From October 14th, 2009 CHALLENGE

Back Afghan pipeline, US backs you

Pythian Press, 8/29 — Through the years power in [Afghanistan and Pakistan]… has switched back and forth with our being on whichever side suited us at the moment. At different times we have supported groups including Osama bin Laden, a Saudi and our current sworn enemy….

It is suspected that our allegiance is largely to whoever is supporting an oil line from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan to a Pakistan port.

Moore: Voting will cure capitalism

NYT, 9/23 — In the end, what is to be done? After watching “Capitalism,” it beats me. Mr. Moore doesn’t have any real answers…. This isn’t the story of capitalism as conceived by Karl Marx… and it certainly isn’t  the story of contemporary American capitalism, which extends across the globe and far beyond Mr. Moore’s sightlines.

Neither is it an effective call to action: Mr. Moore would like us to vote, which suggests a startling faith in the possibilities of social change in the current political system.

Cuba honors black rebel’s demise

NYT, 9/13 — A bricklayer who began working at age 11, Mr. Almeida was the only black commander among rebel leaders. He was one of the most important and decisive voices in the battle to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista….

Mr. Almeida, the Castro brothers and Ernesto Guevara, and Argentine known as Che, were among only 16 who survived the landing, in which most of the rebels were killed by government troops.

“No one here gives up!” Mr. Almeida shouted to Guevara at the time, giving the Cuban revolution one of its most lasting slogans and ensuring his place in Cuban Communist history….

He was a member of the Communist Party of Cuba’s Central Committee since its creation in 1965.

Afghan women see little liberation

LAT, 8/23 — “Liberating the women of Afghanistan” was often cited as one of the reasons to seek “regime change.” More than seven years later, however, the situation for Afghan women remains dire….

Educational gains plummet when girls hit secondary school, with just 4 percent of female students reaching 10th grade. Violence against women is endemic; women in public life are regularly threatened, and several have been assassinated.

Things got much worse recently when President Hamid Karzai officially promulgated legislation that would make the Taliban proud. Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern….

The Kabul government and its backers are supposed to be different from the people they are fighting. Yet with regard to women’s rights, Afghans might conclude that there isn’t as much difference between the two as they had hoped.

What Afghan ‘win’ really means

Tribune Media Svc., 9/5 — …

Geocorporate interests control international relations….

[US] leaders… assume the mindset and agenda of those anonymous interests. In Afghanistan, this agenda includes [US] regional dominance [and] the flow of oil (the pipeline)…. This is what “winning” in Afghanistan really means…

System ranks profits over health

NYT, 9/10 — …Reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system….

There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry….

It’s more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent them. There’s more money in amputating the limbs of diabetics than in counseling them on diet and exercise.

Russian energy clout breeds conflict

GW, 9/18 — Russia’s stranglehold over dwindling global energy resources was dramatically confirmed last week when figures showed that the country has become the world’s biggest exporter of oil, producing almost 10m barrels a day in August, according to the International Energy Agency.

Russian production toppled Saudi Arabia from the number one spot. It is already the world’s largest exporter of gas, and supplies around a third of the European Union’s consumption.

The news is likely to heighten unease… over the Kremlin’s tightening grip on energy reserves….

“The question is will Russia want to exploit its feeling of superiority and demand a seat not just at the table but at the head of the table.”

Pfizer drug sales ‘endangered lives’

GW, 9/11 — Pfizer had been charged with mispromoting medicines and paying kickbacks to doctors.

Pfizer pleaded guilty to… promoting a drug for uses that were not approved by medical regulators….

A Pfizer sales representative in Florida… blew the whistle….

“At Pfizer I was expected to increase profits at all costs, even when sales meant endangering lives. I couldn’t do that…”

From September 30th, 2009 CHALLENGE

Teenagers bumped down, jobless

NYT, 9/15 — This August, the teenage unemployment rate — that is, the percentage of teenagers who wanted a job who could not find one — was 25.5 percent, its highest level since the government began keeping track of such statistics in 1948. Likewise, the percentage of teenagers overall who were working was at its lowest level in recorded history.

