reading, or explaining away troublesome evidence. It must be based on a common sense evaluation of the weight of the evidence and documentation. In a sensible test attributed to the poet James Whitcomb Riley, "when I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck." By that test Oppenheimer was a Communist in the last years of the 1930s and into early 1942. It is ironic that from among all the books written about Oppenheimer, the one that won the Pulitzer Prize is so lacking in accuracy and integrity on this critical point.
At least, they write, Bird and Sherwin tried to deal with the evidence by dissembling it. Others, as you will see, do even worse. They simply ignore what is in front of their face. That, as we know, is most common for naïve liberals who want to believe that there never was any kind of Communist threat at all in the United States.
So the bottom line. Should the AEC have taken away Oppie's security clearance? Haynes and Klehr, again, have the final word:
Knowing what we know now, America's public interest would have been best served if Oppenheimer had been able to continue in his role as a consultant to the government on various atomic and security projects. The evidence that by the mid-1940s he had left his earlier Communist allegiance behind and sincerely supported America's role in the Cold War is fully convincing. But, of course, one of the major contributing factors to his loss of security access was his own unwillingness to provide a candid and honest account of his earlier Communist ties and why he had put them aside. The AEC in 1954 did not know what we now know in 2011. Its decision not to renew his security clearance was understandable under the circumstances.
Read their article and the sources they cite, and decide for yourself what is the truth. I don't think PJM readers will have any problems doing just that.
75 Comments, 30 Threads
1. No, but...
– those close to him were, right? A complex man, who should have been kept in place, but watched constantly. Not for what he might do, but what those around him might do.
February 15, 2012 - 8:07 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Max Friedman
"No, but" gets right to the point about Oppenheimer and his associations. He was surrounded by CPUSA members from his brother, sister-in-law and wife (whose marriage to Dallet, literally a Soviet agent/agent of influence, was a key tip-off as to what "a fine mess" he found himself in.
I have a name for this situation, and other precedents for it. It is called the "sandwich tactic" for the simple reason that the individual in the middle, i.e. Robert Oppenheimer, found himself sandwiched in-between CPUSA members who was also possibly Soviet agents of some kind.
The same thing happened to Albert Einstein re his private secretary (a woman whose name I have forgotten), and his work colleague, German Communist Otto Nixon. Einstein was "sandwiched" in-between the two key people in his work life, both hardcore Communists and probable Soviet operatives.
The late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also got "sandwiched" by his top financial advisor and personal advisor, admitted CPUSA member and KGB cash handler, Stanley Levison, and his personal aide in the SCLC, Jack O'Dell, a key CPUSA leader and probable Soviet agent of influence (based on documents seized by the police in their 1956 raid of O'Dell's apartment).
O'Dell later went on to be the Rev. Jesse Jackson's key "international department" man in Operation Breadbasket, Operation PUSH, and the National Rainbow Coalition, as well as being a key member of the various "Mobe" organizations of the Hanoi Lobby, and its successors, the Mobilization For Survival, etc.
You have to be careful of what you eat, and a red sandwich can give you indigestion and make you into either a willing dupe or an unwilling dupe fool.
Bon appetit!
February 17, 2012 - 8:30 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
2. David W. Nicholas
The difficulty with the "honesty-is-the-best-policy" argument, in this case, is that a lot of progressive people with only modest communist connections were being raked over the coals pretty harshly, in this era. I know we'd like to think that Americans, even back then, would be open-minded enough to accept that someone had changed, but it wasn't always the case. My favorite incident is the one outlined by Iris Chang in the book "Thread of the Silkworm". The subject of the book was a guy named Tsien Hsue-Shen. He was a scientist, an expert in the field of fluid dynamics, and one of the founders more-or-less of what became the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA (or La Canada/Flintridge, if you want to count every part of the facility other than the mailing address). He came to the US before World War II, and was deported at the height of the McCarthy era, after it was discovered that he'd attended meetings of communists in Pasadena in the '30s. He went back to China, and voila, they have the Silkworm missile, which he more or less designed by himself. Yeah, we were worried he was a Communist (he said he wasn't and wanted to stay here) so we sent him back there, where he became a Communist, and designed missiles for them.
Anyway, I'm not saying that anti-Communism in all cases is wrong. I think you can make a case that at least some of the suspicions of various individuals (Alger Hiss most obviously) were well-founded. That being said, there were times when things went off the rails, and it's not surprising Oppenheimer didn't trust his critics to be understanding.
February 16, 2012 - 1:43 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
If an apologist were to make essentially the same self-serving statement as you did but in defense of Nazis I doubt you'd be very impressed. Likewise, I find your statement to be either naive or disingenuous.
If there was confusion back in the late 1940s and early 1950s about who was a Communist and who wasn't it was every bit as much the fault of those activists and agents who made it their mission to obfuscate the truth, both about Communists here in the United States and about the Soviets abroad. It's also true that Americans were targeted by the media for being anti-Communists as well. Much of our perception of the Cold War years has been distorted by a media that was already infected by left-wing bias and paid propaganda.
February 16, 2012 - 8:18 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Well, actually, there was Werner Von Braun, who went from making flying bombs for the Nazis to making manned rockets (more flying bombs?) for the US. Of course, by that time, the Nazis were not much of a threat.
February 16, 2012 - 10:30 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
David W. Nicholas
See my response to snork, just below, for my answer to the Nazi question. As to the main thrust of your response, if I get it correct you're essentially saying that they were all guilty, and that the media and academic response of a few decades ago, that they were all innocent, was misleading and deceptive. I give you points for being half-right.
The trick here is that judging anyone by the actions of another person is dangerous, to say the least. Yes, there were people in the '40s and '50s who were Communists, spies and operatives of various sorts. Yes, some of them did considerable damage to our interests, and some of them tried and failed to do more. That doesn't mean that *everyone* who went to a "meeting of the Party" at someone's house in the '30s should bear equal responsibility, any more than it means that Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs were innocent. Of course they weren't; they were guilty and deserved to be punished. Hiss, if you ask me, got off lightly. Ted Hall got away with it pretty much completely. Those facts being in evidence, someone who (for whatever reason) attended a meeting of "progressive" liberals in the '30s somewhere, or even a whole bunch of meetings, isn't neccessarily guilty of the same sort of betrayal.
I'm not saying Oppenheimer's innocent; I'm saying that for you to convince me he's guilty, you're going to have to do better than tell me that he attended some communist "gatherings" in the '30s. Him actually doing espionage stuff would be helpful. I seem to remember that Pavel Sudoplatov's book "Special Tasks" made mention of Oppenheimer as a source of intelligence about the bomb, but from what I remember Sudoplatov asserted that Oppenheimer hadn't *knowingly* assisted the Soviets; instead they duped him. Better, but still not good enough. For me to condemn him as a Soviet spy, he has to actually be demonstrably guilty, like the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss.
February 16, 2012 - 1:44 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
WTF is a "modest Communist connection"? Is that like being a moderate Nazi, or a reasonable Klansman?
February 16, 2012 - 9:45 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
David W. Nicholas
Which brings to mind a story from a book I finished a couple of weeks ago. FDR is campaigning in the south, meeting local Democrats:
"…His interlocutor, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, was flanked by an Italian and a Jew. Roosevelt asked whether they also belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, hinting at its anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic attitudes. Yes, came the answer. "[T]hey were considered all right since everyone in the community knew them. [I]t was a good illustration of how difficult it was to have any prejudices—racial, religious, or otherwise—if you really knew people," concluded Roosevelt…"—S.M. Plokhy, "Yalta: The Price of Peace" 2010.
The difficulty with stereotypes is that they often don't hold up, for a group, when you examine individuals within the group. Harry Truman was in the Klan…and had a Jewish business partner. Not everyone in the Klan was an out and out racist lunatic…so yes, there were moderates.
As for the Nazis, that one's even easier. Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi Party.
What this does is expose the fallacy of determining guilt based on one's membership in an organization. It should be taken as evidence, yes. It *might* imply, even indicate, that someone's guilty of something; it shouldn't be taken as absolute proof that they certainly are guilty of anything, other than perhaps bad judgment.
February 16, 2012 - 1:31 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
3. Jack
In my own experience with security clearences, the main thing they are looking for are people who are honest and truthfull, not perfect. If you can't be trusted to tell the truth you can't be trusted seems to be the way it works.
February 16, 2012 - 3:44 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
David W. Nicholas
We're not talking about yesterday, you know. Back then, a number of things that excited suspicion and led to arrests would be thrown out of court in the current era. Security checks back then were focused on who you knew and associated with. The "I don't care if you're gay as long as you're not hiding it" philosophy came much much later.
February 16, 2012 - 1:52 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
The most telling stroke against Oppenheimer has nothing to do with his past Communist affiliation. Rather, he was dead set against American development of the H-Bomb, even after it was known that the Soviets had it. He tried to convince Dean Acheson, then the Secretary of State, that the U.S. could disarm the Soviets "by example" — i.e., by disarming first and without an enforceable guarantee that the Soviets would reciprocate.
I would not want such a man in a position of authority over nuclear weapons development.
February 16, 2012 - 4:26 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Harvard Yard Conservative
"…that the U.S. could disarm the Soviets "by example" — i.e., by disarming first and without an enforceable guarantee that the Soviets would reciprocate.
I would not want such a man in a position of authority over nuclear weapons development."
And in the news: "President Obama proposes to pare our nuclear arsenal down to as low as 300 nuclear missiles."
February 16, 2012 - 5:57 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Libby Firenze
I was born and raised in Los Alamos, N.M. We live every day with the duality of our amazing accomplishment and deadly feat. What these men and women did under the leadership of Oppie was incredible and saved many, many lives but yet it took many lives as well. Oppie and many others were terribly affected by this burden. It is never as easy as the armchair quarterbacks think.
