Arthur Koestler (1905-1983)

The following excerpt from American Betrayal appears today in slightly edited form at Breitbart News:

In his contribution to the famous 1949 collection of essays by ex-Communists titled The God That Failed, Arthur Koestler carefully illustrates how set language binds thought to ideology at the expense of evidence. Koestler, author of the unparalleled novel of Stalin’s show trials, Darkness at Noon, describes a conversation he had early in his Communist career with “Edgar,” his Party contact, in which they discuss the front page of a Communist newspaper.

“But every word on the front page is contradicted by the facts,” I objected. Edgar gave me a tolerant smile. “You still have the mechanistic outlook, he said, and then proceeded...

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I couldn't have been more delighted to see that Newt Gingrich has cited American Betrayal in his latest column:

As Diana West writes in her remarkable book American Betrayal,...

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A sharia-dictator dies (Abdullah), a new sharia-dictator takes power (Salman, above), and the US doesn't just bow, it glorifies (Dempsey, above). 

I know this news is a couple of days old, but I just can't get over it. 

Here's the handout from the US Department of Defense: 

"Dempsey Sponsors Essay Competition to Honor Saudi King" WASHINGTON, Jan. 26, 2015 – The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has established a research and essay competition in honor of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz hosted by the National Defense University.

The king, who died Jan. 23 at age 90, oversaw the modernization of his country’s military during the time he spent as commander of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, a position he held from 1963 until he became king in 2005.

Army Gen. Martin...

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While recording the audiobook of American Betrayal, I am occasionally posting sections that challenge the creaky orthodoxy taught, written and perpetuated by "court historians" who continue to avoid incorporating the evidence of the deep and wide Soviet penetration of the US government and other institutions into our general history.    

Today's installment opens with the consensus-challenging work of prize-winning war correspondent and noted military analyst Hanson Baldwin. Indeed, Baldwin's 1949 book, Great Mistakes of the War, proved to be invaluable to the course of my research. In this book, Baldwin examines military mistakes of World War II (thanks to consensus-history betcha didn't...

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Long has the sun done set on the enterprise once known as Great Britain -- aka "England, Mother England," as in "Merrie Olde," "sceptered isle" and all that.

With the flag over Buckingham Palace at half staff in national mourning for sharia- dictator Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (a "reformer," a "real progressive," according to Fox News, practically a sufragette), the Telegraph reports that a senior BBC official has deemed that the men who stormed Charlie Hebdo's office and slayed the staff and others are not to be called "terrorists."

Tarik Kafala, the head of BBC Arabic, the largest of the BBC’s non-English...

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At Gates of Vienna, the Norwegian writer Fjordman reports on what he saw in Dresden at the January 15 PEGIDA rally against Islamization. He concludes with customary flashes of insight that illuminate the shared political turf from which multicultural (read: Marx-inspired) elites and forces of Islamization together stand against native populations.. 

I had an interesting discussion with some Scandinavian friends about why PEGIDA started in Dresden in the former East Germany. You can see more veiled Muslim women within five minutes in Berlin, or in a Western German city such as Hamburg or Cologne, than you will probably see during an entire day in Dresden. Dresden is still a European city. So why did protests against Islamization start there? Normal 0 false false false...

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As I record the audiobook of American Betrayal, I am rereading the book for the first time since I shipped the corrected manuscript back to the publisher in December 2012. It is also my first careful read since American Betrayal was smeared in an orchestrated attack led by a tiny band of septuagenarian ex-Communists starting several months after it came out in 2013. As I read, I confess to taking extra delight in certain sections that I can now imagine drove such people nuts.

I am thinking...

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I am currently recording American Betrayal for an audio book and just came across an unforgettable "lost" scene from our past: when Rep. Martin Dies, the founding chairman (1938) of the House Un-American Activities Committee, runs into Sen. Joseph McCarthy shortly before McCarthy began his investigations into rampant Communist subversion of the federal government in 1950. 

It comes from a section in Chapter 3 recounting the deep bitterness of the investigators, such as House Committe on Un-American Activities' Robert E. Stripling, and the witnesses, such as Whittaker Chambers, who labored to expose the secret, massive Moscow-directed intelligence army of traitors that, in effect, occupied the halls of power in Washington (London, Berlin,...

