This week's syndicated column

About those 300 U.S. military advisers that the Obama administration has ordered to Iraq.

They belong on the United States border with Mexico. They are urgently needed to assess what U.S. military force should be deployed immediately to secure our own border, not Iraq's border, from what is surely the most unconventional and, I believe, the most dangerous war in our history. As tens of thousands of so-called unaccompanied alien children (UAC) crash our southern border, we are undergoing a war against the existence, the concept of the USA as a nation-state.

After all, a nation-state doesn't exist unless it controls its borders and protects its citizens. We, the People, do neither. But the existential danger here comes not from the assault itself. Nightmarishly, it comes from the Obama administration, which, in its greatest betrayal, is leading, or at least supporting,...

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The Obama administration is actively encouraging the unending flow of young aliens on an HHS website.

From the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR): website:

In order to help UAC [Unaccompanied Minors] access legal representation to the greatest extent possible and practicable, ORR coordinates a legal access project. The legal access project provides UAC with presentations on their rights, conducts individualized legal screenings, and builds pro bono legal representation capacity. Many UAC meet conditions that make them eligible for legal relief to remain in the United States including asylum; special visas for children who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned by the parents or guardian; special visas for victims of severe forms of trafficking and other types of criminal violence; or adjustment of status for those who have a legal resident or citizen family member.

...

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The local news from around the USA  tells us that the US federal government is not only enabling the mass invasion at our own border, it is doing nothing to repel it. It is, in fact, doing everything it can to make it permanent.

I include a random news round-up below, but first, behold the "holiday card" above. I found it on the homepage of the Administration of Children & Families.This is a division of the Department of HHS, which is a department of the United States Government, which, last time I looked, was supposed to have something to do with of the people, by the people, and for the people -- " the people" being the American people. The people who run these bureacracies, however, have completely different other ideas, as the picture worth a thousand words reveals.

The caption beneath this illustration says:

By law, it’s ORR's responsibility to temporarily take care of unaccompanied...

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Photo: Maj. Jim Gant, proponent of "going native," with the Pashtun tribal chief he dubbed "Sitting Bull." Later, "Sitting Bull" would adopt Gant, which presupposes Gant converted to Islam.. 

With the appearance of a new book, the abrupt fall from Army grace of SF Maj. James Gant has been in the news. What is worth noting is that he was relieved from his command not for his particularly unhinged version of COIN (described below) but mainly for moral and behavioral infractions of military code. The COIN, presumably, was commendable.

Really?

My syndicated column of April 9, 2010:

A reader e-mailed me to comment on a column by David Ignatius, who recently accompanied the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, to a shura, or local council meeting, in Marja, Afghanistan.

Ignatius wrote: "Given the weakness...

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From July 18, 2005, still tragically topical:

Only one faith on Earth may be more messianic than Islam: multiculturalism.

Without it -- without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same -- the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It's as simple as that. To live among the believers -- the multiculturalists -- is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place un-repulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal.

I'm not talking about our soldiers, policemen, rescue workers and, now, even train conductors, who bravely and steadfastly risk their lives for civilization abroad and at home. Instead, I'm thinking about who we are as a society at this...

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From the Daily Beast:

On Wednesday, Brett McGurk, the senior State Department official responsible for policy on Iraq, met in Baghdad at the home of Ahmed Chalabi, the former exile leader who was supported by neoconservatives inside the Bush administration before the Iraq war.

I repeat: Ahmed Chalabi? Chalabi is by most accounts an agent of Iranian influence. He is a conman for sure, and in more ways than one. He conned 'cons (neocons) into thinking the shadowy ex-pat would return to Iraq as "our man in Baghdad" by popular demand. Evidence indicates he was really Iran's man in Baghdad, or, rather, one of them.

To reacquaint ourselves with Chalabi, here's a 2007 description of him from Mugged by Reality...

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Hillary: Neocon vessel of interventionism?

This week's syndicated column

Are the neocons going home?