“There are an amazing number of kids out there looking for work.”…. Explanations…mostly boil down to being at the bottom….Half of college graduates under age 25 are in jobs that do not require college degrees, the highest portion in at least 18 years….This has led to less…room for new workers at the bottom.

A raw health deal for immigrants

NYT, 9/6 — President Obama is…giving repeated assurances that [undocumented] immigrants would be excluded from any subsidized benefits under health proposals before Congress….

At the same time, [undocumented] immigrants would not be exempt from the obligations in the House bill…Most [undocumented] immigrants in the country would be required to buy health insurance or face tax penalties.

And since they would be barred from subsidies, they would have to pay for coverage at full rates, regardless of their income level.

For profit, cheat the low-wagers

NYT, 9/2 — Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage, according to a new study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago….

Researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, out of an average weekly earning of $339.

The study found that women were far more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than men, with the highest prevalence among women who were [undocumented] immigrants. Among American-born workers, African-Americans had a violation rate nearly triple that for whites….One of the most surprising findings was how successful low-wage employers were in pressuring workers not to file for workers’ compensation. Only 8 percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed.

Paul Robeson, noble anti-capitalist

NYT, 9/3 — Paul Robeson’s story is not forgotten, but is dimly remembered, particularly by the young. Born in 1898…he became the dominant college football player of his time, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, was Rutgers class valedictorian and earned a law degree from Columbia University.

He almost single-handedly legitimized black spirituals and folk music as an art form and became perhaps the most famous concert singer as well as a reknowned actor….

He became a pioneering and uncompromising human rights advocate. He spoke out against segregation decades before the civil rights movement began, and was a fierce opponent of colonialism when that was barely an issue.

He also became an enthusiastic, unflagging admirer of the Soviet Union, something he never renounced or backed away from, even in the face of Stalin’s [critics]. He embraced socialism, not capitalism, as the future. He was blacklisted, had his passport revoked, and, in many ways, was written out of history books….

“I’ve sat in on classes where people are talking about the 30’s and about civil rights and about Martin Luther King, and there’s this gap, as if this man never existed. He’s one of the giants of the movement, and no one knows.”

In poorest areas, sick dial 911

NYT 9/4 – Among the hidden costs of the health care crisis is the burden that fire departments across the country are facing as firefighters much like emergency room doctors, are increasingly serving as primary care providers.

About 80 percent of the calls handled by Engine Company 10 are medical emergencies because firehouse serves one of the city’s poorest areas, where few residents have health insurance, doctors’ checkups are rare, and medical problems are left to fester until someone dials 911….Those calls involved heart attacks, diabetic sores, epileptic seizures and people complaining of shortness of breath.

US drove Sioux off sacred mount

NYT, 9/2 – I have to admit: Mount Rushmore bothers me. It was bad enough that white men drove the Sioux from hills they still hold sacred; did they have to carve faces all over them too? It’s easy to feel affection for Mount Rushmore’s strange grandeur, but only if you forget where it is and how it got there.

Insiders dumping their own stocks

NYT, 9/8 – Better-then-expected corporate earnings in recent months have been the result of companies saving money through job cuts rather than raising revenue through sales growth. It is worthy of note that directors in the US have taken advantage of the rally on Wall Street to offload shares in their firms.

Obama message getting blurry

Jimmy Fallon (TV) – The President is going to deliver his speech to the nation’s schoolchildren next Tuesday. It will be about how if you study hard, you can become the most popular person in the world for eight months, then suddenly, not so much.

From September 16th, 2009 CHALLENGE

Credit check can cost you a job

NYT, 8/7 — …credit checks are now fast, cheap and used for all manner of work….

But… shunning those with poor credit may be unfair and trap the unemployed… in a financial death spiral: the worse their debts, the harder it is to get a job to pay them off.

“How do you get out from under it?”…. You can’t re-establish your credit if you can’t get a job, and you can’t get a job if you’ve got bad credit.”

