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Nice little show you got there... In Boston, a bizarre extortion trial involving movie-stereotype union Teamsters and celebrities from the hit television show Top Chef resulted in a verdict of not guilty for the Teamsters. Interestingly, "at least three witnesses testified that a top [mayoral] aide sought to withhold city permits for 'Top Chef' unless the show hired union members."

Why is the Times so obsessed with communism? At reason, Marian Tupy deconstructs the recent NYT articles fawning over communism. Especially the bold claim that women "had better sex"... Tupy wryly observes: "The Western sexual revolution passed the communist bloc by, and ex-communist countries remain much more patriarchal than their Western counterparts to this day."

Lawyers without borders: The American Bar Association is urging Congress to vote to allow illegal immigrants to practice law in the United States. There's an old movie trope about immigrants having to take jobs in the U.S. that would have been beneath them in their old life. "In my country, I was attorney general." It's odd, given that state bars strenuously check the background of lawyers for crimes and good moral character that they now want people who've broken our immigration laws (and continue to do so) to be able to practice law.

Paul Ryan's going to win his primary: His opponent, Paul Nehlen, who lost to him in the last primary by nearly 70 points, has revealed that he believes in the thoroughly debunked Pizza Gate conspiracy promoted by alt-right shock jocks. Alex Jones, presumably under the very real threat of litigation, renounced his Pizza Gate remarks earlier this year. When you're nuttier than Alex Jones, well, congratulations Speaker Ryan on your primary win.

The stupid "Border Adjustment Tax" is dead. But could a tax on advertisements be its replacement? Critics contend that such a measure would probably not survive a court challenge, as advertising is a commercial form of speech. They're right. However, if it results in the extinction of misleading ads like "Language Professors Hate Him!" and "Diabetes Breakthrough Leaves Doctors Baffled (Try It Tonight)," maybe it wouldn't be that bad...

Jeff Lord is the man for the job! While he's not personally a fan of Jeffrey Lordtweeting "Sieg Heil!" at people is classless and never ironicthe recently fired CNN contributor, my colleague Jim Antle at our sister magazine, the Washington Examiner, makes a compelling case for President Trump to hire Lord as communications director. Here's the nutgraf: "Have you ever seen Lord seem the least bit flustered when it comes to defending the president in public? No matter how tough the case or how many liberals and Never Trump Republicans are trying to shout him down, Lord would plunge forward." A loyalist without the baggage of the Mooch. Minus the whole Nazi tweet. Bad timing! Sad!

Never Invite Milo: At National Review, Elliot Kaufman pillories thoughtless College Republicans for bringing alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannapoulos to campus. College Republicans are worthless. (I know because I was one, once ... before I took a job on a campaign and had the wool lifted from my eyes.) Kaufman is critical and fair: "They are always broke, their leaders are always about to graduate, and nobody on campus ever cares about what they have to say." Milo? "He charges no speaking fees and, with minimal effort and planning from the students, guarantees them attention and controversy. He gives conservative student groups everything they could want." Except the real price is their souls. Because Milo Yiannapoulous is the devil.

Commentary has snagged Sohrab Ahmari, and it's a great hire. His latest today on how President Trump will always disappoint his conservative apologist defenders is a must-read. Here's a taste: "The president reversed himself again in classic Trumpian fashion. Late Monday evening, he tweeted: Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be satisfied truly bad people! Which made the afternoon statement look like a begrudging concession to an ungrateful press corps rather than a genuine expression. As if to validate the impression, Trump retweeted an alt-right figure a few hours later."

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Afternoon Links: Communism and Sex, Illegal Immigrant Attorneys, and Paul Ryan's Nutty Opponent - The Weekly Standard

NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

Latest NY Times 'Red Century' Entry: Women Under Communism 'Had Better Sex' NewsBusters (press release) (blog) The competition for the worst "communism wasn't all that bad" entry was pretty close until Saturday (seen in Sunday's print edition), when Kristen R. Ghodsee, a University of Pennsylvania professor of Russian and East European studies, told readers ...

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Latest NY Times 'Red Century' Entry: Women Under Communism 'Had Better Sex' - NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

15 August 2017 | by Jonathan Luxmoore A total of 422 Catholic priests were executed, murdered or tortured to death during the Great Purge

Russias Catholic Church has appealed to Western Christians to remember martyrs of Communist rule during the upcoming centenary of the 1917 Russian revolution, rather than just helping commemorate the countrys better-known dissidents.

