Breibart Article Defends American Betrayal by Diana West

This is a follow-up to the post below. A brief excerpt from the link will serve for a introduction.

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/08/front-page-mag-losing-credibility-and.html

"Something strange has been going on at FrontPage Mag.

Some time back, I read a post on that site that reflected the patently false claim that Pope Pius XII had sat by idly during the Holocaust. As they who run the site seem to pride themselves on getting the facts straight, I assumed that they would welcome help and replied with some brief points that described the massive efforts of the Pontiff to save tens of thousands of Jews. I also noted that these had to be done with the utmost of secrecy since, as Stalin illustrated by his rhetorical question "How many divisions has the Pope?", any operation not well below the radar would have been torn apart by the Nazis. I also offered to correspond with the writer to give him/her a chance to check with some good sources.

I received no response, so I decided that FrontPageMag had intentions contrary to their implied mission and consequently stopped visiting that site.

A few days ago, I followed some source links which wound up bringing me back to that site. As I was about to click off that page, something caught my eye; a post describing what appeared to be a running battle with much-respected author Diana West on her recent bookAmerican Betrayal - The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character.

Hitting the brakes, I read the post. It was a hastily written defense of an individual that had gone out of his way to attack the credibility of Ms. West's work. I learned that FrontPageMaghad originally given the book a good review, performed a volte-face and turned the reins over to this other guy who smeared it, then was stuck having to defend both the ubercritic and their decision to back him. The reference to Ms. West's work as that of a "John Bircher" type was particularly striking as I have never seen that term used to denigrate anyone or anything except by a hard-core Liberal. The sad part is that very little of what John Birch claimed can be proven wrong in the first place, so where does that leave an organization like FrontPageMagthat supposedly is concerned with the doings of the American Left?........"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Main post:

Hat tip to Gates of Vienna for including the Breibart piece and by extension bringing this article to my attention.

The scourge that plagues any attempt to expose the horrors that occurred under Communism, the cooperation with the Soviets by leaders of the Western world to bring about our Western variant of Socialism, or the threat of a resurgence of authentic Islam is summed up with one word - consensus. Once academicians come to an agreement on the general story that will be approved for publication, and by extension be allotted their support, any works that deviate from the list of approved content will be firstly ignored. Barring that option, the author will be attacked - and mercilessly so. 

One may assume that those who rules in the Halls of Academia are merely envious. A non-scholar has written a work that goes places that they themselves do not dare to tread for  fear of being subjected to coordinated ridicule at the hands of their colleagues. 

Another explanation for envy is that an author may have simply been far more thorough with his or her research. Scholars are a prideful lot, and they bristle at the very thought of an amateur who produces something of substance - especially when that substance is far more than anything they have ever provided for readers.

My position is that neither are correct. Far too many academicians, even though they may cling to a label of Conservative, are in reality little different in their outlook from admitted Progressives. They will report and publish a few tidbits here and there, but they build an impenetrable rampart to prevent anyone from exposing that which they have labored to keep hidden. This is where "consensus" come in to play:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/26/Its-worse-than-a-conspiracy-it%20-s-consensus

"Groundbreaking books about the history of communism, such as Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’sGulag Archipelago or Viktor Suvorov’s Ice-Breaker, are never written by "professional" historians. Indeed, historians typically meet those books with remarkable hostility.
Yet, non-academic history books certainly have their advantages. For one thing, they are readable. More often than not, they are better researched too. Above all, they are intellectually honest, free from the unspoken taboos of the academic world and from allegiances to theories and to colleagues that tie the hands of many an academic.

Where a professional historian pursues an academic career, the amateur seeks after the truth. Ignorant of taboos, the amateur can follow the trail of evidence to wherever it leads and discovers things which, according to the academic conventional wisdom, are best left untouched and unsaid.

That is what Diana West does in American Betrayal:The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character. By her own admission, she started that book with no intention of writing much about the Cold War. She started not as a historian, but a simple mortal puzzled and disturbed by the obvious question: how on earth could this great civilization of ours have degraded into such a hypocritical nonsense as political correctness? Having written her previous book about the death of the civilization of grown-ups, now Mrs. West, in her own words, attempts a post mortem--only to discover unmistakable signs of a murder.

She digs deeper, “tracing references and footnotes backward along a well-mapped historical route that has simply fallen into disuse”, as she puts it--and discovers the true history of the 20th century, the history of communist crimes against humanity, to which so many in the Western Establishment were accomplices and collaborators; and then a massive cover-up of those crimes, which infested our entire public life with a culture of hypocrisy and double standards............

 [The article goes on to point out the culture of amicable (More like Mercutio's rant of "calm, dishonorable, vile submission") denial of the horrors of the Stalinist era and Roosevelt's shameless cooperation with Uncle Joe] 

"Mrs. West has proven her point without access to secret archives on the basis of published sources alone. She would have found this much more difficult if she tried to continue her narrative much beyond the Second World War. Scandalously, most secret archives of that period remain classified to this day, and very few historians ever complain about that. It required some extraordinary efforts on our part to smuggle some of those archives out of Russia and make them available to the Western public. Of course, our efforts were attacked furiously by the very same academics who now attack American Betrayal, using exactly the same expressions. It is their job to suppress any truth about the Cold War. However, despite all their efforts, we now know that the so-called Cold War was never particularly cold on the Soviet side and never much of a war on the Western side:
How the "consensus" of Western Establishment had accepted socialism as the inevitable future of the world, and "convergence" with the Soviet system as the only alternative to the Cold War.
How Western leaders developed their "détente" with the Soviets secretly, treacherously, through KGB channels, as a means to achieve that "convergence."
How all Western policy throughout the Cold War was aimed to preserve ‘stability’ of the Evil Empire and not to achieve its destruction.
Finally, how all Western governments sided with the last Soviet leader against his people, and secretly worked with Comrade Gorbachev in the last desperate attempt to save his regime and his empire. Ever at Gorby’s service, they did everything in their power to prevent unification of Germany, de-communisation of Eastern Europe, collapse of the Soviet Union, and finally--alas, successfully--a Nuremberg-style trial of communism.

That treacherous Establishment is still there. We are still governed by a nomenklatura of collaborationists, Petains and Quislings of the Cold War. Mrs. West has reached that conclusion merely by examining the first chapters of this sad story. Sure enough, there are mountains of other and more recent evidence to support her conclusions. But of course, whatever the evidence, the "consensus" will never plead guilty. Rather, they will try and usurp the judicial seat.

As Mrs. West rightly points out, the moment the free world recognized the evil empire of Communism as a country we could make deals with, even alliances with (be that even in such desperate circumstances as the Second World War)--that moment was “a Faustian turning point." By the very nature of the Soviet system, the history of "East-West relations" could only be a history of deals with the devil, with all the unfortunate consequences such deals had always been reputed to entail. From Yalta to Malta, all those summit-meetings were cannibal feasts of the same kind as Western journalists’ party with a Soviet censor in 1933 Moscow. Therefore, if some 80 years later we find the Western Establishment to be utterly corrupt, we should know what has corrupted them............

She [Diana West]  attacked certain cows that are sacred across the political spectrum; gentlemanly "formulas of denial" long agreed between academics of all colors; certain "common values of mankind," to use Comrade Gorbachev’s favorite phrase. Her facts (it has been reluctantly admitted) are of course correct, but her awful conclusions contradict “the consensus of every historian of the war”. The “consensus” is that Soviet agents of influence had no real influence, that FDR was a great patriot and war leader, and that Stalin’s occupation of half of the world was the best possible outcome of the war. On these points, it has emerged, the "conservative" and "liberal" academics have no disagreements. All their disagreements are about how exactly to explain away the facts that do not fit into their “consensus," and how exactly to suppress dissent..................