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After the curtain went up on the Leftist street theatre in Paris calling itself a "unity" march following the Charlie Hebdo-Jewish market massacre, there was a point at which the mask dropped.

While spectators might have been trying to figure out what, if anything, the march was showing "unity" for or against -- besides being against Marine Le Pen, who was not invited, and against Benjamin Netanyahu, who, we later discovered, was urged not to come -- marchers lifted their voices to accompany loudspeakers blasting "Imagine." The face of "unity" was visible for all to see.

I'm referring, of course, to John Lennon's "Imagine," that maudlin pop-anthem to global Marxian negationisn.

" ...Imagine there's no countries ... nothing to kill or die for ... no religion too ... no possessions ... no need for greed or hunger ... Imagine all the people/Sharing all the world..."

With this anthem, the symbolic message of the march becomes unmistakable. Accordingly, it made perfect sense for the...

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Jyllands Posten, September 30, 2005. This page demonstrated that Denmark was not under Islamic blasphemy law. The same cannot be said today.

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On December 30, 2010. I posted the below post as gleaned from WikiLeaks as netted by Norway's Aftenposten via Islam in Europe.

I am reposting it today as the essential backstory to why Jyllands Posten would today be "afraid" to post the latest Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoon.

I suggest reading it sitting down, and with bourbon (or poison of your choice) within reach. Let's just say our founders...

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Worst news of the ....

The Star Tribune reports Jyllands Posten, the paper that set out to prove that Denmark did not accept Islamic blasphemy law by running a page of a dozen cartoons of Mohammed in 2005, has not published the new Charlie Hebdo cover illustration of Mohammed.

Why?

“We aren’t republishing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons because we are afraid,” Flemming Rose, former cultural editor or the paper, said. “But I know well that if you give in to intimidation, it works.”

Afraid, and probably weary, too. It was a long and violent and costly siege that the Danes held without any other country's support -- including the First Amendament-waving USA.

But just imagine if the West, media, "world leaders," etc., had screwed up the barest modicum of courage to hold the coats of those brave Danish journalists who, alone, tried to hold back the battering ram of Islamic law in the West. 

...

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Naturally, as the last of the 3 million press run of Charlie Hebdo was snapped up, the magazines began to pop up on Ebay, as much media have noted, priced from $4.95 to hundreds of dollars apiece.

I find, however, that there is only one offering of the big daddy Motoon of them all -- a high-quality signed print of bomb-turban Mohammed by Kurt Westergaard, produced and originally sold by the International Free Press Society under Lars Hedegaard (yours truly presiding as vice president).The seller is thinking big: $40,000 to "buy it now."

What price free speech?

From the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR):

Today, SIGAR released an audit of U.S.-funded salary payments for the Afghan National Police (ANP), which total $1.3 billion. 

The audit found:

--The U.S. is spending over $300 million annually for ANP salaries with little assurance that these funds are going to active police personnel or that the amounts paid are correct.

--There are almost twice as many ANP identification cards in circulation as there are active police personnel.

--After 9 years of effort, an electronic human resources system has still not been successfully implemented.

--Reports have disclosed inflated police rosters, payments being made to more police personnel than are authorized in particular locations, and police personnel receiving inflated salaries.

...

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The Death of the Grown-Up came out in August 2007. I am not happy to report that nearly seven years later, the book retains a tragic topicality.

The book marries the decadent "arrested development" of American culture with the dynamics of dhmmitude, which in certain ways may be thought of as the forced "arrested development" of the non-Muslim, on pain of death, according to Islamic law.  

No dhimmi or person living in dhimmitude functions as a free citizen -- a fully developed adult human being. His speech is censored according to Islamic law; his beliefs, particularly critiques of Islam, must be kept to whispers or altogether private. As a non-Muslim (or female), he is treated unequally before the law. He pays the jizya -- Islamic protection money -- for continued sufferance. Always, he lives under threat of Islamic violence or attack,...

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Two years ago next month, the world renowned Danish free speech advocate, journalist and historian Lars Hedegaard was shot at point blank outside his apartment near Copenhagen by an Islamic assailant who would eventually be arrested as an ISIS footsoldier (and then later released to ISIS in a prisoner exchange by the Turkish government). Thankfully, Lars, a dear friend and colleague, was unhurt, and visited Washington shortly after this attempted assassination. 

