
FINALLY -- IN AUDIOBOOK!
ALSO AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK
"It is not simply a good book about history. It is one of those books which makes history. ... "
-- Vladimir Bukovsky, co-founder of the Soviet dissident movement and author of Judgment in Moscow, and Pavel Stroilov, author of Behind the Desert Storm.
"Diana West is distinguished from almost all political commentators because she seeks less to defend ideas and proposals than to investigate and understand what happens and what has happened. This gives her modest and unpretentious books and articles the status of true scientific inquiry, shifting the debate from the field of liking and disliking to being and non-being."
-- Olavo de Carvalho
If you're looking for something to read, this is the most dazzling, mind-warping book I have read in a long time. It has been criticized by the folks at Front Page, but they don't quite get what Ms. West has set out to do and accomplished. I have a whole library of books on communism, but -- "Witness" excepted -- this may be the best.
-- Jack Cashill, author of Deconstructing Obama: The Lives, Loves and Letters of America's First Postmodern President and First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America
"Every once in a while, something happens that turns a whole structure of preconceived ideas upside down, shattering tales and narratives long taken for granted, destroying prejudice, clearing space for new understanding to grow. Diana West's latest book, American Betrayal, is such an event."
-- Henrik Raeder Clausen, Europe News
West's lesson to Americans: Reality can't be redacted, buried, fabricated, falsified, or omitted. Her book is eloquent proof of it.
-- Edward Cline, Family Security Matters
"I have read it, and agree wholeheartedly."
-- Angelo Codevilla, Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Boston Unversity, and fellow of the Claremont Institute.
Enlightening. I give American Betrayal five stars only because it is not possible to give it six.
-- John Dietrich, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency and author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy.
After reading American Betrayal and much of the vituperation generated by neoconservative "consensus" historians, I conclude that we cannot ignore what West has demonstrated through evidence and cogent argument.
-- John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D., Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
"A brilliantly researched and argued book."
-- Edward Jay Epstein, author of Deception: The Invisible War between the KGB and the CIA, The Annals 0f Unsolved Crime
"This explosive book is a long-needed answer to court histories that continue to obscure key facts about our backstage war with Moscow. Must-reading for serious students of security issues and Cold War deceptions, both foreign and domestic."
-- M. Stanton Evans, author of Stalin's Secret Agents and Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies
Her task is ambitious; her sweep of crucial but too-little-known facts of history is impressive; and her arguments are eloquent and witty. ... American Betrayal is one of those books that will change the way many of us see the world.
-- Susan Freis Falknor, Blue Ridge Forum
"American Betrayal is absolutely required reading. Essential. You're sleepwalking without it."
-- Chris Farrell, director of investigations research, Judicial Watch
"Diana West wrote a brilliant book called American Betrayal, which I recommend to everybody ... It is a seminal work that will grow in importance."
-- Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker
"This is a must read for any serious student of history and anyone working to understand the Marxist counter-state in America."
-- John Guandolo, president, Understanding the Threat, former FBI special agent
It is myth, or a series of myths, concerning WW2 that Diana West is aiming to replace with history in 2013’s American Betrayal.
If West’s startling revisionism is anywhere near the historical truth, the book is what Nietzsche wished his writings to be, dynamite.
-- Mark Gullick, British Intelligence
“What Diana West has done is to dynamite her way through several miles of bedrock. On the other side of the tunnel there is a vista of a new past. Of course folks are baffled. Few people have the capacity to take this in. Her book is among the most well documented I have ever read. It is written in an unusual style viewed from the perspective of the historian—but it probably couldn’t have been done any other way.”
-- Lars Hedegaard, historian, journalist, founder, Danish Free Press Society
The polemics against your Betrayal have a familiar smell: The masters of the guild get angry when someone less worthy than they are ventures into the orchard in which only they are privileged to harvest. The harvest the outsider brought in, they ritually burn.
-- Hans Jansen, former professor of Islamic Thought, University of Utrecht
No book has ever frightened me as much as American Betrayal. ... [West] patiently builds a story outlining a network of subversion so bizarrely immense that to write it down will seem too fantastic to anyone without the book’s detailed breadth and depth. It all adds up to a story so disturbing that it has changed my attitude to almost everything I think about how the world actually is. ... By the time you put the book down, you have a very different view of America’s war aims and strategies. The core question is, did the USA follow a strategy that served its own best interests, or Stalin’s? And it’s not that it was Stalin’s that is so compelling, since you knew that had to be the answer, but the evidence in detail that West provides that makes this a book you cannot ignore.
-- Steven Kates, RMIT (Australia) Associate Professor of Economics, Quadrant
"Diana West's new book rewrites WWII and Cold War history not by disclosing secrets, but by illuminating facts that have been hidden in plain sight for decades. Furthermore, she integrates intelligence and political history in ways never done before."
-- Jeffrey Norwitz, former professor of counterterrorism, Naval War College
[American Betrayal is] the most important anti-Communist book of our time ... a book that can open people's eyes to the historical roots of our present malaise ... full of insights, factual corroboration, and psychological nuance.
-- J.R. Nyquist, author, Origins of the Fourth World War
Although I know [Christopher] Andrew well, and have met [Oleg] Gordievsky twice, I now doubt their characterization of Hopkins -- also embraced by Radosh and the scholarly community. I now support West's conclusions after rereading KGB: The Inside Story account 23 years later [relevant passages cited in American Betrayal]. It does not ring true that Hopkins was an innocent dupe dedicated solely to defeating the Nazis. Hopkins comes over in history as crafty, secretive and no one's fool, hardly the personality traits of a naïve fellow traveler. And his fingerprints are on the large majority of pro-Soviet policies implemented by the Roosevelt administration. West deserves respect for cutting through the dross that obscures the evidence about Hopkins, and for screaming from the rooftops that the U.S. was the victim of a successful Soviet intelligence operation.
-- Bernie Reeves, founder of The Raleigh Spy Conference, American Thinker
Diana West’s American Betrayal — a remarkable, novel-like work of sorely needed historical re-analysis — is punctuated by the Cassandra-like quality of “multi-temporal” awareness. ... But West, although passionate and direct, is able to convey her profoundly disturbing, multi-temporal narrative with cool brilliance, conjoining meticulous research, innovative assessment, evocative prose, and wit.
-- Andrew G. Bostom, PJ Media
Do not be dissuaded by the controversy that has erupted around this book which, if you insist on complete accuracy, would be characterized as a disinformation campaign.
-- Jed Babbin, The American Spectator
In American Betrayal, Ms. West's well-established reputation for attacking "sacred cows" remains intact. The resulting beneficiaries are the readers, especially those who can deal with the truth.
-- Wes Vernon, Renew America
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By Diana West on
Thursday, March 27, 2014 7:07 PM