By "neocons," I refer to followers of the hawkish foreign policy school that began to coalesce in the 1970s around New York writers and academics who had rejected their Communist or Socialist lodestar to become vocal anti-Communists. A generation or so later, from Kosovo to Georgia, from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Libya to Syria, from Ukraine and now back to Iraq, they consistently advocate the use of American power, often American troops, to establish and enforce a "liberal world order."

By "going home," I mean returning to the Democratic Party.

The question took shape while I was reading a profile in The New York Times about neocon light Robert Kagan -- brother of Iraq "surge" architect Frederick Kagan, son of Yale professor Donald Kagan, and husband of State Department...

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Blogger and author John L. Work wins the kewpie doll for Iraq analysis today. He writes:

So, lemme see if I have this straight. Al Qaida, (Sunnis), are overthrowing Maliki's Shi'ite regime. The Saudis (Sunnis and BHO's pals) are funding Al Qaida. Iran (Shi'ite state) now reportedly has a green light from BHO to send troops into Iraq and fight against Al Qaida. All the Repubs are shouting, jumping up and down and waving their arms because it's all falling apart and, sooner or later, Bush's folly will become apparent. Or will it? The Repubs, Mark Levin and Joe Farah at WND want some by God military action, stone age bombing, to prop up Maliki. All the Dems are saying, no help for Iraq - except.......BHO sends an aircraft carrier with man o' war escorts into the Persian Gulf. Wait a minute!  Whose side is BHO on - Sunnis or Shi'ites?  What's he doing now with this Iran junta tap dance?  What's...

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From the AP (multiple hat tips to Andrew Bostom):

...While ISIL fighters gained the most attention in this week's swift advances, it was increasingly clear that other Sunnis were joining the uprising.

Not ... the "Sunni Awakening" Sunnis ... the same Sunnis of Anbar who, once upon a "surge," "rejected Al Qaeda"?

Several militant groups posted photos on social media purporting to show Iraqi military hardware captured by their own fighters, suggesting a broader-based rebellion like that in neighboring Syria.

In Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, overrun by militants Wednesday, witnesses said fighters raised posters of the...

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This week's syndicated column

It isn’t that the barbarians are at the gate. The barbarians control the gate. I don’t know what else to call a president and attorney general who have opened the U.S. border to literally tens of thousands of “children” – some described as “sexually active” teens, some even suspected of ties to gangs. This not only breaks laws, it breaks trust. Opening the border this way also opens the most outrageous front to date in what increasingly looks like a kind of war aimed at “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” And the people’s elected representatives do nothing.

Children are usually just children, but when 130,000 of them are expected to storm the border in the coming year, they more closely resemble an advancing column, a kind of foreign legion of child-mercenaries raised abroad with cynical promises of booty in the form of cradle-to-grave...

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Marcia at the website What Would the Founders Think kindly invited me to participate in a Q&A following positive reviews she wrote of American Betrayal and then The Rebuttal (here and here).

I enjoyed our conversation, which covers much ground.

Here is an excerpt.

...

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Fox News' Megyn Kelly recently interviewed six members of Bowe Bergdahl's platoon. In the first segment, there is a fascinating exchange (hat tip MJG) that shows an unexpected side to Bowe Bergdahl as his platoon-mates knew him. To them, the 23-year private not only expressed no criticism of America or the army in 2009. Instead, he was "frustrated" by the counterinsurgency strategy of winning hearts and minds.

From the first segment, starting around seven and half minutes in:

MK: Did he say anything to any of you guys, though, about 'I'm disiullusioned with the war effort,' `I hate the army'?

Evan Buetow, Bergdahl's former team leader: He never said to me that he hated the army. He came to me at one point and said that he was concerned and frustrated with America's, the army's, our approach to the war and what we were doing. He said he was frustrated with...

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The AP today reports that Rolls Royce has opened a showroom in Cambodia, one of the world's poorest countries.



Cambodia's average per capita annual income is about $2,600, a bit less than 1 percent of the cost of the cheapest Rolls-Royce. However, a small but wealthy elite lives in the capital of the mostly rural nation.

This prompted Al Jazeera's Lisa Fletcher to tweet:



But think: The sticker price of a Rolls isn't too far from the price of one lousy speech by Hillary Clinton.