While in town, Lars sat down with The Daily Caller's Ginni Thomas for an interview, posted here,

I mention this particular interview because Ginni's first question in March 2013 is the same question people are now asking today in the aftermath of the Islamic jihad massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in Paris.

Why, Ginni Thomas asked Lars Hedegaard,...

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The Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, France is a milestone in the progress of Islamic blasphemy law in the Western world.

Magazine editor Stephane "Charb" Charbonnier was among the twelve innocents, ten journalists and two policemen, murdered today in the magazine offices by an Islamic military-style assault team. The assassins were enforcing Islamic blasphemy law, the barbarous essence of mainstream, authoritative Islam. Such law is embraced by Muslims around the world, and that includes in the United States. In a 2012 election poll of American Muslims by Wenzel Strategies, nearly 60 percent American Muslims said that criticism of Islam should not be permitted under the US Constitution's First...

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John Boehner, President Obama's leader in the US House of Representatives, was re-elected today with 216 votes out of 408 cast.

Twenty-five, count 'em & bless 'em, Republicans voted for someone else or present.

That's it.

That means that's also it for conservative representation in the House.

Out of 435 members, just 25 went to Washington to try to turn the 2014 Stop-Obama electoral wave, brought to you by We, the American people, into legitimate political power. The rest -- the dwindling Democrat minority and that largest Republican majority since the 1920s -- went to Washington to grease the skids of business as usual. Ergo, Boehner as usual.

Last week, I was just guessing when I imagined that Sweden was more fortunate than America in having 13 percent...

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“Identity Fraud and the Mickey Mouse Media”

From the "A" section of the New York Times, p. 15, in less than 100 words, the psychosis of denial as it is hard-wired into American journalism:

Six years into his presidency, there seems to be almost nothing the nation does not know about Mr. Obama, ranging from his views on the use of drones to target terrorists to how his daughters have less interest in hanging out with him as they become teenagers.

But little is known about the state of his game and what he is like on the golf course,where he has spent roughly 1,000 hours playing 214 rounds since he was elected in 2008, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS correspondent who has kept track of the president’s schedule.

With this, the "paper of record" proceeds to "inform" readers about the never-before-revealed details of Barack Hussein Obama's golf game.

Now we know everything?

Fat chance....

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Victims of jihad in Australia a century apart: Alma Cowie, aged 17, and Katrina Dawson, aged 38

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In the spirit of sermons and soda water, Mark Durie provides a clarifying essay that opens the historical horizons on last month's deadly Martin Place jihad siege in Australia by comparing it to a strikingly similar jihad attack against picnickers in Australia on New Year's Day, 1915 (via Ruthfully). In discussing these and other cases of "individual jihad" (including reference to the Dutch colonial experience in Aceh) where Muslim killers answer the Islamic call to jihad, Durie demonstrates that the go-to, feel-good explanations about "lone wolves" and "crazies"...

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Meet the Mousavis, leaders of the Iranian "opposition" 

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Michael Ledeen ends another year touting the allegedly Good "opposition" movement of former Iranian prime minister Mousavi, the "Green Revolution" leader under house arrest since 2009.

Ledeen concludes:

If we had a foreign policy team worthy of us, we’d be supporting the Iranian opposition, but Obama has proven that he prefers Khamenei to Mousavi.

I was baffled by this same sentiment back in 2009, and remain so today.

How might it be "worthy" of the United States to back a man who wants to turn Iran, as Mousavi declared in...

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Back in June 2009, I wrote a column examining the Green Pundit Rush to Judgment that told us "the Persian street" was filled with Our Kind of People: anti-Khomeini, anti-sharia, anti-Islamic Revolution, anti-regime, anti-nuke, pro-West, pro-Israel, pro-secular masses, all yearning to "free" in the Western sense, which emphasizes the rights and will of the individual. Such a concept of freedom has nothing to do with the Islamic sense of freedom ("hurriya"), which speaks to a "perfect enslavement" to Allah. 

I am reposting that column below, having just commented on Michael Ledeen's PJ Media latest essay in which he calls for...

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In a post titled "The Christmas Junta,' Gates of Vienna reports on appalling developments in Sweden, where the political establishment's policy of population replacement via mass Third World immigration is being challenged in parliament by the lone opposition party, Sweden Democrats. Rather than play by democracy's rules, the Establishment is going junta.

This is a very important piece with direct relevance to our condition here. Why?

