What a publishing coup for the editors at Breitbart News when Vladimir Bukovsky chose to offer them the first chapter of his 1993 book, Judgment in Moscow, for publication for the first time in English. Published in other languages including French (Judgment a Moscou,1995), Random House acquired the book in the 1990s, but, as Bukovsky lays out below, the deal became contingent on deep, transformative revisions he simply refused to make.

As Bukovsky explains, Random House honcho Jason Epstein was determined to shape Bukovsky's remarkable manuscript based on a trove of ultra-secret Soviet documents to fit the conventional wisdom ... the consensus ... the court history of the Cold War -- never mind the evidence as laid out in these stunning documents themselves. Something else Epstein was determined to root out of the manuscript: Bukovsky's interpretation of events, which posits that...

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Note: It is a great pleasure, as always, to publish an original essay by the accomplished Canadian writer, poet, and critic David Solway.

"Is American Racist?"

Oprah Bravely Names the Hatred Roiling the American Body Politic

by David Solway

The United States, as many informed celebrities, experts and political figures would have us believe, is without doubt an impenitently racist nation. Most recently, for example, the divine Oprah told the BBC that the “disrespect” which many Americans feel for Barack Obama has to do with the fact that he is African American. Of course, Obama is not African American, he is half-white, so he is at least as Caucasian American as anything else that he might conceivably be. But this is a mere triviality—he is, after all, what we have come to call a “racialized person.” The skepticism with which many Americans have come to regard Obama plainly has nothing to do with his incompetence, his frivolity, his bald-face lying, his betrayal of America’s...

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This week's syndicated column

When Thanksgiving 2013 is over, will Americans remember it as the holiday when the Obama administration body-snatched their friends and family and turned them into Obamacare robots?

Maybe it happened to your own loved ones. Maybe Cousin Sue brought her favorite cranberry Jell-O mayonnaise salad, but when she opened her mouth, she sounded like Jay Carney on a roll. As for Uncle Al, there’s a reason he kept asking “Have you thought about signing up for health insurance on the new marketplace?” every time it was your turn at Scrabble.

BarackObama.com told them to.

Turning Thanksgiving into Obamacaring was clearly the Big-Brotherly goal of a disturbing project launched by the president’s campaign website, now known as Organization for Change, or OFA. Entitled “Health Care for the Holidays,” this OFA spinoff provides a “sign-up checklist” to take along to grandmother’s house (bring W-2s and paystubs along with those sweet potatoes). It offers “conversation tips” that include such icebreakers as, “When do you plan on signing up?”

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After positively reviewing American Betrayal at Breitbart News at the end of September, Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov found themselves subject to a flurry of attacks. They have now responded, not in kind but rather to explain why "a more intelligent debate" over the issues raised in American Betrayal is urgently needed despite what they call "the vehement campaign against the book." 

From Breitbart News:

"West's American Betrayal Will Make History"

by Vladimir Bukovsky...

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I forgot to post my most recent column on the disastrous US-Afghan agreement. Since writing it, the loya jirga has approved the agreement, Hamid Karzai has nixed it, and now the Obama administration is trying to get some other Afghan government official to sign it. Meanwhile, a new draft Afghan penal code restores death by stoning for adultery. More making the world safe for sharia -- courtesy Uncle Sucker.

My most recent column

Now that U.S. and Afghan negotiators have agreed on terms of a seemingly open-ended – if reduced – U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Obama administration alike breathlessly await the verdict of the world’s greatest deliberative body.

No, not the U.S....

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Happiness is an Iranian diplomat

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Today, Andrew Bostom notes for the record: "Nuke Deal Ignores Iran's Genocidal Islamic Jew-Hatred." Quite. He proceeds to fill in these gaping holes in both the deal itself and, almost worse, in its schematic reporting with a historical/religious overview of the past half-millenium of theocratic Shiite rule. This was interupted by 54 years rule of by Pahlavis, father and son, whose Western-oriented and secularizing regime (1925-1979) would be overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini, the inspiration of Iran's current leader, Rohani.