Others say that the credit check can be used to provide cover for discriminatory practices.

Marx, Engels ‘outlast the ages’

NYT, 8/19 — …the horrors he saw…. in Manchester led [Engels] to write “The Condition of the Working Class in England”….

Engels’s writing caught the attention of Marx…. They would remain friends for the next four decades, as they together wrote “The Communist Manifesto”… and fanned the flames of international communism….

And it is surely true, as Mr. Hunt puts it, that Engels’s larger critique of capitalism — and his hope for a more dignified kind of humanity — “resonates down the ages.”

Nigeria drained by foreign oil co’s

NYT, 8/11 — For years, fighters demanding a greater share of the region’s wealth have been sabotaging [Nigeria’s] oil industry, one of the United States’ biggest suppliers, with brazen attacks on pipelines, oil depots and kidnappings of industry workers….

“The fundamental issues of equity and democratization… are driving the activity… There are no serious or effective proposals under way to deal with this….”

…80 percent of oil money goes to 1 percent of the Nigerian population.

Meanwhile the Delta remains destitute… with… pervasive “social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor,” according to the United Nations….

The combination of wealthy foreign oil companies, entrenched poverty and ideal terrain for guerrilla warfare has produced a state of semi-conflict for much of the decade.

US plotted to overthrow Allende

NYT, 8/17 — President Richard M. Nixon discussed with Brazil’s president a cooperative effort to overthrow the government of Salvador Allende of Chile, according to recently declassified documents… The United States and Brazil [were] trying to root out leftists in Latin America during the cold war….

Mr. Nixon saw Brazil’s military government as a critical partner in the region….

The 1971 memo showed that the two leaders also discussed intervention in Cuba.

Afghanistan legalizes Shia sexism

GW, 8/26 — Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation….

The new… legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. “It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her….”

Although Karzai appeared to back down, activists say the revised version of the law still contains [his] repressive measures.

Bill Clinton should have sat it out

NYT, 8/22 — American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were released after nearly five months in North Korean custody….

But… human rights activists… are accusing them of needlessly endangering the very people they tried to cover: North Korean refugees and the activists who help them….

Notes and videotapes the journalists gathered in China before their ill-fated venture to the border fell into the hands of the authorities….

A South Korean pastor said the police raided his home in China on March 19, four days after the journalists visited and filmed a secret site where he looked after children of North Korean refugee women…. his five secret homes for refugees were shut down….

“The reporters visited our place with a noble cause,” he added. “I did my best to help them. But I wonder how they could be so careless in handling their tapes and notebooks…. many others would be hurt because of them.”

Plenty of excuses for new wars!

NYT, 8/9 — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say….

Intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand and American… relief or military response.

Cuban docs’ jump to US ‘unfair!’

NYT, 8/11 — To the Editor: Re: “Once Doctors in Cuba, Starting Over in U.S.” (Aug 4): I read with growing anger your account of Cuban doctors who flee their country and become doctors or highly trained nurses in Florida.

The fact that men and women educated at government expense in one of the poorest countries in the works are now using that education to benefit people in the richest country in the world seems grossly unfair, if not outrageous.

Useless? If it sells, it’s in GDP!

NYT, 8/17 — To the editor: …our calculation of gross domestic product… includes [any] activity of a purely financial nature.

When loans are made to construct factories, buy equipment or even to build or buy homes, this is a productive transaction. But when these loans are “commoditized” and resold again and again, it is impossible to believe that any notion of “productivity” can be attached to all these subsequent transactions. Yet they are included in the GDP [along with other junk].

From September 2nd, 2009 CHALLENGE

Fired? Your wage won’t recover

NYT, 8/4 — ….it can take years for a worker’s earnings to bounce back after a layoff, and… it can take even longer for a layoff during a recession. Economists, in fact, say income losses for workers who are let go in a recession can persist for as long as two decades, a depressing prognosis for the several million people who have lost their jobs in the current recession.

Working-class tradition: help out

NYT, 7/12, Barbara Ehrenreich — As in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the [recession’s] most reliable first responders are not government agencies, but family and friends….

