RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/fear-and-loathing-are-the-new-freedoms

Imagine that Lionsgate Television serialized Jack Abbott’s In the Belly of the Beast, shot it as a “comedy-drama” in the spirit of Mork and Mindy, complete with humorous but serious lessons in life and prolonged observations on human behavior, sans laugh tracks and yuks. Then you’d have the overall flavor of Orange Is the New Black, a Netflix featured series about a woman’s time in a federal minimum security prison.

Jack Abbott, for those who are unfamiliar with the name, was a convicted murderer whose 1981 book about the cruelty of prison life became a bestseller and was championed by those literary lights, Norman Mailer, Jerzy Kosinki, and Susan Sarandon. Prison, averred Abbott, was but a reflection of America society in general. He blamed it for what he was.

Taylor Schilling, whose last major role was as a fashion-challenged and acting-deficient railroad executive, Dagny Taggart, in a skewed, bizarre, and often esoteric production of Ayn Rand’s prophetic novel, Atlas Shrugged, plays Piper Chapman, a kind of conflicted Mindy, a blonde, blue-eyed inmate sent up for fifteen months for drug trafficking. She is based on the real-life Piper Eressea Kerman, also a vacuous nonentity on whose memoir, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Woman’s Prison, the series is based, who was also indicted for the same offenses.

Chapman is sent to federal prison for fifteen months for transporting a suitcase full of drug money for Alex Vause, a lesbian and an international drug smuggler and Chapman’s former lover. In the series, Vause also appears in Litchfield Prison, a very convenient plot development, because if she didn’t show up to confront Chapman about her sexual proclivities, and to finally “break up” with Chapman, the series would only be half the length it is.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/did-uncle-sam-leave-15000-to-20000-gis-in-stalins-hands

This is the fifth and final part in a series of five parts at Breitbart.com based on the new book American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character (St. Martin’s Press) by Diana West.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/did-communist-influence-lead-to-d-day-invasion-over-italybalkan-strategy?f=must_reads

On March 3, 1945, under prodding from both the senior US military commander and US ambassador in Moscow, FDR cabled Stalin to request “urgently” that provisions be made for ten American rescue crews to move in and out of Soviet-captured territories to evacuate liberated American prisoners or war, many of whom required medical attention. With uncharacteristic punch, FDR underscored his request as being “of the greatest importance.”

On March 5, 1945, Stalin replied: Nyet. There were no groups of American ex-POWs in the Red zone, so no flights necessary. The Soviets would tell the British the same thing about an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 British ex-prisoners.

The US ambassador, Averill Harriman, knew Stalin was lying. He was hearing about hundreds, even thousands of lost American men roaming Soviet-held territory, and he was hearing straight from some who had made their way to Moscow.

On March 6, 1945, the Soviets forcibly took over Romania, shredding the Yalta agreement.

On March 8, 1945, Harriman cabled FDR that he had positive proof that Stalin’s statement regarding American POWs “was not repeat not true.” He stated that some three to four thousand Americans had been freed from German POW camps and were still unaccounted for.

On March 16, 1945, Churchill cabled FDR. “At present all entry into Poland has been barred to our representatives… This extends even to the liaison officers, British and American, who were to help in bringing out rescued prisoners of war… There is no doubt in my mind that the Soviets fear much our seeing what is going on in Poland.”

FDR would cable Stalin again on the matter. Following another rebuke – Stalin insisted that the remaining 17 American POWs in Red territory were en route home – FDR dropped the matter. He died a few weeks later.

This tense, behind the scenes discussion remained mostly unbeknownst to the American people for decades.

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-mother-of-all-scandals/ IRS? A system of voluntary tax compliance cannot survive a dishonest IRS. Lois Lerner and company have virtually ruined the agency. For the foreseeable future, each time an American receives a tax query, he will wonder to what degree his politics ensures enhanced or reduced scrutiny — or whether his name as a donor, […]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/13/pot-holder/ Aging hippies have waited a lifetime to achieve their reefer dreams. Several states are relaxing marijuana laws, and the White House is right behind. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday announced the first retreat in the War on Drugs since President Nixon declared the war four decades ago. “Our system is in […]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/14/carson-can-you-trust-anybody-anymore/ When babies are born, they have little choice but to trust their caregivers, who are usually the parents. As they mature and are able to distinguish one person from another, they tend to show great preference for the parents with whom they have bonded. A trusting relationship develops that should remain intact throughout life, […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/lloyd-billingsley/rats-are-still-comrades-2/

“The California prisoners’ hunger strike is a courageous call for the California prison system to come out of the shadows and join a world in which the rights and dignity of every person is respected.”