Amazingly and alarmingly, it was FrontPage Magazine that published the Pravda-style header which triggered that campaign, and provided a catalog of smears and insults for endless repetition by other members of the consensus. No doubt a highly distinguished "conservative historian" named Professor Ronald Radosh wrote a lengthy review ofAmerican Betrayal, headlined (with remarkable wit, good taste, and academic courtesy, if we may say so) McCarthy on Steroids. There, the Learned Professor dismissed the author as Sen. “McCarthy’s heiress” and the book as a “yellow journalism conspiracy theory” not really deserving the honor of his eminent critique. In his infinite generosity, however, the Learned Professor reluctantly agrees to provide some, and picks several specific points from American Betrayal to accuse Mrs. West of dishonesty and incompetence.

For anyone who has read both Mrs. West’s book and the Professor’s review, however, it is the review that is dishonest and incompetent. The Professor’s trick is to pick a couple of minor points from the book, invent a few more points of his own which he falsely attributes to the book, declare all those points to be “the pillars of West’s conspiracy theory," and then to "disprove" them with all academic solemnity. Unable to argue with the book itself, he instead argues with his own misrepresentation of the book.

He starts with Harry Hopkins, FDR’s alter ego and the most important Soviet agent in his administration. The fact that Hopkins was a Soviet agent has been known for a long time (though perhaps not as widely known as it deserves to be). Mrs. West simply brought together the mountain of evidence already available. That includes the testimony of Oleg Gordievsky, a very high-ranking and very reliable KGB defector. That includes the statement of George Marshall, the wartime US Army’s Chief of Staff and Hopkins’s friend, who told his official biographer: “Hopkins’s job with the president was to represent the Russian interests. My job was to represent the American interests.” That includes the episode documented in the Mitrokhin archive about Hopkins tipping off the Soviets about the FBI surveillance of certain Soviet spies; and so on, and so forth. There are several chapters in the book devoted to the evidence of Hopkins’s treason. In addition to all that, in one paragraph Mrs. West mentions the suspicions, expressed by some, that the mysterious Soviet agent identified in Venona cables only as "Agent 19" was none other than Hopkins.

And here is what is supposed to be a fair summary from Professor Radosh: “A key assertion for West is that FDR’s closest advisor, Harry Hopkins, was actually the Soviet agent known in the Venona decrypts as ‘Agent 19’." In the next thousand words, the Professor endeavors to prove that Agent 19 was in fact another man, and then hastily concludes that Hopkins therefore was not a Soviet agent, and therefore Mrs. West’s book is rubbish.

Whoever "Agent 19" in fact was, it appears to have escaped the scholarly attention that the very codename "Agent 19" suggests that there might have been more than one Soviet agent in wartime Washington. Hopkins still might have been one of them, and a lot of other evidence suggests that he was. But even if he was not, the difference between an agent and a fellow-traveler is hardly significant for Mrs. West’s argument. She is writing not about cloaks and daggers, but about the moral corruption of the Western world, resulting from complicity of the likes of Hopkins in Stalin’s crimes, and the subsequent cover-up of that complicity. How does it matter whether this particular Hopkins was in fact recruited by the Soviets or simply acted as a Soviet agent by his own choice? The difference is no greater than between a "liberal" academic liar and a "conservative" one.

Next, Professor Radosh takes objection to Mrs. West’s point about the massive military supplies to the Soviets under the ‘land lease’ program, administered by Hopkins. Mrs. West cites evidence that those supplies were given a priority even over urgent needs of US troops on the grounds, and that this policy contributed to such major catastrophes of WWII as the defeat on Philippines and the fall of Singapore. Rather sensibly, she links this with the evidence of Hopkins’s treason. Among other things, she cites interesting evidence that under the cover of ‘lend lease’, Hopkins secretly supplied the Soviets with top secret technology, including details of the Manhattan Project and sensitive atomic materials such as uranium and heavy water.

In response, the Learned Professor solemnly proves that the uranium was in fact Uranium-238, not Uranium-235, and therefore did not help the Soviets to make the nuclear bomb; that the first Soviet nuclear bomb was only made in 1949; and that it was made of plutonium. Ergo, all the "lend-lease" supplies to the Soviets were perfectly kosher and in the national interest.

With equal honesty, Professor Radosh then conclusively disproves several amusing historical anecdotes which he falsely attributes to Mrs. West’s book. Towards the end, however, he has another trick to play. Mixed into his list of alleged factual inaccuracies (which are not really in the book), we suddenly find Mrs. West’s alleged opinions about the merits or motives of FDR’s decisions to invade Normandy, not to work with German anti-Nazi underground, or to go along with Sovietisation of Eastern Europe. Not only does the Learned Professor distort the substance of those opinions, he also treats them as if they were factual inaccuracies; and then purports to "disprove" them by citing the conventional opinions of people such as Averill Harriman, whom he describes as “a stalwart anti-Communist."

Having thus demonstrated that Mrs. West’s conclusions contradict the academic consensus, Professor Radosh evidently considers this to be the end of the matter. The rest of his review is just a copy-paste of his usual comments on anything new anybody said or wrote about the Cold War in recent years (or at least, anything without a satisfactory number of Radosh quotations). As per usual, this book is another “yellow journalism conspiracy theory," it is McCarthyist, there is nothing really new in it, and academics know best.

This "review," with all its hatred and lies, comes as no surprise to those of us who have had the misfortune of hearing about Professor Radosh before. What is disquieting is the sight of the "conservative" crowd rushing into that campaign on sheer herd instinct, not only without reading the book, but apparently even without reading the Radosh review.

After all, its dishonesty is crying out to be noticed. It is dishonest to use meaningless labels in a debate. It is dishonest to attack anything whatsoever as "McCarthyist." It is dishonest to attack anything as a "conspiracy theory." So long as there are conspiracies in the world, a conspiracy theory may be perfectly true. It is a conspiracy theory that Al Qaeda organized the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and yet, it happens to be true. It was a conspiracy theory that the Nazi leaders plotted aggressive wars and genocide, but it was proven, and the conspirators went to the gallows. Unlike "academic consensus," conspiracy is a concept with a clear definition; so much so that prosecutors can prove conspiracy theories beyond reasonable doubt in court. Moreover, the criminal law concepts of conspiracy and complicity are not very far apart. Almost anything we say about communist crimes against humanity can be attacked as a conspiracy theory--and, as a rule, is attacked in these terms by Radosh & Co.

It is high time to stop dismissing things as conspiracy theories or accepting things as being consistent with the academic consensus. Some of us here are talking about truth and lies. And this, perhaps, is precisely what annoys the academics, whose monopoly on writing history depend upon the half-truths of the "consensus."...............

It is in the nature of a totalitarian regime to try and corrupt not only its own society, but anybody within its reach. This is how they conquer the world. Communism has corrupted greater men than a few arrogant academics. Indeed, the academics turned out to be one of the easier targets. As "Sovietologists" and "Kremlinologists," their position depended on their ability to travel to Moscow, and therefore, on KGB’s good will. Having now mutated into "Cold War historians," they are dependent on having such limited access to secret archives as Moscow would choose to grant them. As academics, they are committed to their own theories, true or false. As a ‘community’, they are bound together with their corrupt colleagues, and have to defend their collective monopoly against intruders. It is for a very long time that they have been no more than a self-serving nomenklatura, caring nothing about the truth, but only about their own elevated positions. Like politicians. Like the media. Like the rest of the modern world.

