H/T Blazing Cat Fur

It is not too many centurions, particularly 100-year-old-plus writers, whose vision of the world is as relevant today as it was when first shared with the public over half a century ago. It is this vision of Orwell, the X-ray view through the cant, platitudes and lies to that ugliest of human drives, the lust for powers absolute, that still distinguishes the British writer, born 112 years ago this week on June 25, 1903. He was only 46 when he died on January 21, 1950. It is his frightening acuity that keeps him not only in the pantheon but even within the orbit of contemporary consciousness.  

This is testament not only to Orwell's talents, but to the unhappy state of the human race. The totalitarian drive, cloaked in cant, platitudes and lies, is more vigorous than ever before, which explains why it is that Orwell's Cassandra cries resonate to this day. Frankly, how much better to live in a world...

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About this illustration: A non-exhaustive Internet search indicates that the illustration (above) may well be the cover of a 1960 comic book for Catholic schools published by the Catechetical Guild. Whatever it is, the cartoon beautifully captures a conventional fallacy regarding the Cold War: namely, that while "domino"-nations fell to Communism the world over, the good ship USA remained secure, fighting off the external foe. Even if the USA is headed toward the "Red Iceberg" in the picture, Uncle Sam and the republic are still the same as ever. Sure, a single Hiss or a pair of Rosenbergs might pop up from time to time, but, systemically speaking, Communist subversion, Communist influence, are what happened Over There. Not here. Never here.

American Betrayal, of...

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Some years ago, Jeff Nyquist was witness to the perfect confluence of operational illusion and under-the-table-reality. He captured the moment thus:

As a former British MP once said within my hearing; “Reagan and Thatcher saved the West from socialism.” But a former Russian GRU colonel, sitting across the table, whispered in my ear, “But America is the Marxist paradise.”

These two sentences fit the crux of American Betrayal. There is the false narrative of ideological victory in the Cold War expressed here by the British MP. To this day, the narrative plays on,...

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Read the rest here.

Looking back, I can think of no better way to describe June 9, 1954 than as a demonic day of creation.

On this day 61 years ago, the simplest, most enduring Big Lie about Sen. Joseph McCarthy was created on the floor of the US Senate. It began in a question that still quavers disembodied:

"Have you left no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" 

The speaker, later seen brushing tears away, was US Army counsel Joseph Welch (above left). The loss of "decency" Welch decried allegedly came about when Sen. McCarthy supposedly exposed a young lawyer in Welch's Boston firm named Frederick G. Fisher as a past member of the National Lawyers Guild, which Attorney General Herbert Brownell had in 1953 described as the "legal mouthpiece" of the Communist Party in the United States.  

I say "allegedly" and "supposedly" because the person who had already exposed Fisher...

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The New York Times Magazine has published an in-depth report by Adrian Chen on Russian disinformatzyia in the Internet Age. The piece opens a window on the extremely dark and widespread use of well-paid Internet "trolls" who use social media and online outlets (and even non-virtual art exhibits) to wreak havoc not only on public opinion, but on reality itself, both inside and outside Russia, very much including here in the USA.

One troll-goal in Russia, according to a Russian anti-corruption activist, is to drive bona fide political debate away from "trolled" Internet forums. “The point is to spoil [the Internet], to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it,” 

I confess this observation about the trolls' mission rang a bell with me personally. The cabal against American Betrayal  -- "trolls" from here on out -- has so many times attacked American Betrayal by falsifying the contents of the book that they have created a discernible pattern of deception that many have compared to a Soviet-style "disinformation campaign."

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June 5, 1944: Gen. Mark Clark arrives in Rome, the first European capital liberated from the Axis.  

From American Betrayal, Chapter Nine:



The decision to abandon Italy as an expanding, leading front at the end of 1943 made very little sense—unless, cynically, the true objective was to ensure that Central and Eastern Europe remained open for Soviet invasion. Then again, maybe that’s putting things too crudely, too harshly. Let me rephrase: The advantages to enlarging upon Anglo-American gains in Italy were obvious. There was no good strategic objective to be served by virtually abandoning this theater. Not because I say so. The top U.S. commander of strategic bombing in Europe, Gen. Carl Spaatz, said so,...

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You might call American Betrayal one long, sustained, unyielding assault on "the conventional wisdom" -- i.e., the fake history we are reared on and shaped by.

Thus, it hits the beaches of Normandy, too.   

A D-Day excerpt for June 6, 2015.



From American Betrayal, Chapter Nine:

It’s impossible to overestimate the centrality of D-day in Americans’ sense of ourselves, in our understanding of our role in the world, in a national nostalgia for a made-in-USA...

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There is something not a little surreal about announcing that I have published yet another rebuttal to yet another attack against American Betrayal -- but, surreal or not, such is the case. More surrealism: I am again publishing my rebuttal at Breitbart News, not the outlet that mounted the attack because the outlet-- in this case, National Review -- turned it down.  

Who would ever have imagined that the "disinformation campaign," as Jed Babbin called it, or the "mugging," as the late, great M. Stanton...

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Big Brother is watching  ... I mean, FDR Four Freedoms Park

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Longtime reader Robert Strauss wrote in on May 31:

There are the beginnings of a new trope out there.  Call it a pivot, if you will:

"Eleanor Clift Defends Hillary, Compares to FDR": “If she’s elected, she would probably be the richest president ever, But is this a liability? I look back at FDR, I mean, he was very wealthy. He did a lot of great things for the little people.”



Another example: "Matt Bai: Hillary Clinton isn’t like the rest of us? Good!" 

From a photo caption: "President Franklin...

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CNN reports that Dan Pfeffer, "longtime top aide to President Obama," is joining CNN as a contributor. Since I was for a time a CNN contributor, this marks the first another time an Obamabot has followed, sort of, in my footsteps.

Not that he won't halt right there, of course. Pfeiffer has interested me, however, since he was a point man at the 2011 White House unveiling of Prez Obama's online longform art project. See "Let Them Eat Birth Certificates." 

Pfeiffer was also on former Rep. Cliff Stearns' (R-FL) case in 2012 when the member of Congress had the temerity to mention Sheriff Joe Arpaio's quite compelling evidence that the online longform birth certificate was in fact a forgery, which is a very mean word for "art project." See "Silence of the Lapdogs."

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