At least by century's end the guy would have a nice car.











...

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1933 article by Gareth Jones, the Ukraine Terror Famine truth-teller who was thrown down" not only by Walter Duranty but by a conspiracy of his journalist-peers.

--

PJ Media and The New Criterion recently teamed up to bestow the 2013 Walter Duranty Prize for mendacious journalism. Presenters once again included Roger Simon, Roger Kimball, Claudia Rosett ... and Ronald Radosh.

How could they? Seriously, the only word for this is cruel. How could SImon and KImball and Rosett not have been the least bit aware of the ordeal they were undoubtedly subjecting Radosh to? Have they no feelngs? You've heard the old adage, Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. That's nothing. How about Always a presenter, and never a recipient? In short, this Duranty Prize dinner, soigne, chi-chi, and officiated over by the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto, was nothing less than a crime. Radosh, as so many readers...

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American Betrayal came out on May 28 one year ago, but, happily, people continue to read and write about it. At Family Security Matters, Lawrence Sellin reflects on the energence of the Big Lie in public life, as discussed in American Betrayal, and in today's Winona (MN) Daily News, columnist Stan Gudmundson grapples with some of the questions the book raises.

Sellin's piece is here; and Gudmundson's column is below.

"Communists held undue influence"

by Stan Gudmundson





I have a question whose answer runs against the grain a little. It is prompted by a very interesting book written by Diana West. Titled “American Betrayal,” it turns, to some extent, the conventional view of World War II on its head.

The question is, who won that war? Maybe the question really should be, who lost?

Certainly Germany and the Axis lost. But that is not all. Poland lost. So did the people of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, China, North Korea, Yugoslavia, Albania, and parts of the Far East such as the Kurile Islands, Manchuria, and Mongolia. They were all swallowed up by brutal communist regimes. They all lost, too. Big time.

...

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This week's syndicated column

One day, I predict, the fate of Bowe Bergdahl will prove to be the least important aspect of the Bowe Bergdahl story. For now, though, even more than President Obama, Bergdahl is the locus of rage as Americans erupt in pent-up frustration over the disaster that is Afghanistan.

It is probably the poisonous reek of government lies breaking open that has ignited this passion -- so many lies and so much subterfuge that a clear story has yet to take shape. But this collective outrage over Afghanistan -- a first in the history of our long war there -- shouldn't all be spent on Bergdahl, or even on Obama. But I will save that story for another day.

In the meantime, it's worth noting that the nation's wrath is as understandable as it is real. Bergdahl wasn't captured as the government vaguely led us to believe, even going so far as to prevent some of Bergdahl's...

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I am greatly honored and most delighted to announce that the American Freedom Alliance will be recognizing two people tonight at their eighth annual Heroes of Conscience Dinner in West Los Angeles --  the Rev, Jesse Lee Petersen and me. AFA will also be paying tribute to The Clarion Project this evening. Details here.

Led by Avi Davis, AFA has been warmly supportive of my work since The Death of the Grown-Up came out in 2007. A few years ago, Avi offered me the privilege of introducing Geert Wilders, a true hero of conscience, when he received this award in 2009. When the attacks on American Betrayal began last summer, Avi's robust and principled response was to offer me several platforms in Los Angeles from which to speak and discuss the issues, In this AFA event in December 2013, I was ably assisted on a panel that included M. Stanton Evans and Sebastian Gorka.

In...

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It's complicated, yes, but the battle groups forming are not exactly your father's Cold War. ...

Below is an excerpt from American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character tragically, shockingly, angeringly appropriate for Memorial Day. One day, I hope, the sacrifice of these lost American men, too, will be recognized by the nation -- and those responsible for their sacrifice condemned by history.

Note: Cited below is Joseph D. Douglass, Jr., author of Betrayed and Red Cocaine and a kind mentor to me. Sadly, this great patriot passed away at 5pm on May 23, 2014. 

From American Betrayal, Chapter 11:

On May 12, 1945, five days after V-E Day, the AP filed a startling news report from Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF):...