There is a tradition among the American working class of mutual aid, no questions asked. My father, a former miner, advised me as a child that if I ever needed money to “go to a poor man….”

When I worked at low-wage jobs in the 1990s, I was amazed by the generosity of my co-workers…. Such informal networks — and random acts of kindness — put the official welfare state, with its relentless suspicions and grudging outlays, to shame.

But there are limits to the generosity of relatives and friends…. The poor simply run out of resources.

Profit system rules banks’ actions

NYT, 8/1 — So why isn’t it happening? Why aren’t we seeing kinder, gentler banks trying to repay their debt to society? When I spoke to bankers this week, they sounded aggrieved at all the anger directed their way, and they claimed they were doing the best they could. And from their perspective, they are.

But their perspective is that of anyone running a business: their priority is to maximize profit…. That’s what capitalists do…. Maximizing profits means, for instance, jacking up credit card interest rates… and foreclosing when that makes more economic sense than modifying a loan. To ask them to put aside the profit motive, even temporarily, for the good of the country — it’s not even in their frame of reference.

Obama = Bush on immigrant raids

NYT, 8/4 — After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an “illegal”-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by [President Bush].

A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters.

System rewards those who rob us

NYT, 8/3 — Crashing the economy and fleecing the taxpayer aren’t Wall Street’s only sins…. Financial-industry high-fliers made fortunes through activities that were worthless if not destructive from a social point of view.

And they’re still at it….

Unfortunately… the Obama administration… still seems to operate on the principle that what’s good for Wall Street is good for America.

Neither the administration, nor our political system in general, is ready to face up to the fact that we’ve become a society in which the big bucks go to bad actors, a society that lavishly rewards those who make us poorer.

Sex discrimination can mean death

NYT, 7/30 — These dramas play out constantly in poor countries. One woman dies a minute from complications of pregnancy or childbirth somewhere in the world, and 20 times as many suffer childbirth injuries.

There’s no mystery about how to save these lives. Some impoverished countries, such as Sri Lanka, have succeeded stunningly well at saving mothers simply because they have tried. But foreign aid donors like the United States have never shown much interest in maternal mortality, and impoverished women are typically the most voiceless, neglected people in their own countries — so they die at astonishing rates….

One of the most lethal forms of sex discrimination is this systematic inattention to reproductive health care, from family planning to childbirth — so long as those who die are impoverished, voiceless women.

US-China clash exploding in Africa

NYT, 7/19 — Chinese business interests in Africa have grown dramatically in recent years…. Bilateral trade between the regions quintupled, to $55 billion, from 2000 to 2006, and that the figure is expected to reach $100 billion by 2010….

The authors contend that China’s ambitions in Africa are grandly geopolitical…. “I’m going to be honest with you, China is using Africa to get where the United States is now, and surpass it….”

Many African leaders are enamored of the Chinese mix of authoritarianism and capitalism in business affairs, an emphasis on efficiency and a lack of preaching about human rights….

It is not hard to join the authors in predicting that this joining of Chinese and African interests will likely succeed to the chagrin of the rest of the business world.

US gets airbase, winks at tyrant

NYT, 7/23 — …The Obama administration has [ranked] pragmatic concerns over human rights in dealings with autocratic leaders…. Politicians and independent journalists have been arrested, prosecuted, attacked and even killed over the last year as the Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbeck Bakiyev, has consolidated control….

The United States has remained largely silent in response to this wave of violence, apparently wary of jeopardizing the status of its sprawling air base, on the outskirts of the capital, which supports the mission in Afghanistan.

Drugs prey on no-hope workers

NYT, 7/30 — For more than five years Mr. Eche has been a slave to paco, a smokable [sic] drug made from bits of cocaine residue mixed with industrial solvents and kerosene or rat poison. Labeled “the scourge of the poor” by politicians, the drug has become the greatest social challenge facing shantytowns like [Argentina’s] Oculta….

“Every time he comes out of treatment it is worse because he has nothing, no work. There is nothing for him to do….”