Bostom writes:

The so-called “Khomeini revolution,” which in 1979 deposed the secular, Western-oriented regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was in reality a mere return...

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Gates of Vienna has published an important declaration from Geert Wilders

Let us raise a flag of truth and liberation by Geert Wilders

Nine years ago this month, in November 2004, policemen wearing bullet proof vests and carrying machine guns picked me up at my home and drove me to a safe place. This happened two days after the filmmaker and Islam-critic Theo van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic assassin in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street. The police brought me to safety because Islamic criminals had threatened to kill me, too. Because I, too, spoke the truth about Islam, the biggest threat to our freedom and our civilization.

Since that ominous date, nine years ago, I have been forced to live under constant police protection. I have lived in army barracks, prisons and safe houses. The threats continue to this day and have deprived me of my privacy and my freedom.

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On Wednesday, November 20, I received the Mightier Pen Award from Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy at the Union League Club in Manhattan. It was a truly spectacular event. As I noted in my remarks, in early September when Frank announced the award, which is dedicated to the doctrine of peace through strength, it came not only as a great honor, but also as a welcome missile shield against continuing attacks on me and American Betrayal. I can't thank Frank and CSP enough for their unwavering support and friendship throughout, and now, for this unforgettable celebration.

It was, of course, a career high point to be introduced by the great M. Stanton Evans.

Video of Stan's introduction and my remarks below.







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Anybody home?

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How's this for a measure of how far our republic has fallen?

The Kerry-Karzai agreement for continued -- no, cesaseless -- American woe and waste in Afghanistan must past muster with the "loya jirga," the assembly of 3,000 tribal "elders" who will be meeting for the next several days in Kabul. 

Unless a small group of upstart US senators gets traction, our own representatives are assumed to be a rubber stamp for Obama's latest blunder abroad. Or so it seems. As quoted by the New York Times, Kerry's concern is limited to whether the agreement passes muster with the loya jirga, that world- renowned embodiment of sharia justice and tribal enlightenment.



“We have agreed on the language that would be submitted to a loya jirga, but they have to pass it,” Mr. Kerry said.

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Signed copies of all of my books -- and this lovely mug! -- are now available with the click of a "signed copies" button on this website, located in both the blue navigation bar (above), and in the right-hand column.

Enjoy the brew-haha.

Mightier Pen 2013 | Honoring Diana West

Introduction by M. Stanton Evans

November 20, 2013

The Union League Club | 38 E 37th Street, New York City

Registration & Book Signing | 11:30 AM

Luncheon | 12:15 PM

In the amazing-what-you-find-on-Youtube category, here is Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov expressing his pleasure over FDR's decision to "normalize" relations with Stalin's terror state in November 1933. (Spot the whopper when Litvinov discusses new relations between the two "republics.")



Gates of Vienna has now kindly posted short video clips from Friday's symposium on the 80th anniversay of of this momentously infamous event. Because the Soviet Union was always an abnormal state bent on world revolution, state-engineered terror and genocide against its own citizens, our leaders seeking "normalization" would have to deceive us about such things in order to maintain (and even extend and deepen) "normal" relations. This they did and with catastrophic results, as discussed in American Betrayal.

In a post called "Mantled in Deception and Denial," GoV writes:

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Henrik Raeder Clausen has reviewed American Betrayal for Europe News.

Titled "Down the Rabbit Hole, Again," the review opens:

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.

To those of us in Europe who grew up under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella, with US troops still stationed in Germany to deter a Soviet invasion of our countries, history seemed solid: The heroic Americans saved us from the national socialist menace, rolling back the occupations that had plagued our countries...

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With M. Stanton Evans, Frank Gaffney, and Chris Farrell at Judicial Watch yesterday, discussing the the world inaugurated by FDR's calamitous decision to "normalize" relations with Stalin's genocidal regime on November 16, 1933. Steve Coughlin, also on the panel, is not pictured.

