
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
|
|
Dec
10
Written by:
Diana West
Monday, December 10, 2012 7:10 AM
There's something wrong with a government "secrets" case when millions of people have access to those same "secrets."
---
The pre-trial hearing of PFC Bradley Manning is underway at Ft. Meade, MD -- though you'd hardly know it given overall media inattention. Manning, of course, is being tried for allegedly releasing some 250,000 diplomatic cables, as well as a huge cache of documents from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the leak site Wikileak.
Just to sum up where we are in the process, the AP writes:
Manning is seeking dismissal of all charges due to what he claims were excessively harsh conditions during his nine months in the brig.
Brig commanders say they kept Manning confined 23 hours a day, sometimes without clothing, to keep him from hurting or killing himself.
He's charged with 22 offenses, including aiding the enemy. He could get life in prison if convicted.
I've been looking at reports about the hearing, about Manning's defense and the government's case. I confess to finding myself torn over certain aspects, but I firmly believe a life sentence would be beyond draconian. Hasn't Manning been punished enough? Has Manning been punished enough? Are those the proper questions to ask? What about the law of the case? What about national security? What about the people's "right to know"?
This right has been disappearing throughout our era of shrinking free speech, which for me is the all-important political context to the Manning case.
Is free speech political?
In theory, no. But in practice, free speech is the source of liberty, and liberty is the enemy of organized control -- whether such control takes the form of a dictatorship, a socialist bureacracy (which includes every Western nation to varying degree), or an Islamic state.
At this point on the road to "socialism with an American face," the United States still supports freedom of communication; hence, our continued support for an unfettered Internet. The US, in fact, is currently fighting to stave off seizure of Internet control by nation-censors of the world currently gathered at this month's UN’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. (Why in no-free-speech-Dubai? I guess the same reason the Green-bots met in Doha, Qatar.)
This latest UN censorship drive includes a drastic draft measure, as The Hindu newspaper reported today, "to place [the Internet] under government control, with authorisation for extensive state surveillance and content regulation." Not at all incidentally, we only know about this draft measure -- proposed by Russia, UAE, China, Sudan, Algeria, Brazil (Brazil later tweeted it was not involved) and immediately supported on the floor by Bahrain, Russia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Sudan and Burkina Faso -- courtesy the leak site WCITLeaks. The meeting may in fact collapse over this draft proposal. Let's hope.
The defense of a free Internet notwithstanding, the US government itself remains a chilling force on, for example, speech critical of Islam. Arguably, with the maker of "Innocence of Muslims" now serving one year in jail for "parole violations," the US government has successfully prosecuted its first Islamic-anti-blasphemy case. (There may be others.) I would like to know whether at the third official meeting of the "Istanbul Process" in London last week this verdict was showcased as an ingenius example of American sharia-compliance without openly crossing the First Amendment (get 'em on something else, like Al Capone). Ambassador for Relgious Freedom Suzan Johnson Cook and Ambassador Mike Kozak represented the US at this conference on "implementing UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18," as the State website put it, but the proceedings remain completely secret. The State Department hasn't released a single statement, not a tweet. I have seen nothing in the media, either.
A trend? You bet. Every day, the US government becomes more hyper-proprietary (paranoid) about its own information, its own deliberations. From the macro point of view, this control-freakishness has become colossal. In 2011, Uncle Sam classified over 92 million documents, billing the 50.5 percent of us who still pay federal taxes $11.36 billion for the privilege of not reading our own records.
A few observations.
1) Manning's supporters are on the edgier Left, including Occupy types. The MSM, meanwhile, are inexplicably indifferent, largely relying on the Associated Press to provide trial coverage (the NYT had to be publically prodded even to send a reporter to the proceeding last week). Why? Bob Woodward's low interest level is probably typical. He thinks "the story" is the fact that Manning had access to so many documents, not what the documents say, let alone what the government's treatment and prosecution of Manning says.
As an aside, I couldn't disagree with Woodward more. Here is my own ad hoc queue of Wikileaks-based stories, which, limited as it necessarily is, still goes a long way to reveal US deceptions, self-deceptions, and perfectly shocking attitudes toward enemies, allies and even American core principles.
For example:
"No amount of money" will stop Pakistan from supporting the Taliban, LeT, etc., our ambassador wrote many billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan ago.
The US government secretly prevailed upon Denmark and Jyllands-Posten not to reprint the Mohammed cartoons, with the ambassador bemoaning the Danish government's having "hardened its view on the absolute primacy of free speech" -- a devastating insight into our officials' corrupted, dhimmified stance on freedom of seech.
Then there are cables noting the Iraqi intell officer who worked with the Taliban, serving a liaison between Iraq and Afghanstan (hmm), how Russia delivered 1,800 SAMs to Venezuela in 2009, and Western knowledge of the barbarous criminality of Kosovo officials.
Wikileaks also provided much information about Libya, Qaddafi and the "rebels," and served as the basis for this occasional series about the late Amb. Christopher Stevens.
Checking around, I realize also that Wikileaks provided the outlet for the email dump that unmasked the East Anglia climate-fixing brigade.
Julian Assange, on the other hand, credits Wikileaks for the US withdrawal from Iraq, the advent of "Arab Spring" and much evidence of American evil-doing, some of which I see, some I don't. What I find most jarring about Assange is his apparent inability to recognize that the existence of the USA's First Amendment is what serves as the ultimate backstop for his own work -- not the United Nations, the entity he tends to credit with his free speech rights as far as they go these days as an asylum-seeker inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. To consider the UN the bulwark of free speech is to ignore the onoing war on free speech waged by the Islamic bloc and assorted despot-nations such as Russia and China, along with EU bureaucrats and other "soft" despots -- all of whom are now in Dubai, as noted above, with some openly attempting to strangle the Internet on which Wikileaks relies.
Back to Manning.
3) Like the MSM, the Right is strangely silent about the Manning case. This is odd, especially given the bloodthirsty public calls for executions that went around a couple of years ago. (I commented at the time here.)
4) I remain attuned to the argument that publishing secret information can result in loss of life. We have seen no evidence this happened as a result of Wikileaks. To date, the government has brought forward no such evidence, either.
5) I remain equally attuned to the stunning fact that literally millions of Americans had access to the same networks of information (SIPRnet) that Bradley Manning had. How can it something be a "state secret" if millions of government-anointed ones know it, too?
But is this trial really about state secrets? I don't see how the government can make that case, as it did, for example, with regard to the Rosenbergs. What we are really looking at instead is a challenge to government control of information -- control that represents further undermining of the people's right to know. The US government remains intent on expanding and enforcing restrictions on that all-important right in order to exercise its power as secretly as possible -- power that would likely prove unpopular or even unlawful.
As we try to assess the trial, it's simply not correct to consider Bradley Manning the only alleged breaker of law or trust here. By conducting its affairs in secrecy, the US government has been breaking laws and destroying bonds of trust for decades, all the while creating that hardened and colossal safehouse of secrets Wikileaks has been trying to crack in the first place.
In this larger context of government overreach if not lawlessness, PFC Manning becomes a free speech vigilante, doesn't he?
Answer to come.
Tags:
|
|
|
|