New York City Council Honors Ethel Rosenberg, Executed for High Treason for Delivering the US' Atomic Bomb Plans to the Soviet Union, for Her "Great Bravery"

Great bravery.

They're not saying her "great bravery" consisted of delivering the bomb to the Soviet Union. Wink. Actually, they are saying that, but they want plausible deniability; so they're claiming they're honoring her "great bravery" in leading a labor strike, while denying the atomic spy charges. (Which are undeniable -- see the Venona intercepts. We had broken the Soviet's codes and were reading their messages to spies, a secret only revealed in 1995.)

Three council members joined Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer in issuing two proclamations lauding Rosenberg, a Lower East Side resident, for "demonstrating great bravery" in leading a 1935 strike against the National New York Packing and Supply Co., where she worked as a clerk.

The proclamations also said she was "wrongfully" executed for helping her husband, Julius, pass atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Look, there's no question that "OSA" (Russian for "bee;" Ethel's code-name) was a member of Karl Fuch's (code-name: KALIBR) spy ring charged with working on "ENORMOZ" (the code-name for the US atomic bomb program). She urged Ruth Greenglass to recruit her husband David Greenglass (who worked for the Manhattan Project) into the spy ring; she did, Greenglass joined, and Greenglass delivered over key information to the Soviet Union.

We read their secret communications at the time; we have since disclosed this fact; and former Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev said so in his pothumously-published memoirs.

From Wikipedia:

In his posthumously published memoirs, Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, said that he "cannot specifically say what kind of help the Rosenbergs provided us" but that he learned from Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav M. Molotov that they "had provided very significant help in accelerating the production of our atomic bomb".

So there's no question she did what she was alleged to have done; nor, in fact, was there much doubt at the time -- most Soviet-leaning/communist-sympathizing progressives made the Rosenbergs their heroes not because they thought they were innocent, but rather because they knew they were guilty.

Or, as they would put it: they knew the Rosenbergs had "demonstrated great bravery" on behalf of the Worker's Paradise of Mother Russia.

Some of the Rosenbergs' stalwart defenders are quite open about this.

Today, so many decades later, the descendants of the people who proclaimed the Rosenbergs' innocence have now begun yet another campaign to rehabilitate them. They now argue that although it appears Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet spy after all, he gave little of value to the Soviets, was motivated by the desire to stave off atomic war, and in any case had nothing to do with handing over atomic information of any kind to the Soviet Union.

A new variation of this argument was penned recently by the activist historian and lawyer Staughton Lynd, writing in the Marxist journal Monthly Review, founded in 1949 by the late Leo Huberman and the late Paul M. Sweezy. I have written at length about Lynd’s article, but his argument can be easily summarized. Lynd now accepts as fact that Julius Rosenberg led a Soviet spy network, but he objects to what he calls the triumphalism of those like me who have asserted this for years. More important for Lynd is that the couple refused to "snitch," therefore making themselves heroes. He maintains that their trial was a "sham," and he argues that even if they were guilty, they must be viewed as unadulterated heroes. Why? Because, he actually writes, the couple had "obligations as Communists, and as citizens of the world." So, to Lynd, the Rosenbergs' obligation to spy for Joseph Stalin stands above any loyalty to their own country, not to speak of their willingness to make their own children orphans. Secondly, Lynd believes that if the Rosenbergs helped the Soviets get the bomb, that "might have been justified," since he believes Soviet strength stopped aggression by the American imperialists.

For years, the American Left argued that the Rosenbergs were framed and innocent. Now Lynd says they were guilty but that their actions were justified because they helped "preserve the peace of the world." In effect, he is saying that instead of still attempting to prove the Rosenbergs were framed, we should celebrate them for being traitors to their own country. His argument reveals only the desperation some on the left have to descend to in order to maintain their view that the only guilty party was the United States.

They were Atomic Spies for World Peace, or something.

Sixty years later, and it's no different; the crusty old communists of New York City's government are still heaping laurels on the Sainted Heroes of the Soviet Union, Julius (LIBERAL) and Ethel (OSA) Rosenberg, who delivered the Soviets and ENORMOZ boost in their atomic research.

&bodytext=Great bravery. They're not saying her "great bravery" consisted of delivering the bomb to the Soviet Union. Wink. Actually, they are saying that, but they want plausible deniability; so they're claiming they're honoring her "great bravery" in leading a labor...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 01:33 PM

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