American Betrayal is a book about the origins of that corruption. No wonder it has been so popular with thousands of readers who are sick to death of today’s world with all its hypocrisy and lies, and long for an explanation of our moral crisis. Mrs. West sought an answer and found it. As a civilization, we have gone through a major moral disaster. We have been accomplices to mass murders. Moreover, we then tried to cover them up and to live on as if nothing happened. Without a reckoning, without so much as facing the truth about our history, we shall never recover:...............

Diana West, with her “reckless” discoveries, has jeopardized their comfortable world. Once you start talking about moral responsibility for crimes against humanity, what is left of that academic hair-splitting which has been the whole basis of their consensus, and their very existence? How great is a moral difference between an executioner and a mere conformist, between an agent and a sympathizer, between a "liberal" academic and a "conservative" one?

One thing that has particularly irritated the Consensus was Mrs. West’s comparison of America, governed by Soviet agents, to an occupied country. No wonder. If the country was occupied and governed by quislings, we have to stop talking about "spies" and instead have to talk about collaborationists. Any country that has done this in the past could not escape the conclusion that the entire Establishment, to a greater or lesser extent, had been responsible. And this is one conclusion which the entire Consensus had been working hard to avoid for the past 75 years.

While American Betrayal does reveal many little-known and interesting facts, Mrs. West is very far from claiming any credit for her discoveries. She pays excessive tribute to her academic sources. What she does say is that all those facts do not fit into the overall "conventional" theories of history; that the known facts invite very different conclusions from those we have been offered. The only role she claims is that of the child from Andersen’s fairy tale, pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes on, while the chamberlains still walk behind him bearing the train that isn’t there. She only claims “to connect the dots," which is a very modest description of the huge and brilliant work she has obviously done. Yet, it is a fairly accurate description of what the Learned Professors have obviously failed to do. No doubt, when they angrily protest that they had known all these facts all along, they are for once truthful. The sheer number of their academic degrees bears witness to their infinite knowledge. It is just that they lacked honesty and courage to tell us the truth.

Clearly, history is far too important to be left to the historians."

Angela Merkel Eschews German Flag at Election Celebration

There is very little that can be said about this, especially if the video has not yet been seen by the reader. I assure you it's very brief - less than ten seconds.

Hat to to Gates of Vienna-

http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/09/get-that-nasty-thing-out-of-here/


Now tell me, was that ugly or not?

Grossmutter's deportment is easy to understand even by the least observant of us. Handed the flag, she immediately gives what appears to be an almost reflexive shake of her head to indicate her disapproval of such an obsolete and inappropriate act of - God forbid, love of one's nation. As a Catholic, the best comparison that I can imagine would be handing a monstrance containing a consecrated host to an American Fundamentalist Christian and asking him if he would like to adore the Eucharist. Just as quickly, the old hag steps away to dispose of the offending symbol of an era better off forgotten. Returning, she feels that she has not made her point clearly enough to her colleague and engages in a more comprehensive gesture; she shakes her head with greater emphasis - this time showing even a greater sense of annoyance, and murmurs what in American English would likely be something to the effect of "What the F---- of wrong with you? - I can't believe that you did that. You ruined my celebration."

All of this from a leader of a political party that labels itself as Center-Right. 

Germans from Hermann to Bismark must be rolling over in their graves.

...and the excuses and praise will pour in-

    The Chancellor did not want to offend our citizens who do not identify themselves as Germans. She believes that such displays are a dangerous manifestations of nationalism. She did not desire to equate the CDU with rabid nationalism. Many ethnic Germans of the Green and other Leftist parties are opposed to displays of the flag........

We have very, very few elected officials in Western nations who have, or will allow displays of, any pride in their nation, its history, or (least of all) the people who created them.

This sort of act should not come as a surprise. We see similar attitudes  in the United States, but in Western Europe they who have been indoctrinated by their Leftist handlers in Academia are (admittedly barely) one step ahead of their rustic and less cosmopolitan cousins in America:

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2012/06/say-no-to-german-patriotism.html

"European football championship: The left says no to the German flag

Unfortunately the red-white-red flags are lacking on cars at the European football championship currently underway. The reason for this is not the lack of patriotism, for we (Austrians) are condemned to just watch it on TV.

In Germany this is completely different — our northern neighbor is as always joint favorite for the European championship title, and many Germans are also decorating their cars this year with the German flag:


It’s typical of Germany — many lefties disapprove of showing this patriotism. There are lots of photos on the internet about an action in which unknown people furiously break off the flags from the cars. Here you can read their reasons for this:"

[Photo of sign left on the cars on which flags were previously displayed is in the link above]

"Dear car driver (m/f)

I have taken away your German flag. No matter why you have attached this flag (to your car), this gives way in any case to nationalism.

No? of course it does!

This flag does not represent football or any team, but German identity.

Spare yourself your money, us the work, and nature the rubbish, and do not replace it with a new one!"


I'll ask the question again-

At what point will enough be enough for you?

In the US, a the new Chivalry -  the one what places the ruin of the family, murder of our unborn, the degradation of women, etc.,  in a position to be defended with a ferocity bordering on that of the Cherusci and their allies in the Teutoburger Wald, is plainly illustrated by the response of one particular gentleman (along with his Chatti allies) to the work of a campus pro-life group:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/28/man-to-college-pro-life-group-i-want-a-world-where-all-your-churches-burn/

“You’re in conflict with the world that I want which is a world where all your churches burn,” the student then tells the group. “And if we are ever strong enough, we are going to stop you.”

According to the email Students For Life sent out, another student also ripped out pink crosses they had placed in the ground that were supposed to symbolize the amount of “babies that Planned Parenthood kills each day.” The student allegedly shouted abortion “was awesome” as he removed the crosses."

Our response?

The Western churches utterly ignore the  heritage of the Western peoples who provided the Church with a safe place to develop and by their culture contributed to the formation (and outlook) of Western Christianity. Instead, while additionally dropping any old-fashioned talk of sin and redemption, they ally with the Left and focus almost solely on Social Justice.

The People of Western Europe who recognize that their national sovereignty and ethnic/cultural identities are being trampled underfoot ignore the role of the Church in forming even the secular character of their societies. They engage what will prove to be futile attempts to salvage their sovereignty restore their culture by either sticking to a strict secular program or  reversions to a pre-Christian pagan identity, such as that of the Thule Society. 

The rest are just too busy putting food on the table to be bothered.

People, if you want to lose this struggle, by all means continue working separately  and acting as if the other parties don't exist.

Syrian Town Cleansed of Non-Sunnis

While here in the US we breathed a sigh of relief at the knowledge that we took a step back from installing an Islamist government is Syria, the murderous rebels were still at work.

The murders, gang-rapes, and desecration of churches continues, but now  we have accounts that previously non-combatant Sunni Muslims have turned on their long-time neighbors and have guided the thugs into the town:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-crisis-in-sacred-maaloula-where-they-speak-the-language-of-christ-war-leads-neighbours-into-betrayal-883961

"The Diab family can never return to Maaloula. Not since the Christians of this beautiful and sacred town saw their Muslim neighbours leading the armed Nusrah Islamists to their homes. Georgios remembers how he peered over his balcony and saw Mohamed Diab and Ossama Diab and Yasser Diab and Hossam Diab and Khaled Turkik Qutaiman – all from Maaloula – walking in the street with men whom he said were dressed in Afghan-Pakistani clothes. “One of them had a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a sword in the other,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief.

Twenty years ago, identical tragedies destroyed the villages of Bosnia. Now they are being re-enacted in Syria. “We knew our Muslim neighbours all our lives,” Georgios says. He is a Catholic. “Yes, we knew the Diab family were quite radical, but we thought they would never betray us. We ate with them. We are one people.