That’s the closer of an oped piece by Angela Davis, “professor emeritus of history of consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.” There’s a lot more to professor Davis, and her latest cause could also stand some scrutiny.

Peter Coyote, Susan Sarandon and other Hollywood celebrities have signed a letter of support for prisoners engaged in a hunger strike over conditions in the security housing unit at Pelican Bay State Prison. Professor Davis claims such solitary confinement constitutes “torture.” But according to the liberal editorial board of the Sacramento Bee, which has been critical of Pelican Bay in the past, the stars “ought to save their outrage.”

The inmates fomenting the hunger strike, who claim their human rights are being violated, “include killers and leaders of the most brutal gangs in the prison system. They are from the Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerrilla Family, Mexican Mafia and Nuestra Familia.” Prison officials say the hunger strike “has nothing to do with conditions and everything to do with gang leaders wanting to get into the general population so they can more readily conduct their gang business.” The Bee agrees, and adds some detail.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obamas-war-of-word-games/print/ One of the biggest questions about fighting terrorism is whether we intend to fight it on the military level or on the ideological level. Wars have ideological components. Propaganda likely predated the written word. Undermining an enemy’s morale can be a very effective means of turning the tide of battle. But in warfare, the […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/the-dark-world-of-vladimir-putin-on-the-glazov-gang/

The Goals of Obama — on The Glazov Gang

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Igor Melcuk, a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Montreal and Member of the Royal Society of Canada. A scientist and “reluctant” Soviet dissident, he left the Soviet Union in 1977 after being expelled from the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences because he defended Andrei Sakharov​ in a letter published in The New York Times​.

Prof. Melcuk joined the Gang to discuss The Goals of Obama. The discussion took place in Part II and focused on the Radical-in-Chief’s plans for America. The dialogue occurred in the context of Obama’s continued support of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as his bullying of Israel. Melcuk also shed light on The Dark World of Vladimir Putin, analyzing Russia’s dark voyage back into the world of authoritarianism and repression.

In Part I, Melcuk discussed his own battle against the Soviet empire and gave tribute to the fight for freedom bravely conducted by Russian dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Valentin Turchin and many others.

To watch both parts of the two-part series, see below:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324769704579010883098257024.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

Hillary Clinton’s next phase of life . . . has officially begun,” Politico reports. Well, stop the damn presses, she’s back. “She’s coming in to her husband’s signature foundation, which has been renamed for all three Clintons,” the third being 33-year-old Chelsea. “It’s the first time the two elder Clintons . . . are yoking their careers together.” Mercifully, there’s no word on whether they’re yoking anything else together.

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How can we miss you if you won’t go away?

“The foundation provides her with a formal apparatus” and “is also the structure that has provided sustenance for the extended Clintonland for over a decade, a sprawling world of donors, supporters and close friends,” Politico explains.

Finally in paragraph 9 we get to the point, in a quote from Robert Gibbs, a former Obama White House press secretary: “I think having a place such as this for a platform gives her a great launching pad into 2016.” If Gibbs is right, Mrs. Clinton is using a sinecure at a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization–that’s the kind that’s supposed to be extremely limited in its political involvement–as a nascent campaign organization.

Now, the man currently in the White House, President Asterisk, made good on his “jocose” 2009 threat to subject his political opponents to Internal Revenue Service audits. Mrs. Clinton is a former rival of his, and there is reason to think there remains bad blood between Barack Obama and the Clintons. Could an IRS full-body search of the Clinton Foundation be in the offing?

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5351

On Friday, I published a column in these pages about my trials and tribulations over my repeated suspensions from Facebook.

It took two months of experiencing intermittent bans from the social network — due to ostensibly “inappropriate material” on my page — before I finally took any measures to extricate myself from the situation.

Each time I received a warning and a temporary ban, I would wait impatiently for my punishment to pass, and enlist the help of friends and family members to share my pieces in my stead.

But then it got to be an annoyance. Facebook is a key tool for writers, present company included. As someone once admonished me prior to my entry into the world of social media, “If you’re not on Facebook, you don’t exist.”

This was not a philosophical statement, but the advice of a well-wisher who was looking out for my career. He was right, of course, a fact I have come grudgingly to acknowledge. I had been hesitant about taking the plunge; but once I did, I understood why I should have swallowed my pride and done so years earlier.

So when I began to be barred, it was not personal rejection, I felt, but rather a form of ill ease, as though I was being watched. This is a pretty ironic, if not an almost irrational sensation, considering it was I who opted to put my views and thoughts on display for the world to see in the first place.

Nor did I automatically chalk up the nuisance of being prevented every so often from “joining the club” to discrimination. Indeed, if there’s one thing I can’t stand as a political conservative, it is right-wing conspiracy theories born out of paranoia — a symptom of megalomania.