This week's syndicated column
It may surprise some Americans to learn that almost one-quarter of the people living in Switzerland are foreigners. Even so, just over 50 percent voted last month to cap immigration, which, unchecked, could leave indigenous Swiss a minority in 50 years. Newsweek’s headline over the story was typical: “Switzerland’s Sudden Fear of Immigrants.”
Fear. Immigrants. The German publication Spiegel Online wrote also about “scaremongering.” The enlightened reader’s thought-bubble is now supposed to register the word “racism.” But was it really “fear of immigrants” – read: “racism” – that drove sufficient numbers of Swiss to the polls to check their own demographic extinction as a recognizable culture and nation-state? Or was it a nearly anachronistic instinct to survive as a recognizable culture and nation-state?
I see it as the instinct to survive – and applaud the...
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By Diana West on
Tuesday, March 25, 2014 9:23 AM
I am currently writing about the events referred to in this video, events which Peter Martino has encapsulated well here. In the meantime, there is no one who can explain them with more eloquence and clarity than Geert Wilders himself.
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By Diana West on
Monday, March 24, 2014 12:14 PM

Behold the statue of The Dockworker in Amsterdam (found here via here). It stands between the Portugese Synagogue and the Jewish Historical Museum on Jonas Daniel Meijerplein Square.
Of course, all eyes are drawn to the black flag of Al Qaeda, that elongated and Arabian-curled swaztika, waving beside it.
Back to the statue for a history lesson that makes the appalling symbolism apparent. Below is a screenshot from A Travel Guide to Jewish Europe. It tells us that nearly three-quarters of a century ago, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Dutch dockworkers...
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By Diana West on
Friday, March 21, 2014 5:28 AM

President Obama welcoming Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, whose cabinet recently approved sharia-based draft law legalizing child rape ("marriage" to 9-year-olds)
This week's syndicated column
You may have missed it, but March 8 was International Women's Day, a holiday unconnected to a religious rite or person, and with no national or even seasonal significance. It is socialist in origin, and it was Lenin himself who made it an official holiday in the Soviet Union. Not surprisingly, it is now a rite of the United Nations.
In these origins lie the day's basic fallacy: that womanhood is an international -- global -- political state of being; that there is a universal female political condition, which urges, a la Marx, "Women of the world, unite!" Against what? The common foe -- men.
As with Marxism itself, for such a sisterhood to coalesce, even on paper or in elite committees...
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By Diana West on
Tuesday, March 18, 2014 3:06 AM

Note from Condoleeza Rice to George W. Bush and back again on June 28, 2004.
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When Westerners and Muslims talk about "freedom," they are talking about two entirely different ideas. Tragically, irresponsibly, the political and academic elite still don't admit or know it. They seem to have learned nothing in more than a decade since 9/11 and the subsequent US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the several years since "Arab Spring."
It's so easy to find the facts it becomes clear they don't want to know them.
The entry on freedom, or hurriyya, in the "Encyclopedia of Islam" describes a state of divine enthrallment that bears no resemblance to any Western understanding of freedom as predicated on the workings of the individual conscience. According to the encyclopedia, Islamic freedom is "the recognition of the essential relationship between God the master and His human slaves...
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By Diana West on
Thursday, March 13, 2014 5:46 PM

This week's syndicated column
Reading as widely on Ukraine as possible, I kept wondering why the story wasn’t making sense. Then I realized the buzzwords used to tell the story weren’t adding up.
Here’s what we hear: Democracy in action drove a corrupt leader, whose snipers had fired on protesters in Kiev, to flee Ukraine. Enter Russian forces into Crimea, Ukraine. The “Free World” must now take its stand against the “Russian Bear” for freedom, sovereignty and rule of law, and reject the outcome of an “unconstitutional” referendum in which Russian-majority-Crimea is expected to vote to join Russia. Meanwhile, please inject billions of Western taxpayer dollars and euros into Ukraine.
Mute the rhetoric, though, and it’s hard not to notice that last month, a violent mob and rump parliament ousted the elected Ukrainian president in another “unconstitutional” process better known as a coup....
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By Diana West on
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 11:02 AM