One of the things I saw in even clearer terms in preparing my remarks and listening to the other presentations was the extent to which the epic struggles over what we now quite ignorantly and even superstitiously sum up as "McCarthyism" (tossing a pinch or two of salt over the shoulder) may be seen on one level as an extended cover-up by the executive branch of the calamitous, multi-pronged impact of that 1933 decision.

Not that "McCarthyism" came up on our discussion, the presence on the panel of Stan Evans, author of the seminal book overturning decades of lies about Joe McCarthy notwithstanding. Still, FDR "normalized"...

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This week's syndicated column:

On Saturday, Nov. 16, the United States marks a milestone: the 80th anniversary of when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union and “normalized” U.S.-USSR relations. It is a day that should live in infamy.

But it’s a day hardly anyone has ever heard of. I certainly hadn’t before researching my book, American Betrayal. As I studied the event, however, it became clear that it was on this day 80 years ago that what I call “American betrayal” began. It is the date on which the U.S. government institutionally learned to lie.

After the Bolsheviks seized dictatorial powers in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, four U.S. presidents...

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Center for Security Policy Convenes Symposium on Subversion in High Places:

The Legacy of FDR’s Normalization of Relations with the USSR

Eightieth Anniversary of Deal That Facilitated Penetration of U.S. Government, Society

Washington, DC — Eighty years ago this Saturday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed for the first time to recognize the Communist regime of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He did so on the basis of formal undertakings by then-Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov that the Kremlin would not engage in subversive actions in America.

The rest, as they say, is history. And a sordid and still unfolding history it is.

The Center for Security Policy is pleased to convene a symposium to review that history — both that of the immediate post-normalization period, of World War II, of the Cold War and of today — from noon-2:00 p.m. at the headquarters...

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A reader just reminded me of a post from those first weeks of the campaign against American Betrayal -- a campaign my editor at St Martin's Press tells me he has never before seen the likes of. I am re-posting this August 18 post today for the benefit of both new readers and old who may have heard David Horowitz belittle this mendacious and widespread campaign he and Ronald Radosh spearheaded against American Betrayal as "one bad review."

By the way, "take-down" was Radosh's word for this "review" (his first of multiple hits), which is referred to below. A chronology of the copycat hit pieces that followed appears in an appendix of The Rebuttal.

From August 18, 2013:

"The War on American Betrayal: The...

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I went to the Heritage Foundation today to hear David Horowitz discuss his newly published collection of essays, The Black Book of the American Left. Maybe, I thought, I could figure out why his personal views of Left and the Right necessitated the ad hominem attacks, the smears of American Betrayal, as completely rebutted in copious if not excruciating detail in The Rebuttal  (not "Book-Burners," as Horowitz misstated today).

I don't know what I learned, but I surely witnessed something strange.

Watch the clip above and fact-check Horowitz with "The Rebuttal" in three parts as published by Breitbart News  here, or The Rebuttal: Defending American Betrayal from the Book-Burners with Additional Commentary from the Blogosphere here.

Favorite Horo-whopper: "She's got a whole book, it's 22,000 words, it's called "Book Burners," for one bad review --  I mean, come on!"

Is he kidding?

A partial list:



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The cone of silence over public discussion of the Radosh-Horowitz attacks on American Betrayal cracked perceptibly last week as commentator and radio host Hugh Hewitt asked my great friend and Team B II colleague Frank Gaffney to interpret the controversy for Hugh Hewitt's sizeable radio audience.

(NB: On November 20th, I am deeply honored to say, Frank Gaffney's organization, The Center for Security Policy, will be awarding me The Mightier Pen Award for 2013. Information about attending the event in NYC here.)

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It was a high honor and privilege to address the National Vietnam & Gulf War Veterans Coalition at the group's annual leadership luncheon on Saturday -- particularly as the only non-veteran to speak on a program that included former Vietnam POW Red McDaniel and former Navy SEAL Benjamin Smith.

