Displaying posts published in

August 2013

HUH? IN SPAIN A 47 STORY HIGH RISE—THEY FORGOT ELEVATORS

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/09/a-47-story-high-rise-has-a-tall-problem-they-forgot-the-elevators/ At 47 stories, the In Tempo skyscraper in Spain is set to be the tallest residential building in the European Union. But anyone living on floors 21 through 47 has a problem: to get any higher than the 20th floor, you have to take the stairs. The In Tempo skyscraper in Spain was built […]

Rachel Ehrenfeld The “New Democratic Normal” – The Muslim Brotherhood

Home As with so many other issues, U.S. policy and diplomacy (“dim-plomacy”?) of the handling of post-Morsi Egypt is reaching to a new low.  The Jerusalem Post reported on August 6, that President Obama will meet with representatives of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood at the White House sometime this month, ostensibly, to “hear their opinion.”  The JP […]

Israel’s Bad Neighborhood Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”

http://send.hadavars.com/index.php?action=message&l=2096&c=20462&m=18958&s=a317a26441993bdd8f740ee9a6c71bce While the Middle East combusts, threatening vital US interests, the US attempts to clip the wings of Israel – the only reliable, predictable, stable, effective, democratic and unabashedly pro-US firefighter in the region. Western policy-makers and public opinion molders welcomed the 2011 riots on the Arab Street as an Arab Spring, a people’s revolution […]

BE MERRY WITH KERRY COULD BE HIS LOGO: RUSSIA AND AMERICAN NEED TO MAKE PROGRESS ON SYRIA DESPITE CONFLICTS

John Kerry: U.S., Russia Need To Make Progress On Syria Despite Conflicts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/john-kerry-russia-syria_n_3732330.html WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) – The United States and Russia must find ways to work around their sharp differences and agree on approaches to Syria and other global trouble spots, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday as the two countries […]

THE RADOSHITES VS. DIANA WEST…

HERE IS A SAMPLE FROM FRONTPAGE AUGUST7,8,9
DIANA WEST’S ATTEMPT TO RESPOND
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ron-radosh/diana-wests-attempt-to-respond/ August 9

JEFFREY HERF: DIANA WEST VS. HISTORY
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/jeffrey-herf/diana-west-vs-history/ August 9

DAVID HOROWITZ: OUR CONTROVERSY WITH DIANA WEST
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/editorial-our-controversy-with-diana-west/ august 8

RON RADOSH: DIANA WEST-DOWN CRACKPOT ALLEY
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ron-radosh/diana-west-down-crackpot-alley/ August 8

RON RADOSH: McCARTHY ON STEROIDS
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ronald-radosh/mccarthy-on-steroids/ August 7
AND HERE IS DIANA’S REBUTTAL OF DEAR PROFESSOR RADOSH TODAY: PROFESSOR RADOSH GETS AN F
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2614/-Professor-Radosh-Gets-an-F.aspx

Note to readers.

In just one of today’s installments of the Smear Me Show at Frontpage, Radosh tells readers that an episode he criticized in his original “review,” and that I flagged yesteday for not being in the book, is in the book — and in three places.

This is a lie, too.

But it gets worse. First, he has to swap the first episode (not in book) for a new one (also not in book), and hope no one notices.

I noticed.

His original episode (still not in book) relates that “George Elsey found confidential files in the Map Room that showed FDR naively thinking he could trust Stalin, and instructed Hopkins to tell Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov that FDR was in favor of a Second Front in 1942.”

Remember: Elsey, Map Room, confidential files, FDR telling Hopkins to tell Molotov he favored a Second Front.

Today he writes:

Maybe she couldn’t find the anecdote. But it is there in three different places where she writes how FDR told Hopkins to go into Molotov’s bedroom while he was staying in the White House so that he could meet with the President, and at that meeting, Hopkins told Molotov that FDR was in favor of a Second Front.

Whoa, whoa, whoa — where’s George Elsey? Where’s the Map Room? Where are those “confidential files”?