The sufferings in Soviet prisons and labour camps remain an issue for the whole of society here, not just religious communities, said Mgr Igor Kovalevsky, secretary-general of the Catholic Bishops Conference. But stories of witness and martyrdom are universally known and respected. Churches have been built to those who died for their faith, who deserve to be compared to the martyrs of Christianity's first centuries.

The priest was speaking amid preparations for the hundredth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, which heralded more than eight decades of communist rule.

In a Tablet interview, he said the work of dissidents such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) and Nadezhda Mandelstam (1899-1980) had become well known worldwide, but should not overshadow the tens of thousands of Christians who died for their beliefs.

At least 21 million people are believed to have died in repression, persecution and terror famines after 1917, including 106,000 Orthodox clergy shot during the 1937-8 Great Purge alone, according to Russian government data. A total of 422 Catholic priests were executed, murdered or tortured to death during the period, along with 962 monks, nuns and laypeople, while all but two of the Catholic Church's 1240 places of worship were forcibly turned into shops, warehouses, farm buildings and public toilets.

In his Tablet interview, Mgr Kovalevsky said the Catholic Church was ready to help commemorate all those who died, but was particularly concerned to preserve the memory of the Soviet Unions Christian victims. Speaking earlier this year, Patriarch Kirill blamed the revolution's violence on "horrible crimes committed by the intelligentsia against God, the faith, their people and their country", and urged citizens to mark the centenary with deep reflection and sincere prayer.

PICTURE: 1933 image of one of Stalin's 'purge' committees

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Time to recall Christian martyrs to communism, says Russian catholic church - The Tablet

A 1980 50-yuan note from China shows the people leading the development of a modern China: an intellectual, a farmhand and an industrial worker. Photograph: Trustees of the British Museum

They are banknotes that show cheerful farm workers, enthusiastic soldiers and committed intellectuals as well as foundries, factories, fields, dams, lorries, railways and guns and they are as aesthetically pleasing as any of the worlds currencies, a new exhibition hopes to show.

The British Museum is to mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution by staging its first exhibition on communist currency.

There will be posters, medals, bonds, coins and banknotes that show bountiful agricultural productivity, major industrial progress and unmatched military prowess. I think they are beautiful, said the curator, Tom Hockenhull. Especially compared to western notes of the same period, these are far nicer, far prettier.

Even though the currencies were devalued and people were told they werent worth anything, the banknotes, in particular, carry some of the most glorious designs that have ever been committed to paper.

Helped by money from the Art Fund, Hockenhull has been researching and acquiring communist currency to fill gaps in the museums extensive money collections.

Examples of notes on display will include a 1975 100-shilling note from Somalia, which shines light on what the state expected of women. (Everything.) It shows a woman holding a gun, a shovel and a baby. It is saying to women you can do whatever you want, you can take on all these different roles, but youve still got to do all this, said Hockenhull.

There will be a Yugoslavian banknote featuring the smiling, handsome epitome of a good, hardworking foundry worker, Arif Herali.

Herali was part of a group of workers photographed at their blast furnace workplace in Zenica in 1954. His face stood out and the heroic image of the father-of-11 was used on Yugoslavian banknotes for more than two decades. The true story of Herali is rather less inspiring, in that he struggled with alcoholism and died penniless in 1971.

A 1980 50-yuan note from China shows the people leading the development of a modern China: a farmhand, an industrial worker and an intellectual.

The exhibition will explore how money worked under communism and its central conundrum. Under communism, under Marxist theory, there should be no money, said Hockenhull. It is a social construct, it should not exist. But it is never abolished ... no state ever successfully eliminated it.

No good Marxist would ever want a state with money but communist economies had it and the notes were so much more interesting than western ones. It tends to follow not always that the most stable economies have the most boring notes, it is just the way it is, said Hockenhull, pointing out that the US had not updated its dollar since 1962 and that it was not very different from the 1862 design.

It is only when you have a different political agenda that you change things ... money had a different role under communism and therefore it had to look different. A form of communism has been brought to about 20 countries around the world since 1917 and all had a currency.

Often the states contempt for its currency was overt. The British Museum display will include coins used in East Germany, made from aluminium and therefore absurdly light in weight to show how little value they were.