The American people are undergoing an identical "junta"-like suppression here, particularly if we allow for the differences between the US and Swedish governing systems. We have the same Democrat/GOP Establishment flouting the wishes (votes) of Americans, ramming through, with shameful ease,...

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Having continually offered reports including eyewitness dispatches about the ever-receding tide of Western civilization, I think I probably owe a little escape — or, better, escapism — to readers, some respite from reality. At least until the end of the holidays.

After sorting through the vaults for some diverting holiday fare, here is a festival's worth of A-list movies set in some of the great cities of the world — those same places that often serve as a backdrop to the ongoing multi-pronged war on the West that, alas, characterizes our era. But enough of that for now.

Given the gloom, some parameters. First, freshness. While these movies are what you could certainly call Cinema Antique, some of them may well prove to be new discoveries. In other words, no "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Casablanca" here — although "Casablanca" wouldn't make this particular cut because of my second criterion: total uplift....

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When will "the authorities" take into consideration this snap of Koran 8:60 that, as Charles C. Johnson reported at gotnews.com, police-murderer Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley posted at his now-discontinued Facebook page?  

So far, no MSM, no police or political officials have even admitted its existence.

Instead, as the Washington Post reports:

Bratton said investigators were looking into all of Brinsley’s ­social-media accounts in...

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Speaking of normalizing relations with Communist dictatorships vs. fighting for liberation ....

Have you ever wondered why Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" has historically caused more outrage in the West than the evil of the Soviet empire itself? Today, Geert Wilders faces even more opprobrium for honest political discourse about another collectivist, totalitarian system that threatens Western liberty -- Islam.

I believe the reason for this lies in is the mainly unknown, still hidden assault on our nation's character as chronicled in American Betrayal. Something...

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The Dutch public prosecutor announced today that legal proceedings will begin against Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders "on charges of insulting a group of people based on race and incitement to discrimination and hatred."   

"The decision to prosecute me is incomprehensible," Wilders has said in a statement.

Yes it is; but only in a moral, rational Judeo-Christian -- i.e., Western -- world.

In our world, circa 2014, the decision is perfectly comprehensible. In our world, powerful global elites seek to destroy the indigenous cultures of Europe (and their descendants here) through "multicultural" -- read: Marxist and anti-nationhood -- policies that ride the pressure plates of expansionist Islam and, additionally in our hemisphere, Hispanic south and central America and beyond.        

In a statement released by PVV, Wilders said, “I have said what millions of people think .... For the second time, [the state] apparently wants to deal with someone who speaks the truth. It...

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Way back in the summer of 2006, I was guest-blogging at Michelle Malkin's website and wrote a post called "Jihad and Dhimmitude: A Real-Life Test Case."

I am re-posting excerpts below as the world once again reels and deals quite badly inside the vortex of another jihad-dhimmitude cycle, this time triggered by the Sydney jihad hostage siege. As is always the case, the threat from murdering Muslims -- more jihad -- is exponentially compounded by what follows -- deeper dhimmitude.

Here is the pattern as observed in 2006:

... Above all else, understanding jihad and dhimmitude is crucial to understanding what we call the war on terror.

Jihad, of course, means “holy...

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Mayor Bill de Blasio at the dedication of NYPD memorial, Oct. 10, 2014 (Mayor's office photo)

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An update on what NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is lauding as "an example to the world on how to protest" from the New York Times: 

At least five officers have been assaulted by protesters — including two lieutenants on Saturday during a nighttime melee on the Brooklyn Bridge. Earlier on Saturday, at Madison Avenue and 28th Street, a group of protesters surrounded a pair of traffic agents in a marked police car and smashed the rear window with a trash bin and a side window with a metal pole.

The New York Post reports on...

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In a post called CIA Torture: An Insider's View,The XX Committee blog recounts:

For much of the IC [Intelligence Community], the months after 9/11 were a blur. I spent more time at the office, or on the road, than at home; my recollections of that era — easily the most exciting time of my life, when all of Uncle Sam’s spooks thought our personal contributions, each day, might make the difference between a “nuclear 9/11″ happening or not — are therefore impressionistic, with occasional vivid recall of specific operations. I never had Dick Cheney call me, or anyone close to me, screaming into the phone to “get tough.” This was unnecessary: we all knew what the stakes were.