Something's very wrong when the Land of the Free is the envy of Europe for its "centralized government."
From Speigel Online's recent interview on Ukraine with Polish foreign minister Radek Sikoski:
SPIEGEL: Do you feel that Europe is making a weak impression in this crisis? While EU leaders continued to discuss the issue in Brussels, Washington was already imposing stronger sanctions.
Sikorski: The Americans have done even more -- by relocating F-15 and F-16 jets to Eastern Europe, for example. In contrast to Europe, the US has a centralized government. We should learn from the current crisis that European integration must also continue when it comes to security policy.
Sounds to me as if Sikorski is talking about more power for...
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By Diana West on
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 10:16 AM

If you thought that in Ukraine we finally had a global crisis sans Islam, think again. My first clue was hearing "Allah Akbars" on a Youtube of some anti-Russia protestors (not in news media). Then, a Ukrainian e-pal from Kiev wrote in, noting, "The Kirimli (Tatars) can ask for help Turks and other Muslim peoples. With Hisb-ut-Tahrir or Wahhabites. It could be a new `hot point.' "
The Tatars of Crimea -- at least the ones who have returned to Crimea in the aftermath of Stalin's mass deportations of nearly 200,000 Tatars in 1944, which would kill nearly half of the population -- are Muslim and speak a Turkic language.
According to Al Monitor, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutolgu recently met in Kiev with the former speaker of the Tatar National Assembly, Mustafa Abdulcemil Kirimoglu, and declared: “If the term is appropriate, we are in 'mobilization' to defend the rights of our kin in Crimea by doing whatever is necessary.”
...
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By Diana West on
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 8:47 AM

In 2005, drawing from his ground-breaking book A Throne in Brussels, Paul Belien published an essay titled "The Dark Roots of the EU." If ever you have wondered why the EU resembles a socialist superstate, this essay reveals that the EU's earliest theorists were socialists and Nazi sympathizers.
Paul writes:
In the 1930s the idea of transplanting Belgicism to the European level, by creating a unified pan-European corporatist welfare state, was further elaborated on by Henri De Man, the leader of the Belgian Socialist Party, and by his deputy Paul-Henri Spaak. De Man called himself a national socialist, but explained that this had nothing to do with nationalism at all. In fact, one of his major books was called “Au delà du Nationalisme” (“Beyond Nationalism”).
De Man knew that Belgium, as an artificial construct, did not really exist as a nation. The Belgian state was no more...
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By Diana West on
Sunday, March 09, 2014 11:22 AM
You can't. It's not possible.
Yes, Europe's Islamization is more overtly advanced -- from de jure sharia courts in England to de factos sharia courts in Germany, no-go-zones in all major cities, halal food galore, sharia speech curbs everywhere, mosque proliferation -- but the US is being Islamized, too, maybe more neatly and more quietly, but with no such vocal and passionate political opposition.
Somehow, Europe has spawned courageous politicians such as Switzerland's Oskar Freysinger, whom I had the pleasure of intereviewing at his home in the Alps several years ago, Belgium's Filip de Winter (ditto in Antwerp), The Netherlands' Geert Wilders, whom I have interviewed on several occasions, among others, but America has not. We have no one here who addresses the Islamic threat in clear, forthright terms, not even among those conservative politicians who parade before CPAC, all the while fancying themselves defenders of the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
...
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By Diana West on
Saturday, March 08, 2014 2:50 PM

I have been trying to figure out why from the start I have balked at the mainstream narrative framing the struggle in the Ukraine as that of a classic, black-hat, white-hat struggle -- Tyranny versus Freedom.
First, there are the players. It's just hard for me to see a white hat on the European Union, which in no way stands for preserving the liberty of the citizen. The EU stands for central control -- "soft" tyranny -- "soft" empire, too, and for the end of national sovereignty. A few weeks ago, in fact, I hailed Switzerland's successful, anti-EU referendum to wrest more control of its borders and immigration policy from Brussels, the EU "capital." Could the EU possibly be suporting the sovereignty of Ukraine, or of any other country for that matter? Certainly, that's what we are to believe, but the evidence is not convincing. Worth remembering also is that the EU is helmed by a bevy of erstwhile Communist, Marxist, Maoist and nuclear freezenik ministers who rule by means of an unelected, non-accountable governing structure that Vladimir Bukovsky has likened to that of the old Soviet Politburo. (I discuss the EU in American Betrayal in the context of who really won the Cold War.)
...
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By Diana West on
Saturday, March 08, 2014 5:06 AM
As thousands of conservatives from across the country gather outside Washington, D.C., this week for the annual CPAC conference, they get to see and cheer on their favorite conservative all-stars and presidential hopefuls in person – Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter and many more. But something else is going on. Amid the hoopla, book signings, meet and greets, speeches, panels and bands, a tense, no-holds-barred fight is under way to try to rid CPAC of a pair of influential men with track records of working with America’s enemies – Islamic organizations the U.S. government has linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and larger world of jihad.
It sounds like the setup to a thriller: Here is the pre-eminent showcase of red-meat conservatism, and at its organizational heart are movers and shakers with links to the world jihadist movement. But these are the facts as laid out in a meticulous, 40-plus-page “Statement of Facts” solemnly signed last month by former CIA Director...
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By Diana West on
Thursday, March 06, 2014 4:31 PM
"Intercepted" phone conversations between unelected officials are magically appearing on Youtube -- something George Orwell, I don't believe, gave much imaginative thought to.
First, there was Victoria Nuland's intercepted conversation with the US Amb to Ukraine -- a gem, which left us with much more than the headline "F--- the EU" to contemplate. Such as: Why do unelected American bureacrats think they can/should pick new governments for foreign countries?
Now, there is the Estonian foreign minister's intercepted phone call with Baroness Catherine Ashton, the unelected "foreign minister" of the EU, which is also known as, pace V Bukovsky, as the "EUSSR." The Estonian minister relays evidence to Ashton conveyed to him by a Ukrainian medical official that some element of the opposition was behind the snipers. Estonia and the Ukrainian health official have since tried to walk back the story -- although Estonia has authenticated the call.
...
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By Diana West on
Tuesday, March 04, 2014 9:24 AM
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By Diana West on
Sunday, March 02, 2014 6:43 AM

