FINALLY -- IN AUDIOBOOK!
ALSO AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK
"It is not simply a good book about history. It is one of those books which makes history. ... "
-- Vladimir Bukovsky, co-founder of the Soviet dissident movement and author of Judgment in Moscow, and Pavel Stroilov, author of Behind the Desert Storm.
"Diana West is distinguished from almost all political commentators because she seeks less to defend ideas and proposals than to investigate and understand what happens and what has happened. This gives her modest and unpretentious books and articles the status of true scientific inquiry, shifting the debate from the field of liking and disliking to being and non-being."
-- Olavo de Carvalho
If you're looking for something to read, this is the most dazzling, mind-warping book I have read in a long time. It has been criticized by the folks at Front Page, but they don't quite get what Ms. West has set out to do and accomplished. I have a whole library of books on communism, but -- "Witness" excepted -- this may be the best.
-- Jack Cashill, author of Deconstructing Obama: The Lives, Loves and Letters of America's First Postmodern President and First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America
"Every once in a while, something happens that turns a whole structure of preconceived ideas upside down, shattering tales and narratives long taken for granted, destroying prejudice, clearing space for new understanding to grow. Diana West's latest book, American Betrayal, is such an event."
-- Henrik Raeder Clausen, Europe News
West's lesson to Americans: Reality can't be redacted, buried, fabricated, falsified, or omitted. Her book is eloquent proof of it.
-- Edward Cline, Family Security Matters
"I have read it, and agree wholeheartedly."
-- Angelo Codevilla, Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Boston Unversity, and fellow of the Claremont Institute.
Enlightening. I give American Betrayal five stars only because it is not possible to give it six.
-- John Dietrich, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency and author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy.
After reading American Betrayal and much of the vituperation generated by neoconservative "consensus" historians, I conclude that we cannot ignore what West has demonstrated through evidence and cogent argument.
-- John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D., Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
"A brilliantly researched and argued book."
-- Edward Jay Epstein, author of Deception: The Invisible War between the KGB and the CIA, The Annals 0f Unsolved Crime
"This explosive book is a long-needed answer to court histories that continue to obscure key facts about our backstage war with Moscow. Must-reading for serious students of security issues and Cold War deceptions, both foreign and domestic."
-- M. Stanton Evans, author of Stalin's Secret Agents and Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies
Her task is ambitious; her sweep of crucial but too-little-known facts of history is impressive; and her arguments are eloquent and witty. ... American Betrayal is one of those books that will change the way many of us see the world.
-- Susan Freis Falknor, Blue Ridge Forum
"American Betrayal is absolutely required reading. Essential. You're sleepwalking without it."
-- Chris Farrell, director of investigations research, Judicial Watch
"Diana West wrote a brilliant book called American Betrayal, which I recommend to everybody ... It is a seminal work that will grow in importance."
-- Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker
"This is a must read for any serious student of history and anyone working to understand the Marxist counter-state in America."
-- John Guandolo, president, Understanding the Threat, former FBI special agent
It is myth, or a series of myths, concerning WW2 that Diana West is aiming to replace with history in 2013’s American Betrayal.
If West’s startling revisionism is anywhere near the historical truth, the book is what Nietzsche wished his writings to be, dynamite.
-- Mark Gullick, British Intelligence
“What Diana West has done is to dynamite her way through several miles of bedrock. On the other side of the tunnel there is a vista of a new past. Of course folks are baffled. Few people have the capacity to take this in. Her book is among the most well documented I have ever read. It is written in an unusual style viewed from the perspective of the historian—but it probably couldn’t have been done any other way.”
-- Lars Hedegaard, historian, journalist, founder, Danish Free Press Society
The polemics against your Betrayal have a familiar smell: The masters of the guild get angry when someone less worthy than they are ventures into the orchard in which only they are privileged to harvest. The harvest the outsider brought in, they ritually burn.