“A few of the Diab family had left months ago and we guessed they were with the Nusra. But their wives and children were still here. We looked after them. Then, two days before the Nusra attacked, the families suddenly left the town. We didn’t know why. And then our neighbours led our enemies in among us.”......

Not one of the 5,000 Christian residents – nor a single member of the 2,000-strong Muslim community – has returned. Maaloula is, almost literally, a ghost town. Only Georgios and his friend Hanna and a few other local Christian men who joined the “national defence” units to defend their homes, are left. At least 10 Christians were murdered when the Nusra militia began its series of attacks on Maaloula on 4 September, some of them shot – according to Hanna – when they refused to convert to Islam, others dispatched with a knife in the throat. .........

Hanna says that before the war reached Maaloula this month, both Christians and Muslims agreed that the town must remain a place of peace. “There was a kind of coexistence between us,” Georgios agrees. “We had excellent relations. It never occurred to us that Muslim neighbours would betray us. We all said ‘please let this town live in peace – we don’t have to kill each other’. But now there is bad blood. They brought in the Nusra to throw out the Christians and get rid of us forever. Some of the Muslims who lived with us are good people but I will never trust 90 per cent of them again......
The problem, of course, is that there’s a simple military solution to Maaloula’s present agony: for the army to use shellfire from their Russian-made tanks to blow the caves to pieces. But that would only continue the destruction of the heritage of Maaloula, whose people still speak Aramaic, the language which scholars believe was spoken by Christ. Only five months ago, in an untouched Maaloula, I stood next to the church of Mar Taqla while a Catholic girl recited the Lord’s Prayer’s in Aramaic. No prayers now.

It is impossible, amid the bullet-whizzing streets of the town today, talking to armed Christians whose emotions are incendiary, to gather up the full – even accurate – story of the Maaloula tragedy. They say that the church of Mar Taqla has been badly damaged, the altarpiece smashed, Byzantine pictures destroyed, but even Syrian troops will not approach the monastery today. When they briefly tried to help some nuns return after the battle, they told me, Nusra snipers cut them down, many shot in the legs as they helped the nuns to run away.

Almost every soldier I met had been wounded. Lt Talal, who comes from Sweida, had been hit in both legs during the battles. Two Syrian soldiers were hit on Monday, one in the legs, another in the shoulder. From an earlier skirmish with Nusra men – apparently with another Diab brother – Georgios had been shot in the arm, legs and ribs, and one of his fingers had been torn off by a bullet.

The Nusra men seemed to take a perverse pleasure, not only in destroying Christian icons, but household beds and chairs, perhaps in a search for cash.

Even the exact number of deaths cannot be confirmed. But it is impossible to believe, after these sectarian wounds, that Maaloula can return as it was, a place of worship for Orthodox and Catholic but also, intriguingly, for Shia Muslims, many of them Iranians who used to visit the town to see its monasteries and Christian shrines.

A Syrian general tried to explain to me later that I was not witnessing a civil war, merely a “war against terror” – the stock government quotation – and that Syrians were not sectarian. “In Latakia, we have 200,000 Sunni Muslim refugees living among Christians and Alawites and there are no problems between them,” he said. This is true. And outside Maaloula, several civilians claimed that the Nusra forces which invaded the town – and which numbered 1,800 men, according to the Syrian army – also killed local Muslims......'

Here is a story that will not, save a pathetically few exceptions, be reported by the Western media  Al-Nusra not only slaughtering non-Sunnis - Christians, Alawites, and fellow Muslim  Shiites, but being led into town by its residents. Another facet of this story that will not be told - Syrian Army soldiers risking their  lives to help non-Muslim of all types escape the slaughter and refraining from the most effective means of  destroying the Al-Nusra thugs that are dug in in that area -they will not rain down artillery on the Al-Nusra positions because they want to avoid doing any more damage to the city.  

I am reminded  the the US Marines during failed NVA Tet offensive in Vietnam. The city of Hue was initially taken by the North Vietnamese, but the Marines were given orders to engage in urban combat., or house-to-house fighting, to avoid unnecessary damage to the numerous religious buildings in Hue. Neither the Marines nor the United States were given any credit for this move that risked lives to respect the faith of others, and I have no doubt that the world will be told nothing about the actions of the Syrian army. 

Assuming for the moment that the bulk of the Suuni Muslims residents of Maaloula did not have any intense hatred of their neighbors - whose families go back with their own for of multiple generations and probably did not all wake up one day deciding that they wanted all non-Sunnis out, I have simple explanation for their actions:

Islam is Fear.

The Sunni Muslims knew that they had a choice; to act in defense of their neighbors in the spirit of humanity or save themselves. The chose the latter. I have little doubt that word was sent to the Sunnis of Maaloula - "Help us, or when we enter your town, we will consider you to be non-Sunnis". 

It is the same fear that causes virtually every Muslim family to turn out for the next call for a mob. Danish cartoons, a Pope (Benedict XVI) simply noting that Islam was spread almost solely by war and conquest, wild claim that a Coptic women is being prevented by her family from concerting to Islam, that the Coptic Patriarch is trying to place Muslims under Christian rule, or any other reason to call for violence - "show up and act was we do or you will be next." ..."If you stay home we will assume that you are one of them."

This series of three posts says it more clearly and thoroughly than I ever could:

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/11/islam-is-fear-part-i.html

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/11/islam-is-fear-part-ii.html

I could only find Part III of this series on the following link:

http://europenews.dk/en/node/49342

There were more reports of carnage in Maaloula. It appears that the city was by no means a military target.

"ONE OF THOSE KILLED IN MA'LOULA: "I AM A CHRISTIAN, AND IF YOU WANT TO KILL ME FOR THIS, I DO NOT OBJECT TO IT"

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/64403.htm

http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-fight-assad-maaloula-alnusra/

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/09/we-knew-our-muslim-neighbours-all-our-liveswe-had-excellent-relations-it-never-occurred-to-us-that-m.html

Syria Analyst/Swindler Hired by McCain the Islamophile Warmonger

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/27/syria-analyst-fired-over-false-academic-creds-finds-new-employment-with/

About a month ago,analyst Elizabeth O-Bagy, who had  pulled the wool over the eyes of a lot of people, was found to be a fraud. Not that this should have come to a surprise to anyone; she was deliberately abusing the influence of her position to paint a very rosy picture of the Syrian rebels - recall that at the time the the Isamophiles in the US were clamoring for war against the Syrian government. In that climate, anyone, Leftist or innocent dupe, who would say what the warmongers wanted were getting lots of press coverage and influence with McCain&Co,. AKA - Obama's shameless thugs.

Another reason for a lack of surprise were her techniques for obtaining information. To do so, she used what she gleaned from a Facebook page of one of the groups. In any other country, what is taken off of a propaganda source, modern social media, Party poster/broadside/pamphlet, or radio broadcast would be sufficient cause for being laughed out of town. In the United States of today, well that's a different story - O'Bagy took what one rebel group said about themselves and proudly presented it as proof positive that these rebels were actually pretty nice guys who deserved our support. Wow, I never thought about asking people to just tell us if they are good guys or bad guys.

In the end, Ms. O' Bagy was discovered to have lied about her level of education and consequently was forced from her job. That wrinkle in her career was short; in time she obtained a new position as a reward for her lies. The filthily dishonest, "bomb-everyone" himself , The Honorable Senator John McCain of Arizona has acquired to services of ms. O'Bagy so that she will continue to have a platform to spew her propaganda. Here she will be able to ensure that  Christians will continue to be slaughtered and that sovereign nations will be undermined to facilitate the ultimate end of national governments - and not just in the Middle and Near East.