Sunday, March 2:
From Minnesota Conservatives blog:
Diana West is the exclusive guest for the full hour of Gilmore & Glahn radio, Sunday, March 2, 2014 at 4 p.m. CT. Please go here to listen in real time. The podcast will be linked to below once the show has aired.
Gilmore & Glahn are honored to have Diana West tell their listeners the real story of what she found while conducting what she has called "investigative history." Don't miss Radio Worth Your Time™
Details here.
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By Diana West on
Friday, February 28, 2014 8:58 AM

This week's syndicated column
Finally, a headline of my dreams: “Rand Paul: Democrats Should Be ‘Embarrassed’ to be Seen With Bill Clinton.”
In fact, the headline is stronger than Sen. Paul’s actual statement – Democrats “ought to be a little embarrassed” – but I’ll gladly take it and extend my heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Sen. Paul for being the first political leader I can remember (perhaps only?) to acknowledge the obvious: Bill Clinton, gross-out, serial sexual predator accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick (not to mention virtual creator of the Red Chinese military threat through releases of military technology in exchange for campaign contributions), is a national disgrace. Yes, Democrats should be “embarrassed” to be seen with him – and with his wife, too, but that’s another column.
The reality, of course, is that Democrats celebrate Clinton, showcasing him as a keynote speaker at the 2012 National Democratic Convention, for example. But I doubt it’s just Democrats who still scrap for his autograph, pay a hefty year’s salary (six figures) for one speech and generally treat Bill Clinton like a respected and laudatory personage. And that’s a problem.
...
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By Diana West on
Thursday, February 27, 2014 5:44 AM

Finally, a headline of my dreams: "Rand Paul: Democrats Should Be `Embarassed' To Be Seen With Bill Clinton."
In fact, the headline is stronger than Paul's actual statement -- Democrats "ought to be a little embarassed" -- but I'll gladly take it, and extend my heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Sen. Paul for being the first political leader I can remember (maybe ever?) to state the obvious: Bill Clinton, sexual predator and accused rapist, not to mention creator of the Chinese military threat (for campaign contributions), is a national disgrace,...
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By Diana West on
Tuesday, February 25, 2014 6:17 AM

On Feb. 9, 50.3 percent of Swiss voters passed a referendum to cap immigration from the EU. In the course of a (very hostile) Spiegel Online interview with Christoph Blocher, leader of the Swiss People's Party, the impetus becomes clear. The EU's so-called freedom of movement -- read: untrammeled immigration into decreasingly sovereign states -- has approached a crisis for Swiss nationhood.
"Some 23.8 percent of Switzerland's population is comprised of foreigners, and almost 15 percent are first-generation naturalized Swiss citizens," Blocher said. "No similar European state has anything like that."
Once the shocking fact that nearly one in four people in Switzerland are foreigners sinks in, it seems logicial to conclude, as Galliawatch does, that many if not most non-native voters probably opposed the immigration cap. That means that the outcome among native Swiss was likely...
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By Diana West on
Friday, February 21, 2014 10:31 AM

"The Grinning Generals" by Rob Crllly is a recent London Telegraph story all about the above photo of two generals, one Afghan, one American. Noting the identity of the pair -- Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, the new ISAF commander, and Maj. Gen. Abdul Raziq, the police chief of Kandahar "accused of corruption, drug running and, most extraordinarily of all, mass murder," Crilly is incredulous that this unseemly embrace was not secretly snapped and smuggled to news media. On the contrary, it is an official US government handout.
Pictures are snapped not by an outraged junior officer with an anonymous Facebook account, nor are they leaked surreptitiously to the media. The photographs are in fact distributed by the US military's own media outfit.
...
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By Diana West on
Thursday, February 20, 2014 11:05 AM
House Speaker John Boehner made headlines on February 6 for tabling immigration "overhaul" -- one week after indicating it was at the top of this session's agenda.
But don't think anyone has put the hatchets away. Measures hacking away at the US border, US citizenship, and US law itself continue across the land even as Congress increasingly becomes the 535-figured-headed white elephant on the Hill. More American Betrayal, and at breakneck speed.
Some recent dispatches from the world of do-it-yourself, forget-about-the-legislature, immigration-policy-making.
Feb. 4: TheStreet.com reports "DREAMers Get BiPartisan Support as Donald Graham Joins Grover Norquist."
TheStreet,com reports:
Immigration reform may be at an intractable standstill but former Washington Post Publisher Donald Graham is creating an organization to do what the federal government has been unable to do: help make it possible for young, undocumented immigrants to go to college, and by extension,...
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By Diana West on
Thursday, February 20, 2014 7:00 AM

