The Despicable Walter Duranty

In 1933 there was on the horizon in the Soviet Union the Metro-Vickers trial which the Western press desperately wanted to cover. Concurrently, to that time frame a young Welshman named Gareth Jones had taken a three week walk through the heart of what would be later known as the Holodomor and reported back, via dispatches clandestinely shuffled to England via Diplomatic bags, that more than political starvation was occurring in sundry parts of the Soviet Union. Garth Jones’ missives reinforced Malcolm Muggeridge’s prior pseudonymous reporting, back to England, that this was “more than a famine.” Muggeridge reported that it was a Military occupation and so political starvation. The Communists were, by malice aforethought, liquidating their opposition to collectivization.

The Soviets were desperate to discredit the young Welshman Jones and his reporting. The barely earlier reporting of Muggeridge had already been sabotaged due to the influence of his Leftist Aunt, Beatrice Webb. The Fabian, Beatrice Webb, had already successfully threatened a chap named Cairns, thus squashing a official report he had brought back to England on his observations about the conditions of the European “Bread-basket.” The way that Jones was undercut is what make this particularly ugly.

Remember that all this was happening concurrent with the upcoming Metro-Vickers trial. Western Foreign Correspondents desperately wanted to be able to cover this trial. Knowing this, the Soviet Bureaucrat in Charge of assigning journalists to the trial, made it known that the honor of journalist covering that Metro-Vickers trial was dependent upon their disavowing Gareth Jones and his story of death by famine.

The Western Journalists complied and led by the doyen of the Western Journalists, Walter Duranty, they disavowed Gareth Jones, insisting that Jones was exaggerating, even thought they knew that Jones was correct. Duranty himself, disemboweled Jones with a cabled article to the New York Times, that the New York Times dutifully printed. Duranty wrote in a published article,

” “Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. The food shortage, however, which has affected the whole population in the last year and particularly in the grain-producing provinces—the Ukraine, North Caucasus, the Lower Volga—has, however, caused heavy loss of life.” Duranty concluded “it is conservative to suppose” that, in certain provinces with a total population of over 40 million, mortality had “at least trebled.”

Duranty’s method of discrediting Gareth Jones was to half Jones’ observations. Duranty knew what he was doing.

By the means of the leftist in the West, which included Sydney and Beatrice Webb as well as Walter Duranty, the news of the ugly slow death by starvation known as the Holodomor was suppressed and kept from Western News outlets. And the thing that really grinds people who know this story is that Duranty was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Soviet Union. All these years later the New York Times refuses to return Liar Duranty’s award.

Decades letter the New York Times assigned a member of its editorial board, Karl Meyer, to write a signed editorial regarding Duranty’s work. In a scathing piece, Meyer said that Duranty’s articles were “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.” Duranty, Meyer said, had bet his career on Stalin’s rise and “strove to preserve it by ignoring or excusing Stalin’s crimes.” Four years earlier, in a review of Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow, former Moscow bureau reporter Craig Whitney wrote that Duranty all but ignored the famine until it was almost over. Of course by this time all this was merely dirt on the graves.

The same tribe who would make their sufferings well known worked overtime making sure that the sufferings of others was blacked out.

Revisiting The Holodomor

As a result of the Soviet draconian measures foisted upon the Ukrainian Kulaks (arrests, house-searches, fines, confiscation of property. and even shooting) the Kulaks began to resist. There were instances of armed insurrections, assassinations of Party officials, stonings, and beatings but by far the most prevalent means of resistance to the Communist was the Kulaks scorched earth policy that found them slaughtering their own livestock so that it could not be commandeered by the Soviets. The Peasants were seeking to avoid collectivization even if it mean self impoverishment.

In February and March of 1930 alone 14 million head of cattle were destroyed, a ful 1/3 of all pigs, and 25% of all sheep and goats. By 1934 40% percent of all Cattle were gone and 60% of all sheep and goats. (Western estimates were far higher.)

As a consequence of this scorched earth policy Moscow decided that the Kulaks could not be collectivized and so must be liquidated as a class and so the Soviets did to the Kulaks what the Kulaks had been doing to their livestock.

The Communist Reprisals against the Kulaks is what we now call “The Holodomor.”

Information from
S. J. Taylor’s “Stalin’s Apologist” — pg. 162-163

Taking On Ruth Bader Ginsburg & Her Hobby Lobby Dissent

“The reason why is hardly obscure. Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community. Indeed, by law, no religion-based criterion can restrict the work force of for-profit corporations…The distinction between a community made up of believers in the same religion and one embracing persons of diverse beliefs, clear as it is, constantly escapes the Court’s attention. One can only wonder why the Court shuts this key difference from sight.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Associate Justice — Supreme Court
Dissent to Hobby Lobby case

1.) So according to Ginsburg when you start a for profit corporation you lose all your religious rights in relation to the company.

