insist on imposing their own misconceptions on the situation while ignoring the evidence." I disagree. These folks are smart enough to KNOW what the real story is. It is their IDEOLOGY that demands that they misrepresent, lie, and ignore the evidence. Look, during the time and after, of Stalin and Mao, "intellectuals" all across Europe and the USA (the "useful idiots") lied about the nature of these dictatorships and denied, rationalized or simply lied about the mass exterminations these murderers committed. They simply blamed the USA (i.e., capitalism) for all the world's ills. Just to cite two examples Hobsbawm and Chomsky literally jumped through their anuses to JUSTIFY or deny the horrors of any left wing mass murderer.Chomsky in particular had a very soft spot for Pol Pot. Further, you will note that the people who really hate Israel, about 99% of them, are liberals, liberal progressives, socialists or communists. This is NOT a coincidence. Ever since the USSR became pals with Egypt's Nasser, the entire middle east affair became -- due to the very effective propaganda of the USSR and Arabs -- a fable in which exploited, repressed "victims," the fictitious "Palestinians," were being enslaved, murdered, exploited by the evil Israelis. Of course, Israel was, and still is ( I think, thought with Obama you never know) an ally of the imperialistic, root of all evil in the world, capitalistic, exploitative USA. When the middle east mess became a cold war battle zone betwixt the USSR and the USA