http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324030704578424520066643466.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Opinion They say history repeats itself as farce, but it usually takes longer than this. A day after the U.S. government published its list of Russians banned from travel to the U.S. under the Magnitsky Act, Russia responded Saturday with two lists of its own. The first is what the Russian Foreign Ministry dubbed the […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/jamie-glazov/the-devil-in-history/
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Vladimir Tismaneanu, a Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of several books, including Stalinism for All Seasons: A History of Romanian Communism (UC Press), Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism and Myth in Post-Communist Europe, and Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel. His new book is The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century.
FP: Dr. Vladimir Tismaneanu, welcome to Frontpage Interview. It is an honor and a privilege to have you with us.
Congratulations on this fascinating, brilliant and captivating book. It is a stupendous achievement.
I simply couldn’t put it down till I finished it.
Tismaneanu: It is a pleasure for me to engage in this dialogue. I know some of the contributors to Frontpage; I have known David Horowitz and Peter Collier since the 1980s. Your kind words honor me, especially coming from someone with your family background.
The book tries to offer a comparative perspective about those regimes that have taken a horrible toll on families like yours and mine. I am sure you noticed how important it is in the logic of my demonstration to highlight the extraordinary insights of the great novelist and moral thinker Vassili Grossman. You and I know that the Devil is not simply a theological construct, a whimsical metaphor or a speculative fantasy. Living within totalitarianism, surviving within an infernal universe, has been a real experience for millions of human being.
WES PRUDEN: CHIPPING AWAY AT THE IRON LEGEND
http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6920
Margaret Thatcher is getting her revenge on the Nancy men who mocked her in life, and who continue to throw rocks at her in death. Her reputation as “the Iron Lady” who towered over a plastic age is secure, and she’s getting a funeral that her girlhood idol Winston Churchill got before her. Big Ben, the famous clock that towers over Parliament, chiming the quarter-hour since 1859, will fall silent during the obsequies just as it did for Sir Winston nearly five decades ago.
This has put Thatcher critics in a froth of toxic bile, as the accolades continue to pour in from all over the world. Civility is always scarce in politics – it is, after all, a contact sport – but some of the rage in Old Blimey moves close to the edge of the charts.
A cartoon in the Guardian, a leading newspaper of the left, depicted the Iron Lady descending into hell, the front page of the Socialist Worker headlined her death with the single word “Rejoice,” and a movie marquee in the tough neighborhood of Brixton paid its respects with the message “Margaret Thatchers Dead LOL,” for “laugh out loud.” The BBC called the song, “Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead” tasteless and offensive, but played it to mark her death, anyway.
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2013/04/15/kosovo-a-frozen-conflict
Kosovo, a Frozen Conflict
Until a week ago it appeared that the government in Belgrade would give up the last vestiges of its claim to Kosovo for the sake of some indeterminate date in the future when Serbia may join the European Union. A series of unreciprocated concessions over the past few months have encouraged the KLA regime’s mentors in Washington and their European backers to expect the final capitulation. In the end they overplayed their hand by demanding everything and offering nothing.
The demands have been escalating for years. The final objective was stated in December 2011, German Chancellor Angela Merkel came to Serbia to declare that the “path of Serbia into the EU can only lead through the normalization of its relations with Kosovo”—i.e., Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo. This precondition was stated with her customary subtlety and diplomatic tact, but at least it had the quality of candor which made it difficult for Boris Tadić and his eurofanatical Democrats to pretend that “the European path” did not entail eventual surrender.
The defeat of Tadić last May and the subsequent establishment of a new, allegedly nationalist coalition government in July did not result in any change of course. Quite the contrary: Washington and Brussels were surprisingly comfortable dealing with Šešelj’s former No. 2, Tomislav Nikolić, as president, and a former Milošević loyalist, Ivica Dačić, as prime minister. The key “Westerner” in the triumvirate is Aleksandar Vučić, known for his embarrassingly groveling statements on visits to Germany and the U.S.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3662/islamic-paradise When as a Muslim and as an Arab, I look… with envy at life in the West, I feel cheated. Paradise Lost To denigrate the achievement-rich West and glorify, as a role model, Islam, Islamic extremists compare the way of life in Europe and the United States to the pre-Islamic period of jahiliyya, […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3678/germany-mega-mosque-critics Our work of information is not oriented against Muslims, but against the political ideology of Islam. Muslims are its first victims, most of all women.” — Politically Incorrect The Bavarian branch of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), has placed under state surveillance German activists accused of fomenting hate against […]
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-150413.htmlEgyptians are getting hungry. The fall of the Egyptian pound to just 60% of its 2012 exchange rate against the dollar has priced everything but bread out of the reach of the poorer half of the population, and the bread supply is now at risk. The news late last week that Libya and Qatar may lend […]
http://washingtonexaminer.com/jed-babbin-a-red-line-for-north-korea/article/2527109 President Obama should be applying to North Korea now what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu taught the world about “red lines” and nuclear weapons last year. After months of threatening South Korea, the United States and Japan — the last with nuclear holocaust — North Korea may launch ballistic missiles on Monday capable of […]
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13146#.UW0TjLPD-Uk Any group can divide itself into several sub-groups and demand a nation for each one. The Jews have only one state. Gerald A. Honigman The author is an educator who has done extensive doctoral studies in Mid-East Affairs and has conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth. He gives lectures and participates in debates […]
http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2013/4/15/adl-downplays-controversy-over-anti-israel-texts-in-curriculum-of-newton-mass
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) are at odds over the presence of anti-Israel materials in the public school system of Newton, Mass.
THE ADL LONG AGO ABDICATED ITS ROLE IN THE DEFENSE OF JEWS AND ISRAEL….AS A PHILANTHROPIC WAG ONCE PUT IT…THEY HUNT DOWN ANTI-SEMITIC GRAFFITI ON BATHROOM DOORS AND SPEND THE REST OF THEIR CONSIDERABLE RESOURCES IN DEFAMING ISRAEL’S FRIENDS…..RSK
APT—a Boston-based nonprofit “dedicated to promoting peaceful coexistence in an ethnically diverse America by educating the American public about the need for a moderate political leadership that supports tolerance and core American values in communities across the nation”—is calling for reforms in Newton schools to prevent the reappearance of those materials, most notably the Arab World Studies Notebook, which claims that Israeli soldiers murdered hundreds of Palestinian nurses in Israeli prisons.
According to the Newton School Superintendent David Fleishman, the Arab World Studies Notebook was removed from Newton’s public school curriculum. Nevertheless, many parents and other citizens have expressed concern about other anti-Israel materials they say remain in distribution. Local ADL leaders, however, are downplaying the uncertainty as to which anti-Israel texts are still being used in Newton classrooms.
“There is currently no evidence of ‘Saudi-funded hate education’ in Newton public schools,” Acting Director of ADL’s New England Region Robert Trestan and ADL New England Region Board Chair Jeffrey Robbins wrote in a recent letter to the editor in The Jewish Advocate of Boston.