February 16, 2012 - 6:10 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Fred Zarguna
Everyone who is in the least way complicit in killing other people — even in a just cause — is affected by it if they have the slightest trace of humanity.
I get quite a pain in my hindquarters when I hear about how terribly conflicted Manhattan Project participants felt about the whole enterprise, as if combat infantrymen were not at least as morally troubled. Though many of them had very good personal reasons for hating the enemy, none that I know did. None that I know regarded it as anything but a necessary evil. Evil yes. But sadly, necessary as well.
The firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo are stark reminders that we didn't need nuclear weapons to destroy a city or kill tens of thousands of people. We didn't need them in 1945, and we certainly don't need them for that purpose today. Physicists didn't make a unique and terrifying contribution to warfare any more than a particular airman or infantryman or sailor did. It's called "duty" instead of, say, recreation, because everyone who does it knows that it exacts a terrible cost.
February 16, 2012 - 8:12 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
David Estes
Yet, that is exactly what President Baraq Hussein Obama is shooting for with the Chinese today.
February 16, 2012 - 6:54 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
David W. Nicholas
This is the reason we don't let scientists determine policy. Several of the Jewish members of the Manhattan Project, in 1945, just assumed that when Germany surrendered the whole thing would be shut down. They were horrified when the bombs were assembled, tested, and then used on the Japanese…they thought the whole point was to drop an a-bomb on Berlin to kill Hitler, not on the Japanese.
Scientists are technicians…and they should be kept to that. A scientist who develops weapons should no more decide how or when they're deployed than a general should determine when and whether his country goes to war. It's dangerous for it to be otherwise, and Oppenheimer is just a good example of why.
February 16, 2012 - 1:49 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
myth buster
Oppenheimer was not a soldier or a weapons manufacturer by training. Rather, he was an astrophysicist who was recruited to run the Manhattan Project based on his knowledge of supernova mechanics. He was quite reasonably traumatized by what the atomic bomb was capable of, so when confronted with the possibility of America building bombs a thousand times as powerful as the ones he built, he was horrified.
February 16, 2012 - 2:30 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
5. Thomas_L.....
It's like blaming the effects of a virus on the attempts at a cure. In reality, is it not more accurate and honest to say that Stalinism and Soviet Communism, along with actual agents, fellow travellers and useful idiots, being dangerous, duplicitious and treacherous is what is actually to blame for all of this?
February 16, 2012 - 5:33 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
6. john
What's the evidence Oppenheimer was a communist? The web is so full of articles that claim irrefutable evidence for one argument or another and don't summarize it. Instead we go haring off to links that do the same.
February 16, 2012 - 6:03 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
7. Hejsan
If you enjoy Feynman like I do, you'll remember he writes about the Manhatten Project and how security was really, really lax. Feynman would prove this by breaching it all the time (I'm sure both to prove his point and to amuse himself). It is curious why it was so lax, considering Oppenheimer was basically in charge. This doesn't incriminate Oppenheimer, but it is weird.
February 16, 2012 - 6:31 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Good Ole Charlie
And Feynman borrowed a car from Klaus Fuchs,,,who was an honest-to-Gawd Communist spy, passing information along, carried to Santa Fe in the very same car.
Did the security types either nab or suspect Fuchs?
February 16, 2012 - 5:45 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
8. sinz54
A lot of sincere, even patriotic, left-wing Americans strayed close to Communism. Ernest Hemingway fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Prior to the end of World War II, the U.S.S.R. was not viewed by many Americans as an existential threat. In fact, during World War II, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were allies, with the U.S. shipping aid to the U.S.S.R. And the U.S.S.R., with its rhetoric about the triumph of the working class, actually sounded pretty good to Americans in the Great Depression, when the unemployment rate hit 20% while many capitalist industrialists still lived in luxury.
The turning point came with the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. The vast majority of left-wing Americans broke with the U.S.S.R. after that. Those few who did not represented the real internal threat to our nation, because it was now clear that they supported totalitarianism.
February 16, 2012 - 6:43 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Long before the Hungarian uprising, occurred the Hitler/Stalin pact and the carving up of Poland. Anyone still in the thralls of Stalinism and thinking it would deliver the socialist Utopia, at that point, was living in La La Land.
February 16, 2012 - 6:57 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Fred Beloit
Sinz, if you were only around in 1954 and you were a child for many years after that, you can't have a memory of how most Americans felt about Communism during the late 40s and early 50s. Just for example, an American librul, Truman, took us to war in Korea to stop the forceful spread of Communism a mere five years after WWII had ended, leading a war-weary nation, but one very much opposed to Communism, into uniform by enlistment or draft.
We also had drills to try to prepare school children for a nuclear attack by the USSR well prior to 1954.
Wide-spread anti-Communism was well underway no later than 1948.February 16, 2012 - 7:26 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
The "turning point" did not come in 1956, not by a long shot. 1956 was horrifyingly inevitable (to those who understood communism) that the communists had been able to deceive those they wanted to deceive in order to be in the position to do what they did in 1956. Sickening.
February 16, 2012 - 10:11 am Link to this Comment | Reply
Mark v
patriotic, left-wing Americans
That is an oxymoronic statement.
The values of the left are diametrically opposed to the values on which this country was founded.
A man who despises the very liberty that made this country great cannot be called a patriot.
February 16, 2012 - 2:23 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
9. Conrad
From what I read, it seems RO had been an active member of some Commie organization or another for a few years, as had his brother. There doesn't seem to be evidence that he was a spy. However, it seems reasonable to conclude (as the government did) that RO was a security RISK in that a fair number of Commies back then were in fact working with the Soviets (e.g., Hiss and the Rosenbergs). The whole "Red Scare" era has been caricatured as a witch hunt, but this ignores the fact the Soviets really were trying to take over the world and were actively using fellow travelers in the government (and Hollywood, for that matter) to try to bring about that end.
February 16, 2012 - 6:57 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Good grief, people, where have ya' been! Half the boffins on the Manhattan project were communists! The ones that weren't card carrying reds were sympathizers, or their families and friends were! They were all university academic types. That bunch have been communists and sympathizers of the USSR since its inception. These were the men that had the expertise to do the job, so they were ones the government got on board to do the job. The army tried as best they could to keep them under a tight security cone, and they did create the bomb, but some still managed to pass the secrets on to the soviets. America was awash in soviet agents back then. It was inevitable that they would get the key pieces of information needed to build an A-bomb. It's relatively easy to build simple 'little-boy' style bombs. The hard part is getting the fissionable material.
February 16, 2012 - 7:31 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
You are correct. It was pathetic how penetrated it was. Klaus Fuchs and Theodore hall wee definitely Soviet Agents. Hall simply took a vacation to his hometown of NYC and contacted a communist friend from Harvard.
Communist sympathies were common at the time among immigrants from Eastern Europe. I guess it was en vogue to be a commie back in the day. I just read where the English upper classes and spy agencies were riddled with communists. I their case homosexual communists.
February 16, 2012 - 11:49 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
11. Baobo
I believe there were (and continue to be) far more agents pretending to be spies than actual spies. We may never know who was friendly or hostile.
February 16, 2012 - 7:40 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
What does this "agents pretending to be spies" stuff mean?
Are you asserting that even if someone who actively worked to advance the cause of Communism–say a writer at a Hollywood studio who tried to insert Communist themes in movies, or a newspaper reporter who shaded news stories to favor Communism– should be seen as merely a relatively harmless "agent," as opposed to those individuals who advanced the cause of Communism by actually stealing classified or other valuable information and then deliberately handed it over to the Communists, and who were, therefor, much more harmful and dangerous "spies."
Clearer, please.
February 16, 2012 - 8:16 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
I was loosely referring to double agents, if I understand the term right… A toy duck attracts real ducks, which can then be shot. From a distance, there is no telling which ducks are toys.
February 16, 2012 - 9:19 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Phillep Harding
A joke common back around 1970 was that the easiest way to tell who was a police spy was to see who was current in their dues. Others claimed, in apparent sincerity, that the assorted dissident groups would go broke if the police spies stopped paying their dues.
February 16, 2012 - 12:39 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
the assorted dissident groups would go broke if the police spies stopped paying their dues.
Soros is ridiculously obvious. It almost like they want us to know.
February 17, 2012 - 7:05 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Max Friedman
To Phillep Harding re the 1970s joke about funding the leftists. BS!! A double BS. I was in the New Left (SDS for one meeting – pathetic at Am. Un.; SMC, Nat. Mobe, founder of New Mobe, NCAHCUA, etc).
Money was the "faux" cause because the Communists always saw to it that their organizations got it somewhere, be it from CPers like Sid Peck, John Rossen, Quentin Young, etc, from CP sympathizers in various fronts (esp. those anti-HCUA groups), or from communist/marxist foundations (DJ Bernstein, Mott,Stern, etc, now Soros, Tides Foundation, Arca Fdtn, and a host of CPUSA legacies).
No one knows how much cash communist fronts got from churches, pass-the-bucket collectors at protests, KGB cash funneled through the Party, and CPUSA money from their own members, not to mention those in the SWP/YSA.
All I can say is that it wasn't "chump change."
Check out the IRS 990 forms for a lot of these organizations like the Institute for Policy Studies, Fund for Peace, Youth Project, and you will see, even back in the 1970s, some real, serious funding of the marxist Left. You just have to know which groups were red and which were pink. In some cases, as time has revealed, there was no difference, only the camouflage over them.
Oh, I forgot Hollywood fundraisers for various CP fronts such as Lillian Helman's "Committee for Public Justice", or old leftists like Norman Mailer funding PEPIC/Organizing Committee for the 5th Estate.