-- Hans Jansen, former professor of Islamic Thought, University of Utrecht
No book has ever frightened me as much as American Betrayal. ... [West] patiently builds a story outlining a network of subversion so bizarrely immense that to write it down will seem too fantastic to anyone without the book’s detailed breadth and depth. It all adds up to a story so disturbing that it has changed my attitude to almost everything I think about how the world actually is. ... By the time you put the book down, you have a very different view of America’s war aims and strategies. The core question is, did the USA follow a strategy that served its own best interests, or Stalin’s? And it’s not that it was Stalin’s that is so compelling, since you knew that had to be the answer, but the evidence in detail that West provides that makes this a book you cannot ignore.
-- Steven Kates, RMIT (Australia) Associate Professor of Economics, Quadrant
"Diana West's new book rewrites WWII and Cold War history not by disclosing secrets, but by illuminating facts that have been hidden in plain sight for decades. Furthermore, she integrates intelligence and political history in ways never done before."
-- Jeffrey Norwitz, former professor of counterterrorism, Naval War College
[American Betrayal is] the most important anti-Communist book of our time ... a book that can open people's eyes to the historical roots of our present malaise ... full of insights, factual corroboration, and psychological nuance.
-- J.R. Nyquist, author, Origins of the Fourth World War
Although I know [Christopher] Andrew well, and have met [Oleg] Gordievsky twice, I now doubt their characterization of Hopkins -- also embraced by Radosh and the scholarly community. I now support West's conclusions after rereading KGB: The Inside Story account 23 years later [relevant passages cited in American Betrayal]. It does not ring true that Hopkins was an innocent dupe dedicated solely to defeating the Nazis. Hopkins comes over in history as crafty, secretive and no one's fool, hardly the personality traits of a naïve fellow traveler. And his fingerprints are on the large majority of pro-Soviet policies implemented by the Roosevelt administration. West deserves respect for cutting through the dross that obscures the evidence about Hopkins, and for screaming from the rooftops that the U.S. was the victim of a successful Soviet intelligence operation.
-- Bernie Reeves, founder of The Raleigh Spy Conference, American Thinker
Diana West’s American Betrayal — a remarkable, novel-like work of sorely needed historical re-analysis — is punctuated by the Cassandra-like quality of “multi-temporal” awareness. ... But West, although passionate and direct, is able to convey her profoundly disturbing, multi-temporal narrative with cool brilliance, conjoining meticulous research, innovative assessment, evocative prose, and wit.
-- Andrew G. Bostom, PJ Media
Do not be dissuaded by the controversy that has erupted around this book which, if you insist on complete accuracy, would be characterized as a disinformation campaign.
-- Jed Babbin, The American Spectator
In American Betrayal, Ms. West's well-established reputation for attacking "sacred cows" remains intact. The resulting beneficiaries are the readers, especially those who can deal with the truth.
-- Wes Vernon, Renew America
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Feb
6
Written by:
Diana West
Sunday, February 06, 2011 9:28 AM
Photo: Sherry Rahman. Caption: She tried.
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A very important and related story from Patrick Goodenough at CNSNews.com reporting that Sherry Rahman, the brave lawmaker in Pakistan who introduced an amendment last November against the nation's blasphemy laws, has dropped her campaign.
As for our "pal" and major charity case, Prime Minister Gilani? Goodenough notes that Gilani "assured a gathering of Muslim leaders last month that the government has no plans to change the blasphemy laws. He subsequently disbanded a committee that had been established to determine how to amend the legislation."
So let's send over another load of US aid money. After all, Pakistan has only received $18 billion since 2001.
The CNSNews.com adds further detail to the whole story:
Her effort won the support of PPP colleague Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, who called late last year on President Asif Ali Zardari to pardon a Christian woman sentenced to death under the laws for allegedly blaspheming Mohammed.
Islamists then took to the streets to demand that the government not intervene to save Asia Bibi from death row or tamper with the laws. A radical cleric offered a reward to anyone who killed Bibi, and both Taseer and Rehman received death threats.