2.) It is true that “Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith,” as those persons subscribe to the interests of the God of their religious faith, but it is not true that for-profit organizations do not exist to foster those same interests. For-profit corporations do exist to foster the interests of persons who own the corporation. The corporation does not exist primarily either for the employees nor for the consumers, the corporation exists for those who own the corporation and so are subscribes to the same religious purpose; to wit, making a profit.

3.) If workers for a corporation don’t like the policy of a particular corporation there is alway the option of leaving the corporation they don’t like in order to get abortifacients as part of their health care package at another corporation.

4.) Neither religious organizations nor business ultimately exist for the membership or the workforce. Both exist for the ownership. Religious organizations exist to advance the cause of the God of their faith system and corporations exist to advance the profit of the owners of the corporation. In both cases neither the membership or a religious organization nor the workforce for a corporation has the place to advance their interests over the interests of the God of the religious organization or the owners of the corporation. Ginsburg’s mistake is to think that the corporation exists for the workforce and their needs as opposed to what the situation really is and that is the fact that the workforce exists for the corporation and its needs.

4.) This woman is so twisted in her reasoning she would try to make a case that Cow’s milk is really Cow urine. After all … it is liquid and it comes from a Cow and it is a byproduct.

God’s Glory

In a well known Sermon from the greatest American Theologian and perhaps the greatest mind ever produced by America, Jonathan Edwards, addressed this is a classic Sermon entitled, “Dissertation on the End for which God Created the World.” In a sermon that could not be preached today in most Churches because of how involved its argumentation is Edwards wrote,

“All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works, is included in that one phrase, “the glory of God;” which is the name by which the ultimate end of God’s works is most commonly called in Scripture; and seems most aptly to signify the thing.”

Jonathan Edwards
The End For Which God Created the World

And so right from the state we offer that God does all He does for His own Glory. Edwards was not alone in this thinking. Calvin himself offered,

“God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.”

We see that Edwards is consistent with Calvin. Calvin held that the Salvation of man had as its chief end “God’s Glory.” Edwards merely expanded that thought to insist that not only man’s salvation but all that God did has as its end God’s glory.

For Calvin this whole world, moved by God’s providence, was a “theater of God’s Glory.”

If we are going to pursue the idea that God does all He for His own Glory we should have a operating idea of what we mean by the word “Glory.”

We might offer that God’s Glory includes the quality of His activities, His attributes, and perfections. We would talk about the Revelation of Jesus Christ who, Scripture says was the “outshining of God’s glory.”

The OT word for “glory” comes from the Hebrew Word for weightiness, or heaviness. What that is communicating is the idea of substance and import. We see an example of the use of the word “glory” in this direction when we read of Joseph’s revelation of himself to his brothers. He tells them,

“So you shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that you have seen; and you shall hurry and bring my father down here.”

Joseph desired that his weightiness as seen in his position, status, and wealth to be conveyed to his Father.

In the NT the idea of “glory” points to much the same idea. It is that which is true about a man that is praiseworthy.

Matthew 6:2, “Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.”

“Glory” here is what effects praise from men because of the quality and character of the action.

So when the Bible speaks of the glory of God it is speaking of that which is praiseworthy about Him … it is speaking of His worthiness, honor, and exalted Character. When “glory” is used of God it is His supreme Majesty that is in view.

When we suggest then that God does all He does for His own Glory we are suggesting that God’s primary motivation for all His doing His is Glory … is His own Majesty … is His own Supremacy … is His own Exaltedness … is Himself.

We might ask here what other motivation could God find for doing all His doing except Himself? If God were to pursue anything else as His primary motivation, besides Himself, God would at that point be making that other lesser thing, whatever it was that was motivating Him, to be something higher than Himself. That something else would become God to God.

Example — If God’s motivation was Human happiness and as such God was motivated in all He does by human happiness than the chief end of God would be to glorify Human happiness, and if the chief end of God would be to glory human happiness then human happiness would be God’s god. But God’s motivation does not terminate on human happiness, but God’s chief end is Himself.

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:36)

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:16)

Now this does not mean that Human happiness and God’s glory are in Contradiction. Clearly the overflow of God’s glory is the happiness of God’s people.