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Imagine a curious soul or two in the not-too-distant future furtively peeling back the layers and learning the cruel truth: that their forbears willingly exchanged all of their precious liberties for tyranny rather than assess and educate and protect themselves against Islamic conquest -- violent, pre-violent, smooth, explosive, financial, political, kafiyya-wrapped or Armani-suited. I think they will marvel because, as they will so very tragically know first-hand, Islam is so simple: its culture of death, its oppression of women and non-Muslims, its defilement of children, its suppression of conscience, religion and speech. They will be astonished, also very angry, over the way free men and women in 20th-21st centuries saw fit, not to embark on emergency measures to ensure energy independence from Islamic oil, block Islamic immigration, and shield financial markets and academia from sharia-compliance,...

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This week's syndicated column:

The National Catholic Register broke the most shocking cultural news of the week:

“A group of students at the University of Notre Dame has generated a campus-wide controversy by advocating that marriage between one woman and one man is better suited for children than same-sex ‘marriage.’”

Welcome to campus controversy 2014, where the subversives are traditionalists and, as we will see, the subversives control the establishment.

The Register continued:

“The group – known as Students for Child Oriented Policy (SCOP) – elicited negative letters to the campus newspaper and prompted hundreds of students to sign a petition calling upon the university not to recognize it as an official campus club.”

What comes next may not be surprising, but it remains gasp-worthy: Notre Dame refused to recognize the group favoring what we now know as “traditional...

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Photo by Paul Avallone

Former Green Beret (including the Afghan War) and photojournalist Paul Avallone just sent me two of his photos emblazoned with a cut from a recent post of mine. My idea of a perfect collaborative effort -- thanks, Paul.

Here's the first:

What Would The Founders Think just published a positive review of American Betrayal by Marcia here. Marcia has now added a "postscript" about The Rebuttal. Aside from the 25 reviews on The Rebuttal's Amazon page (4.6 star rating), this amounts to the first stand-alone review of American Betrayal's unanticipated companion volume.

Martin recently informed this reviewer that Diana West has written a book-length Rebuttal to negative reviews of American Betrayal. That being unusual, it was necessary to read the reviews to discover...

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Your tax dollars at work: Local Afghans watch as Marines with Engineer Platoon, Battalion Landing Team 3/8, Regimental Combat Team 8, remove a bridge and culvert at Kakar village, Helmand province, Afghanistan, March 28, 2011. Residents asked the Marines to build the bridge then asked them to removed it a few days later in the erroneous belief it hindered water flow to their poppy fields. Despite assurances from the engineers that the water was unrestricted, the Marines removed the bridge at local Afghans' insistence in order to maintain the goodwill, trust and confidence the Marines have earned since their arrival. (Photo by Gunnery Sgt. Bryce Piper)

This week's syndicated column

John F. Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan...

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America has a new and, thankfully, living Medal of Honor winner -- Kyle White -- whose bravery is now part of the annals of military history. The battle for which White has been honored was "a textbook ambush," according to the USA Today account, "by an enemy that vastly outnumbered the Americans and their Afghan comrades." Six Americans were killed that day in 2007. The other eight were wounded.

USA Today recounts the incident:  

Fourteen Americans and a squad of Afghan National Army soldiers were attacked while strung out single file along a narrow trail devoid of cover. Scores of Taliban fighters crouched on the opposite side of the valley or were concealed ahead down the trail or on the ridge above. They opened fire at 3:30 p.m. as the setting sun was in the soldiers' eyes. Many of the attackers were in shadows, all but invisible to the Americans.

...

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This review of Ken Burns' 19-part "Jazz" documentary first appeared in The Weekly Standard:

All That Jazz Ken Burns in Black and White Diana West January 15, 2001, Vol. 6, No. 17

Louis Armstrong was a great trumpet player, a major jazz innovator, and a widely beloved entertainer. But was he the Second Coming? This is the hardly exaggerated implication of Ken Burns's Jazz documentary, and it's one well worth pondering -- not for what it says about the great Satchmo, but for what it says about a tightly blinkered view of history and race that has come to dominate the presentation of music in America.

Burns -- who first came to fame with his PBS documentary on the Civil War -- is an admitted musical neophyte. But he found as mentors...