I know my late father would have been very happy to know I had this opportunity to discuss before so many fellow patriots his World War II service from Normandy to the Bulge in the context of American Betrayal -- the possibility than sans Communist penetration (saturation) of the policy-making chain in Washington and London, neither of those two costly battles might have been necessary.

I also discussed the shocking cable traffic that indicates the Truman administration and military command in Europe under Gen. Eisenhower in May 1945 left some 15,000 to 20,000 American GIs in Stalin's custody -- the ultimate...

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Seated: Me, Dru Davida, Lucianne Goldberg, Carol Taber, Ruth King, Linda Barnes. Standing: Ronnie Perl, chair, Book Events at WNRC, Lee Kessler

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Last week, I was royally feted by the ladies of the Women's National Republican Club in their elegant clubhouse next to Rockefeller Center. While this was a fine opportunity to discuss American Betrayal and the ruckus it has kicked up, it was also a long-awaited reunion with some of my staunchest and outspoken defenders during the attempted "take-down" of the book spearheaded by Ronald ("yellow journalism conspiracy theories") Radosh and David ("She should not have written this book") Horowitz. These include (seated at the table above) Lucianne Goldberg of Lucianne.com, Carol Tabor of Family Security Matters and Ruth King of Ruthfully Yours.



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This week's syndicated column

Dear Prospective Conservative Republican Candidates:

Today’s column offers strategic tips that can’t possibly be worse than the ones “political consultants” charge you big bucks for. Even better, these are free.

Everything a conservative needs to win state and national elections lies in the exit poll numbers. I first noticed these strategic gems following Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat. The media echo chamber was still in high gear, revving up the public to believe that “white men” were Romney’s “only” constituency – and you know how awful “white men” are, and did you ever notice how Mitt Romney is both white and a man? Well, no wonder he lost.

Then I realized the exit polls didn’t tell the same story the media were telling. (Shocking, I know.) According to these numbers, it wasn’t really “white men” and Romney against the world. Romney had other constituencies – underexploited constituencies. This week in Virginia, the same is true according...

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Just wondering: Could the use of these poisonous chemicals (to dogs) be banned under an international chemical weapons treaty as implemented by Congress?

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The following report from The New York Law Journal relates how "a `lover's triangle' dispute from Pennsylvania ... has mushroomed into a major test of the power of Congress to implement international treaties in ways that may interfere with the prerogatives of the 50 states."

WASHINGTON - U.S. Supreme Court arguments over the constitutional power to make and implement treaties took a dramatic turn Tuesday when Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. warned justices that a ruling interpreting the meaning of a chemical weapons treaty would be "terribly unfortunate" and could disrupt "very sensitive negotiations" underway with Syria and...

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Just heard my friend and colleague from the good ol' days of the Washington Times (before dread respectability set in) bring down the house at the Kirkpatrick Society with her first presentation of her hilarious -- but sharply pointed -- new book, When Did White Trash Become the New Normal?: A Southern Lady Asks the Impertinent Question.

While Charlotte doesn't examine perpetual youth in her travels through the culture (my own springboard  in The Death of the Grown-Up), I can certainly relate to these fresh insights and trenchant observations (and white trash recipes!) from Charlotte's inimitable Delta perspective.

Don't miss. 

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The war on American Betrayal launched from the Right continues to perplex people. I hear the same question everywhere I go, and notably from people who have actually read the book: What is inside the covers of American Betrayal that could have inspired the no-holds-barred smear campaign against it waged by putative political allies?

M. Stanton Evans has discussed his theory in "In Defense of Diana West" here; Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov weighed in with "Why Academics Hate Diana West" here. I have my own theories, too.

Now, Ned May of Gates of Vienna, a leading counterjihad site that distinguished itself during the hottest weeks of this battle in its defense not only of my book and me personally but also free and civil debate more generally, has published here his further and deeper thoughts on the controversy. These also include Ned's take on the crashing silence on the part of professional...