I provided counsel to senior leadership at Guantanamo Bay, the dreaded GTMO, on how to deal with interrogations. From what I saw, their operation was a shitshow — a characterization top IC officials agreed with, off-record. They knew it was all going wrong, but they wanted to prevent terrorism. They listened to, and rejected, my counsel, which was to get serious and professionalize their approach, without delay. Specifically, they needed to adopt something like the Israeli model....

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Breaking: After more or less 15 years of continuous weekly newspaper syndication, I have just filed the final column in the string. 

Here it is:

Dear Readers,

This is a hard one to write. After more or less 15 years of continuous newspaper syndication, this column you are reading is the end of the line. I am not ceasing to write, of course. All of my content -- columns, essays, posts, and, of course, books -- will continue to appear at my website, www.dianawest.net, and elsewhere.

But my weekly conversation with readers in good old-fashioned newsprint stops at the bottom of the page. In some ways, that's too bad. For one thing, there is a kind of journalistic romance to appearing on the pages of a real paper that is still hurled at a front porch. Internet-generated...

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FLASH: Another attempt to shrink the broad canvas of American Betrayal into a micro-dot, this time by Haynes & Klehr -- sorry, Klehr & Haynes -- in an article about "19" published in a summer 2014 issue of the academic journal Intelligence and National Security. (And I thought this was all I had to deal with last summer.)

"19"  -- one paragraph in American Betrayal, but an unending (see perfume bottle) of the consensus historians. 

For anyone interested in delving into these weeds, the M. Stanton Evans-John Earl Haynes Memos(aka...

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As the news-sentient world knows, Rolling Stone "walked away" from its single-sourced, anonymous account of a torture session via gang rape by seven members of a University of Virginia fraternity. Managing editor Will Dana issued the retraction through a soft lens.

Dana's Note to Readers concludes:

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

"Jackie's account," in other words, fell apart. What...

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... this email below has made writing a column that is not just online, where niche-reading is the norm, but in local newspaper papers across the country, very gratifying as a writer.   

The email-writer, who is in law enforcement, tells me he was having service work done on a Ford cruiser in small-city USA when he came across my column in the local paper lying in the lounge.  

Hi Diana,

As a veteran police officer with 27 years of experience in the field, I just wanted to thank you for an article that speaks for the police and soldiers.  I could not believe I found an article that was actually based on facts and common sense rather than the typical knee-jerk reaction of the ill-informed.  It is always those with the loudest opinions who have never defended...

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Whizzed in and out of NYC yesterday.

Destination No. 1 (above) : Flat Iron Building, home of St Martin's Press, and office of executive editor Michael Flamini, my wonderful editor on The Death of the Grown-Up and American Betrayal both.

Destination No. 2 (below): The Union League Club Annual Holiday Book Fair, chock ablock with authors from Nelson Demille to Steve Forbes, signing books for charity Christmas shopping. I signed American Betrayals at a table with economist Milton Ezrati, author of 30 Tomorrows, across the room from Ann Coulter, semper fabulous, signing Never Trust a LIberal Over 3 -- Especially a Republican. 





...

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"Hands up, don't shoot." No doubt Stalin would approve. 

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When Fox News' Sean Hannity asked Thomas Sowell for his reaction to the mantra "Hands up, don't shoot" now being repeated from the protest theater of the streets to the floor of the US Congress by members of the Black Caucus in order to negate the evidence weighed and assessed by the Ferguson grand jury, Sowell replied: 

Oh, for political reasons. I thought of Joseph Goebbels' doctrine, people will believe any lie if it's repeated often enough and loud enough. 

This exactly describes the mechanism of The Big Lie. People speak of it variously as a tactic...

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Obama and Holder announce Holder's resignation as attorney general / White House photo 

This week's syndicated column

When St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch explained that some exonerating testimony in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, came from several African-American eyewitnesses who described Brown as having charged police Officer Darren Wilson before he fired the fatal shots, it was a powerful moment.

Such testimony was consistent with physical evidence establishing that Wilson had not fired at Brown’s back as repeatedly and poisonously alleged. Indeed, it would seem that the aggressor in this fatal encounter was not Wilson, but rather Brown. According to evidence the grand jury sifted and assessed, it seems that Wilson fired not in cold blood, as so often declared, but in self-defense.

