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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Jun
29
Written by:
Diana West
Wednesday, June 29, 2011 5:50 AM
Wen Jiabao taking in a little Hamlet in Stratford-on-Avon this week. Or: To censor or not to censor; that's not the question....
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It's not that anyone believes Chinese dictator -- sorry, "premier" -- Wen Jiabao when he says, as in London this week, "tomorrow's China will be a country that fully achieves democracy, the rule of law, fairness and justice."
Obviously, this is just the sugar to make the medicine go down. But the economic prostration of the West to the Chinese totalitarians, cushioned by our piles of "Made in China" belongings, feels better if we also convince ourselves that our concept of human rights is part of the Grand Exchange: Flatscreens for us; Freedom for them.
Dream on. The Danish paper Information published a scoop of all scoops this week, a series of stories based on a most unusual leak of documents from the super-highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. This is the kind of tightly held information that makes the Wikileaks story -- between two and three million people had access to SIPRNET, the system containing the Wikileaks docs (44 percent of which were unclassified, 40 percent were "classified," and 6 percent were "secret") -- seem tame. According to the paper, only between 1,400 and 7,000 Chinese CP officials are allowed to see the documents in question. Now, we all can at least get the gist.
Information's article of June 27, 2011 (more here) opens by quoting a March 2011 document's orders for censorship:
”In particular, crackdowns must be imposed on any aggression directed against the party and its leaders as well as against the promotion of other political systems and a free press.” Such is the essential message in an official and classified document from the Chinese Central Committee leaked to the Danish daily
On the first page of the document, it is stated that its contents has been approved by the Central Committee and sent out for implementation. The document is one of a number of papers leaked from the top Chinese echelon that directly contradict public statements by Chinese leaders. Among other things, the regime has insisted that it does not exercise any censorship. However, the official document outlines several instances of how the Chinese authorities should prevent people from getting in touch with ”politically sensitive information”. Such information must be either ”blocked”, ”destroyed” or ”cleansed” from the Internet, media and books, the order from the Central Committee to the lower levels of the state apparatus makes clear. ...
The same line is repeated in other documents, including the one from the Party leadership in Beijing, which declares that ”all illegal and harmful information on Chinese and foreign web sites should be completely blocked.” And that people who disseminate such information should be ”indicted and prosecuted quickly before a judge and be quickly convicted.”
The classified documents reveal that the Chinese government plays a double game with a large and growing gap between the self-portrait regime that Beijing itself wishes to project to outside world and the way it actually intends to rule. The communist regime’s propaganda apparatus is instructed to introduce China to other countries as peaceful, increasingly democratic and open to the outside world. But behind the facade, its grip on Chinese people and society should be tightened to new levels of harshness.
...
Besides giving evidence to an increased control and censorship of domestic media and Internet, the documents also prescribe the establishing a corps of informants who should be responsible for identifying and designating critical citizens. Moreover, Beijing’s perceived threat from the West to the party’s power should be resisted, among other things by tightening the reigns on foreign journalists and NGO’s and by exerting ”greater control over the access of Western cultural products to the Chinese market.” This should be combined with a strengthened propaganda effort against the Chinese population, making it less susceptible to ”dangerous information from the outside” and promoting ”a better understanding of the Communist Party’s strength”.
Hardliners in power
For a long time, there has been a hope in the West that China’s tremendous economic development would automatically lead to a political liberalization and greater freedoms and civil rights for the Chinese. The leaked documents, however, suggest that Beijing will do everything in its power to ensure that this scenario will not come true.
”It shows that China is not on track to become the freer society that so many Western governments would like to imagine. Rather, the opposite would seem to be the case”, says Jean-Philippe Beja, a China researcher at the Centre for International Studies and Research in Paris, whom Information has initiated in parts of the leaked documents.
David Bandurski has not seen the document files but Information has presented parts of the contents to David Bandurski, and he believes the documents can be seen as signal about which direction the political winds in Beijing are blowing today: ”It is clear that the hardliners of the party are now in charge and that the distance between reality and the image which the government wants to project of China, grows bigger and bigger.”
From the highest level
Often, the Chinese local governments are accused of being behind the violations, the clamp-downs and the increased control over the media and ordinary citizens, while the central leadership in Beijing is presented as proponents of a relatively more lenient line. But the documents contain orders from the top leadership for a tougher stance: Most of the calls for greater control are to be found in documents from Party’s Central Committee, the highest authority in the party.
The leaked documents originate from the period between late January and mid-March. That is to say shortly after the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo in December was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and immediately before and around the time of anonymous calls on the internet to protest against the government in Beijing began to circulate – inspired by the popular revolts in North Africa and Middle East – prompting the Chinese authorities to strike an exceptionally hard blow against serveral regime critics. A large number of eminent lawyers and activists were arrested, placed under house arrest or simply vanished. The most prominent victim of the ongoing tightening has been the artist and activist Ai Weiwei, who was released only last Wednesday after 81 days in jail and who has apparently now been muzzled by the authorities.
”We must assume that these documents were written at a time when the regime was in a state of panic over the danger of civil unrest inside the country,” says Jean-Philippe Beja.
A Society of Snitches
It’s not just against the Internet and the Chinese media that the clamp-down should be intensified. A document issued by the central propaganda bureau dated 22 January declares that ”the daily monitoring of the population is to be extended”, which will be accomplished mainly through building a ”more efficient” system of ”informants or whistleblowers” who, on behalf of the regime should be on the look-out for ”dangerous informations” and ”dangerous individuals”. These informants should be located ”in schools, universities, workplaces, villages and housing estates.”
The document states that it is an approach that ”the center”, i. e. the central leadership of the party, has ”agreed” upon and which the provincial governments and the Party committees throughout the country will be responsible for implementing.
”The use of informants – or snitches – seems to be a used tool which is increasingly used to target anyone who sticks his head out,” says Jean-Philippe Beja. And, so the French professor continues, the documents suggest that ”the regime now will again begin to penetrate deeper into people’s lives, even cracking down on opinions that are voiced privately. To a large extent, the authorities had evolved at habit of closing their ears to the honest opinions, that Chinese people expressed in small gatherings. Obviously they now intend to prevent this kind of outspokenness. It is a frightening development.”
Information’s reporter has presented the sources in this news story with summary and quotes from the content of the document files in question. Sources have not actually seen the files.
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