Why not? Our beloved Senator assures us that the rebels are a great group of guys:

http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/18/mccain-rejects-report-claiming-syrian-rebels-are-largely-jihadis/

Here is a lesson for us all. If a capable  individual wants no part of the political, university, and journalistic world, the place that an honest person could have taken will be filled by  someone whose only desire is to have power over others. People who themselves have an agenda, particularly one for Social Engineering and control in general, will not be satisfied with  being good citizens with productive jobs who have (true) sympathy for the defenseless, and an appreciation for the society in which they were born and bred . They will spend years sucking up to their co-conspirator Leftist professors in Academia to obtain recommendations for internships, where they begin again with spewing whatever garbage their new bosses want to hear; all for the chance to be an appendage of the Beast. They will, like Samantha Powers, assert that the United States has been "stingy" with foreign aid. They will, like Ms.O'Bagy, work tirelessly to promote the causes of groups that routinely slaughter helpless people.

All this to help The Cause - providing Islamists with the chance to unify former sovereign nation's in either a pan-Islamic confederation or a restored Caliphate and the weakening of Western nations to create the need for the (as they would say) end of the obsolete notion of nation-states.


"The men whom the people ought to choose to represent them are too busy to take the jobs.
But the politician [ Journalist/Academician/Social Engineer] is waiting for it.
He's the pestilence of modern times.
What we should try to do is make politics as local as possible.
Keep the politicians near enough to kick them.
The villagers who met under the village tree could also hang their politicians [Journalist/Academician/Social Engineer] to the tree.
It's terrible to contemplate how few politicians [Journalist/Academician/Social Engineer] are hung today." G.K. Chesterton

Breibart Writer Says Gay Marriage Will PREVENT Governmental Control

Now I've seen everything.- author unknown to me.

When people who are supposedly on your side in the fight to oppose the onslaught of the Progressive/Socialist movement use Orwellian language to promote a key facet of the agenda of the postilion, we are in terrible trouble. The writer in  Breibart, in an effort to restrict war on marriage to a religious issue, engages in the most convoluted reasoning that I have ever witnessed to argue that to support gay marriage is to oppose governmental control on the family:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/25/conservatives-who-hate-government-control-of-families-should-support-same-sex-marriage

"....Conservatives believe marriage and close families are a stabilizing influence in culture, the building block of communities. They are not wrong. But that makes opposition to recognizing same-sex marriages even stranger. New generations of gays and lesbians, with no loyalty or interest in the doctrine of the sexual revolution, seek this same stabilization. There isn’t some sort of a trick or a scam or scheme. Because of the progressive control of the argument, weighted words like “equality” and “fairness” set some conservatives on edge because those words have been corrupted over decades as a way to diminish others, the socialist idea of achieving these aims by taking property and freedoms away from others.

A conservative can accept gay marriage recognition and still resist such efforts from the left. Ultimately, the government should have as little say in your family’s relationship as it does in your education and what you do with your property. That the government ties up so many incentives and rights in marriage agreements should be troubling to conservatives. Marriage should be a private contract between consenting adults to tell the state the nature of their relationship with each other for legal purposes, not a permit from the state giving its stamp of approval on their relationship.

We define our families, not the government. Ultimately, the ceding of this power to government helped create this environment of subsidies, benefits (and even penalties) that have contributed to the twisted incentives conservatives rail against

The problem has always been too much government control, not too little. Intellectual consistency in the belief in small government mandates accepting the rights of families to organize themselves. Conservatives should resist the urge to try to use government authority to control family structures, because that power will always be subject to abuse by ideological opponents....."

That is far and away the most convoluted, backwards, Orwellian logic that I have ever seen. In order to oppose governmental control over families, support of same-sex marriage is exactly what must be avoided.

This very issue is the one that should provide impetus for religious and non-religious secular conservatives to unite. When a government takes upon itself the power to create institutions, especially in regards to ones that predate all governments by thousands of years, we have a dangerous precedent - one that poses a direct threat of governmental interference with the family. Allow the government to tell us that there is a new type of marriage, and we could find ourselves hit with even more intrusions on the family in coming years than we have now. The foot in the door of asserting a new and dangerously creative power of government sets us up for trouble. Governments are given the authority to regulate marriage to avoid abuses and to confine it to types that are germane to its inherent culture.That's why we don't allow underage brides, multiple brides, or still-married people to marry before obtaining a divorce. Marriage is an institution that falls within the Natural Law. An artificial construct that is the State cannot have, nor can it be allotted, the authority to create. The authority to create is the authority to severely restrict or to take away.

Even the Catholic Church, which is rightly or wrongly the most centrally organized body in Christianity and is criticized by Protestants for giving too much authority to the magisterium, freely admits that even it cannot forbid Catholics to be married without a priest. The quite-hierarchical Church will require a priest for five of its seven sacraments, but it freely admits that Baptism and Marriage do not have the absolute need for a Priest. No Priests around or coming soon? That did not stop Tokugawa- suppressed Japanese Catholics nor would it stop marriages today.The Catholic Church did not regularly perform marriages until around (estimating at the moment) the 11th century. If a strictly centralized organization such as the Catholic Church that requires Priests for most everything effectively admits that it does not have some lock on marriage on its own members, then it follows that the Church knows that its authority does not include a defining authority over marriage itself.

The demands of the radial gay faction and their Leftist allies who want nothing more than overreaches of governmental authority are resulting in - yes Liberals, lots of wins, but at what cost even for you guys? We are being rent in two with vicious thuggery on the part of gay marriage supporters on one side, and the even more vicious Westboro Baptist Boys on the other. What are Liberals going to do if people start leaving liberal states at an even faster rate than now, coalesce in a state or two, and start a real legal war in which fake marriages are not given the legislative play-act of recognition? Are you OK with what can follow that? I assure you it won't be anything like when artificial laws such as those that requires segregation existed; an issue of governmental control on marriage and by extension the family will be very hard to solve with federalization of the National Guard and DHS police/troops.

-The purpose of gay marriage is to establish full governmental control of society and all of its people.

Think about it. If the State can force people to act as if a government can bring the impossible into existence, and force everyone to go along with it, then what is it incapable of doing or forcing? If a society accepts that the State can conjure up institutions by going through the motions of making laws, what can stop them from removing rights or creating others that infringe on the Liberties of the rest of the people?"

Pope Francis Bringing Church, Western Nations Potential Trouble

I will start with my usual clarifying statements that I am a lifelong practicing Catholic that has supported the Church on all (the sinful past indifference to the existence of pedophile priests excepting) of her doctrines, disciplines, and practices.

With the comments Pope Francis made last week that effectively told the world that the Church should not talk about (did he mean ignore?) the societal threats posed by abortion and the radical gay agenda still being quite warm, however, the loquacious Pope commenced to open his mouth yet again. The preceding of course came after his questionable activity of flaunting church practice such as with his flippant choice of garb in his installation in office and washing the feet of a girl in a solemn portion of the Holy Thursday liturgy. This time he not only tells westerners that we have no right to determine who or how many people should be allowed to enter our countries, but he also implied that our concerns about the effects of rampant immigration are irrational.

I would welcome his words if he urged the developed countries to increase their assistance of agricultural development such as irrigation, soil improvement, and drought/disease resistant crops. He could have added that we would do well to improve access to water and provide jobs by building production facilities of any type in underdeveloped nations.

All of these would would be more in line with Christian principles than merely telling people that the right to property, with that of national sovereignty and cultural identity naturally following, essentially mean nothing. It would also be of far more benefit to help them from a position of - of not prosperity, which is fast leaving Western nations, at least of having more than what is necessary; a key acquirement for those who are called upon to help others rather than from a position of forced, mutually-shared ruin.

