Posted on 10/02/2016 5:29:45 PM PDT by Kaslin
For the second day in a row, the New York Times hailed a Communist and Fidel Castro supporter on the front of its Arts page. On Friday, it was former Communist Part vice presidential candidate and Castro-worshipping Angela Davis who got red-carpet treatment. On Saturday, the Times senior staff editor for culture Tamara Best conducted a fulsome interview with 89-year-old entertainer Harry Belafonte, “Old Warrior Takes Stock But Continues the Fight” that was teased on the front Arts page: “Harry Belafonte: ‘Movements Don’t Die.’” According to the tease, Belafonte is part of a festival near Atlanta this weekend “focusing on voting, mass incarceration and the relationship between community and law enforcement.”
An inside photo caption read: “Harry Belafonte, musician, actor and civil rights activist.” It left out: “Castro-lover.” Best completely ignored Belafante’s long, passionate support for the decidedly pro-incarceration Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro. Belafante has been quoted: “If you believe in freedom, if you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, you have no choice but to support Fidel Castro!” Well, Cubans certainly don’t have any choice.
More of the entertainer’s euphonious paeans to Castro can be found in Belafonte’s autobiography, like this excerpt that captures Belafonte’s feelings for Castro, who has visited Havana several times as the dictator’s invited guest without seeming to notice the repressive state around him:
For a day or so we explored Havana and lolled by the pool. Then came word that we should be in the hotel lobby at a certain time. We were warned that we might wait awhile; Castro, as usual, was running late. We didn't care. We were going to meet Fidel!...Castro took pride in presenting Cuba to the world as a truly prejudice-free nation; it was part of his socialist outlook -- and also because he knew we admired what he was trying to do. Sidney's doubts about Castro at the time were certainly greater than mine. But we both wanted to believe in the dream, and in the dreamer.
(Back in February, Belafonte perhaps predictably endorsed Bernie Sanders for president.)
Best gushed:
During his seven-decade career, Harry Belafonte has been a singer, an actor, a friend to Martin Luther King Jr., a Unicef good-will ambassador, an anti-apartheid activist and more. “I’m at a time of life when I’m examining the entire journey,” he said one recent afternoon at his Manhattan home, lamenting how the dreams of the civil rights movement are far from realized. “When I was 20 and 30, my visions for what the world would be, all things were possible.”
Mr. Belafonte, for whom art and activism have been inextricably linked, said his life is a “call and response,” and, at 89, he isn’t ready to retire from being one of society’s most passionate and visible advocates just yet.
This weekend, “Many Rivers to Cross,” a two-day “music, art and justice” festival in the Atlanta area focuses on three issues: voting, mass incarceration, and the relationship between community and law enforcement.
....The event will raise money for Sankofa.org, a social justice organization founded by Mr. Belafonte that unites grass-roots organizations and artists in the fight against problems like income disparity and inequities in the justice system.
The group’s “Partner’s Page” includes hard-left sites, including The Rosenberg Fund for Children, which aims to “Exonerate Ethel” -- Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and executed in 1953.
The only discouraging words Best could find involved Belafonte criticizing over black entertainers for being lacking in their left-wing activism:
In 2012, a brouhaha ensued after Mr. Belafonte asserted that today’s celebrities have “turned their back on social responsibility” and mentioned Jay Z and Beyoncé....But Mr. Belafonte fervently maintains that artists must do more to champion causes.
Mr. Belafonte provides counsel to celebrities and organizations, saying that he draws parallels between the roadblocks and successes of the ’50s and ’60s and those of the present political movements.
With his 90th birthday on his mind, Mr. Belafonte paused to take stock. “I wake up at the age of 90, and I look around and say, ‘What do we need now?’” he said.
“Well, the same things needed now are the same things needed before,” he went on. “Movements don’t die because struggle doesn’t die.
And. Obama will be the Che of the Arab Spring...he hasn’t been been able to perform any executions by his own hand, but Janaury 2017 he’ll have a free hand -SS sworn to secrecy.
Oh, I thought you were talking about Hillary.
* Communist professor at the University of California's Santa Cruz campus
* Recipient of the Lenin "Peace Prize" from the police state of East Germany in 1979
* Provided an arsenal of weapons to Black Panthers who used them to kill a Marin Country judge in a failed attempt to free Davis' imprisoned lover, Black Panther murderer George Jackson
* Icon of the campus Left and frequent guest speaker at anti-war rallies
* Leader of a movement to free all criminals who are minorities claiming that they are political prisoners of the racist United States
* "The only path of liberation for black people is that which leads toward complete and radical overthrow of the capitalist class."
Angela Yvonne Davis is a tenured professor in the "History of Consciousness" program at the University of California - Santa Cruz. A former member of the Black Panther Party, she is currently a "University Professor," one of only seven in the entire California University system, which entitles her to a six-figure salary and a research assistant. This income is supplemented by speaking fees ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 per appearance on college campuses, where she is an icon of radical faculty, administrators, and students. Davis has also taught at UCLA and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1303
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“'History!' Kaepernick wrote on Instagram Oct. 15 [2015], when he marked 50 years since the Black Panther Party was founded.
Kaepernick has posted 170 photos or videos on his Instagram account in the four years since he created it. Most of his first 128 posts were pics of him in football gear, publicity photos or shots taken with friends.
But 31 of his last 42 posts have strong social justice connotations, often featuring quotes from radical Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, Black Panthers founder Huey Newton and cop killer Assata Shakur [aka, JoAnne Chesimard].
During a Sunday news conference about the flag flap, Kaepernick dressed in a black hat with a large, white “X” and a T-shirt that featured photos of Cuban despot Fidel Castro and Malcolm X.”
The New York Times = The emperor has no clothes on (them and the rest of their slobbering, frothing at the mouths co-horts)
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