It was this right to self-defense – “even” for a policeman – that the grand jury decision left sacrosanct when it determined there was simply not sufficient evidence to indict Wilson for any crime.

...

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This week's syndicated column

I am giving special thanks this year for the hard work of patriots who toil without recompense to expose the many vectors of Islamic subversion currently eroding the already hollowed-out institutions of Western society.

To this end, I will tell a story about a story. It concerns the first Muslim prayer service ever held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. As I wrote last week, this weirdly "invitation-only" service, which took place on Friday, Nov. 14, gathered representatives of Muslim groups with proven links to Hamas and to Hamas' parent group, the Muslim Brotherhood. This means that, however briefly, jihad-linked groups took over the National Cathedral, where presidents and other great Americans have lain in state. These terror links led some media to label the event overall a "Muslim Brotherhood event," or an "Islamist" or "extremist" event. As the...

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This week's syndicated column

There are several ways to see the National Cathedral's decision to host Islamic Friday prayers this week.

First, the facts. The service is the brainchild of the Rev. Canon Gina Campbell, the Episcopal cathedral's director of liturgy, and South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, a Muslim, who is delivering the sermon. Invitation-only guests include Masjid Muhammad of The Nation's Mosque, representatives of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

That's some roster if playing "Spot the Muslim Brotherhood Front" is a hobby. Clearly, it's not the professionals' pursuit. On being quizzed by the Daily Caller, for example, cathedral spokesman Craig Stapert had no idea that two of the invited groups were unindicted co-conspirators...

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John Molloy, chairman of the National Vietnam & Gulf War Veterans Coalition, and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Veterans Day 2014

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I had the exceedingly great privilege to spend Veterans Day with the patriots of the National Vietnam & Gulf War Veterans Coalition. Among attendees of the annual leadership luncheon blessed by the Rev. Alister Anderson, Col., USA (Ret.), were former POWs Red McDaniel, Mike Benge, and Lawrence J. Stark, Rolling Thunder founder Artie Muller, Gold Star mothers, and a contingent of veterans from the Army of South Vietnam. Special guest speakers included included Rep. Louie Gohmert (above) and Commander Kurt S. Lippold (USN Ret.). 

...

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The following excerpt is from a harrowing report at Fox.com about Christians and Yezidis who have fled for their lives to Kurdistan to escape the rampaging Islamic State in Iraq. 

It recounts the flight of Faten, a young Christian refugee who used to lived in Qaraqosh in northern Iraq

Then, just three months ago, the Islamic State – commonly called Daesh in Kurdistan – swept into Qaraqosh after decimating Mosul’s Christian community.



The invaders offered Qaraqosh’s Christians the usual three options: Convert, pay the jizya tax, or get out.

Otherwise, they would face the Islamist's sword.  

Come again? 

Convert, pay the jizya tax, or get out. Otherwise, they would face the Islamist's sword.  

...

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No better place to reflect: George Washington's study at Mount Vernon, less than 20 miles from the US Capitol



This week's syndicated column



Almost every anti-establishment firebrand is the same. Elected to break the chokehold that Beltway elites have on the republic, they come to Washington with their constituents' concerns foremost. They are eager to heave overboard the dead weight that sinks the balance of powers, and ready to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Then it happens. One taste of the waters of forgetfulness on Capitol Hill and suddenly their goal is something called "incumbency," and their allegiance is to the powers that be -- "the leadership." It hardly matters which party's.

After the earthquake election of 2014, in the wake of a historic mandate against the Obama agenda -- from "executive amnesty"...

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This poster hung in European Commission HQ until the Lithuanian ambassador complained about multiple hammer-and-sickles.

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In January 2010, the United Kingdom Independence Party's (UKIP) Gerard Batten called on his fellow members of European Parliament to reject the proposed European Commission, the top executives of the European Parliament, on the grounds that so many of them began their political careers in Communist parties or related entities. This included, as Batten wrote in 2010, "Commission President Barroso's Maoist past, Spanish commissioner Almunia's Marxist connections,...

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Theo van Gogh (1957-2004)

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The following is a speech Geert Wilders delivered in Copenhagen today, the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Theo van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam for criticizing Islam.

Dear friends,

I am happy to be in Copenhagen again.

It is always a pleasure to return to this wonderful city – the home of my good friend and fellow freedom fighter, the Danish hero Lars Hedegaard.