The understanding that God does all that He does for His own Glory has made a difference in the way Theologies have been crafted as many have noted in Church History. Some Theologies have been crafted so as to find their center terminating on man’s rescue and so on justification. As noble as that theme is if we terminate God’s motivation on man’s justification as if that is God’s chief end, then we end up with a theology that is anthropocentric. Reformed Theology saw a different center…. a different end that God was pursuing even in Justification so that Justification was not a ultimate end but only a proximate end of God pursuing His glory.

Here Robert Letham offers some words that hits upon what I am aiming at here,

“Perhaps most striking is the difference in emphasis on justification between Luther and Lutheranism on the hand and Reformed theology on the other. For the former, justification is central to the whole of theology. It is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. It functions as a kind of critical methodological tool by which any aspect of theology, or theology as a whole is to be judged….However, there is hardly an instance in Reformed theology placing justification in the center. Not that Reformed theology opposed justification by faith alone, or salvation by pure grace. On the contrary, they saw salvation in its entirety as a display of the sovereign and free mercy of God. The explanation lay in the fact that, for Reformed theology, everything took place to advance the glory of God. Thus the chief purpose of theology and of the whole of life was not the rescue of humanity but the glory of God. The focus was theocentric rather than soteriological. Even in the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), where soteriological concerns are more prominent (one of its authors, Zacharias Ursinus [1533-1587] was formerly a Lutheran) the famous first question ‘What is your only comfort in life and death?’ is answered w/ reference to the action of the Trinity, beginning, ‘I am not my own but belong… to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.

Following from this was an attempt by Reformed theology to grasp the unity of creation and redemption. The whole of life was seen in the embrace of God’s revelatory purpose. With the covenant at its heart, the whole of life was to display God’s glory….

Robert Letham
The Work of Christ — pg. 189-190

God’s people understood the idea that God did all He did for His own glory. The appeal in their prayers throughout Scripture demonstrates that they understood that they were to pin their hopes upon the Character of God as being the motivation for God to answer their requests,

Here we are going to spend some time looking at that idea.

That God’s glory was the basis upon which God’s people prayed is seen everywhere throughout Scripture

That God does all He does for His own Glory was understood by God’s people in the Scripture and was the foundation upon which they made their appeals to God.

(Appeal to God’s Glory)

Exodus 32:12 — (Context — Moses comes down from the Mountain and finds the children of Israel in the midst of
Idolatry and God threatens to wipe them out.)

Listen for the foundation upon which their Appeal to God is made for not destroying Israel

12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.

Numbers 14:13-19 (Context — God is threatening to destroy Israel because of their complaint about the prospective
of their being crushed by the inhabitants of the Promised Land.)

Listen for the foundation upon which their Appeal to God is made for not destroying Israel

13 And Moses said unto the Lord, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;)

14 And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou Lord art among this people, that thou Lord art seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night.

15 Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying,

16 Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness.

17 And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying,

18 The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

19 Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.

Joshua 7:9 (Context — Israel has been defeated at Ai over Achan’s disobedience. God threatens to destroy Israel. Joshua intercedes in prayer)

Listen for the foundation upon which their Appeal to God is made for not destroying Israel

9 For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?

II Samuel 7:26 (Context — God has given David permission to build a house for God to reside in)

Listen to David’s chief desire for this proposed house,

And let thy name be magnified for ever …

I Kings 8:43, 8:60 — (Context — Solomon dedicates the Temple)

Hear Solomon’s chief desire in the establishment of the Temple that God’s glory might be known

“that all people of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee …”

“That all the people of the earth may know that the Lord is God, and that there is none else.”

Parallel account — II Chronicles 6:32-33 — (Context — Request that prayer might be heard @ the Temple

“… in order that all peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you.”

I Kings 18:36-37 (Context — Contest on Mt. Carmel — That God might be vindicated over Baal)

Hear the appeal to God’s Glory in that God might be known

“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel… that this people may know that thou art the Lord God…”

II Kings 19:19 — (Context — Threats of destruction to King Hezekiah by the Servants of the Assyrian King)

Hear the appeal for deliverance on the basis of God’s reputation … (His glory) being known.

19 Now therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only.

Parallel account

Isaiah 37:20 — (Context –Hezekiah’s prayer for deliverance from Sennacherib, King of Assyria)

Now therefore, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord …

Jeremiah 14:7, 21 — (Context — Relief from famine)

Jeremiah’s prayer — Pinned upon God’s Glory

“do thou it for thy name’s sake”
“Do not abhor us, for thy name’s sake, do not disgrace the throne of thy glory: remember …

A theme we find in the Psalms on the lips of David

Psa. 25:11 — Context — for the pardon of guilt

“For thy name’s sake”

Psa. 31:4 — Context — request for leading and guidance

“For thy name’s sake”

Ps. 79:9 — Context — For help and deliverance

“For the glory of thy name … for your name’s sake”

Ps. 109:21 — Context — Deliverance

“For your name’s sake”

Daniel 9:16-19 — Context — Prayer for God to have mercy on the Exiles of Israel and to restore them

“… For your own sake … because of your great mercy … for your own sake … because your city and your people are called by your name.”