I could write a book on this topic of the hidden funding of the marxist Left in America. Humm, maybe I should considering the degree of ignorance shown by some posters here, as well as the almost total lack of investigative journalism shown by the mainstream media, not only back then, but now as well (Media Matters, Tides Foundation, Apollo Alliance, etc.)
February 17, 2012 - 8:47 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
That's all consistent with the point we were making – that most people can't tell fronts vs. real enemies… not even considering the overlap with turncoats and confused young morons in both camps.
February 18, 2012 - 7:59 am Link to this Comment
12. Ex Canuck in US.
On Oppenheimer and other Sov agents of that period its worth taking a look at Romerstein, Herbert and Breindel, Eric. The Venona Secrets. Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors. Regnery, Washington. 2001. isbn 978-9-89526-225-7.
This book is based on decryptions of Soviet telegrams released by the US government and other public document sources. Oppenheimer gets a lengthy discussion in the context of various California spy rings.
February 16, 2012 - 8:57 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
13. cfbleachers
I find the notion that there was "Communist hysteria" a bit disingenuous.
If, indeed there was a concerted effort to infuse Communism into America through deceit, fraud, conspiracy…then pointing at it not only is not hysteria, it's responsible and necessary behavior.
Similarly, today we face a rampant, runaway, conspiratorial infusion of what I call "small c communism". It is not a tinfoil hat response to point out, oppose and disclose the acts, people and entities that are engaged in such a conspiracy.
The fact that Oppie had Communist sympathies certainly at a stage in his life, made the question about whether he retained them, disavowed them completely or partially held some, a legitimate cause for concern for the protection of national security secrets of this magnitude.
Small c communists love to hide behind all manner of masks and camouflages. There is absolutely nothing hysterical about recognizing a plot, a conspiracy and a scheme. To NOT expose it, for fear of being called "paranoid" or "hysterical", is the act of a coward, not a patriot.
We shouldn't be peer pressured out of saving the country from overthrow and conspiracy and traitorism.
February 16, 2012 - 9:20 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Art Chance
Well, we have been peer pressured out of pointing it out or even acknowledging it. Only racism is a stronger epithet than McCarthyism in most Americans' painfully ignorant minds.
February 16, 2012 - 10:08 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Absolutely right, Art.
The race card is actually an ace in the communist rigged deck.
Nothing has kept the African-American community down longer, more efficiently and more decidedly…than the scam pulled on them by the small c communists.
The Workers Party mentality is pervasive in black neighborhoods. The fear instilled in them that the "white man's party" (Republican) will "take away" their "safety net"…is so ingrained, it has nearly 100% acceptance in large metropolitan areas.
No matter how many West, Rice, Thomas, Cain examples PROVE it to be false, playing the racial warfare card in combination with the class warfare card…works.
Small c communism needs victims, so it creates them…then blames its actual intended target. Capitalism and free market proponents.
Small c communists feast on wedge issues. Religion can be made a wedge issue? Small c communists will seize on it.
Class warfare can be made a wedge issue…small c communists will set a thousand traps to fall into.
Small c communism is ALL about divide and conquer. Having a "black" candidate gives them an automatic weapon, locked and loaded.
Picking a fight with Catholics, Evangelical Christians…even pro-Israel Jews…part of the small c communist playbook.
And, an automatic shield is "McCarthyism". A loaded charge, that prevents anyone who spots the conspiracy from voicing it. The propaganda machine will explode into action and smear the hell out of any effective voice.
Now that we know that the Journolistas confer on how to slander and the Media Matters Mafia will stalk and plant stories…the conspiracy is pretty much an open secret. That fact will stop exactly…nothing.
February 16, 2012 - 11:25 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Fred Beloit
"Nothing has kept the African-American community down longer, more efficiently and more decidedly…than the scam pulled on them by the small c communists."
Speaking of which:
http://times247.com/24-7-videos/obama-launches-african-americans-for-obamaFebruary 16, 2012 - 1:34 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
Art Chance
My only point of disagreement is your characterization of "small c communist." The communists with the big C bankrolled and manipulated much of the Civil Rights Movement, many leaders of which were educated in schools run by Party members and close fellow travellers. Likewise the anti-war/anti-draft movements. If you went to one of those big demonstrations odds were that there was both a KGB and a CIA/FBI agent somewhere in your field of vision. The Left is still busily trashing J. Edgar Hoover because he was the only one in America who would actually go after the KGB and it's Comintern apparatchiks, and he was smart enough to know that the OSS/KGB had been hopelessly compromised. At least the Brits ran their foremost mole to ground and forced Kim Phiby to go join his comrades in the USSR; we never caught ours, that we know of anyway. God knows Reagan and Bush bringing back old boys from the OSS days sure put a shock in the CIA and State systems.
Anyway, at the apparatchik level, they're all big C communists; its just with the fall of the USSR, there is no Comintern to call the shots. Somebody called the shots that so grossly manipulated the World economy in '08 and allowed the coup d'etat, but I don't really know who or what combination of interests.
February 16, 2012 - 1:55 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
'I find the notion that there was "Communist hysteria" a bit disingenuous.'
From a review in American Scholar:
"In 1946, an FBI informant in Hollywood warned his superiors of two productions that reeked of communistic propaganda. One was a war-vet drama that associated criticism of Russia with "anti-Semitism, Jim Crowism [and] Ku Klux Klanism." The other was a Christmas fable that featured a "demeaning" portrayal of bankers. These threats to the American way? William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life."
February 16, 2012 - 11:33 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Well, that proves it then.
Everyone was hysterical, nothing to look at here. Move along.
February 16, 2012 - 2:19 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Art Chance
Yeah, plenty of useful idiots like you to look at.
February 16, 2012 - 4:05 pm Link to this Comment -
Readers Digest
Plenty? Perhaps.
Like, Mission to Moscow (1943). Or, The North Star (1943). Or, Song of Russia (1944).
I just cannot recall which made Viktor Kravchenko, who had just defected from the Soviet trade mission, sick with disbelief.
But, perhaps, all of them.February 17, 2012 - 1:12 pm Link to this Comment
While Stalin murdered millions decade after decade,American communists stood by him.Even Hitler became acceptable after Stalin signed their pact.Our children today know all about Manzanar but nothing of the gulags.Stalin and Hitler worked together from 1939 to 1941 trying to destroy freedom forever, and the American communists helped all they could.This ugly time for the far left has been scrubbed from our history.Soviet penetration of the OSS was also real.Just as the far-left deliberately blinded itself to communist massacres in the Soviet union and China, today's progressives refuse to acknowledge Islamic suppression of other religions.
February 16, 2012 - 1:58 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
14. elkh1
It is ironic that from among all the books written about Oppenheimer, the one that won the Pulitzer Prize is so lacking in accuracy and integrity on this critical point.
Remind you of that Pulitzer the NYT Walter Duranty won?
February 16, 2012 - 9:29 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
15. Dajake
A favorite story of mine is when Oppie was visiting the White House after the war, he lamented to president Truman that he couldn't help but feel like he had blood on his hands for his role in developing the bomb. Truman was reported to say afterwards that he never wanted that crybaby to step foot in the White House ever again. Of coarse I might be biased for thinking that dropping both bombs on Japan was justified as my dad was on Saipan at the time.
February 16, 2012 - 10:22 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
16. ari
well, I don't know that he was. But I do know, people were nervous. and it's hard to tell. communism looked clever and foresighted.
and, well, it's just hard to tell, when someone is insisting on being hard-headed independent, unchecked by anything. I expect that Mr Oppenheimer was fairly riven with contempt for all sorts of normal intelligence folks, or people without his social polish. I doubt that that interview would go well. It's a trope in movies, even today: the sweaty local cops screaming and yelling and the interview subject laughing at him, or the audience- even in Something About Mary, a gross comedy, has that scene- and then elegant high-wire quizzing from a top-drawer socialite with x-ray vision, basically. Oppenheimer wouldn't have trusted a regular FBI worker to have any sense, since he probably didn't have the class polish, either.
And, well, if one cherished bohemian ideals- the Greenwich Village true bohemians were shipping off to Russia on a pretty regular jaunt. You can't explain Bill Clinton, otherwise. My dad is like that, in so many ways. We had to leave all my toys at one of his postings- they were hecho en ussr- cheap toys. This sort of makes sense- except, there were cheap non- russian toys to be had, as well, I think. maybe? who can tell? He's hard liberal, but hates the Soviets. How does judgment on that work? I think that comes down to the interviewer. 20 years service in the military, near worship of FDR, five copies of Germinal…..he's american, just maybe not a right-wing version of american.
and i think that's part of it- someone ideological can love their country, they just want a different version of it, a place with the same name, and a different political order. is that treasonous?
would you give that person a security clearance? there are competing visions on the right, as well. not compelling, but they are here.
February 16, 2012 - 10:34 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Art Chance
That's why the loyalty oath all government employees and elected or appointed officials once had to swear said that you wouldn't support the violent overthrow of the US or your state's government. Unfortunately, we have today by a more less democratic process elected an avowed communist who so far is doing a pretty good job of using democratic processes, and the failings thereof, to establish a Stalinist-style bureaucratic communist government. It is interestingly ironic that the methods used to bring him to power and which his Junta uses to exercise power are essentially those of Trotsky, and Trotsky became an apostate for opposing the bureaucratic communist state. One thing we can be sure of; many of those who helped to bring him to power will wind up with an ice axe in their head once he has power firmly established. The first casualties of any revolution are always the revolutionaries. That's really going to come as a surprise to all those useful idiots who thought they were going to be a part of the nomenklatura.