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Rep. Martin Dies, Texas Democrat and founding chairman on the House Committee on Un-American Activities

---

In the following two quotations, we see encapsulated the Influence vs. Spying divide, the main topic under consideration in "Influence and the Experts, Part 1" here.

The power to influence policy has always been the ultimate purpose of the Communist Party's infiltration. It was much more dangerous, and, as events have proved, much more difficult to detect, than espionage, which beside it is trivial, though the two go hand in hand.

--Whittaker Chambers

In our more than twenty years of archivally based research on Soviet espionage in America, we have uncovered ample documentation of Soviet intelligence obtaining...

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I did not have -- you know -- and isn't that a bummer?

---

This week's syndicated column

Remember that day in 1998 when Bill Clinton’s lewd Oval Office liaisons with an intern named Monica Lewinsky became public knowledge and Bill Clinton thought he was a cooked goose?

He sure looked that way in those early pictures, and he acted that way, too, enlarging the conspiracies he’d already orchestrated to try to obstruct justice in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. Before the whole grimy era was technically over, culminating in historic impeachment proceedings, Bill Clinton would engage in suborning perjury, witness tampering and the like – even gulling his own Cabinet members to lie publicly on his behalf – all to save his political hide, which the American people had no intention of tanning.

Sure, he would be found in contempt for intentionally...

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In 2012, the AP apologized for firing war correspondent Edward Kennedy for reporting the end of WWII on May 7, 1945  in defiance of military censors accommodating Stalin's wishes to announce the German surrender on May 8.

---

Notice the media huzzas for the 69th anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe? Too bad the date is wrong. We celebrate V-E Day on May 8 due strictly to Stalin's wishes and Truman and Churchill's fear of "offending the Russians" -- the frequent driver, sometimes fueled by bona fide agents of Stalin's influence, of much US and British policy and strategy.

The war in Europe ended on May 7, 1945.

The story, from Chapter 12 of American Betrayal:

...

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Harry Dexter White: senior Treasury official, Soviet agent and agent of influence

---

One question I continue to be asked is what motive could possibly have driven the tiny band of anti-American-Betrayal extremists in their "disinformation campaign" -- Jed Babbin's phrase -- against the book (debunked here) and their "mugging"  -- M. Stanton Evans' term -- of me (recently re-imagined by J.R. Nyquist as "a bungled mugging in which the mugger was seriously injured by blows from the victim’s purse").

Having received input from Old Leftists, psychologists, intelligence professionals and others on what still remains a subject of wide and intense consideration, I can say the various theories are fascinating but, naturally, inconclusive.

I would like to address a different vector of criticism that I have to date left mainly unanswered, except for a tangential...

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Selections from a lively mailbag on my most recent syndicated column: "Execrable Harry Reid Is No Joe McCarthy" indicate that outside the punditry and political class at least there are Americans who are familiar with the facts the about Sen. McCarthy.

Go get Em, Ms. West. I have been truly amazed by how many patriotic Americans have swallowed the lies about McCarthy. I am always glad to read one of your articles warning us of the depth and width of infiltration occurring throughout our Federal government. Perhaps Mr. Hanson and others will dig deeper to find the truth, thanks to your persistence. Sincerely,

XXXX

Thank you for standing for truth in answering Victor Davis Hanson's column comparing Harry Reid to Joseph McCarthy. I am old enough...

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James Hodge writes in:

For some reason I cannot trace, I was recently reminded of Byron's poem and this parallel glimmered, so I tried to put it together. ... 

BYRON REDUX The Front Page came down like Montag on a book, And its minority cohorts knew just what it took-- Regardless of whether they had read it or no-- To defame BETRAYAL as the words of a foe. Like the leaves of a cactus or the wings of a pig, The critics were sparse, but tried to seem big. Like the first hasty weeds when the winter has passed, Their magnificent assumption was not fated to last. Like the flight through the air of Odin’s dread spear, The Truth breathed their cowardly hearts full of fear. Their outrage swelled up and then spasmed away, When they saw they could not keep derision at bay. There lay the pretenders, their mouths...