I will be writing more about an extraordinary development in what has heretofore been former Reagan-era Pentagon official Frank Gaffney's heroic but very lonely quest: namely, to throw light on what ten prominent former national security officials are now publicly calling Grover Norquist's and Suhail Khan's "ties to and activities in support of Islamists inside the United States, including the Muslim Brotherhood, its operatives, front groups and agenda."
In other words, their ties and activities in support of ... enemy jihadists.
This case of stealth jihad inside the Right now has the on-the-record endorsement of 1) former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, 2) former CIA Director James Woolsey, 3) former Rep. Allen West, 4) fomer Commander in Chief,...
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By Diana West on
Saturday, February 15, 2014 8:53 AM

This (above) is a screen shot of a tweet from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, regarding Obama's most recent executive branch power grab from the legislative branch. Grassley's bottom line: "Obama admin can't change law w memo."
Grassley also put the same message in proper English in a statement reported in the Washington Post:
“Marijuana trafficking is illegal under federal law, and it’s illegal for banks to deal with marijuana sale proceeds under federal law. Only Congress can change these laws. The administration can’t change the law with a memo.”
But "the administration" is doing exactly that...
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By Diana West on
Friday, February 14, 2014 6:43 AM

State Department photo/public domain
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This week, The Washington Free Beacon published a story by Alana Goodman based on excerpts from the papers of Deeda Blair, an intimate friend of Hillary and Bill Clinton, under the headine, "The Hillary Papers: Archive of Closest Friend Paints Portrait of Ruthless First Lady."
Media filters -- censors -- went haywire attempting to downplay and dismiss the findings (NBC's Andrea Mitchell admitted on "Morning Joe" that she had argued against NBC even mentioning the Free Beacon story), which are of interest given the source: Hillary Clinton's best friend. That is, the evidence has long and redundantly demonstrated that Hillary Rodham Clinton is "ruthless" -- Goodman finds the adjective in a heretofore unpublished 1992 report by Clinton presidential campaign pollsters Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake -- but...
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By Diana West on
Friday, February 07, 2014 7:01 AM

I am happy to say that American Betrayal continues to be reviewed, debated and discussed widely. I couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised than when I noticed this charming Twitter pic and profile above -- a soulmate, clearly, but no relation!
The book is also, I gather from Twitter, making the rounds in The Netherlands, and I just posted a new letter in Reader's Corner from Kiev, Ukraine. In December, a letter, also posted in Reader's Corner, came in from St. Petersburg, Russia.

Recently, along with unprecedentedly lavish coverage...
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By Diana West on
Thursday, February 06, 2014 5:25 PM

This week's syndicated column:
One of the hats I wear is that of Washington correspondent for Dispatch International, a European weekly newspaper co-edited by Danish journalist and historian Lars Hedegaard. The name may ring a bell with U.S. readers because last February, a man dressed up as a postman with a fake package tried to assassinate Hedegaard, a noted critic of Islamization and proponent of free speech, at his home in Copenhagen. International headlines followed.
One year later, Hedegaard lives under state protection, and there have been no arrests. But that’s not what this week’s column is about.
A few days ago, Hedegaard wrote me with a new assignment:
“Would you write something about a disturbing phenomenon: the fact that Obama rules by decree and neglects the Constitution. How can this go on? Nixon was a complete amateur compared to this would-be Kim Jong-un....
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By Diana West on
Thursday, February 06, 2014 1:08 PM

America was lucky to have him.
Maybe next time we can at least elect a president who can ride a horse.
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By Diana West on
Wednesday, February 05, 2014 1:28 AM

It sounds like opera. Venice been sold down the river to the Emir if Qatar by Letta the Prime Minister and Orsoni the Mayor. Enter Bitonci, the hero from Lega Nord. Things don't end well.
Western civilization, weep.
From the Daily Mail:
Venetians are up in arms over plans to build an Islamic centre on the banks of the lagoon city's Grand Canal.
Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta announced plans to build the Islamic museum and study centre during a meeting with the Emir of Qatar.
Letta, who is in the Middle East to drum up investment for Italy’s woe-begotten state industries, said the leaders had ‘made a commitment to explore the opportunity to build an Islamic museum in Venice on the Grand Canal.’
...
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By Diana West on
Tuesday, February 04, 2014 4:02 AM