I've seen this play out several times in union decertification elections; the radicals who bring down the incumbent union can't do it on their own so they ally with some powerful International Union (few of them are truly international by the word has another meaning communist circles) that comes in to "help" them take over and then become the recognized union. Then a year later, not one of the old radicals is holding a union office or working for the union, and lots of them have already been sold out to the employer and fired. Tragic, I say, truly tragic.
February 16, 2012 - 1:41 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
17. R. L. Hails Sr. P. E.
There is no question that Stalin stole our highest classified secrets, both military and encryption, and that our government, at levels reporting to the President contained traitors, paid by the USSR, following WWII. This is just well documented factual history. Stalin gained, perhaps 50 years, in the global race for the bomb, the ability to kill millions of people with one stroke. If monsters lacked this power, history would be different, for billions of people.
Yes, McCarthy, and his henchman, Dick Nixon, persecuted hundreds of innocent, pink people, destroyed their lives, without uncovering one legitimate traitor. They were despicable men, but the lack of fruitful result was due to incompetence and alcohol. They were correct in threat assessment.
Spying hurts. Russia obtained the force necessary to enslave hundreds of millions of people. Hitler tried but lost the race. Tojo lost the race, and got melted. This is what happens to nuclear losers.
Oppenheimer had been a communist, had family members who were communists, and had empathy for this social system. But so did Christ's apostles. The key is whether communism strives for a violent overthrow of the existing society.
We face the same conundrum today. 51% of the PhD candidates in nuclear physics, in US grad schools, are/were citizens of China. These are the farm clubs for our DOE labs, smart people who work on H bombs, and as any sailor knows, one tiny hole can sink any boat. The Academy of Science, begun in Stalin's Russia and copied in China, is an arm of the military. Chinese hackers continually probe our military networks. Thus how do we identify, "them killers", in a globally intertwined community? And finally how much information, methods and sources, must a free society publish in fighting this lethal battle?
We contend with the same problem today; is he loyal, or will he kill us all?
February 16, 2012 - 10:37 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
MOS was 71331
"McCarthy, and his henchman, Dick Nixon, persecuted hundreds of innocent, pink people, destroyed their lives, without uncovering one legitimate traitor." Sorry, Mr Hails, Alger Hiss was certainly a traitor, and Richard Nixon "persecuted" him into prison, where he belonged.
McCarthy had little involvement with the Hiss case. However, he did refer to Hiss in speeches in 1952 commenting on the Eisenhower vs Stevenson presidential campaign. McCarthy repeatedly used the faux Freudian slip, "Alger — I mean Adlai."
As for the accusation of "hundreds of innocent, pink people, destroyed", surely you can provide an example or two. The 1956 book, "McCarthy and His Enemies", by William F Buckley and Brent Bozell, discusses the prominent individuals attacked by McCarthy and shows that McCarthy's attacks were correct. And there weren't "hundreds" of McCarthy "victims." The actual count was well below 100. McCarthy did refer to a list of 57 in his famous speech in Wheeling, PA, but, in his congressional follow up, he didn't supply several of the 57 names because (as he stated) he thought the evidence against them was insufficiently persuasive.
You might also say what you mean by "destroyed." One of the individuals McCarthy named later became the president of the New York state bar association. (I wish I could be so destroyed.)
February 16, 2012 - 1:10 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
MOS was 71331
I'll also point out that after he was released from prison for his perjury conviction (he had denied under oath having known Whittaker Chambers), New York state reinstated the law license of Alger Hiss. What a travesty! If any nonviolent felony should disqualify a person for a license to practice law, perjury surely is that crime.
February 16, 2012 - 3:36 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Buckeye Abroad
"Yes, McCarthy, and his henchman, Dick Nixon, persecuted hundreds of innocent, pink people, destroyed their lives, without uncovering one legitimate traitor. They were despicable men, but the lack of fruitful result was due to incompetence and alcohol. They were correct in threat assessment."
So McCarthy was correct, but wasn't competent enough to handle it? Probably correct. Don't blame him.. he died young and was on his own for most of it.
Care to take a guess who his assitant was and apparrently was so enthralled asked him to be godfather to his first born?
February 16, 2012 - 1:23 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
MOS was 71331
I assume you're referring to Bobby Kennedy, brother of JFK and JFK's Attorney General. The whole Kennedy family liked Joe McCarthy, and McCarthy had an inside track to becoming a JFK brother-in-law.
February 16, 2012 - 3:45 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
R. L. Hails Sr. P. E.
I agree with most of these comments; none of my disagreements would directly relate to Oppenheimer. [Briefly, the hundreds are the judgments of Hollywood types, media types, pickos, who claim injured careers. Yes, even today, there are claims of the innocence of Alger Hiss, after his treason has been documented in the opened files in post Stalin Moscow. McCarthy was an severe alcoholic and attacked the loyalty of Gen. G. Marshall, who IMHO, was the greatest allied military leader of the war.] There are excellent points made by other commenters; I will not repeat them. America was successfully (in Stalin's eyes) attacked by communist spies. They severely threatened America's survival, and directly led to a half century of global suffering and death.
My points are these. Oppenheimer, like many in at that time, was/ had been a communist, either large or small c. He fought against Teller, and his scheme for the H bomb, and was canned, not on scientific grounds, but in a policy/ morality/loyalty conflict. More importantly, for today's generation, Oppenheimer's America lived in a real fear, of being annihilated by Stalin. That fear, branching in part, into McCarthyism, was well founded, talented people were trying to kill us. Others try today. We ignore spies, hackers, traitors at our peril. But it is "fashionable ???" to discount this concern as "McCarthyism", connoting a racist, power mad fraud, but with no actual national security threat. This mind set is dead wrong. Hate filled people really want to kill us.
However, our countermeasure policies, eg Homeland Security, or our 36 year pogrom against civilian nuclear power are terribly flawed. Electronic detection, and communication is infinitely more complicated, and thus vulnerable, than in Oppie's time. The problem is our problem. Americans who are terrified of a nuke, or global warming, perceive little danger from a terrorist WMD attack. How else can our non existent border security, illegal immigrant, energy policies, or drug war failures be reconciled? Tens of thousands of tons of white powder are smuggled yearly into our commerce, for our fun. It is cocaine; it could be anthrax. The people who ran Fast and Furious supposedly defend us against an smuggled A bomb. Feel warm and fuzzy? Do voters comprehend the difference between a millirem, or thousands of rems?
Oppenheimer, a genius, did not clearly see risks, and threats. American leaders, today, do not either.
February 16, 2012 - 8:34 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
18. james wilson
A communist is almost by definition not un-patriotic, but anti-patriotic. Centralization and uniformity are his gods, and his politics are international, not national. American communist were attached to Stalin because he and Moscow represented to them an aggressive international movement. Which it was indeed.
If Oppenheimer moved away from his close attachment to the movement it was because he saw no future in risking his many newer associations and coming old age to it. The plans were laid, but the time in which Americans would elect a communist President was far off. Enough was enough.
February 16, 2012 - 10:46 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Absolutely right on! International Communism, with the elimination of nationhood, was seen as the panacea for all the world's problems. It was just the silly little details that needed to be worked out. Like human nature and the fact that there are no real socialists. Hitler, with his sick genius, correctly saw through Stalin and recognized Russian imperialism in drag. The only real difference between Stalinism and Hitlerism was that Hitler made no bones about having no intention of giving up German nationalism. Thus National Socialism vs. International Communism. A totalitarian battle for the non-existing soul of the non-existent socialist man.
February 17, 2012 - 7:26 am Link to this Comment | Reply
19. Unattorney
Where are today's communists? Centralized government control of the entire economy. What President believes in that? Only the words change. Reverse discrimination becomes affirmative action becomes diversity.Social security contributions become payroll tax.Debt becomes stimulus.Global warming becomes climate change.Communism becomes progressive.
February 16, 2012 - 10:47 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
20. Unattorney
Oppenheimer roots in 1930′s Bay Area communist circles have been well documented.Stalin was in full glory and US communists followed party discipline when he and Hitler embraced.Communist scientists did congregate at certain university physics and math departments so the dangers was real as history shows.
February 16, 2012 - 11:13 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
21. Monkey
It was Oppenheimer's knowledge of George Eltenton's connections to the Soviets and his deception in protecting Haakon Chevalier that raised a red (no pun intended) flag. Espionage from any side is a crime against the state, whether one is working for the commies or a hostile democracy. If Oppenheimer were loyal to the U.S. Gov. while espousing communist ideas, that would not have been a crime or even a legitimate reason for excluding him from a security clearance, and there was no proof that he held communist sympathies. It was in his acts of duplicity and withholding information that Oppenheimer demonstrated unreliability and generated suspicion, though the instances were few and the consequences ultimately minor. Joe McCarthy and his ilk were twits who stomped on the Constitution through persecuting Americans for their perceived ideas and beliefs.
February 16, 2012 - 11:19 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
"Yes, McCarthy, and his henchman, Dick Nixon, persecuted hundreds of innocent, pink people, destroyed their lives, without uncovering one legitimate traitor. They were despicable men, but the lack of fruitful result was due to incompetence and alcohol."
This is a gross mis-statement of fact! Those of us who care to check the history that exists outside the main stream liberal media know that the Senate and House of Representative's investigations proved that there were many Soviet spies working in Washington DC in the 30s through the 50s. Some fled the country and others went to jail like Alger Hiss. Others like Harry Dexter White died before thay could be completely uncovered. Those who promelgate the lies that no Soviet spies were discovered and innocent lives were ruined only make it easier for the modern communists to work toward the same goals that the traitors of the 50s worked for!
February 16, 2012 - 11:35 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
23. Mark v
naïve liberals who want to believe that there never was any kind of Communist threat at all in the United States.