There will be a banknote from Cuba signed by the national bank president, Ernesto Guevara. He was so appalled at having to sign it he used his nickname, Che, as a way of signifying his contempt for money. It was his two fingers to capitalism, said Hockenhull.

Among the posters reproduced for the show will be a USSR advert for the state savings bank that avoids any mention of benefits, such as an interest rate, because the accounts were meant as a benefit to the state, not an individual.

A better way of rewarding people was with medals, which followed Stalins statement that the Soviet people have mastered a new way of measuring the value of people not in roubles, not in dollars [but] according to their heroic feats.

One example in the show will be the Mother Heroine of the Soviet Union gold medal given to women who had 10 or more children.

Another will be an Order of Labour Glory medal issued by the USSR in Ukraine in 1985. Recipients of all three classes of the order also received a pension increase, priority on the state housing list, free public transport, a free annual pass to a sanatorium and one first-class round trip flight per year.

Hockenhull, the museums curator of modern currency, said it had proved a huge and rewarding subject to research. It has been fascinating. Im English I grew up in a capitalist society. It has been a window into a completely different world and different way of looking at things.

Currency of Communism at the British Museum, 19 October-18 March.

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British Museum exhibition to showcase communist currencies - The Guardian

Saturday's violence in Charlottesville, Va., where a car mowed through a crowd protesting against neo-Nazis and other "alt-right" demonstrators, has renewed focus on white supremacists and, more specifically, the role Confederate monuments play as rallying points. In the wake of the Charlottesville protests, Baltimore; Richmond, Va.; Dallas; and Lexington, Ky., are now debating removing their Confederate monuments. Simply put, the protesters argue that history matters and that the symbolism of the past has resonance today.

Make no mistake: The issue surrounding Confederate symbolism is different than efforts at Yale University and elsewhere to rename buildings and to remove statues, stained glass windows, and artwork. The issue at hand is not a refusal to judge historical figures by the standards of their time, but rather the symbolism driving or representing a political movement.

How ironic it is, then, that the same stigma (rightly) attached to Confederate symbolism is strangely absent with regard to communist symbolism.

Communism, after all, is an ideology that has led to the deaths of almost 100 million people. While men like Ernesto "Che" Guevara may have become folk heroes for some on the political Left, they were in reality sociopathic mass murderers. The same holds true, of course, with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong).

Democratic National Committee Vice-Chairman Keith Ellison told progressive activists on Friday that North Korean communist leader Kim Jong Un was a more responsible leader than President Trump (he immediately regretted his wording). Kim, however, presides over a system of concentration and death camps that are reminiscent of Nazi Germany or Stalin's Gulag. The American Friends Service Committee describes itself as a progressive organization dedicated to non-violence, but they were among the chief cheerleaders for the Khmer Rouge, a communist and racist gang responsible for the deaths of over a million people in Cambodia.

That the New York Times seeks to glorify sex under communism is no different than had it complimented the matchmaking prowess of the Nazi-era Bund Deutscher Mdel.

In reality, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and any adherents to a racist, segregationist ideology are scum; they should be condemned. So too should the Nation of Islam and the radical fringes of the Black Lives Matter movement who adhere to ideologies just as racist and supremacist.

But all of their legacies pale in comparison to that of communism. A communist should face the same disgrace as a Nazi, and a former communist should be stigmatized as much as a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. That they were products of society is not an excuse: After all, many southerners chose not to join the KKK even if it meant personal disadvantage in places where KKK members dominated business and many Russians chose not to join the Communist Party, even at the height of the Soviet era.

The progressive blind spot to communism reflects historical ignorance on the part of Americans and Europeans. It reflects a failure at the high school and university levels to truly confront the horrors of the last century and, in the case of China and North Korea, this century as well. While the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation does good work, the United States still does not commemorate the victims of communism on a scale commensurate with their numbers.

If protesters truly want to combat hate, they must recognize that the Nazi Swastika, Confederate iconography, and the hammer and sickle each represent ideologies of hatred. They need not be erased, but rather confined to historical museums. To march under or tolerate one while combatting the other represents not the pursuit of justice but rather hypocrisy and ignorance.

Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.

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Why aren't communists stigmatized just as much as Confederates and neo-Nazis are? - Washington Examiner