It is always a privilege to be in the capital of the brave Danish people.

And it is always an honor to be a guest of your great organization.

The Danish Free Press Society is a beacon of light. For Denmark, for Scandinavia, for the whole of Europe, and for the entire West. Your staunch defense of civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, serves as an inspiration for many, including myself and my party.

On a moment like this, when the free world is in mortal danger, an organization such as the Danish Free Press Society is needed more than ever.

...

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Beverly Perlson of Band of Mothers has sent the following letter to the Secretary of Defense about the horrendous miscarriage of justice that has imprisoned Sgt. Derrick Miller for "pre-meditated murder" for defending himself and his men in Afghanistan.

This is another shameful, shameful case where it becomes clear that the US government would have preferred mourning US casualties to supporting still-living troops who have survived the deadly pitfalls of COIN.   

October 31, 2014 

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel

1000 Defense Pentagon

Washington, DC   20301-1000

Dear Secretary Hagel:

Sgt. Derrick Miller is an American son currently serving a life sentence in Ft Leavenworth, convicted of premeditated...

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Retired Marine Gen. John R. Allen, Obama's new envoy to the "anti-ISIS coalition," was much in mind while I was writing this week's column even if he is not part of the column's short roll call for the pandering to Islam that is codifed in COIN.

Now Allen gets his own story (below). Note his anti-ISIS deputy: Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bret McGurk. McGurk withdrew his nomination to be ambassador to Iraq after a series of inappropriate emails to a woman not his wife (and WSJ reporter) were leaked to media. Allen withdrew his nomination to be supreme allied commander in Europe, after thousands of pages of emails to a woman not his wife were discovered in an FBI investigation.

... The thing is, this isn't a joke. Or, if it is, the laugh's definitely...

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This week's syndicated column

In the summer of 2009, U.S. Marines pushed into Afghanistan's Helmand province to begin the new offensive that President Obama had ordered based on the model of the President Bush's Iraq strategy of nation-building and counter-insurgency (COIN). This fall, a little over five years later, U.S. Marines turned over their last base in Helmand to Afghan forces and, except for a residual force, left the country.

And?

Maybe a crescendo in background noise, but not much else. Surely, after 13 years of war, it's not too soon for a public reckoning. Then again, maybe it's too late. Maybe Americans have forgotten the fiasco of vision, strategy and tactics that civilian and military leaders forced onto the backs of U.S. service members. If so, it's worth returning to those early days of this war's final phase.

It started with that childish, lethal idea -- COIN. The U.S.-led...

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John Clore, Duke and friends. Photo by Jennifer Kneuss

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While working on this week's forthcoming column, I came across the story below about Duke, the bomb-sniffing dog and companion of the late Lance Cpl. Peter Clore. I wrote about Lance Cpl. Clore, who was killed in action in May 2011, in this column. 

The Marines turned over their last base in Afghanistan earlier this week, but that doesn't mean the war ends, as this March 20, 2013 story by Jennifer Kneuss, tells us.

"Fallen Marine's Bomb-Sniffing Dog Comes Home to New Phila":

IDD Marine Corporal Duke is home, honorably discharged after a several years of brave and valiant service in the U.S....

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From the Facebook Page of David Rustebakke, a veterinarian in Clarkston, WA:

The present Ebola crisis in the world is frightening. I have submitted the following letter to the editor of the Lewiston Morning Tribune:

Editor, Lewiston Morning Tribune:

If I wish to import a horse into the United States from Liberia or any African country other than Morocco, the horse needs to undergo a 60 day quarantine period at a USDA approved quarantine facility prior to mingling with the general population of horses in this country. Africa has a disease called African Horse Sickness that does not exist in the US; this is the way we have kept it out of this country. African Horse Sickness does not cause disease in people, only horses; our government has determined that...

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EuroCanada graphic: "Screening of sickle cell disease in newborn babies in mainland France from 2005 to 2013. The values are per region and in percent of the total number born that year. As this genetic illness is mostly confined to non-Europeans, primarily Africans, the ethnic origin of newborns can be derived from the data (see below for sources; map composed by FDesouche)."     



Via Galliawatch, a stunning study by Falko Baumgartner published at EuroCanada about the "Africanization" of France. Bottom line: In the past 13 years, the percentage of babies born in France to at least one non-European parent has grown from about one-fifth to more than one-third. 

...

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