Let me fix that for you:
naïve liberals who want to do their part to conceal the well-entrenched Communist threat at work in the United States.
February 16, 2012 - 2:21 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
24. Yet Wave
Klaus Fuchs was the only proven commie rat in Oppenheimer's coterie of brainiacs and oddballs. The only thing certain that can be said about Oppenheimer is that Roger Simon now wears his hat.
February 16, 2012 - 2:45 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
25. Deep Blue
I had the opportunity to hear Kai Bird speak at an historical symposium in San Antonio in 1995. This happened to occur during the Smithsonian's shameful attempt to redefine the atom bomb mission of the Enola Gay as something motivated by American racism. On that occasion, Mr. Bird stood before an auditorium full of veterans of the Pacific war and other historians and proposed that the veterans' memories were actually muddled by time and mistaken, and that racism was, in fact, the principal factor motivating them to fight.
Although one might be tempted to give him high marks for outrageous moxie in his willingness to publicly insult the recollections and motivations of the veterans present, I also quite clearly recall Mr. Bird's early exit from that engagement, escorted as he was out a side door, chased by shouts of outrage and a chorus of boos from the audience.
I do not know whether Oppenheimer was a communist or a spy. But I am fairly confident that whatever position Kai Bird has taken in the matter may reliably be considered a doctrinaire, agenda-driven, contra-indication of the truth.
February 16, 2012 - 2:46 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Max Friedman
Kai Bird is a veteran leftist, back as far as the 1970′s. He poses as a professional journalist but upon closer examination of his major writings, it shows a definite more-than-liberal leftist ideology.
The fact that a lot of the journalism/book world accepts him as a legitimate, unbiased writer, is a sad commentary on the state of writing today.
I don't care if he writes lies or distortions the rest of his life. I'm concerned that people continue to be fooled by them and then defend him from the documented exposures such as those of Haynes/Klehr.
February 17, 2012 - 10:30 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
26. charles
Philby, Burgess and McLain were given complete access to the US atomic facilities because the British had helped to bring uranium from Belgium to the US which led to the US-British Special Relationship in the development of the atomic bomb. Opie was not the only Soviet spy.
February 16, 2012 - 4:40 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
27. Pragmatist
What a pity it is that Western Democracies have fallen for the Political Correctness, Multi Cuturalism , Feminazism, Green Nazism, Islamophilia and Race Card playing that the Left Wing Moonbats have infest the world with.
February 16, 2012 - 10:18 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
28. P. Zaretzki
In his autobiography "A Mind Always in Motion" (U Cal), the physicist Emilio Segre writes about his Berkeley colleague, J.R. Oppenheimer, notices his eccentricities, strengths and weaknesses and recalls that "Oppenheimer and most of his acolytes followed the political line of the Communist Party of the United States, which was highly uncritical and simple-minded. Although most of these young people were not members of the Party, some were members of auxiliary organizations and later fell victim to cruel persecutions." This was in the late 1930′s.
February 17, 2012 - 3:33 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
29. JakeTobias
Are you kidding? America has a communist president right now! The liberals have won. Americans are now so ignorant and stupid, they have happily elected a full blown communist for their president, and don't even know it! Liberals have insisted so long, and to so many generations, that you can be certain of nothing, that words have no meaning, that notions of good and evil are silly because those are "mystical" words, that not even the Republican party will call a Red a Red. Who cares if some dead scientist was a communist or not? There is a duck in the White House dismantling our country with the help of those useful idiot pink-o Republicans. Quack. Quack. Quack!
February 19, 2012 - 7:42 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
30. BB-Idaho
Oppenheimer was a victim of politics in the form of physicist-wannabee Lewis Strauss .
March 1, 2012 - 3:56 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Comments are closed.


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'The Jungle Book' Live-Action Reboot Is Coming From Disney, Because Why Not?
It shouldn't surprise you to learn that a new live-action version of 'The Jungle Book' is currently being written for Disney. After all, the company's latest (and so far successful) business plan has been to take previously successful animated properties and transform them into live-action spectacles. It worked for 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and 'Alice In Wonderland,' and it'll probably work for the wrapped 'Maleficent' and the about-to-shoot 'Cinderella.' So, 'The Jungle Book'? Why not?
First 'Wolverine' Clip: Hugh Jackman, a Speeding Train and Some Angry Yakuza
At the end of the day, 'The Wolverine' has one job and one job only: to be better than 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine.' Thankfully, that shouldn't be too difficult of a task. In fact, the latest clip from director James Mangold's film is more impressive than anything seen in Wolverine's previous solo adventure, even if it all feels a little familiar.
Weekend Box Office Report: 'Despicable Me 2′ Rides Over 'The Lone Ranger'
Which would you expect to win the Fourth of July weekend: the Disney-produced, Johnny Depp-starring revival of an iconic American hero or the sequel to a French-made, Steve Carell-starring animated movie about a lovable supervillain? Well, it looks like American audiences simply aren't interested in westerns, even the uber-expensive ones starring Captain Jack Sparrow with a bird on his head. 'Despicable Me 2' destroyed 'The Lone Ranger' over the holiday weekend. Like, totally wrecked it. Mercilessly.
'Delivery Man' Trailer: Full-Length Look at Vince Vaughn and His 533 Kids
A full-length 'Delivery Man' trailer has debuted, and only time will tell if it's better than the Google advertisement that was Vince Vaughn's last movie, 'The Internship.' But if we're going by first impressions, the new flick looks like it'll be the far superior effort.
Comic-Con 2013 to Premiere Superhero Short Film Starring Lizzy Caplan and Ron Livingston
Although San Diego Comic-Con is traditionally known for its massive panels celebrating the most-anticipated films and most-popular TV shows in the geek world, it also plays host to countless other projects, many of which often seem to get lost. Hopefully, that won't happen to 'The Sidekick,' a new superhero-themed short film that will premiere at Comic-Con 2013 and has some pretty big ambitions.
Weekend Box Office Report: 'The Heat' and 'White House Down' Play Second Fiddle to Pixar
What happens when two new releases that look like sure-things smash into the unstoppable wall that is a Pixar movie? Well, you get one second place hit and one severe disappointment. 'The Heat' still looks good next to the continued success of 'Monsters University,' but it made 'White House Down' stumbling at the starting line look all the more horrible.
'Iron Man 3′ Hits DVD and Blu-Ray in September With a 'Thor 2′ Preview
Now that 'Iron Man 3' has officially passed the $400 million mark at the box office, Tony Stark's third solo adventure is just about to leave theaters and head straight to your home media collection. In a few months, you'll be able to purchase Shane Black's delightful superhero adventure for yourself on DVD and Blu-ray, but will it be worth it? Marvel has released the details of the package to help you decide if the special features will push this one into the "must buy" column for you.
'Escape Plan' Trailer: Stallone and Schwarzenegger Break Out of Prison
When a structural-security authority finds himself incarcerated in the very prison he helped design, he teams up with an inmate to break out.
New 'Pacific Rim' IMAX Poster: Find Out How to Score This Anime Masterpiece
Movie fans really don't need any extra incentive to go see 'Pacific Rim' in IMAX. After all, if you're going to see a movie about gigantic robots fighting gigantic monsters, you might as well go see it on the most gigantic screen imaginable. However, there is now another reason to see director Guillermo del Toro's epic, sci-fi actioner on a grand scale: attendees of the first IMAX screenings will receive an incredible, limited-edition poster.
Weekend Box Office Report: 'Monsters University' Schools 'World War Z'
Zombies may be really hot right now, but there's one thing that is (and probably always will be) a bigger deal: Pixar. Brad Pitt's 'World War Z' performed quite well in its opening weekend, but even the biggest zombie movie of all time couldn't keep pace with 'Monsters University.'

subset: commoncrawl


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Iracema, Di Cavalcanti, and All Is Brazil
Event: |
Iracema, Di Cavalcanti, and All Is Brazil Iracema's fusion of fiction and documentary is still exhilarating for contemporary audiences. Iracema (an anagram of "America") is thr tragic story of a young teenager from the Amazon who heads out to the big city. Against the backdrop of the taming of the Amazon, fiction filmmaking becomes inseparably interwoven with Direct Cinema in an allegory of Brazilian destiny, progress, and identity. (90 mins., 35mm) Di Cavalcanti, a little-known short by one of Brazil's greatest filmmakers and one of his defining works. When it was announced that the great painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, a friend of Glauber Rocha's, was going to have his funeral at Rio's Museum of Modern Art, Rocha showed up with his camera, to the shock of Di Cavalcanti's family and friends. Overtop of the frenzied, inspired footage, Rocha gives a breathless monologue about his late friend, art, life, filmmaking, and politics. (18 mins., 35mm) All is Brazil is part visual essay and part freeform fantasia centered around Orson Welles' fascinating trip to Brazil in 1942. Against a dizzying array of imagery, the film chronicles all the aspects of Welles' trip and encounters with Brazilian culture. Rogerio Sganzerla is one of the key figures of the experimental, underground Cinema Marginal movement and in All is Brazil, he brings his radical techniques to turn his film about Orson Welles into a speculation of Brazilian identity. (82 mins.) |
Date and time: | January 29, 2014 7:00 AM |
Location: | Wexner Center Film/Video Theater |
Contact: | Jill Malusky |
Phone Number: | |
Event category: | Wexner Center |
Event Type: | Film |


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A few weeks ago, the lovely ladies over at CT Working Moms compiled a beautiful photo essay, End The Mommy Wars, in which they highlighted differences in parenting choices and stressed acceptance, love and understanding without judgement. My mommy friends and I got together and did our own End The Mommy Wars photo series, as we thought there were some, er, important topics missed in the first series. To our surprise, the CT Working Moms caught wind of our post and they loved it! They invited me to share a wonderful event they are hosting in conjunction with The Bump- March 4 has been declared Moms4Moms Day! All day long, we'll be celebrating judgement-free motherhood on social media! You can participate by snapping a selfie while holding a sign with a positive message for other moms. Post your pic on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and/or Twitter using the hashtag #moms4moms - you can even get your other mom friends involved and have fun with it!
