Author: Eric Garris

Georgie Anne Geyer writes today about Jon Basil Utley‘s journey to find the fate of his father who disappeared into the Soviet gulag.

Jon’s mother, Freda Utley, was a prominent American Communist in the 1920s. She fell in love with a brilliant Russian Jewish economist, the handsome, dark-haired Arcadi Berdichevsky, and moved to Russia with him. In 1936, their lives together came to an end with the Soviets’ infamous “knock on the door” at 2 a.m.

Freda, unable to help him, soon used her and Jon’s British passports to return to England, where she mobilized important leftist friends, people like George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and Harold Lasky, to try to find out where Arcadi was and even sent a letter directly to Stalin. What camp in the Gulag, that web of labor camps that eventually killed untold millions?

So Freda Utley stayed in the West, moving eventually to the United States, and turned totally against communism, becoming a prominent conservative writer, thinker and activist with her respected books The Dream We Lost in 1940 and Odyssey of a Liberal and many others. With Jon and his family, she settled in Washington, where she died at 80, having learned of her husband’s death, but never knowing the circumstances.

In 1991, Jon began contacting the Russians, and eventually made multiple trips to Russia where he eventually found the fate of his father. “Copies of files detailing his arrest, indictment and execution order were sent to me by the FSB, successor to Russia’s notorious KGB,” he told me. “Incredibly, it still has detailed records of political prisoners and willingly provides information and help to searchers like me. They also gave me three photos of my father from the file, taken at the time of his arrest in 1936. They are in better condition than any that my mother had preserved. In Moscow’s FSB library, I held the files of his interrogation in my hand.”

Read this great article.

I met Jon in the early days of Antiwar.com, and his commitment to the cause of peace and his assistance to this Website has been invaluable. Jon is still a welcome member of the conservative inner circles in Washington, DC, in spite of constantly handing out Antiwar.com’s latest articles to the often-uncomfortable insiders.

Check out Jon Basil Utley on the Web:
Antiwar.com archives
Americans Against Empire
Frida Utley’s Writings

Last week, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) announced an upcoming Q&A session with Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki.

IraqSlogger reports that today the CFR announced that, at Maliki’s request, his comments cannot be reported by any media or repeated by any participant in the meeting to anyone who might relay his comments to the media.

Maliki has asked to speak on this “not-for-attribution” basis, which is rare for a world leader speaking to an audience of hundreds of members of the CFR.

A few months ago I attended a conference in Las Vegas and saw copies of Liberty Watch magazine for the first time. I was impressed. I had seen their online articles linked from various libertarian websites, but I had no idea how well-produced the print magazine is.

Liberty Watch is monthly and in it’s third year of publication. It is an average 60 pages of full-color, slick, extra-high-quality paper with lots of photos and ads. It has a few thousand paid subscribers, but most readers get it free. It is mailed to Nevada decision-makers, small businesses, and lists of conservative voters. It is also distributed at community events, political rallies, and business gatherings.

And the latest issue has … Justin Raimondo on the cover!

The interview with Justin is lively and interesting, along with some current photos of Justin (and he shows he is still smoking).

Scott Adams really gets it!

Thanks to Lew Rockwell.

IraqSlogger has gotten ahold of a “sensitive” but unclassified US report about corruption in the Iraqi government.

IraqSlogger reports that the document was prepared by the US embassy in Baghdad and based on the work of Iraq’s Commission for Public Integrity. They say the report concludes that corruption is “the norm in many industries.

We haven’t had a chance to analyze it yet, but want to make our readers that it is available online.

According to the US and Israel, it does.

In a rare vote, the UN General Assembly passed a UN atomic watchdog resolution calling on all Middle East nations to renounce atomic weapons. Since the US and the West have been pushing to stop nuclear proliferation in the region, especially Iran, you would think they would have supported and applauded the vote.

Not so. The US, Israel, and most of the EU either opposed or abstained on the vote. On the other hand, most Arab nations and Iran supported it.

So what’s the problem?

One clause urged all nations in the Middle East, pending creation of a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) there, not to make or test nuclear arms or let them be deployed on their soil. The other urged big nuclear arms powers not to foil such a step. “The new language threatened to bring new political issues into the IAEA that would ultimately detract from the technical role the IAEA plays in safeguarding nuclear material,” said a Western diplomat whose delegation abstained.

That argument is not only faulty, it is empty. The only nation in the Mideast to possess a nuclear arsenal is Israel. And the nation with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world that is not subject to IAEA inspection is, again, Israel. That is because Israel has refused to sign any international nuclear treaties.

I don’t understand the double standard. I am Jewish, but I don’t believe that Israel has special rights to possess Weapons of Mass Destruction while at the same time threatening to attack nations that may desire the same.