I respect the call to end what amounts to slavery in many nations, but Pope Francis is taking the position of the Left by having us infer that we have no right or reasons for our concerns.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/24/us-pope-refugees-idUSBRE98N0CT20130924

"Pope Francis urged countries on Tuesday to welcome and respect migrants and refugees and not treat them as "pawns on the chessboard of humanity".

Francis, who has made the defense of the poor and vulnerable a cornerstone of his papacy, said in a message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees that there should be a change in attitude on the part of host countries......

"They are children, women and men who leave or who are forced to leave their homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having, but above all for being more."...........

Immigration is a divisive issue in Europe and beyond. France's far-right National Front, which has an anti-immigrant policy, has been buoyed by improving poll numbers.

Italy's first black minister, Cecile Kyenge, who was born in Africa, has been the butt of racist comments from the anti-immigrant Northern League because she supports automatic citizenship for immigrant children born in Italy.

The steady flow of refugee boats is a also hot issue in Australia, polarizing voters this month's election.

The pope, whose own ancestors left Italy for Argentina in the early 20th century and lived through the Great Depression, called for "the elimination of prejudices and presuppositions" in the approach to migration.

"Not infrequently, the arrival of migrants, displaced persons, asylum-seekers and refugees gives rise to suspicion and hostility. There is a fear that society will become less secure, that identity and culture will be lost, that competition for jobs will become stiffer and even that criminal activity will increase," he said.......

["Yes, your Holiness, that is correct, but our concerns are not petty, nor are they without cause. They are derived from what we are already experiencing now. These are not irrational fears, they are realizations that everything that you mention is happening as we speak".]

In July, Francis chose Lampedusa, the tiny island off Sicily that has been the first port of safety for untold thousands of migrants crossing by sea from North Africa seeking a better life in Europe, as the place for his first trip outside Rome to draw attention to the plight of refugees.

[The choice of Lampedusa was ironic as he island has been swarmed by migrants for at least two years. These have,  in addition to seriously straining the ability of the Italian government provide for them, have often enraged in violent activity in the refugee centers, including numerous acts of arson]

"A change of attitude towards migrants and refugees is needed on the part of everyone, moving away from attitudes of defensiveness and fear, indifference and marginalization - all typical of a throwaway culture - towards attitudes based on a culture of encounter, the only culture capable of building a better, more just and fraternal world," he said in the message.

Earlier this month, when he visited a refugee center in Rome, Francis said disused church buildings should be used to house asylum-seekers."

[Well, the latter is just a great idea. Why don't we just plaster over the mosaics and frescoes, remove the statuary and stained glass, and just turn them over to Muslims for new Mosques? That's something for which Europe has a pressing need]

I am beginning to come to the belief that Pope Francis has all the makings of a train wreck; not the old-fashioned type mind you, but one that involves high-speed trains.

Pope Francis, even though he hails from Argentina, cannot be unaware of the situations in Western Europe, Australia and the United States. Western Europe is in grave danger of losing what makes it Western Europe - a region populated by peoples whose relatively common culture, history, and even religion* have enabled them to develop along certain lines and create societies that have characteristics unlike those in any other region of the world. The Left-induced deluge of immigrants from  Muslim countries has introduced an intrusive element - one that has a incredibly long history of invading and subjugating Christian-held lands, has brought places like Germany to the point in which (along with mind-boggling amounts of horrific violent crime in all of Western Europe) ethnic Germans children are now a tiny minority in some elementary schools. These new 'minority in the land of the ancestors' children are, in addition to being routinely harassed, commonly called "pork gobblers" by their fellow Muslim students. The US, Canada and other daughter nations of the UK have similar foundations and, while their stations are not yet as drastic as that of Western Europe, these too are in danger of being slowly marginalized to the point of eventual nonexistence.

(*Few realize that the old Mainline Protestation churches have more in common in doctrine and practice with Catholicism than they do with the Evangelical/Fundamentalist brand of Christianity. I have done other posts on that subject. One example-  http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/03/evangelicals-erase-term-easter.html )

It does not take a combined mathematician/anthropologist to understand that a nation or region can only absorb an amount of newcomers from quite different cultures that allows for real integration into the host society. If Vietnam began to allow all Chinese who desired to live in that country to enter unchecked, in time that nation would be far more sinicized than it was in the late middle ages-early modern era from Chinese influence/political domination. Keep that pace up and eventually Vietnam itself becomes a name that has virtually no meaning. 

Pope Francis, with all of his (possibly - we'll have to make a decision on that when we have more evidence), good intentions, seems to ignore that the very culture of Western Europe was an appreciable factor in making  the Catholic Church what it is today. Sure, Kata and Holos, (Koine?) Greek for "thorough and whole" means "universal", but to take the term universal and knowingly gloss over the fact that the Church has elements that simply would not exist had it not been given all the breathing space that it had (snug in the bosom of the Western world) is to play the same game as a Marxist. The latter starts off with the presumption that certain periods are needed for development of a society and that, once it reaches a certain point, it can be maintained forever while casting off all of the elements that came together to create that society. "Year Zero" is the aim of Marxists - the determination that everything that occurred before the here and now has no purpose and must be discarded.  

While the Western Church was protected by the civil arm of Western Europe, the nations of the Eastern churches bore the brunt of the frontier fight (acting also as a buffer for the West) and ultimately succumbed to Islamic domination (excepting the Russians who had the Mongols) . These societies have never fully recovered from those centuries of oppression and despoliation . Western Europeans, after a lot of fits and starts, were able to check the Islamic advance in the Iberian peninsula, Sicily, and other Muslim-held regions and in time retake them. It was in this climate that the Western Church, born of a religion coming from Judaism and with contributions of Greek thought, was preserved and able to prosper. Politically too the Western Church owes to Western hisyory her independence from the state. The situation in Western Europe, having no permanent presence of a central political power in Italy, enabled the Western Church to assert herself in a manner that would be utterly foreign to the Patriarchs of the Eastern churches, who were quite subordinate to the Emperor in Constantinople. 

Pope Francis would do far better to work to bring about, as did his predecessor, a new evangelization to Western Europe - one that allows Western Europeans and Western nations to return to the common Christian roots. Such a move would be followed by calls for true charity - the type that helps people without submerging the societies that provided the environment in which the Church forged much of her identity.   

How about the wealth of the Church? Well, he could see the treasures sold off at auction, which would bring enough money to feed the poor in Bangladesh (Which could use some petrodollar help from the Gulf States) for maybe a year. Then what?

The European "far-right" noted in the article has been pushed into its own corner by complicity with the Left of  the Catholic and Protestant churches of Western Europe. With their Churches ignoring the most crucial aspects of Christianity - mans' fall, sin and the redemptive work of Christ, and the pretending that the Churches' protector - the Western world, is no longer needed, patriotic Europeans are trying to reclaim their heritage and societies while living in a state of atheism, rabid secularism, or even a reversion to the old European paganism (Thule Society and such). Just as the Church would be utterly different without Western Europe, so too would be Western Europe without the influence of the Church. This is patently obvious, as is the understanding  that a prosperous and strong Western Europe would never have come to be in a climate of competing pagans adhering to the old ways of cattle raiding and blood-feud. But alone these people are, ignored by the Church.

The loss of this symbiotic relationship is almost never discussed.   

I strongly recommend  consideration be given to reading Jean Raspail's The Camp of the Saints. Having three children of half-Korean ancestry, I had to push my way through some of the attitudes of the third -person narration, but the overall message is too important to ignore - The peoples of Western Europe and the nations that developed largely from its progeny are in a state of paralysis of guilt and fear of being labeled as racist. A failure to address these fears could easily result in the end of the West an an identifiable entity, and the Western Church along with it. Submerged the cultural identity of Western peoples enough and the result will be a Socialist world that has no need for a Church that gave up concentrating on preaching the message of sin and redemption to focus almost solely on Social Justice. 