It's easy to think that we women wage these "Mommy Wars" because we are "gossipy" and "judgmental". But I don't believe that. I think women are at a major
crossroads. Our roles have evolved exponentially in the past century,
especially compared to the roles of men. It has us all feeling a little
Do people think I'm lazy if I
stay home? Do people think I neglect my children if I go to work? If I
do a little of both, do I make enough time for my husband? Do I make enough
time for me? Am I giving birth the best way? Feeding my children the best way? Am I a valuable contributor to society?
war is in our own heads, ladies! We need to all take a deep breath, stop trying
to defend what we do and give ourselves our own pat on the back because we are all acting out of love. And that's what really matters!
Today in the Senate, there are 100 members and only 20 of them are women. In House of Representatives, there are 435 members, and only 80 of them are women. In contrast, the latest census numbers state that women make up 50.8% of the United States population.
Ladies, we need to fight a different kind of battle! It does not matter if you're pro-choice or pro-life, if you're for or against hospitals supplying formula for newborns, if you think healthcare should be covering contraception or not, and on and on and on. The fact of the matter is these are women's issues, and women are not adequately represented in the highest levels of our government. The majority of the people voting on these crucial women's issues are men! Our insecurities stem from these issues not being addressed as we women need them to be.
We have to unite as mothers, as women, to ensure our needs are served. We have to vote every chance we can, not just in presidential elections, but also for all primaries and every November.
As women, as mothers, we owe that much to our children. And that is something we can all agree on.
Like what you've read here? You can follow me on the blog by entering your email
address in the box at the top right hand corner. You can also find me on Instagram and Twitter
@momheartspinot !


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LEGO has called on the 'skills' of 1990s TV nerds to decipher the figures in its latest minimalist print campaign 'Imagine'.
Created by Hamburg-based creative agency, Jung von Matt, the clever minimalist print series features basic shapes made from LEGO which each represent a popular cartoon character, recognisable through height and colour of the bricks (e.g. Marge's tall blue hair is a dead giveaway).
Test your TV skills – see if you can guess the characters in each advert (the answers are listed at the end of the article).
Answers from top to bottom: Smurfs, Donald Duck, Ninja Turtles, Bert and Ernie, Asterix and Obelix, The Simpsons.
Via DesignTaxi.


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i'll be backSubmitted by little napoleonnie (not verified) on Wed, 04/16/2008 - 5:29pm.
I'll be back. I get you and your little dog to.First you get the money then you get the power. When you get the power then you get the .....crap beat out of you( or fall out of a tree stand.) Just remember to pay your child support...ooops did I say that.
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Bill Belichick Q&A
Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized
Thanks to the Patriots' PR staff, here's the complete Q&A with Head Coach Bill Belichick's morning session with the media:
BB: This is the week where we begin to transition into our regular season schedule. We're still in camp, but we're starting to transition into that and kind of shift into more of a game preparation and more of a regular weekly schedule. The players have moved out of the hotel, the ones that wanted to anyway and things like that. We're definitely not there yet, but we're taking as step there. There are a lot of things that we're trying to work on. Some things that are just general things that we need to do to get ready for the season. Some things pertain to Carolina. Some things pertain to the Jets and the opening part of the season. So we still have a few personnel things, we want to try to let guys work in different positions so that we can build depth on our team when we go to a 45-man active roster, that we have enough depth to get everything covered. We kind of have a lot of balls in the air this week. I think it's an important week for our team in terms of its overall development. Going down to Carolina at the end of the week, I'm sure that will be a tough game down there. That's kind of what we're doing this week here. Like I said, we have a lot of things going on.
Q: Is the fact that Laurence [Maroney] wasn't wearing a red contact jersey indicate that he may be closer to playing in the game on Friday?
BB: Yes. It certainly puts him closer. He's made steady progress.
Q: How important is it to you that he at least get some game work? Is there anything about that position that would make you feel comfortable saying he doesn't need the game contact?
BB: No, I think everybody can benefit from being on the practice field and playing. The amount might vary a little bit depending on what you're trying to get done, but I think it's beneficial for everybody.
Q: Is saving a player's legs a little bit at that position might be a little more important just because of the wear and tear of the season?
BB: Again, I think an individual player's situation varies from player to player, but I think in general, players need to practice and play to get ready to play. I think if we just want to save everybody, we would just be sitting around here for six weeks and not do anything, but I don't think we'd have a very good football team. But I think everybody would be safe. I don't think that's the answer. There has to be some middle ground between working and getting the team to be able to execute to a certain level and at the same time you don't want them worn down by the time you get to the season, but you have to be able to go out there and play competitively against pretty good competition in this league. We're just trying to find that balance and it's not the same for every player. I'd be the first to say that. But from a team standpoint, you're trying to manage it for everybody.
Q: How much do you expect Vinny Testaverde to play over the next two games?
BB: He'll play some. I don't know. We haven't really set the playing time for this week. He'll definitely play some. We haven't even talked about it really.
Q: What did he bring to the team last year and what do you hope he'll bring this year?
BB: I think Vinny can still play the position at a good level and that gives us depth and experience at that spot. Each year is its own new year, so we'll evaluate based on what we see this year and how it goes here in the coming practices and the last couple of preseason games. He brings a wealth of experience and I think he's still, based on last year, was able to do the things that a quarterback needs to do to be productive in this league.
Q: Tom [Brady] made a comment on the radio this morning about if it's possible he would like to have a few days off for the birth of his child. Would you be agreeable to letting him have a few days off? How have you done that in the past?
BB: I think there are situations between a player and a coach and the team and the personal situations, those are all talked about and dealt with on an individual basis. It doesn't matter who the player is. There are plenty that have come up through the course of the year. I'll deal with them like I do all of them.
Q: Last year you chose to start the season with two quarterbacks on your roster. Any reason this year to go with three?
BB: Well, that hasn't been decided. We'll make the decisions that we think are best for the football team. Each year is different, each situation is different. I don't think it's important to go back and talk about last year. I think where we are this year is where everybody feels comfortable at. Vinny and I talked about it. He was here and worked out with us in the spring for the mini camps and we decided that this is what we're going to do. We talked about it later and so here he is.
Q: Are there set rules for offensive lineman on stunts?
BB: Well, in terms of picking up stunts on the offensive line, it depends on what the protection is, and so how many people are involved in the protection, and then it also depends on the timing, the way the stunt is run. There certainly are rules on the way you want to block them. That depends on what protection your in, but then within that, like anything else, the variable is the timing of it and when the guy comes around. You can say you want to switch him, but if they're grabbing, then you really can't switch them and you need to stay with him. So there's stuff like that. I wouldn't say it's black-and-white by any stretch. But you have to be able to handle all of those things, so you have rules on how you're going to do it and you practice it and the defense runs them to try to mess up the way you're doing it and get a guy free. That's the game within a game.
Q: Would you consider having a pure kick return specialist on your team? Would he fit?
BB: If he's good enough, if you think he brings enough value to your team. There are teams in the league that have kickoff specialist, purely a return specialist, I would say coverage specialists, that really maybe aren't even that big of a factor in the return game. They're basically on the team to cover punts and kickoffs. I think you can justify anybody on your team if he was good enough and he made a contribution that you thought was worthy of that position depending on what the rest of your team makeup was and how important that position was for you. Absolutely.
Q: Have you experienced that before?
BB: Sure. Yes. Sure. Absolutely. Even going back to when I was in Baltimore, Detroit. We had guys, and that was back when the roster sizes were smaller. Howard Stevens did for us in Baltimore. I forget what the roster size was back then. It was maybe like 42 or something like that, so it was even harder to afford that. Those guys, some of them played really just on the coverage teams. That's through the years at Detroit, at the Giant and at Cleveland. If the player is good enough, and he contributes in a role, then depending on what the rest of your team makeup is, you could definitely justify it. I don't think that would be a problem at all. Now, it's going to make you go short somewhere else. I understand that. But depending on how important the role is and how well the player does it, absolutely.
Q: Can you talk about Chris Patrick and how that came about?
BB: We evaluated Chris on the supplemental draft. One of the problems with players at that point in time is just your roster size. You're committed to a lot of guys. We were actually a little bit over the limit once our draft choices signed and we had to release some players when our draft choices signed right at the beginning of camp and most teams are in that situation. It's hard sometimes to get those extra players in because you have to release somebody to bring somebody in, guys who have been with you through spring camps and all of that and you want to get a look at them. Just the way it turned out, there were some things that we liked about Chris and now that we are a couple of weeks into camp and certain things have gone on with our roster, we found that we had a couple of roster spots available and we added him and we added Vinny and it just kind of worked out that way.
Q: Was there anything in the Giants game that helped in that decision?
BB: No, not really. Really most of our evaluation was based on what we saw at Nebraska.
Q: With the guys who are on the PUP, are we getting closer to a point now where if they're not on the practice field within the next couple of days, they might be in jeopardy of not being able to play in the season opener?
BB: I think we'll judge each case individually. Each guy is kind of in a day-by-day situation. I think they're all making progress and certainly the closer it gets, the less time there and you cut it closer and closer. When is the breaking point and when is the deadline, I don't know. We'll certainly have to decide something at the last cut, whether to carry them active or keep them on the Reserve/PUP for October. At this point, they're in a day-to-day situation. They're all working hard. They're all making progress and when they're ready we'll put them out there. We're getting closer, I'm just not sure exactly when that's going to be.
