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BOOKS

John Bolton’s book looks like a fairy-tale for Trump haters By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/john_boltons_book_looks_like_a_fairytale_for_trump_haters.html

The Trump administration has sued to stop John Bolton’s purported “tell-all” from being released next week on the ground that it is filled with classified information that affects national security. That suit hasn’t stopped Bolton’s publisher from leaking the supposed “bombshells” in the book.

Those bombshells will excite Trump haters, but those who support Trump will immediately recognize them as lies, deliberate misinterpretations, and resentment. Expect the activist Democrat media to sing the book’s praises, but that won’t change the outcome of the November election.

The book’s biggest alleged bombshell, which Bolton writes about in the Wall Street Journal (paywall), is his claim that, in June 2019 at the Osaka G20, Trump begged Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him get reelected. According to Bolton, Xi said that America’s relationship with China was important and that it was wrong for some in America to want a Cold War. Trump countered that Democrats were hostile to China and then, says Bolton, the begging started:

Knives Out: Bolton Lacerates Nikki Haley in New Book By Philip Wegmann

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/18/knives_out_bolton_lacerates_nikki_haley_in_new_book__143483.html

As far as exit interviews are concerned, this one was unofficial and especially ugly.

In his forthcoming book, “The Room Where It Happened,” John Bolton condemns President Trump as a bumbling executive and mocks Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin as a political opportunist and dismisses Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as generally averse to conflict.

But he doesn’t stop there, as one rising GOP star is finding out.

The highly unflattering 494-page tome, cataloguing the former national security adviser’s time in the Trump White House, seems destined for bestseller lists — that is, if it can get published. Citing national security concerns late Wednesday, the Department of Justice asked a judge to issue a restraining order.

But copies are already floating around Capitol Hill, and regardless of what the court rules, a harsh picture of Nikki Haley is among the portraits emerging. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during much of Bolton’s tenure acted like a “free electron” more concerned with political ambition than international diplomacy, according to a copy of the book obtained by RealClearPolitics.

Haley, the rare Cabinet member to leave the White House on good terms with the president, is considered a top presidential aspirant in a post-Trump Republican Party. Bolton seems intent on denting that reputation.

After Syrian President Bashar al-Assad unleashed a chemical attack on his own people, Bolton suggested that Haley stand with ambassadors from the United Kingdom and France in the U.N. Security Council to present a united front against the rogue leader.

“I had done that many times,” Bolton wrote, “but Haley declined, preferring to have pictures of her alone giving the U.S. statement in the Council. That told me something.” It was indicative, he added, of an “untethered performance in New York over the past year-plus,” and Bolton, still new in his job at the time, made a note to discuss the performance with Pompeo.

Meet Your New Commissar Black Studies star Ibram X. Kendi has plans for you. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/meet-your-new-commissar-bruce-bawer/

Among the byproducts of the worldwide mayhem and destruction carried out in solemn memory of career criminal George Floyd is that books on racism are selling almost as briskly as guns. As I write this, the #3 bestseller on Amazon is something called How to Be an Antiracist by one Ibram X. Kendi.

This book is Kendi’s third. The first was The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965–1972 (2012); the second, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016), won the National Book Award, led to a Guggenheim Fellowship, and propelled Kendi, three years ago, from a low-level teaching job at the University of Florida to a position as full professor and head of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University.

Next month, in a further move up the academic ladder, Kendi, age 37, will take up a plum post as director of the brand-new Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. He’ll also publish Antiracist Baby, a “board book” for very young children (already #15 on Amazon) “that introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of anti-racism.”

Terror in the Cradle of Liberty: How Boston Became a Center for Islamic Extremism Ilya Feoktistov

https://mailchi.mp/peaceandtolerance/apt-webinar-our-new-book-on-radical-islam-in-new-england?e=c4e6370125

How the Muslim Brotherhood obtained a foothold in Boston through an organization called the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB).

• How the ISB built the largest mosque in the Northeast to radicalize Boston’s Muslims.

• How the ISB’s radical leadership defrauded the political and civic leaders of Boston, who accepted the mosque as an authentically moderate Muslim force for good.

• How Jewish leaders, knowing about the antisemitism of the ISB mosque leaders, decided nevertheless to give the mosque a kosher stamp, giving political cover to the rest of Boston’s civic and political leadership to embrace the mosque.

• What mosque leaders are preaching to Boston Muslims now, in 2020.

Ilya and Charles will name names of those Jewish leaders who refuse to tell Boston’s Jews, or anyone else, what they know about the radicals who own and run the mosque. They will show the primary source videos and documents described in Ilya’s book, which expose the extent to which Boston’s leaders have ignored and aided Islamist extremist efforts in the city.