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/08/illegals-turning-us-into-camp-of-saints.html


The following two posts concern my proposal for American Catholics to deal with the political  intrusion of the Church on our society, but it would work for Western Europe as well. The full post is in the Gates of Vienna link with some excerpts in the link below.

http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/09/the-secession-of-a-pleb/#more-30465

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/09/catholic-proposes-strike-against.html

Kerry to Sign UN Small Arms Treaty

As my youngest is a high school senior, I had what was my last back-to-school night for parents this evening and got back late. This post will be short.


Knowing fully well that the chance having sufficient votes the US Senate to approve the UN Small Arms Treaty, Obama is having his stooge sign on to it anyway.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/24/kerry-to-sign-un-arms-treaty-despite-senators-opposition/

"Secretary of State John Kerry plans to sign a controversial U.N. treaty on arms regulation on Wednesday, a senior State Department official told Fox News -- despite warnings from lawmakers that the Senate will not ratify the agreement. 

A State official said the treaty would "reduce the risk that international transfers of conventional arms will be used to carry out the world's worst crimes," while protecting gun rights.

"The treaty builds on decades of cooperative efforts to stem the international, illegal, and illicit trade in conventional weapons that benefits terrorists and rogue agents," the official said.

U.S. lawmakers, though, have long claimed that the treaty could lead to new gun control measures. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., one of the most vocal opponents of the treaty, sent a letter to Kerry declaring it "dead in the water," since a majority of senators has gone on record against the agreement.

"The administration is wasting precious time trying to sign away our laws to the global community and unelected U.N. bureaucrats," he wrote......."

On the surface, the UN Small Arms Treaty, as with most methods of state control over private individuals and businesses, looks like a good thing. Few would argue that the transfers of military equipment to rogue states and terror groups should continue unabated. But as we have seen with other international agreements, the treaty  has more than its share of provisions that would enable national governments to several restrict the ownership and transfer (read sales between individuals - a key freedom that the Left despises) of privately-owned firearms. It also leaves room to  clamp down on types of firearms that the Left certainly wants the People to be without. 

In a best-case scenario for the Left, the US would ban privately owned guns. The second choice would be a US that is transformed into a UK-type climate in which the approval to own a firearm itself would be an extremely difficult thing to obtain and the few types of firearms that are not prohibited would be restricted  to hunting and small-bore target guns. Handguns and semiautomatic rifles would be out of the question. What is allowed will be so restricted as to be impossible to transfer to anyone without a recorded transfer at the hands of a retail dealer - sales or gifts to family members or others who are legally allowed to own guns would become a thing of the past. By this means, what guns are privately owned would dwindle in number down to almost zero as older citizens die off. A key will be requirements that nations create registries of firearms, a nice way of saying registration - the first move of all who plan on implementing full-blown totalitarianism. 

Regulations such as those in the Small Arms Treaty provide governments with the power to enact much more stringent laws, all while assuring the People that it is not their doing but only what they are required to do by the treaty - a classic case of plausible deniability.  

There is one possibility that, even without a yes vote from the Senate, the treaty can still at some point effect Americans. I can't find it right now, and it's too late to try to find (will add tomorrow if my search is successful) but from what I understand, international law provides a fail-safe provisions that deems the treaty as binding as long as nations that have signed on have been putting the required regulations/laws into practice for a set period of time. From what I recall the number may be five years. That is, if the US enforces the treaty, it will be considered as binding on the United States - a way of forcing the treaty on us through the 'back door' and going around our Constitutional process. 

 

Establishment Republicans Attacking Ted Cruz

The envy and fear someone who does his job, when you do not, can be a powerful motivator.

What has been done to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, by his Republican colleagues no less, is nothing short of reprehensible. When an elected official has the courage and fortitude to fight what is presented to us as the inevitable by career politicians who could not care less about what happens to our nation in the long term, the apparatchiks will lash out.  The few who are willing ton run this gauntlet will be subjected to merciless and shameful  attacks by they who would be complicit with the Left.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/22/Palin-to-Chris-Wallace-Release-Names-of-Top-Republicans-Who-Encouraged-You-to-Trash-Cruz

"On Sunday, Wallace said that establishment Republicans are so worked up that Cruz is leading the defund Obamacare fight that he immediately got unsolicited questions and research on Cruz from "top Republicans" before Cruz's appearance.

In an appearance on Washington D.C.'s Fox 5 to preview his Sunday show, Wallace said, "I will tell you I have never in my time in Washington seen a party so upset with one of its own members."..........

[Sarah Palin's words] "Welcome to our world, Ted. The same people have been denouncing conservatives like me for years (right after they ask for help fundraising for themselves or endorsing the latest candidate they’ve suckered into paying their exorbitant consulting fees). We can compare shiv marks next time we meet, my friend."

She also wrote about the "gutless" and "rudderless" permanent political class:

Those of us who hang in there supporting a major political party with our energy, time, and contributions would like to believe that that party would praise principled conservatives like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee for following through on campaign promises. We’d like to believe that the GOP establishment would applaud the way these bold leaders have rallied the grassroots to their cause. But, no, such praise would require a commensurate level of guts and leadership, and the permanent political class in D.C. is nothing if not gutless and rudderless."

[Video in below link]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/22/chris-wallace-top-republicans-sent-me-opposition-research-on-ted-cruz-to-hammer-him-with/

"........Many top Republicans are upset that Cruz is threatening to filibuster if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reinserts funding for Obamacare, after the House stripped the money from a recently passed continuing resolution bill, Wallace said.

“This has been one of the strangest weeks I’ve ever had in Washington,” Wallace said. “As soon as we listed Ted Cruz as our featured guest this week, I got unsolicited research and questions, not from Democrats but from top Republicans, to hammer Cruz.”

The Left has got to be rejoicing with the knowledge that their supposed opponents are so fearful of losing their influence (and possibly their positions) that they will attack members of their own party.

And, if that was not enough, the war monger, amnesty peddler, Obamacare-submitting John McCain is so incensed at Cruz for refusing to meekly submit as did he that the Arizona Senator has, by manifesting his resentment and envy, admitted his own guilt:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/23/which-longtime-gop-senator-apparently-fking-hates-ted-cruz/

“He f***ing hates Cruz,” an adviser to Sen. McCain told GQ’s Jason Zengerle. “He’s just offended by his style.”

-Words of wisdom from The New Jersey Patriot:

http://newjerseypatriotblog.newjerseypatriot.us/?p=2849

"It’s about time that Ted Cruz and his allies in Congress considered joining the American Conservative Party. There is no longer any question that the GOP has abandoned them. They do not agree on Syria, Benghazi, Common Core, Agenda 21, Obamacare and so much more. In fact there is downright hostility. The American Conservative Party’s philosophy is much more in line with these patriotic congressional conservatives......

Doing this sets up a few opportunities.

1) It allows for election of local officials on the ACP ticket. People would be willing to “vote the line” with a person like Cruz at the top.

2) It allows for a true conservative to run for President without having to be bashed in a GOP primary battle. Assuming there is money available, they would have a lot more time to make their case to the American people. Would they take votes away from the GOP in a general election? Perhaps, but if we run in targeted states, like Texas or Utah, it is possible for someone like Cruz to win a few electoral votes. In a close election, this would throw the decision to Congress. There, we might not have enough votes to win but we would have enough to have leverage over the GOP.