Q: Do you feel like having competition at certain positions can really help push players and maybe you get a better performance out of certain guys because they have someone pushing them?
BB: Sure. Sure. Absolutely. I think it pushes everybody to a little bit higher level and I think it also pushes the guy on the other side of the ball. When there's competition at a spot, then both guys are working hard to try to earn it and that's making the guy on the other side of the ball better because he's facing two good guys, or he's facing two guys that are competing. Really everybody is competing, but I know what you're talking about, when you get a situation like that, but I think it helps everybody involved. Oftentimes, there's enough of those in a training camp in a competitive situation that kind of forces everybody to move up there with that, a little bit higher intensity or competitive level of play on the practice field.
Q: Do you feel like if you have great depth at a position, that can help the competition be better?
BB: A lot of times you do to get good competition from that type of situation, but again, really our competition is the Jets, it's San Diego, it's Buffalo, it's Miami, it's Cleveland, it's all of the teams that we play. So we're really competing against them everyday, even though they're not out there. But that's really who the competition is. A lot of our practice, as you know, we're really working for each other and the offense is running plays for the defense and the defense is running plays for the offense. You run them at a level that's productive, but you don't want a whole bunch of guys on the ground in piles and blindsiding guys and stuff like that. That's just not a good way to practice. There's a competitive spirit and there's a competitive level, but there's also practicing smart so that you can improve and not put guys or put your team at risk. Again, that's kind of the balance that we're trying to strike.
Q: This week, are you going to ramp up the film study and the scout team just to see how some of the guys react?
BB: Well, as I said, this week we're kind of in that transition mode where we are probably going to be a little bit more on Carolinas than we were on Tennessee, but not as much as in the regular season. We're not to that point. We're still working on some general training camp things and again we're also sprinkling some things in there that we want to do early in the season to keep working on those. It's not a full-scale regular season preparation kind of game, but it's more than we've had the last couple of weeks, put it that way. We're moving in that direction, both on the practice field and in the meetings.
Q: Is there anything that you learned from last year with integrating the new receivers that has helped you this year speed that process along?
BB: I think a lot of training camp and preparing your team for the season as you start off with a general plan on the rate you're going to install things and how you're going to work on them and what you're going to practice, and then as you go, we meet on it every night. We talk about the practice schedule and what we need to work on and how things are going and do we want to stay on schedule or are we going too fast or maybe are we going a little bit too slow and we need to pick it up a little bit, certain players are ready for more and then you have to balance that out with positions when you have players that are short at a certain positions and maybe another position is heavy with players and how to try to balance the work load and so forth. It's really pretty much, even though we have a general schedule and a general plan, there's a certain degree of fluctuation on a daily basis – how much hitting we do, what the speed of the drills are, how much individually do we do, how much team work we do, how much group work we do and all of those kinds of things. Then each coach individually has to make decisions on how many plays certain players get or when to switch them or which plays they want them in for, so forth and so on. That's really a day-to-day type of thing and, offensively, it's not about one position. It's about the entire execution of the unit and that's ultimately what we want to try to do, is to try to be an efficient offensive team and that includes everybody. So, everybody is important and everything we do is important. It's not geared towards one position or one guy or one play or anything. It's a composite. That's how we try to look at it.
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GHS gets 21 on All-15-4A soccer
Coming off the best soccer season in a decade at Granbury High, one would expect the Pirates to pretty much dominate the district awards.
And they did.
Granbury received four superlative awards and 13 honors in all from the league's coaches as the All-District 15-4A Soccer Team was announced recently.
The rest this story is restricted to subscribers only. |
Category: Granbury Sports Archived, Sports Archived


text: 000 SRUS43 KSGF 261551 RRMSGF DAILY PRECIPITATION REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SPRINGFIELD MO 951 AM CST THU FEB 26 2015 Station Precipitation Southwest Missouri Cooperative Observers Anderson 3W M Ash Grove T Billings M Branson Airport 0.00 Buffalo 2N T Bolivar 1NE M Cassville RS M Diamond 2W 0.00 Flemington 3E M Galena M Ava 12SW M Greenfield M Halltown M Pomme de Terre T Lebanon M Lake of the Ozarks M Lockwood 0.00 Mansfield 0.00 Marshfield 0.00 Miller 1E M Morrisville M Neosho M Ozark M Lake Taneycomo M Pleasant Hope M Powell M Protem 4NE 0.00 Seligman M Seneca M Stockton Dam 0.00 Table Rock Dam M Monett M West Central Missouri Cooperative Observers Appleton City 0.00 Cole Camp T Climax Springs M Eldorado Springs M Horton 2S M Golden City 6S M Jerico Springs M Lamar M Mount Hulda M Nevada 0.00 Osceola M St. Thomas M Truman Dam COOP M Eastern Ozarks Cooperative Observers Alton 6 SE M Ava 6W 0.00 Ava 12SW M Bunker 4N M Dora M Eldon M Eminence 1N M Gentryville M Houston 1NE M Houston 2W M Iberia M Isabella 3W M Licking M Montauk State Park M Mountain Grove M Mount Hulda M Rolla T Round Spring T Salem M Summersville M Tecumseh M Ft Leonard Wood M Vienna M Vanzant M Wasola 5N M Waynesville M White Church M West Plains M Southeast Kansas Cooperative Observers Columbus T Fort Scott M Girard M Melrose M Pittsburg T Uniontown M Walnut M Automated rainfall accumulations across the ozarks and southeast Kansas...values are not always accurate Values are based on the automated system. Use with caution! Akers - Current River M Asbury Water Station 0.00 DNR Well at Cassville M DNR Well at Ava 0.00 Branson - Bull Creek 0.00 Beaver Creek RAWS near Ava 0.00 Powell - Big Sugar Creek 0.00 Butterfield Water Station 0.00 DNR Well at Carthage M Cannon Range Hollow at For 0.00 Carr Creek 0.01 Dadeville-Sac River 0.00 Liberal - Drywood Creek 0.00 Bardley-Eleven Point 0.05 Ozark 6SW-Finley River 0.00 Table Rock Dam M Greenfield 0.00 DNR Well at Ha Ha Tonka St M Neosho - Hickory Creek 0.00 Lanagan - Indian Creek M DNR Well at Joplin M Joplin 24N CRN Site M Mountain View 5N-Jacks For M Lebanon Water Station 0.00 Lost Valley Water Station M Lamar Water Station 0.00 Pineville 7SW - Little Sug 0.00 DNR Well at Monett M Mt. Vernon Water Station M Mount Vernon RAWS 0.00 Morrisville - Little Sac 0.00 Montauk State Park 0.00 Oswego 3E - Neosho River M Ozark Fisheries M Springfield East - Pearson 0.00 Edgar Springs - Big Piney 0.02 Bolivar 5SW - Pomme de Ter M Powersite Dam 0.00 Pomme de Terre Dam M Rolla Water Station 0.00 Roby RAWS M Lynchburg-Roubidoux Ck M Waynesville-Roubidoux Ck 0.00 Richards 3SW 0.00 Rolla 5E M Springfield-South Dry Sac 0.00 DNR well at Springfield M Springfield SE - James 0.06 Sinkin RAWS 0.00 College of the Ozarks - Wh M Below Stockton Dam M Tunnel Dam - Macks Creek 0.00 Valley Water Mill Water St 0.00 Eminence M Wilsons Ck - Scenic M Springfield 1SW-Wilsons CK 0.00 Wah Kon Tah RAWS 0.00 West Plains Water Station 0.00 Warsaw M Salem 10W - CRN Site M $$


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Can you identify 5 British birds by their songs? Click the video above and take the cottages4you Chirp Challenge to find out! Please post your answers as a comment below and we'll reveal the results soon.
Category Archives: Fun
Funny, interesting or downright bizarre things
Give us a Giggle winner
The weather may have let us down recently but here's something to cheer you up! This is Zack, the well-deserved winner of our recent Give us a Giggle video competition.
If you want to updates on the latest competitions, offers and news from cottages4you then make sure you like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or add us on Google+.
Now, over to Zack…
Did you hear the one about the…?
To celebrate Manchester Comedy Festival — and put a smile on everyone's face now the nights are drawing in — we asked our friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook to submit their funniest jokes.
Here are the results…
- What cheese can you disguise a horse with? Mascarpone
- What do you call a Frenchman wearing Sandals? Philiipe Flop
- My husband left me for my obsession with touching pasta. I'm feeling canneloni right now….
- I went on a once in a lifetime holiday last year…Phew, never again!
- What do you call a man with a shovel on his head? DOUG
- what do you a man with out a shovel on his head DOUGLASS
- what do you call a man with a seagull on his head? CLIFF
- What do you call a Gorilla with a machine gun? … Sir.
- Did you hear Greece has stopped production of tatsziki and taramasalata? They fear a double dip recession !
- 2 parrots sitting on a perch, one smells fish.
- Some guy just poured a pint of milk over me…how dairy
- What time does Sean Connery get to Wimbledon…? Tennish
- There's been an explosion in a pie factory…Approx 3.142 dead
- A cop pulls over a car and finds boot full of penguins. "Take them straight to the zoo" says the cop. Next day the same: cop pulls the same car over for speeding and finds a boot full of penguins wearing sunglasses. The cop says … "I thought I told you took take these to the zoo?" The man says "I did, they loved it so I'm taking them to the seaside today!" Ba-dum-tssssh.
Can you do better? Post your best joke in the comment section below!