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This week's syndicated column

Dear Victor Davis Hanson,

You suggest in your syndicated column, “Harry Reid: A McCarthy for Our Time,” that we “ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the same question once posed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy by U.S. Army head-counsel Robert [sic] N. Welch: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?’”

First of all -- that would be Joseph N. Welch, not Robert. Robert W. Welch was someone rather different -- a founder of the John Birch Society. Second, I would like to ask you a question: Are you aware of the context of Joseph N. Welch’s showboating remarks?

M. Stanton Evans did the spadework in Blacklisted by History,...

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Remember how Obama chest-thumped his way through the 2012 campaign as Vanquisher of "al Qaeda"?

Setting aside the absurd and distracting act of branding this entire age of expansionist Islam and jihad as "al Qaeda," the 2014 terrorism report from the State Department confirms what we already read in headlines, from Benghazi to Syria. Obama, having proclaimed from the hustings that Osama bin Laden's killing was, effectively, a jihad-ender, completely demagoged the danger with a line that is now laid bare as phony.

From the executive summary:

Al-Qa’ida (AQ) and its affiliates and adherents worldwide [ie., Islamic jihad] continue to present a serious threat to the United States, our allies, and our interests. While the international community has severely degraded AQ’s core leadership, the terrorist threat has evolved. Leadership losses in Pakistan, coupled...

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Don't miss Sun TV's Michael Coren's interview with Liberty GB candidate Paul Weston (click "Read More"), who was arrested in Britain this week for a speech quoting from the following passage by Winston Churchill from 1899 edition of The River Wars (excised from contemporary abridged editions):

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

...

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J.R. Nyquist, whose strategic analysis first caught my eye in the mind-expanding book, And Reality Be Damned...., has weighed in on the "war" against American Betrayal with an essay.

"In Defense of Diana West."

by JR Nyquist

There is great confusion in our political discourse today. “Former” Communists in Russia are sounding more and more like conservatives. The same might be said of “former” Communists in the United States. Everyone talks...

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On February 5, 2013, a bullet almost ended the life of Lars Hedegaard, one of the leading champions of free speech in the world, and a dear friend. Danish police have now made an arrest in the case -- in Istanbul.

From Dispatch International:



Would-be assassin of Lars Hedegaard may have been holy warrior in Syria

 

A 26-year-old Lebanese man accused of an attempt on the life of Danish journalist and Dispatch International editor Lars Hedegaard in February 2013 was arrested in Turkey five days ago. According to press reports, he is connected with extremist Islamic circles in Denmark and Sweden and has probably taken part in the fighting in Syria.

 

...

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DVIDS/US Navy photo by Fireman Roderick Eubanks: Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry launches a Tomahawk missile in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn on March 19, 2011. This was one of approximately 110 cruise missiles fired from U.S. and British ships and submarines that targeted about 20 radar and anti-aircraft sites along Libya’s Mediterranean coast.

This week's syndicated column

More than Benghazi skeletons should haunt Hillary Clinton's expected 2016 presidential bid. It now seems that the entire war in Libya -- where thousands died in a civil war in which no U.S. interest was at stake -- might well have been averted on her watch and, of course, that of President Obama's. How? In March 2011, immediately after NATO's punishing bombing campaign began, Muammar Qaddafi was "ready to step aside," says retired Rear Admiral Charles R. Kubic, U.S. Navy. "He was willing to go...

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Browsing through the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings on "Subversive Involvement in Disruption of 1968 Democratic Party National Convention, Part 1," I came across fascinating Page 2260 (screenshot above). It is testimony from committee staffer James L. Gallagher, who was discussing some of the 82 Old Left to New Left groups and publications (some with ties to foreign Communists) the Committee had identified as fomenting mayhem and violence at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Ramparts was the ninth group on the short list. (Note: Both the convention "disruption" and this congressional hearing took place in 1968; David Horowitz was not yet editor of Ramparts. By his own account, Horowitz was not part of the Ramparts contingent that travelled to Chicago for the convention.) There are several points of historical interest in this testimony....