Via Andrew Bostom.
On November 25, 2013, Forbes noted:
Over the long run the easing of sanctions against Iran spells trouble for the economics of the tight oil plays that have sprung up across the United States in recent years. The Eagle Ford and Permian Basin and Bakken need sustained high oil prices to make the economics of expensive drilling and steep decline rates pay off. It’s no coincidence that America’s great oil and gas renaissance has coincided with sanctions on Iran and unrest in Libya. The concern for U.S. drillers is that successful Middle Eastern diplomacy could end up being the worst thing for their business. If crude oil benchmarks were to fall to $75 a barrel...
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By Diana West on
Saturday, February 01, 2014 8:37 AM
This week's syndicated column
I can’t believe I’m writing these words: Marine Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III is going on trial – again.
Twice, Hutchins’ conviction by a military court martial for unpremeditated murder in Iraq has been overturned due to factors precluding a fair trial. That means that twice, following Hutchins’ initial conviction in 2007, he has been released from the brig a free man.
After his conviction was overturned the first time, there were eight months of freedom in 2010. Then, on the day his wife Reyna found out she was pregnant with their second child, Hutchins, a third-generation Marine, returned to prison. Last summer, the military’s highest appeals court overturned his conviction a second time. For the past six months, Hutchins has been living with Reyna and their two children, Kylie, 8, and Aidan, 2, while teaching marksmanship at Camp Pendleton. A new baby is on the way. Now, he – and they – must prepare for a new trial, his third. Why?
...
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By Diana West on
Wednesday, January 29, 2014 8:54 AM

The Washington Post's Walter Pincus has extracted some other items of interest from Robert Gates' book, Duty (noted earlier here). These include the forgotten fact that the Bush administration discussed withdrawing the "surge" in Iraq even as it was getting underway, much as the Obama administration would do more emphatically vis a vis Afghanistan. (Similarly, a withdrawal date from Iraq was set by Bush.)
Also this:
Another Gates disclosure provides another lesson: information about Syria building in 2005 what turned out to be a North Korean-designed nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium during the Bush administration.
Though the United States considered Syria a high-priority intelligence target, it was Israel that supplied the compelling evidence in spring 2007 about its nuclear activities. Gates, a former CIA director, said this represented “a significant failure on...
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By Diana West on
Friday, January 24, 2014 2:34 PM

This week's syndicated column
Two Iraqi men in their 20s have been convicted of a bloody sex crime in Colorado that left the victim, a woman in her 50s, in need of immediate surgery and a colostomy bag. Three other Iraqi men, also in their 20s,were convicted on lesser charges as accessories.
Four points set this case apart. First, there is its brutality: Law enforcement officers describe the July 2012 assault as "rare" and "horrific" and "one of the worst in Colorado history." Second, all of these men once assisted U.S. military forces in Iraq as informants and interpreters. Third, every one of them received permanent residency status in the U.S., due in part to efforts made by U.S. military members on their behalf. Fourth, this extraordinary case and the ties that bind it to the U.S. military and the war in Iraq have received little coverage.
Most of what the public knows...
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By Diana West on
Tuesday, January 21, 2014 2:40 PM

At Breitbart News today -- the 64th anniversay of the conviction of Alger Hiss, by the way -- M. Stanton Evans has published a brand new article, "`McCarthyism by the Numbers." Besides laying to rest the canard that Sen. Joseph McCarthy's investigations only netted a "few small fry," it concretely strengthens the defense of American Betrayal against all those tired, postmodern, juju-charges of "McCarthyism."
Which isn't to say, of course, that I don't take "McCarthy's heiress" as a compliment.
"`McCARTHYISM' BY THE NUMBERS"
by M. Stanton Evans
The orchestrated attack on Diana West’s important book, American Betrayal, has been brutal and unseemly, but in one respect at...
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By Diana West on
Monday, January 20, 2014 9:30 AM
 
In 2012, five Iraqi men in their 20s were arrested on charges in Colorado related to the extremely bloody rape and assault of a woman, who has been variously described as elderly or middle-aged. It was a sex crime so violent law enforcement describe it as "rare" and "horrific" and "one of the worst in Colorado history."
Finally, the last defendant in the crime now comes to trial. His name is Jasim Ramadon, above in orange. A decade ago, Jasim, known as "Steve-O," helped US troops i.d. Saddam loyalists, including his father.
UPDATE: Jasim Ramadon has been convicted on multiple counts of sexual assault.
As the disturbing realization...
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By Diana West on
Sunday, January 19, 2014 3:01 PM

After endorsing the gubernatorial run of conservative California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a Tea Party favorite who opposes illegal immigration, actress Maria Conchita Alonso "abruptly" left the cast of a San Francisco play this week.
From the local CBS story:
The actress was to perform next month at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco’s Mission District in a Spanish-language version of “The Vagina Monologues,” scheduled for a run from February 14th through 17th. The show is being produced by none other than Eliana Lopez, wife of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.
“We really cannot have her in the show, unfortunately,” Lopez told KPIX 5. She said Alonso abruptly resigned from the cast on Friday, given the backlash on the immigration issue.
“Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we’re in the middle of the Mission. Doing what...
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By Diana West on
Sunday, January 19, 2014 3:51 AM

One of my favorite sites, Tundra Tabloids, is currently under a massive DDOS assault launched by enemies of free speech. No worries. After armoring up, TT will be back online.
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By Diana West on
Saturday, January 18, 2014 7:42 AM