Think of it… this is the time to act."

There is more in the New jersey Patriot link just above the excerpt.

This type of attack by the entrenched elite is not new - in March of this year, another filibuster drew the ire of the worthless dead-weights:

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/03/republican-establishment-gangs-up-on.html


"Following the conclusion of Sen. Rand Paul’s nearly 13-hour filibuster of the White House’s secretive drone program, GOP senators Lindsay Graham (S.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.) took the opportunity to deride his efforts as absurd and “not helpful.”

“I don’t think that what happened yesterday is helpful to the American people,” Sen. McCain said after reading aloud a Wall Street Journal editorial that characterizes Sen. Paul’s concerns as “ridiculous.”...........
The old guard/establishment wing of the Republican party exemplifies why the people stay away from national elections. Not content with having engaged in a wholesale abandonment of American principles of government (And any preservation of American culture), the has-beens (or maybe never-was'es) have refused to support the young and virile defenders of our Republic.

This is the opposite of, for example, a Major League Baseball team. There, the old veterans deserve to be admired by the rookies who grew up watching their heroes on TV and seeing them at the ballparks. The new guys know what the vets have accomplished, want to learn from them how to play better and to win, and have every reason to accept their leadership. One almost never hears of a rookie in the MLB who scoffs at the old guys; they revere the men. They want to hear them recount their experiences and exploits for their teams and the game as a whole. In short, the rookies know that the vets still want to play the game the right way and that they have the same goal - for their team to win.

In turn, the veterans, knowing that they too were once new guys, full of piss and vinegar and eager to do their part, welcome the new blood and recognize that new guys can contribute in ways in which age 30-plus players cannot. They play harder, miss less games, throw harder, have better range in the field and are faster with the bat and on the bases. The new guys play the game like they did when they were twelve years old back in Little League, with a fire in their bellies than cannot be extinguished. The vets respect that determination and intensity and seek to cultivate and encourage rather than suppress or mock these. They look at the news guys, are reminded how motivated they were in their youth, and are thankful for the presence of the hard-chargers. When the team wins a nail-biter in the last inning, the youthful enthusiasm of the rookies rubs off on the veterans, and the whole team benefits.

Rand Paul made a brave, exhausting, and impassioned move. For that he is disparaged by the men who should be commending him for doing what they no longer have the drive, courage, and/or ability to do. I cannot fathom how the entrenched elite of the party were not inspired by his actions, did not feel proud of him, and were not sobered by the implicit reminder of their own inaction They should have been slapping Paul on the back, telling him how much they respect his efforts, and assuring him that he has their support.

From what I gathered, they weren't even there for most of the filibuster.

I personally do not believe that the Republican Part can be salvaged but if I am wrong, the future is with guys like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. The new will have no choice but to brush the doddering, cowed, and lazy old guard of the GOP aside and take their places as the leaders in the restoration of American government and virtues.

Activists Checked by IDF Cry Foul

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/22/israel-blamed-for-manhandling-french-female-diplomat-but-video-appears-to-show-the-woman-threw-punch/


another verse of the same song. 
-Colin McEvedy

In a repeat performance of past publicity/drama-creating sideshows, activists who had been working under the banner of the EU (in American football parlance)  'ran their standard play'. The idea is to bring lots of video crews, show up at a location in which IDF soldiers or Israeli police would be required to stop them, deliberately use provocative language and initiate physical confrontations, have the video crews be highly selective in what footage they capture (read - don't press "record" until your guys have already done most of their work), then broadcast to the entire world the purported brutality of the Israelis.

This appears to be nothing more than a slightly different version of the 2010 supposed (not fully recalling the name) 'bicycle tour for peace' where many if the participants/demonstrators tried to press their way through Israeli lines and assaulted IDF soldiers. The footage of course picks up only after the initial altercation, so we only see IDF soldiers knocking back the demonstrators.

In this case, however, one of the demonstrators/activists seemed to have forgotten the plan and (admittedly ineffectual) punched one of the soldiers.

For the most part, though, the probable Leftists (how many Pro-Palestinian European activists are not Leftists?) got what they wanted - media outlets all over the world telling us how badly these poor people who juts came to help were treated.

Video is in the link.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/22/israel-blamed-for-manhandling-french-female-diplomat-but-video-appears-to-show-the-woman-threw-punch/

"The media were quick to draw conclusions about an incident that took place in the West Bank on Friday during which Israel Defense Forces (IDF) apparently tried to stop a truck carrying tents meant to rebuild Bedouin shacks in Khirbet Al-Meiteh that had been demolished after an Israeli court determined they had been illegally constructed.

In addition to the Palestinian activists traveling with the materials, at least one European diplomat was present when the IDF’s effort to stop the truck turned into a scuffle, including the reported use of stun grenades. Multiple news agencies wrote that diplomats were “manhandled,” but the video of the event does not appear to show that. In fact, at least one diplomat threw a punch at Israeli soldiers.

Reuters reported that European Union diplomats had been “manhandled” by IDF soldiers.

Russia Today also said that diplomats were “manhandled” while “trying to deliver emergency aid.”

Business Insider’s headline blared “Wild Photos Show Israeli Defense Forces Manhandling Diplomats In The West Bank,” but its attached photo essay shows no diplomats being touched, let alone “manhandled.” Rather, it shows two images of the French diplomat on the ground with soldiers holding their guns and standing over her and two photos of another unidentified man in a scuffle with the troops........

According to the IDF’s version of events, “Palestinian and foreign activists violently objected, throwing stones and striking Israeli security forces. The security personnel contained the violence with riot dispersal means, seized the tents and detained three Palestinians who were the main instigators, forcefully objecting to the activity.”...........

But the IDF says it’s investigating if diplomats “abused their diplomatic privileges” and “if required, complaints will be filed with the relevant authorities.”.........

But, according to the IDF, the photo “was taken as a screenshot from a video with footage clearly showing that Marion Castaing was neither physically dragged to the floor nor had guns pointed at her. Also, the photo clearly shows that the officer is holding his gun by the magazine, nowhere near the rifle’s grip.” The IDF posted a photo on its blog that sketched the angle at which the rifle was held to try to demonstrate it was not pointed at Castaing’s head. TheBlaze is unable to verify that claim......."

So, here is the summary:

An Israeli court rules that Bedouin shacks were not constructed legally (I'm sure that Bedouins routinely file all necessary paperwork and would never occupy land that they did not own) and the structures are subsequently razed. The EU, apparently operating under the assumption that they can overrule decisions of Israeli judges, decide to make big show of having their diplomats accompany those bringing tents to rebuild the illegal structures. When an attempt is made to stop the truck carrying the materiel, the participants force their way through the line of soldiers. The video footage, as expected, begins after the initial physical confrontations. We are then are treated to the chorus of multiple media outlets who, with a  precision of the United States Marine Corps Silent Drill Team,  break out with a coordinated barrage of the exact pre-planned verbiage to describe the event.

Does anyone see the similarity to the methods used by American Democrats and their allies in the Liberal press?  When we are subjected to week's worth of claims from multiple sources  of the Republican "War on Women", the even more bizarre claim that Conservatives are responsible for the bankruptcy of the City of  Detroit, or any other wild assertion that is deployed on cue, we are not witnessing people who are at a loss for words and thus have to copy what others say. What happens is an operation that is coordinated to the point that the descriptions of the event will be settled on by the planners either before the event occurs or immediately after. What we get is the incessant Orwellian pounding of what amounts to a propaganda of labels. They do this because, for many of us, it works. Come Monday morning, Americans will speak of the Israeli soldiers as brutal thugs who beat - diplomats of all things, who were only there to help the oppressed Bedouins.