Paco averages only 10 percent cocaine, with the rest being highly toxic substances, [a] judge said. “Doctors we have consulted say nerve cells and brain cells start dying soon after consumption begins,” he said….

Oculta’s residents are starving for jobs with decent salaries to help break the cycle of hopelessness that is creating whole families of paco addicts.

From July 1, 2009 CHALLENGE

Banks plotted ‘ghetto loan’ profits

NYT, 6/7 — As she describes it, Beth Jacobson and her fellow loan officers at Wells Fargo Bank “rode the stagecoach from hell” for a decade, systematically singling out blacks in Baltimore and suburban Maryland for high-interest subprime mortgages.

These loans… tipped hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure….

Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages…. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”

We just went right after them…. The N.A.A.C.P. has filed a class-action lawsuit charging systematic racial discrimination by more than a dozen banks, including Wells Fargo….

A typical spread between conventional and subprime loans… adds more than $100,000 in interest payments.

Obama won’t cut cash to Israel

NYT, 6/1 — administration officials are debating how to toughen their stance against any expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank….

Israel is a critical United States ally, and no one in this administration expects that not to continue….”

Placing conditions on loan guarantees to Israel, as the first President Bush did nearly 20 years ago, is not under discussion, officials said.

They prayed for doctor’s murder

NYT, 6/10 — The Kansas abortion clinic run by the doctor who was shot to death in church last month has closed permanently , his family said on Tuesday….

“Where does it end?” Dr. Hern said. “The anti-abortion fanatics got exactly what they wanted….”

The president of the Kansas Coalition for Life… who since 2004 had arranged for daily volunteers to stand outside the clinic… said…. “it looks like our prayer was answered.”

Good time to discuss communism

Barbara Ehrenreich, LAT, 5/8 — Today, with the country losing more than a half-million jobs a month, both white-collar job searching and blue-collar retraining are becoming surreal exercises in futility. No matter how smart you are — how flexible, personable and skilled —  you can’t find a job that isn’t there….

Of course…. You could get together with laid-off friends and co-workers…. To express anger and… conspire to build a better world.

Drug prices: no money for health

NYT, 6/4 — “I’m out of Lexapro,” a woman pleaded one recent Tuesday…. “Can I just have four pills until payday on Friday?”

Some customers request prices for a fistful of prescriptions, and then say they can fill only the cheapest two. Others ask which are most important.

“It can be a hard question to answer,” said [a] pharmacist. “The only thing I can do is let them know what they’re for, get them the cheapest available and encourage them to come back for the others when they can.”

Even with the Medicare drug benefit… many Americans still find themselves unable to afford the prescription medications that manage their life-threatening conditions.

US racism jailed black champ

GW, 5/22 — Jack Johnson struck a… blow, literally, for African-American equality. On 26 December 1908 he became the heavyweight boxing champion of the world — a title previously reserved for white men….

Boxing promoters immediately launched a search for the “Great White Hope” — a white fighter who could regain the title for the “superior” race.

The search failed. Johnson…. obliterated a succession of white challengers.

What could not be achieved within the boxing ring was, however, achieved in a courthouse….

By the time of the [1913] trial he had been married to two white women. The judge, sentencing him to a year in prison, said he was “sending a message” to black men about relationships with white women….

Johnson’s legacy has lived on. Mohammed Ali claimed him as a great inspiration and musician Miles Davis composed a tribute to him.

‘Free’ US media serves ruling class

minutemanmedia.org, 5/29 — A few weeks ago 10,000 marchers flooded the streets of Kiev to protest the government of President Viktor Yushchenko. I know. I read it in the New York Times.

That same week 10,000 marchers also flooded the streets of lower Manhattan to protest the war policies of President Barack Obama. I know. I was there. But you’d never know from the New York Times. They didn’t cover it. Neither, for that matter, did anyone else. Grassroots dissatisfaction with war, greed, and thievery in America has long since ceased being newsworthy in the corporate press….