I've been mulling how -- or even whether -- to mark the appearance of six entries on American Betrayal in the January 2014 issue of The New Criterion. The issue contains an essay by editor Roger Kimball and five letters, all devoted to my book, or, rather, to Andrew C. McCarthy's review of American Betrayal, which appeared in the December 2013 issue.
Why so much ink? The answer is simple. Andy McCarthy, the celebrated former federal prosecutor, noted author and commentator, had the temerity to write positive things about my book in his December review. Like a clanging bell to Pavlov's dog, this review drove Ronald Radosh and Conrad Black to churn out letters to the editor explaining to McCarthy the error of his ways. By my count, this becomes the fifth, maybe even the sixth piece by Radosh, and the fourth or fifth by Black. Harvey Klehr and John Haynes also write in general protest. I...
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By Diana West on
Friday, January 17, 2014 2:21 PM

All I can say is that it's been way too long since Tom Stone has published a guest-blog here.
"Regarding Michael O’Sullivan’s review of Lone Survivor in the January 10, 2014 Washington Post, Weekend Section."
by Tom Stone
I don’t know if Mr. O’Sullivan has ever been in the military, let alone in combat. Let us not get into an argument over whether we should go to war, for whatever reason, this movie is not about that. War is a terrible thing, has been for thousands of years, an unavoidable consequence of man’s ignorance, of man’s inhumanity to man.
War is in our genes and will never cease. I dare anyone to argue that.
I have seen war in Vietnam, and like my father and my father-in-law in WWII, and my son in Iraq and Afghanistan, experienced the worst...
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By Diana West on
Friday, January 17, 2014 7:21 AM

March 1940 NKVD memo by Beria, released by Russia in 2010, proposing mass execution of thousands of Polish POWs. Signed approval by Stalin, K. Voroshilov, V. Molotov, and A. Mikoyan. Signatures in left margin are M. Kalinin and L. Kaganovich. Soviet guilt for this massacre was known to US and GB beginning in 1943, but Allies joined Stalin's conspiracy of silence.
This week's syndicated column
The power of history to speak to us depends on our ability to hear it. When we are deaf to its secrets, or too confused or conditioned to decipher them, we miss the opportunity to be empowered by them. We thus fail to overcome the propaganda our own government, like the dictatorships we revile, has all too often deceived us with.
I am struck by this aura of static around a sensational new discovery. Researcher and author...
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By Diana West on
Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:01 AM

RLN.fm, a news site described to me as "Russian libertarian" (yes, you read right), has included me among 20 "important American conservatives." I tossed the site's Russian-language write-up into Google Translate to learn this recognition comes due to American Betrayal.
It is wonderful to see how far and wide American Betrayal has already traveled -- as far as Australia, where a positive review is now the top featured article online in the January 2014 issue of Quadrant, edited by Keith Windshuttle, and now even to Russia. I recently learned that a Polish-language translation of American...
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By Diana West on
Friday, January 10, 2014 4:30 AM

DVIDS photo by Lance Cpl. Jason Morrison of Marines patrolling Sangin, 2012
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Excuse me while I defend President Obama.
This doesn’t happen often, if ever at all. But this Robert Gates story, whipping through Washington like wildfire, feels like smoke in our eyes.
It all started with an article by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post about the former secretary of defense’s new memoir, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.” Gates, Woodward writes, had concluded “by early 2010 (that) the president ‘doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war (in Afghanistan) to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.’”
Getting out: my one, undoubtedly accidental, convergence with Obama. But I digress.
Woodward continues: “Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates...
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By Diana West on
Wednesday, January 08, 2014 6:26 PM

An interesting new review of American Betrayal from the January 2014 issue of the Australian journal Quadrant, edited by Keith Windshuttle.
"America, the Big Dumb Ox"
by Steven Kates
I have long known Robert Conquest’s three laws of politics, of which the third had always been something of a mystery. One and two I have seen for myself, but the third remained unclear:
1. Everyone is conservative about what they know best.
2. Any organisation not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation...
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By Diana West on
Thursday, January 02, 2014 5:50 PM

This week's syndicated column
The reporting on China’s commemoration of the 120th birthday of Mao Zedong all seemed to come from the same angle. Festivities were “understated” (Associated Press). Events were “scaled back” (Reuters). The following headline, which ran on the Fox News website over the AP story, is typical: “China marks Mao’s 120th birthday with low-key celebrations.” The story opens: “China’s leaders bowed three times before a statue of Mao Zedong on the 120th anniversary of his birth Thursday in carefully controlled celebrations that also sought to uphold the market-style reforms that he would have opposed.”
Forget for now the “market-style reforms.” Only three times? How “muted”! That, by the way, was the word CNN used to describe the occasion.
But there’s something wrong with this media picture. Imagine if, on Adolf Hitler’s upcoming 125th birthday, German Chancellor Angela...
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By Diana West on
Tuesday, December 31, 2013 7:35 AM

Another "politically incorrect" book by another enervated member of the Western intelligentsia about that winning strategy for civilizational destruction known as "muticulturalism" -- Trojan horse for Islamization, among other Western nation-killers -- has again prompted a "heated" response in the media. The book is L'Identité Malheureuse, the writer is Alain Finkielkraut, and it is a pair of journalists from the German publication Spiegel who are hot and bothered.
The questions alone suffice to convey the "interview."
SPIEGEL: Mr. Finkielkraut, are you unhappy with today's France?
SPIEGEL: Why is that? Post-national and multicultural sounds rather promising.
SPIEGEL: Aren't you giving in here to the right-wingers' fears of demise? ...
Note: Even with the post-nation upon them, citizens who lament the evident loss are "right-wingers" harboring "fears"...
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By Diana West on
Tuesday, December 31, 2013 4:20 AM