I Chronicles 17:19, 21, 24 — Context — Prayer that God would do as he had promised to David

“… and your name will be established and magnified forever.”

II Chronicles 4:11 — Context — King Asa’s prayer going into battle against Zerah the Ethiopian

“…Let not man prevail against you…”

II Chronicles 20:9 — Context — King Jehoshaphat’s prayer for deliverance from enemies Moab & Ammon

“….your name is in your house…”

Now what is the implication of this?

One sure implication of this is that we cannot center ourselves upon God and His glory without Knowing God and His character. If we pin our hope in our prayer life upon God and His glory and then have wrong understandings of God then we are bound to go amiss. We will inevitably have zeal without knowledge.

As such, if we are to live in keeping with God’s glory we have to know the mind of God and the only where we can find the mind of God is in Holy Writ.

Ann Elizabeth Jagt — Requisiet in Pace

60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit[e] and life. 64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. 65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Ann was and remains a Christian. And when we speak of her we would do well to remember that truth first and foremost.

To have been called to be a Christian means ultimately there is an understanding that, having been bought with a price, one’s life is not one’s own, and so all is life is lived under the authority of the Lord Christ who gave Himself as a Sacrifice for His people.

You see in being a Christian one is given the understanding that they are accountable to the God of the whole cosmos and so they fashion their life in keeping with His Word.

This confidence on Ann’s part of the fact that Christ died the just for the unjust so that His people might have Peace with God … that Christ loved Ann and gave Himself for her becomes then the explanation for who God created her and called her to be.

So deeply was this sense of abandonment to Christ owned by Ann that Ann found the passage in John we just read particularly comforting during her long battle with Cancer. In context the Lord Christ had been spoken truths that were hard to accept and as a result fair weather followers begin to peel off from following Christ. Jesus queries His core of 12 disciples if they were going to leave also and they respond with words that speak both of a divinely given understanding and of resolve.

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

The disciples understood here that no matter how difficult the Words of the Lord Christ might be it was simply the case that all other Words were empty words.

Ann embraced this passage because as freely purchased with the blood of Christ she understood that no matter how difficult the path may be it was simply the case that Christ was the answer. Where else could she go with this Cancer? Christ alone had the words of Eternal life. Embitterment was not an option because Christ alone had the words of Eternal life. And so she entrusted herself to Christ and the Providence of God and not only refused embitterment but refused Fear.

One of Ann’s favorite Scripture was

“God has not given us a Spirit of Fear but the power of love and of a sound mind.”

In light of this Word from God Ann did not give into fear and relentlessly taught her children not to give into fear. This, of course is a Christian virtue itself given by the God of all grace. As Christians we are called to fear only God and when we offer up our fear to anything that is not God we, at the same time divinize what ever it is we fear other than God and so become idolaters.

There are many virtues we can rightly speak of regarding Ann but we should recognize that any virtue we speak of says more about the magnificence of the Creator than it does about the Creature.

It was the Gospel of Jesus Christ for Sinners that crafted and shaped Ann. It was Biblical Christianity that explains her family-centric orientation where she submitted to her husband and poured herself into her children. It was the Christian faith that explains her fierce loyalties to friends. It was nothing but the finished work of Christ and the confidence in God’s undeserved love that found her optimistic and cheerful in her living and dying.

This is what the Christian faith does. It takes people, who are remarkably unexceptional in and of themselves, like all of us who call upon the name of Christ, and by the Hands of the Sovereign craftsman it shapes, molds, hammers, and refines so that the result is a person who shines like a star in the Universe. The explanation for a life well lived then is not found in mortals for there is nothing in us that recommends us to God’s favor. The explanation of a life well lived is found in God’s favor as revealed in Christ’s work on the Cross and as then fashioned by the Master’s hands. The explanation in a life well lived is the truth that Grace restores nature.

So, considered proximately the legacy of Ann is her role of wife and mother but ultimately the legacy of Ann is that Her Savior, even in the context of what we might count as severe Mercy, was Faithful to Her.

She lived in confidence of the fact that He alone had the words of Eternal life and she is now at rest in the one who loved her and gave himself for her.