Best dressed wedding guests
With our wedding invites obviously lost in the post we took it upon ourselves to hold a best dressed wedding guest competition in the cottages4you office today. Here you can see our very own Shirley Brooks, Pam Rebanks and Janet Pollitt ready for the big day!
A guide to 2011's best film locations
Fancy a cinematic tour of the UK? We're looking at seven upcoming cinema releases and sharing their UK filming locations. So if you fancy donning your superhero costume and paying a visit to the X-Men mansion, or taking your broomstick to Shell Cottage from the new Harry Potter film, all you need to do is click on the tickets below.
A poetic tour of the UK
To celebrate World Poetry Day, we're going to look at some of the UK's finest poets and the beautiful locations that inspired them.
Tennyson – The Isle of Wight
Alfred Tennyson often wrote of the natural world. In fact, the longest serving Poet Laureate's most famous quote describes nature as being "red in tooth and claw." A visit to the poet's home on the Isle of Wight, however, reveals a more beautiful side to nature.
It's easy to see how Tennyson could find so much inspiration in the local geography. There are the sandy cliffs of Alum Bay; the iconic Needles that rise dramatically out of the sea and Tennyson Down, a grassy ridge with spectacular views of Freshwater Bay.
Wordsworth – The Lake District
William Wordsworth was equally inspired by his natural surroundings. In this case it was the evocative landscapes of the Lake District that allowed his equally vivid poetry to flow. And while the Lakes itself is a fitting testament to Wordsworth, there are plenty of places to pay homage to Tennyson's predecessor as poet laureate.
Dove Cottage in Grasmere is widely considered to be the place where Wordsworth produced his most inspired work. Pay a visit today and you can not only take a tour of the house, but also visit a museum which houses a variety of artefacts linked to the poet.
Robert Burns – Scotland
Burns' poetry was influenced by – and subsequently influenced – a whole nation. Now internationally celebrated, the 'Scottish Bard' is a cultural icon whose life is well worth exploring. Of course it helps that an exploration takes in some of Scotland's most beautiful locations.
Burns Night is probably one of the best times to visit Scotland if you're looking for a true measure of the poet's legacy. The Writer's Museum in Edinburgh, however, is perhaps better suited for a more personal exploration. There you'll see a collection of Burns artefacts, including his writing chair.
Lewis Carroll – Oxfordshire
Though better known for Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll was also a renowned poet, specialising in such whimsical 'nonsense poems' as Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark. And even though these works have little obvious bearing on reality, the writer's home of Oxford provided a huge inspiration.
An Oxford boat ride down the Thames allows you to recreate the journey Carroll took when creating Wonderland. Similarly, Christ Church College in Oxford played an equally large part in the author's life, with many of the subjects he captured in his works still there to see. So if you fancy hunting the snark yourself, you know where to begin!
Do you have your own favourite UK poet? Leave a comment below! If you'd like to continue your tour of the UK's literary locations then check out our Magical Literary Tour on www.cottages4you.co.uk.
Banana and lemon tea loaf recipe
Kath P sent us this delicious recipe for banana and lemon tea loaf, which we thought we'd share with you on the blog.
You're probably all fed up with pancakes today, so this should make a welcome change!
Got a delicious recipe to share? Send us an email with 'Recipe' as the subject and we'll put it on the blog!
115g (4oz) sunflower margarine
115g (4oz) light soft brown sugar
2 medium eggs
225g (8oz) self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 medium bananas
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
175g (6oz) sultanas
Cooking instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4. Grease and line a 900g (2lb) loaf tin.
2. Put margarine, sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder in a bowl. Beat together using an electric mixer until thoroughly mixed.
3. Peel and mash bananas. Add to cake mixture with lemon zest and beat until well mixed. Stir in sultanas, mixing well.
4. Spoon mixture into tin and level the surface. Bake in oven for 1-11/4 hours, until risen, golden brown and just firm to the touch. Turn out onto a wire rack and cool.


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May we suggest
Pack a punch of detailed designer style in your dining area. The Alinia Designer Dining Chair includes beige fabric upholstery with quilted detailing for a hint of regality. A solid rubberwood frame, dark brown legs, and foam cushioning round out a great set of features. This set of two contemporary dining chairs is made in Malaysia, requires assembly, and should be spot cleaned.
- Contemporary dining chair
- Solid rubberwood frame with dark brown legs
- Beige fabric seat
- Polyurethane foam cushioning
- Tall backrest
- Quilted design
- Assembly required
- Spot clean only
- Set of two chairs
There are no swatches images.


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Tribes stand united against Keystone XL pipeline
Press release
On May 16, 2013, at 3 p.m MST, at the Hilton Garden Inn in Rapid City, a tribal Press Conference will be held in order for the tribes to respond to the Department of State's Tribal Consultation being held that same day. Some tribes do not recognize consultations out of their homelands and some refuse to participate in a process that gives tribes inferior status.
The Ihanktonwan Treaty Council (Yankton Sioux), the Pawnee Nation, and the Southern Ponca Nation of Oklahoma stand united against the unwanted and risky Keystone XL pipeline, which is violating the 1868 Great Treaty of Ft. Laramie Treaty and the 1858 Ft. Laramie Treaty by passing through Oceti Sakowin, (Seven Council Fires) Treaty Territory. Thousands of sacred aboriginal sites are being disrespected in the proposed 800-mile corridor.
Following the press conference there will be the opportunity for questions and interviews with tribal members and allies.
Contact Faith Spotted Eagle at 605-481-0416 or by email at firstname.lastname@example.com or Sabrina King at 605-939-0527, or by email at email@example.com.


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The relationship between OFID and the Palestinian people dates back more than three decades. During this time, OFID has worked hard, through the provision of grant assistance, to lay foundations for the empowerment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as for those in refugee camps in neighbouring countries. Today, these people are enduring one of the most challenging periods of their turbulent history.
Despite these challenges, however, life must go on. Palestinians still need to support themselves, they still need to raise and educate their children, and they still need the basic essentials such as food and shelter. Recognizing this, OFID's support to Palestine reaches deep into people's everyday lives, building human capacity and focusing on projects that offer Palestinians the hope of a long-term, sustainable future.
In uniting with the Palestinian people, OFID has co-financed hundreds of projects, extending valuable lifelines to this vulnerable population as they pursue their dream of an independent and secure Palestinian State.
Read leaflet OFID and Palestine: A special solidarity. Arabic version of OFID and Palestine: A special solidarity.
Targeted Assistance
In order to step up its operations in Palestine, OFID set up a special grant program to accelerate the delivery of assistance where it is needed most. The Palestine program provides support to areas of long-term concern, such as:
Education is among the key focus areas of the program, which supports an ongoing scheme to help universities and colleges remain open by subsidizing tuition fees and subsistence costs of students. Another important initiative is the Scholarship Fund for Talented Palestinians, which was launched in 2009 by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). OFID played a major role in developing this initiative and was its very first sponsor. Under the scheme, all talented Palestinian youth can apply for funding to attend any degree course at any university of their choice.
OFID's special program for Palestine also provides funding to hundreds of grassroots civil society organizations in the West Bank and Gaza, where enforced movement restrictions continue to impede economic activity and drive poverty levels and unemployment even higher. Operating at community level, these NGOs provide a wide range of essential services. The Palestinian authorities themselves cannot meet these growing demands due to inadequate funding and a lack of institutional capacity.
In its operations in Palestine, OFID works closely with leading Arab aid institutions, international donors and specialized UN agencies, including the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development, the Islamic Development Bank, the UN Development Program, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and UNRWA.
The PalFund
Micro-financing plays an important part in addressing a number of Palestine's social and economic challenges. Its strength lies in empowering people to help themselves.
Recognizing this, OFID launched the OPEC Fund Micro Enterprises for Palestine (PalFund) scheme in 2004. Several thousand microentrepreneurs and artisans have received loans so far. The amounts injected into the scheme by OFID have been 'recycled' many times, as successful entrepreneurs pay back their loan amounts (usually in the region of US$600 in the first instance) and borrow larger sums to expand their businesses. All repaid amounts are channelled back into the revolving PalFund scheme.
Administered by UNRWA, the loans are made through two products. One aims to help women in the Gaza Strip, many of whom are engaged in street or market trade, or home-based enterprises. The other makes funds available to general micro-businesses across Gaza and the West Bank. The vast majority of loans have gone to the services and commercial sectors.
The PalFund is the largest micro-financing program operating in the region.


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A new website from Brooks offering a clear, dedicated resource on cycle touring.
By submitting your personal information, you agree to allow BROOKS ENGLAND LTD. (the principal company) and BROOKS ENGLAND srl (the subsidiary) to store your data and use the information for statistical analysis, as well as informational and promotional mailings in respect of privacy laws applicable in the UK and Italy. The data will be processed using the support of hard copy and telematics. Providing data is optional, but the lack of consent to process it makes it impossible to provide the service you requested. Your information will be accessible to company employees and consultants designated to process the data and to those entrusted with the service of management and maintenance of computer systems. Your details will not be shared with any party, other than BROOKS ENGLAND LTD, BROOKS ENGLAND srl and their shareholder Selle Royal SpA. You have the right to obtain ratification, integration or cancellation of your data by sending your request to the company using the CONTACT FORMS in the GETTING IN TOUCH section.
We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Over the last year, we've been working to create the ultimate online cycle touring resource. The project has evolved and Brooks has teamed up with PANNIER to provide even more expertise. The new website will be launching in early 2014. If you want to be kept informed of the latest developments please subscribe to our mailing list.
Should you be a keen cycle tourist, with stories to tell, PANNIER are interested in hearing from you. Please get in touch with our Editor, Stefan