And when was the last time you saw a poll of American sentiment about our foreign adventures? There were plenty of them back in the early days of war when the public supported it. Then the tide turned. We’re sour on war now, so no more polls….

Heroic pollsters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have contrived to sample public opinion in those unhappy places as to whether they want U.S. and allied forces to continue to “protect” them. In each case the answer has been “no,” but the U.S. media has not found that data worthy of attention….

So, when we read about the shortcomings of the press in troubled lands, and how it kowtows to the government or the rich, believe it. Just don’t assume that it’s all that different here.

China: Another imperialist in Africa

GW, 6/5 — Wangari Maathai…. in October 2006…. had just become the first African woman to win a Nobel prize….

“Some Africans are asking themselves whether we are being exposed to a new wave of colonialism”, says Maathai. “Yes, there is a grab for resources. We are vulnerable to anyone who wants to exploit us.” The paymaster these days is China, which has invested tens of billions of dollars to extract African oil, minerals, timber and land in return for roads and jobs. “China is really no different from the United States, the Soviet Union and the colonizing European nations which facilitated the rise of African strong men and protected them in the post-colonial period, despite knowing of their corruption and cruelty, so they could continue to extract Africa’s resources unhindered.”

Africa: Multinationals pay the bribes

NYT, 6/9 — Major setbacks to anticorruption efforts in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are weakening the resolve to root out graft, a stubborn scourge that saps money needed to combat poverty and disease in the world’s poorest region….

The search is on for more effective ways to tackle corruption, including intensified legal efforts to prosecute multinational corporations that pay the bribes….

Transparency International’s suit seeks to… investigate how the leaders of Gabon, the Congo Republic and Equatorial Guinea and their families acquired tens of millions of dollars in assets there. Still others say rich countries and international organizations that provide billions of dollars in aid to African countries each year must more vigorously use their leverage to make sure aid does not fuel corruption….

There are tens of billions of dollars of corrupt transactions each year in sub-Saharan Africa.

‘Innocent’ oil co. pays $15m

NYT, 6/9 — Royal Dutch Shell, the big oil company, agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle a case accusing it of taking part in human rights abuses in the Niger Delta in the early 1990s, a striking sum given that the company has denied any wrongdoing….

Much of Shell’s production in the delta is still the target of militants seeking a larger share of the country’s oil wealth.

Skillful indigenous rebels rock Peru

NYT, 6/6 — Clashes between indigenous protesters and security forces on a remote jungle highway in northern Peru left more than a dozen dead on Friday, including 11 police officers, heightening tension… over plans to open vast tracts of rain forest to oil drilling, logging and hydroelectric dams….

The indigenous groups in Peru have surprised the authorities with their sudden strength and organization….

“The president thought we would be docile… and we are not….”

The protests have disrupted oil production and pipelines, blocked commerce on roads and waterways, and halted flights at remote airports…. The real concern is that the protests will succeed in cutting energy supplies to major coastal cities.

‘Allies’ saw reds as the real enemy

NYT, 6/7 — “Red Orchestra”…. participants worked — however much in vain —to turn an enthralled populace against Hitler….

And as mass-murder operations on the Eastern front escalated, members began to put together a secret archive of photographs and documents in the hope that if the Germans were ever militarily defeated, the material could be used to bring the perpetrators to justice….

Nelson [author of ‘Red Orchestra’] adeptly documents… the myopic lack of interest of the Americans and the British in German resistance activities…. Had the military information gathered by Red Orchestra members been properly received by the Allies, the war might have been shorter — and the Holocaust smaller.

Red Orchestra members came from all walks of life… [including] bohemians involved in theater and film… and Communist Party-affiliated workers….

Many Red Orchestra members were captured and beheaded or hanged. A number of others survived.

…Contact with the Soviets… undid the group’s dreams of postwar justice. Because of… cold war politics, Red Orchestra members were smeared as Soviet spies and their carefully gathered evidence against the Nazis disregarded. Even more appalling, one of the butchers responsible for many Red Orchestra members’ deaths found a new role advising postwar American counterintelligence.