Lenin and Stalin: The ultimate masters of terror and deception
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One of the more difficult tasks for the layman is evaluating the salvos over the worth/worthlessness of one defector or another as they whiz by. Was that heat or light and then it's gone.
Of course, evaluating defectors in and of itself is also one of the more difficult tasks for intelligence experts and professionals. What about when one defector weighs in about another? After an interview with Romanian defector and DIsinformation author Ion Mihail Pacepa sharply dismissing Soviet defector and New Lies for Old author Anatoliy Golitsyn appeared at WND.com this week, I put out some feelers and received the following response from Jeff Nyquist, which I found of great interest. Nyquist is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Inter-American Institute and author of Origins of the Fourth World War....
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By Diana West on
Monday, December 30, 2013 2:34 PM
This is a fascinating piece of 1952 footage featuring former US Ambassador to Poland Arthur Bliss Lane discussing a Big Lie put over by the Soviets in 1943 concerning their 1940 massacre of thousands of Poles in what is known as the Katyn Forest Massacre.
I'm not sure the facts come through clearly in this short exchange, but the basic outline of events is as follows. The Germans uncovered mass graves containing thousands of Polish officers in Katyn Forest near Smolensk in April 1943. The Soviets blamed the Germans for the massacre. The Germans blamed the Soviets. The Soviets -- our bosom allies led by "Uncle Joe" Stalin and appeased at all costs by FDR and Churchill -- were, in fact, guilty. The US and British governments under FDR and Churchill not only accepted this Soviet Lie, they amplified, supported and perpetuated it, and for most of the next decade -- even in the face of overwhleming evidence to the contrary. I discuss this notorious cover-up and its deep implications at length in American Betrayal,...
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By Diana West on
Sunday, December 29, 2013 4:58 AM

Sgt. 1st Class Frank Limtiaco, left, exults as 1st Battalion, 294th Infantry Regiment, Guam Army National Guard leaves Afghanistan on December 28. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Eddie Siguenza/Released)
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The latest National Intelligence Estimate, the Washington Post reports, conveys the glaringly, painfully, tediously obvious: That "gains" in Afghanistan, repetitiously labeled "fragile and reversible" by the vaunted, disgraced, then vaunted again David Petraeus for years, "are likely to have been significantly eroded by 2017, even if Washington leaves behind a few thousand troops and continues bankrolling the impoverished nation, according to officials familiar with the report." (Emphasis added.)
Bring them all home, yesterday. The sooner this...
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By Diana West on
Thursday, December 26, 2013 7:14 PM

In the interest of tying up some loose ends, here are a few updates before the new year.
Principle, what principle?
Remember how 2013 began with much ado over Al Gore’s unseemly $500 million sale of Current TV network to Al Jazeera, aka “the Muslim Brotherhood channel”? Even anything-for-a-buck Time Warner Cable saw fit to drop the Qatar-owned “news” organization from its package. Well, TWC this month announced that, yes, it will be bringing Al Jazeera America into 55 million American homes after all. “Financial terms weren’t disclosed,” USA Today reported.
The Few. The Proud. The Gender-Normed.
Remember how, with a stroke of their pens, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin E. Dempsey decreed that no battlefield mission or military role would be off-limits to women? Call it the Equal Rights Amendment by executive fiat. But hold on about “equal.” As Elaine Donnelly’s Center for Military Readiness has reported, “gender-norming” is the Pentagon’s idea of “equal.”
...
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By Diana West on
Tuesday, December 24, 2013 7:08 AM

My syndicated column:
It’s been weeks now, more than a month in some places, but it is all about to come to an end.
“It” is the soundtrack of the season – Christmas carols. From mall to shining mall, these carols sync American life in a rare shared cultural experience that lasts exactly as long as the holiday shopping season itself. Most of the widely – OK, incessantly – played songs are secular in content: “White Christmas,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and more. But their glory days run according to the holiday calendar. They vanish from audio range as soon as Christmas Day is over and the sales begin.
Many will say good riddance, having been Frostied, Rudolphed and Silver-Belled to a tinseled pulp by year’s end. But I will confess to regret on seeing many of the great voices of American popular song once again retired to seasonal oblivion. I refer...
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By Diana West on
Friday, December 20, 2013 5:17 AM
This week's syndicated column
Feeling soaked after the gushers of drenching hagiography that crashed over the world on the death of the Nelson Mandela, I have been trying to reconcile what I know with what we are supposed to believe.
For example, I know Mandela was a founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the combat wing of the African National Congress, which was closely allied with the South African Communist Party. Starting in 1961, MK carried out hundreds of bombings, including of civilian targets. When Mandela was sentenced to life in prison in 1964, I know his crime was sabotage and related charges – not political opposition to apartheid, as we are supposed to believe, at least if those comparisons to symbols of non-violence, from Martin Luther King to, yes, Jesus Christ, are to stick.
Another founder of MK was Ronnie Kasrils, a Soviet-trained, South African Communist agent and militant, who, decades later, would serve President Mandela and then President Thabo Mbeki (also...
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