Will anyone be surprised to learn that this new episode isn’t in my book either?

It gets worse — as in even more incorrect.

About these supposedly three instances of the (new) anecdote, he writes:

They can be found on p. 129, p. 268 and p. 296. She missed them because of a trivial error I did make [DW: Such a big man] which was to associate the anecdote she took from her source, Laurence Rees’ WW II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, with the anecdote about Elsey’s find, which is in another part of Rees’ book. West may not have mentioned Elsey’s role in her own text, but it is the anecdote itself about the Second Front that is the crux of this matter and she does refer to it on three occasions.

No, in fact (something Radosh has an aversion to), I don’t. And Rees is not my source. Radosh Is Wrong Again.

This time, it’s a compound error. He has now seized on two different episodes (not one episode repeated three times as he claims) and, as noted, Laurence Rees is not the source of any of them. Plus, neither of these two episodes are events as he describes them and attributes to being in my book.

From American Betrayal.

p. 129:

When Soviet foreign minister Molotov made his first visit to Washington in May 1942, Secretary of State Cordell Hull handed Hopkins a memorandum indicating the things he wanted taken up with Molotov.70

Careful (non-Radosh) readers will notice this anecdote not only has nothing to do with Elsey and Map Room (Radosh Delusion No. 1), but also nothing to do with FDR telling Hopkins to go to Molotov’s bedroom or the Second Front (Radosh Delusion No. 2)

Not surprisingly to everyone (except Radosh) my source here isn’t Rees.

Note 70: Sherwood, Hopkins, 2:562

p. 268:

Was it merely paradoxical back in May 1942, when, according to Soviet records, Harry Hopkins privately coached Foreign Minister Molotov on what to say to FDR to overcome U.S. military arguments against a “second front” in France in May 1942?58

Here we come to a triple, maybe quadruple whammy. Not only does this bear no resemblance to Radosh Delusion No. 1 from the “review.” it also doesn’t resemble Radosh Delusion No. 2. In fact, it is very much the opposite of what Radosh reports. He says my anecdote has FDR telling Hopkins to go to Molotov, with Hopkins telling Molotov FDR favors the Second Front.

Mine has Hopkins coaching Molotov on how to overcome opposition to a Second Front.

Bonus: again, my source isn’t Rees. It’s Mark.

Note 58, Mark, Venona Source, 20

p. 296:

Such “good Germans” might have spoiled the chances for both unconditional surrender, recently “reaffirmed” in May 1942, and, of course, Stalin’s “second front,” the subject of Molotov’s secret discussions with Hopkins, also in May 1942.

Same source as Note 58.

This is a disgrace.

RUTHIE BLUM: BEING TARGETED ON FACEBOOK

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5307

For the past two months, intermittently, I have been barred from Facebook.

The first time it happened was in June, when I tried to post my Israel Hayom column. Suddenly, a window popped up, telling me that inappropriate material had been found on and removed from my page. I was warned that if I continued violating Facebook’s “community standards,” I would be banned from the social network for good.

The notice included a link specifying these standards, and a demand that I click to acknowledge I had read and understood them. Failure to do so, it said, would result in my inability even to open Facebook to read my newsfeed. I complied.

The following statement appeared: “Facebook gives people around the world the power to publish their own stories, see the world through the eyes of many other people, and connect and share wherever they go. The conversation that happens on Facebook — and the opinions expressed here — mirror the diversity of the people using Facebook. To balance the needs and interests of a global population, Facebook protects expression that meets the community standards outlined on this page. Please review these standards. They will help you understand what type of expression is acceptable, and what type of content may be reported and removed.”

Underneath the explanation, examples of unacceptable content were listed. Among these were “violence and threats,” “self-harm,” “bullying and harassment,” “graphic content,” “nudity and pornography,” and “hate speech.”

I was puzzled. Neither I nor anyone else who had shared articles with me had engaged in any of the above. And, as hard as I searched, I couldn’t locate a single dirty picture on my timeline.

DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE QUALITY OF LIFE

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

It’s hard to remember sometimes that the latest Bloombergian crusade to ban all the sodas, steal all the salt or wall off half the streets to automobile traffic had its roots in another New York City where Times Square was a seedy flickering danger zone, entire neighborhoods were always on the verge of an explosion and the only optimistic people were the ones moving out.

Some twenty years ago, Rudy Giuliani began tackling crime directly with waves of men in blue using
smarter and blunter tactics, and also indirectly by going after “Quality of Life” issues. The theory was that crime came out of social blight. Improve the neighborhood and you reduce crime.

The ubiquitous squeegee men were put out of business and drives rejoiced, Times Square’s acres of sex businesses were broken up to make way for Disney musicals. Homeless encampments that had taken over public places were broken up. Graffiti, prostitution, panhandling and a thousand other behaviors, some criminal, some not, but that contributed to the grimy dangerous city were targeted.

Critics called Giuliani a fascist, but New York City became a better, safer and more prosperous place. It’s hard to remember what a gamechanger the notion was, back then in the dark days of liberalism, that cities didn’t have to be fixed with an endless round of welfare that only added more blight. Instead they could be fixed by enforcing civilized norms that too many had given up on enforcing.

MELANIE KIRKPATRICK: ON PERE MARIE-BENOIT ****

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578531732457565050.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion At the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, there is a tree planted in honor of a French priest. Père Marie-Benoît is one of the “Righteous Among the Nations,” non-Jews honored by the state of Israel for protecting and rescuing Jews during that black moment in human history. Working with underground Jewish rescue organizations, […]

MARK STEYN: CINEMA EX-MACHINA

http://www.steynonline.com/5686/cinema-ex-machina Of my two local-ish movie theaters in New Hampshire, one has an irksome habit of always showing the film just a little larger than the screen, so that anything happening out on the borders of the frame remains a mystery: If memory serves, it was the most recent Die Hard sequel that had all […]

ANDREW BOSTOM: MEET TODAY’S PSEUDO ACADEMIC ATTACKER OF DIANA WEST. JEFFREY HERF

Meet Today’s Frontpage Pseudo-academic Attacker of Diana West, Jeffrey Herf

Jeffrey Herf is another pseudo-historian whose alleged specialty is “Germany,” and recently, in particular, the supposed “Nazification” of Islam.

He was a major promoter of the idiotic, counterfactual “Kuntzel hypothesis”—a debunking of which you can still read at Frontpage (hurry before they take it down now that I am defending one of the Frontpage “Untermentschen,” Diana West) http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=29031

Of course like Kuntzel, he went about this with the same level of pseudo-academic charlatanism.

If you look at “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism” I demonstrated this briefly in a footnote, reproduced below.

Herf who is a respected German translator FAILED to translate the writings of von Leers in a manner that reflected their important contents, or context. In Sharia Versus Freedom I further included discussion of a full pious Muslim-perspective treatise on jihad that von Leers wrote in 1942-43, which I arranged to get out of captured German archives held in Russia, and have translated. Got that? I obtained these vaunted “primary source documents,” not the pseudo-academic Herf. They confirmed Leer’s Islamic reverence which, in fact, dated back to the early 1930s—twenty years before he converted to Islam, in Egypt, his conversion being overseen by Hajj Amin el-Husseini.

Leers adopted the name—as I NOT Herf—documented in a primary source letter of Leers I obtained from the Hoover Inst (written to a US Nazi H. Keith Thompson, who, in turn donated his papers to the Hoover)—“Omar Amin von Leers,” in “honor” of both his friend Hajj Amin, AND Caliph Omar (“Rightly Guided” Caliph # 2), the latter because Leers dubbed Caliph Omar, appropriately, as per the hadith, “a bitter enemy of the Jews”!

ZILCH/NADA/NONE of this and more appears in Herf’s “oeuvre” as of 2006—and he was supposed to be the “expert scholar” !