The controversy deepened in early January when Taseer was assassinated by a member of his security team. Mumtaz Qadri, who shot Taseer repeatedly while shouting “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is greater), said he had acted because of the governor’s opposition to the blasphemy law.
After the assassination some 500 Muslim scholars issued a statement warning clerics not to participate in the slain governor’s funeral in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, or even to voice sympathy about his death.
The scholars also saluted Qadri, giving the assassin the honorary title “Lover of the Prophet, Commander of the Jihad Fighters.”
Lahore-based clergymen declined to take part in memorial services, and police said afterwards that three clerics from elsewhere who did so had received death threats. One went into hiding while the other two were provided with police security.
In the prevailing climate of fear, lawmakers in the federal parliament decided not to offer prayers for Taseer, foregoing a practice customary in Pakistan after a politician dies.
Meanwhile the feting of Qadri continued, his picture featuring prominently at demonstrations in favor of retaining the controversial laws. Hundreds of lawyers offered free representation to the confessed killer, who is in custody awaiting trail.
While the threats of radicals to kill those accused of insulting their religion and prophet came as little surprise in Pakistan, the U.S.-backed government’s capitulation was especially troubling for minority Christians and other critics.
How about US continued support for said capitulating government? That's especially troubling, too.
Gilani’s Jan. 18 assurance to Muslim leaders that the government would not amend the blasphemy laws came shortly after a Christian woman and her daughter were attacked by a mob in Lahore who accused them of blasphemy. ...
Nice cause-and-effect situation.
Barnabas Fund, a charity working with Christians in Islamic countries, noted that the 500-plus clerics who issued the intimidatory warning after Taseer’s assassination represented the “supposedly moderate” Sunni Barelvi movement, Pakistan’s largest Muslim faction.
“While Barelvis are seen as moderates in the West because of their opposition to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, they are fanatical in their adherence to shari’a and in their defense of the honor of Muhammad,” said the charity’s international director, Patrick Sookhdeo. ...
Key point. Opposition to one faction of jihad or another has nothing to do with opposition to sharia -- which poses the existential, long-term threat. It appears to reflect more regional or even personal loyalties, much as a mafiosi prefers one mob to another.
Monitoring groups say around one thousand people have been charged under the laws since 1986. Although no death sentences have been carried out, hundreds of people are serving prison terms for violating the laws.
While Christians, Hindus and members of the Ahmadi sect of Islam are often targeted, most of those indicted have been Muslims.
A Muslim teenager arrested in Karachi last week faces trial after being accused of writing insulting comments about Mohammed in a school exam; two weeks ago, an imam (prayer leader) and his son were convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Punjab. They were brought to trial after removing a poster from outside their store which reportedly included verses from the Qur’an.
Beyond criminal proceedings, at least 30 people accused of blasphemy have been killed by mobs or individuals, some of them during court appearances or while in police custody, according to figures kept by a Pakistani Catholic organization.
Viewed as a crucial partner in the campaign against extremism in the region, Pakistan is among the world’s leading recipients of U.S. aid, having received some $18 billion since 2001, a sum that includes military reimbursements for its support of counterterrorism efforts.
The Obama administration requested $3.05 billion in fiscal year 2011 in military and economic assistance for Islamabad.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent statutory body that advises the executive and legislative branches, has urged the government since 2002 to designate Pakistan as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) for egregious violations of religious freedom.
Each year the State Department has overruled the recommendation.
But it's not political. The State hack, I mean, flack, I mean spokesman says so:
When the department released its most recent annual religious freedom report last November, its top human rights official, Michael Posner, said officials continued to raise concerns about the blasphemy laws directly with Pakistan’s government,
He denied that Pakistan’s status as an ally was a factor.
“We apply a universal standard to every country, friends and countries that we have difficult relationships with. That doesn’t mean we don’t have security interests or economic interests or other diplomatic interests. But we will raise these issues as we see them,” Posner said. “We’ll call them as we see them.”
 Not.
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