http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/its-the-iranian-constitution-stupid Announcing the November 24th agreement between Iran and the P5 plus 1, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly touted that the world is now safer. As Neville Chamberlain, ridiculed by Adolph Hitler as “that silly old man,” eventually found out, it was the leadership, not the piece of paper, that […]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/harvey-klehr/setting-the-record-on-joe-mccarthy-straight/print/
Harvey Klehr’s note: The talk printed below was delivered at the Raleigh Spy Conference in 2005 and new archival materials uncovered in the past eight years would lead me to make a number of small changes to various parts.
Rather than make alterations, however, I would simply note that several of the people whom I say are unidentified have been identified – including the two atomic spies, Quantum and Fogel.
I would refer interested readers to Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, that I co-authored with John Haynes and Alexander Vassiliev for the details. It turns out that Senator McCarthy did identify a few additional Soviet spies – but only a few – and I feel no need to change the assessment of him that I offered then.
*Was Joe McCarthy Right?
I am tempted to start my talk by saying: “I have here in my hands a list of names.” That, of course, was the phrase made famous by Senator Joseph McCarthy, who built his political career in the early 1950s, the history books tell us, on exaggerating the extent of Communist subversion of American life. He also gave his name to a phenomenon that has become a term of opprobrium in American political life. To accuse someone of McCarthyism or to label a person a McCarthyite is not to issue a compliment. The implication is that a person so named has made scurrilous and unwarranted accusations and is engaged in unethical and sleazy maneuvers. The late Senator from Wisconsin even gave his name to the period. The McCarthy era is commonly depicted as one where America, consumed by a paranoid and irrational fear of domestic communism, went on a witch-hunt. In fact, the one work of literature that virtually every very high school student in American will read is Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, an account of the Salem witch trials, in which the main character is pushed and pressed to name his fellow citizens as witches. John Proctor’s refusal to falsely implicate innocent people leads to his own condemnation and execution. Miller wrote his play during the heyday of McCarthyism and consistently maintained that it should be read as a parable of what happens when a community begins searching for and persecuting heretics.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/banned-from-britain-for-supporting-israel/print/ New revelations about why I was banned from entering Great Britain reveal how deeply compromised the British government is to hard-Leftists and Islamic supremacists – including the most virulent haters of Israel. As faithful FrontPage readers may recall, last June I was banned from Britain because, as a letter from the U.K. Home Office […]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/civilization-and-the-knockout-game/ The Jewish part of Crown Heights is a narrow island a handful of blocks in length and width. Walk one block out of the way and you’re suddenly in a dangerous neighborhood The names, Empire Boulevard, President Street, Eastern Parkway, Montgomery Street, reflect an old vanished grandeur. The men in top hats and tails […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/state-dept-undermines-us-doctrine/?print=1 On Monday, the State Department called on China to withdraw the rules it imposed when announcing its East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone. “The fact that China’s announcement has caused confusion and increased the risk of accidents only further underscores the validity of concerns and the need for China to rescind the procedures,” […]
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/12/03/common-core-assignment-makes-parents-identify-whether-they-are-liberal-or-conservative/?print=1
Common Core Assignment Makes Parents Identify Whether They Are ‘Liberal’ or ‘Conservative’
AND…creepier.
An assignment sent home from an Oak Forest, IL high school government class is raising eyebrows among parents who are shocked by the questionnaire they and their children are required to fill out. The questionnaire (below) has the parents identify their positions on a number of highly-charged issues, and then places them on a “political spectrum”.
The survey is part of Oak Forest High School’s Common Core curriculum, which according to the school district’s website is to …”provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them.”
There is a screenshot of the questionnaire at the link, as well as the lesson’s purported objectives, all of which could ostensibly be taught without hitting the parents with what looks like a political party fundraising survey.
It’s not a stretch to believe that the agenda here from the Common Core overlords is insidiously political when you remember that these are the people who used sentences like “Government officials’ commands must be obeyed by all” in an English lesson.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/chinese-power-play/
China’s establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over most of the East China Sea on November 23 erases any doubt about the international community and the U.S.’s long-standing efforts to persuade China to become a “stakeholder” in the international order. These efforts have failed at a major juncture of what constitutes international order: the right of innocent passage through international waters and airspace.
China has been contesting territorial claims of various of its neighbors in the South and East China Seas for years now — with Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan, to name a few. But China’s newly declared ADIZ should not be confused with an attempt to increase security. It is, rather, a power play aimed at establishing the subordination of neighboring states, extending China’s territorial reach in other disputed areas, and the narrowing of legitimate South Korean and Japanese Air Defense Identification Zones which are now intersected by China’s, and about which no previous dispute existed.
The contest with Japan over the Senkaku Islands, located in the East China Sea, is a proximate cause of China’s most recent action. The newly announced Chinese Air Defense Identification Zone is a polygonal shape that extends eastwards from a point north of Shanghai deep into the East China Sea and parallels the Chinese coast at a distance of about 400 miles closing back toward the mainland just north of Taiwan. China will require aircraft that pass through this zone to identify themselves or face what government spokesman Qin Gang said was “an appropriate response according to the different circumstances and the threat level that it might face.” This is a not-so-veiled warning that China may use military force to assert its claim. The Chinese have no legal basis to make this demand of aircraft that transit international waters. It is as though the U.S. were to extend the limit of North American airspace by several hundred miles and demand that aircraft — including commercial aviation — that pass through it identify themselves or risk being forced to land, or more dire consequences.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12/grooming_gangs_and_sharia.html Muslims groups around the world are crying Islamophobia and playing the victim card as horrific Islamic-motivated crimes, such as grooming and rape-gangs, rage on with impunity throughout the Western world, especially in Europe. Rape or grooming gangs, which are almost entirely Muslim, are committing a crime that is religiously mandated in Islamic doctrine. Muslim […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/365404/print Bob Fu’s new book, God’s Double Agent, tells of his fight for Christians’ freedom in China. Pondering the plight of the people of China, one’s head can start spinning. The stories of oppression — including imprisonment and executions; citizens simply “disappearing”; dissidents undergoing torture, beatings, and intimidation; and absolute control of just about every aspect of everyday life — seem […]
“But Mr. Hannan shouldn’t be faulted for his optimism—particularly given the gravity of his book’s central argument: that the survival of democratic self-governance, individual rights and economic freedom depends largely on the choices made today by the world’s English-speaking cousins.’
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303789604579200063693919116?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecondBucket
I am reading this wonderful book…Daniel Hannan could write about 50 ways of cooking kale and it would be delightful….rsk
Years ago, when I was an American student in Edinburgh, I had a long conversation about British foreign affairs with another student—an Italian—and remember finding it slightly amusing that he kept referring to the British as “your cousins.” I had never thought much about the political and cultural ties binding the U.S. and Great Britain and was at the time more keenly aware of the differences between the two peoples than of their essential sameness. But as Daniel Hannan observes in “Inventing Freedom,” his history of the principles and institutions that have defined English-speaking nations, non-English speakers much oftener think of the U.S. and Britain as a single entity than as two countries. When French political commentators and European Union officials complain about “Anglo-Saxon” values—liberalized labor markets, low taxes—they are coming closer to the truth than Americans and Britons typically realize.
Mr. Hannan’s book is more than intellectual history; it’s also an argument and a plea. The principles of representative democracy, individual liberty and property rights aren’t the products of some general European phenomenon called “capitalism,” he says, and any belief that they are owes more to Karl Marx than to the historical record. These principles originated in pre-Norman England, were realized fully in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and spread as English speakers left the British Isles to colonize the New World, India, East Asia and Australia.