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Three-plus months later, the any-means-necessary effort to eject American Betrayal from within the boundaries of debate has failed, with only the faintest yap-yapping in the distance.  

Now, where were we?

To recapture the line of argument, I am reposting my piece, "Who Really Won the Cold War?," which ran on July 18 at Breitbart News.

How could there be anything left to say about World War II and the Cold War that hasn’t been said already? We know the narrative, start to finish. In researching my new book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character (St. Martin’s Press), I was shocked to learn that’s not the same thing as understanding what really happened.

That probably won’t make sense until you find yourself, as I did, staring at the brick wall that somehow blocks the body of intelligence history from entering the general flow of the narrative we know so well. Bringing them together--intelligence history with general history--changes almost...

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I am very happy to reveal that at this year's gathering of the Pumpkin Papers Irregulars, a deluxe dinner held in Washington by intelligence experts and interested observers to honor the memory of Whittaker Chambers and his triumph over the traitor Alger Hiss, I was given the annual honor of lighting the pumpkin and later addressing the assembly about American Betrayal.



American Betrayal guarded the door.





Highlights of the evening included warm tributes to fallen Cold Warriors: M. Stanton Evans on the late Herbert Romerstein (1931-2013), and Paul Kengor on the late Judge William P. Clark (1931-2013). This year's "coveted" Victor Navasky Award, presented by Ken deGraffenreid, went posthumously to Saul Alinsky, whose spawn (HRB, BHO, among others) continue to subvert the remnant republic. Regrettably, former Sen. Jon Kyl was unable to appear as scheduled. Al Regnery and Sebastian Gorka MC'd the evening's presentations.

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Opening his weekend column at PJMedia, Andrew C. McCarthy writes:

Life may be too short to unwind everything Ron Radosh distorts in his PJMedia blog post on Monday. ...

Uh-oh. Sound familiar?

In the course of unwinding the basic Radosh distortions of his own work, Andy writes:

I have not commented on this but, since he [Radosh] brings up the subject of civility, I am still taken aback by the tone of his review of Diana West’s American Betrayal … and I cringed upon learning that, in the midst of the nasty cross-fire that it ignited, he sent Diana a giddy...

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As some are aware,  American Betrayal came in for a little flack in the past couple of months.

While I was marshalling my forces -- all 22,000 words' worth -- many others filled the breach with eloquent, passionate, heartfelt defenses both of my book and of free and civil debate overarchingly. I didn't want these missives from the front to disappear into Internet ether. This amazing record of intellectual battle in real time needed a repository. To that end, I have published both my rebuttal, which originally appeared in three parts at Breitbart News, and a selection of these essays written in my behalf in a new book, The Rebuttal: Defending American Betrayal from the Book-Burners. Authors include Andrew Bostom, Vladimir Bukovsky, Donald Douglas, Edward Cline, M. Stanton Evans, Ruth King, Clare M. Lopez, Ned May, R.S. McCain, Takuan Seiyo, Cindy Simpson, David Solway,...

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This week's syndicated column

Could Obamacare be the biggest voter registration fraud scheme in the history of the world?

This is the bombshell assessment of a pair of conservative activists: Gregg Phillips, founder of Voters Trust, and Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote. Both groups are conservative nonprofits focused on election integrity.

What helped Phillips and Engelbrecht draw this conclusion, which Breitbart News reported this week, is almost as amazing as the conclusion itself: Left-wing groups and media have for some time been openly discussing Obamacare as a vehicle for so-called Motor Voter registration. Motor Voter is the law that makes voter registration a part of driver’s license applications. In fact, the 1993 law also requires any government office that provides “public assistance” to make voter registration part of the process. Since many applicants applying for coverage in the Obamacare “insurance marketplace” – the infamously malfunctioning healthcare.gov...

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