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On November 16, 1933, FDR “normalized” relations with the USSR in spite of overwhelming evidence that USSR was anything but  a “normal” state. On the contrary, it was a self-declared revolutionary entity openly (and covertly) dedicated to the subversion and overthrow of non-Communist nations. The US-USSR agreement included Soviet promises not to foment the overthrow of our Constitution, not to support agents attempting to overthrow our Constitution, and the like – all of which was already underway and, after the agreement, would only increase. Maintaining this diplomatic (later military) relationship, then, required looking the other way, the sustained denial of the facts, and even outright lies – a pattern of behavior, I argue in American Betrayal, that ultimately helped subvert our government, and even our nation’s character.

Without a serious re-examination and revision of these events,...

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This week's syndicated column

The important-sounding Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union has recently reiterated “its strong support for Ukraine’s unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.”

Poor, destabilized, post-putsch Ukraine is to be congratulated for receiving something none of the 28 countries that actually belongs to the EU ever does: support for its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. (“Unity” is a more complicated matter, given the EU’s reflexive pox on separatist movements that might prefigure the breakup of the EU itself.) As the world’s pre-eminent transnational entity since the breakup of the USSR, the EU is all about eradicating its members’ sovereignty, independence and borders.

This, of course, is not something most Americans are aware of. When we hear talk of “Europe” vs. Russia, or the importance of extending “European values,”...

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There is nothing theoretical about the European Union's plans to eradicate the nation-states of Europe as sovereign states. These plans are becoming "reality," as the London Telegraph story below explains, and despite all assurances provided by any so-called "opt-out" clause. Meanhile, the emerging shape of federal Europe also shows Western concerns over Russian violations of Ukrainian "sovereignty" to be camouflage for something else. The last thing the EU empire wants to do is safeguard any state's "sovereignty," thus preserving its independence of Brussels. This is not to put a gloss on Putin's opportunism, however, or to recast his motives. It should, on the other hand, bring Brussels' motives in Ukraine under more informed scrutiny.

...

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Not one but several of the lowpoints of what Vladimir Bukovsky & Pavel Stroilov have called a "Soviet-style propaganda campaign" against American Betrayal, what Jed Babbin tagged a "disinformation campaign," and what M. Stanton Evans has described as my "mugging" were logged by The American Thinker website edited by Thomas Lifson.

There was the (1) unsubstantiated parroting of the lies, distortions and fabrications (all debunked here) in an otherwise positive review (which, not incidentally, included the reviewer's declaration that he was now persuaded that Harry Hopkins was an agent of Soviet influence inside the Roosevelt White House); there was the (2) rapid enforcement action by Rado. publicly whacking the positive reviewer (and, of course, my book again in one of a blizzard of Rado-Horo attack pieces); there was (3,4) not one but two other attacks posted at American Thinker by writers who actually admitted in print not to have read my book at all; and 5) lowest of all, there was Thomas...

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This week's syndicated column

When Brandeis University withdrew an honorary degree for Ayaan Hirsi Ali after a student-professor firestorm branded her an “Islamophobe,” the campus in effect declared itself an outpost of Islamic law, American-style. Officially, Brandeis is now a place where critics of Islam – “blasphemers” and “apostates,” according to Islamic law – are scorned and rejected.

Not that Brandeis put it that way in its unsigned announcement about Hirsi Ali’s dis-invitation, which notes: “She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world. That said, we cannot overlook … her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.”

Translation: Hirsi Ali’s advocacy on behalf of brutalized women is Good, but Hirsi Ali’s “past statements”...

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This week's syndicated column

Whether the Cold War is back, it’s an apt moment to strike up a wider conversation about a couple of central questions from my book American Betrayal. Why did the West fail to claim an ideological or moral victory at the apparent end of the Cold War? Did the West really even win the Cold War?

If we go back in time and listen, we hear no consensus click over signs that an unalloyed U.S.-led triumph over communist ideology had taken place; nor do we find a sense of national thanksgiving for the forces of good – or, at least, for the forces of better – in their triumph over the forces of a non-abstract evil as manifested in Gulag or KGB or famine or purge history. “Mustn’t gloat”...

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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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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.

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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