This willful ignorance has cost the city significantly: Fourteen leaders, donors, and congregants of the Islamic Society of Boston — including the Boston Marathon bombers — are either in prison, awaiting trial, on the run, or dead due to their involvement in Islamic terrorism.

Ilya based his book on thousands of documents obtained from years of on-the-ground monitoring of the ISB’s activities, from the ISB’s internal financial and governance records subpoenaed during its defamation lawsuit against its critics, and from moderate Boston Muslims who have been fighting against the Muslim Brotherhood’s efforts in Boston even longer than we have.

Antifa – An Integral Part of the Dems’ 2020 Playbook It’s déjà vu all over again. Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/antifa-just-part-democrats-2020-playbook-kenneth-r-timmerman/

When I see videos of Antifa thugs smashing and looting luxurious shopfronts on Fifth Avenue in New York, for me it’s déjà vu all over again.

I wrote those scenes in my new book, The Election Heist, which I sent to my publisher last November.

I’m not claiming to be a prophet, but I do believe that fiction precedes reality. By that, I mean that by using our imagination, we can apply patterns of observed behavior to future situations.

Let me give you a specific example. In one of the Antifa scenes in my new book, an NYPD officer guarding Trump Tower takes a call from the deputy police commissioner, even as the thugs start charging the Gucci store front next door.

The deputy commissioner tells him to stand down.

Hillary Without Bill What would her life have been like if she’d gone it alone? Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/hillary-without-bill-bruce-bawer/

In his 1976 novel The Alteration, Kingsley Amis imagined a contemporary Britain in which the Protestant Reformation never took place. In The Plot against America (2004), Philip Roth imagined a 1940s America in which Charles Lindbergh beats FDR in the 1940 election and signs peace treaties with Germany and Japan. In her new novel, Rodham, Curtis Sittenfeld imagines an equally portentous alternate world: one in which Hillary Rodham never married Bill Clinton – and ended up being elected president in 2016.

Well, it’s not quite correct to say that Sittenfeld imagines it. There’s not really much in the way of imagination in this stunningly vapid, pedestrian piece of work, which plods from incident to incident without a single vivid detail or snappy exchange of dialogue or hint of wit. It’s so flatfooted, so thoroughly uninspired, that one assumes, in the early pages, that Sittenfeld – who is a woman – banged it out prontissimo, Joyce Carol Oates-style, with the cynical objective of cashing in on all the poor hapless women who were so devastated by Hillary’s loss that they’d presumably be desperate to escape into an alternate universe in which Hillary won. But as one reads on, one acquires the distinct, and horrifying, impression that Sittenfeld’s heart is actually in this leaden, lifeless thing, and that escaping into her own sketchily depicted parallel universe is Sittenfeld’s way of consoling herself.  

Kris Larsen Reviews “Erasing America”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/a_first_look_at_erasing_america.html

“Progressives” throughout the West seem eager to erase our history and impugn our civilization, with ample blowback from those beastly “deplorables.” You know, those horrid patriotic people who hang out at Dunkin Donuts and live on farms or in small towns, or who serve(d) in the military, or who are blue collar. Thankfully, James S. Robbins, Ph.D, formerly a professor, journalist, and special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, now a senior fellow at the American Foreign Council, has effectively researched this phenomenon from an American perspective. His recent book, Erasing America: Losing our Future by Destroying Our Past (2018), is clear, well written and well researched, without getting bogged down in esoteric jargon. Nor is much spared as the falsehoods of sacred cows are exposed. 

Robbins reminds us that America’s first and third presidents, both southerners, are impugned as slave owners, which we know is evil, thanks in no small measure to the history we have been taught. There have been demands to remove their statues as well as their names from schools, government buildings, streets, etc. But should this be the sole basis for judging George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? Slavery was commonplace in their era, especially in the South, and it is not fair to completely judge those of a bygone era by contemporary standards (here’s looking at you, Halifax). Fairness demands a balanced portrayal, not just a negative one, which means the greatness of Washington and Jefferson must also be acknowledged. Besides, these America and western civilization hating “progressives” might want to grudgingly concede that  Great Britain and her Commonwealth were first to abolish slavery, a worldwide blight hardly unique to the English speaking world. And while the United States followed suit a few decades later, it was still long before many anti-Christian, non-Christian, or non-western societies; the ones romanticized by the politically correct postmodernist left.

Asaf Romirowsky: A Review of “The War of Return How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf”

http://www.romirowsky.com/24223/the-war-of-return

Palestinian identity is rooted in three basic ingredients: the “right of return” to Israel for all Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants; permanent, sanctified struggle with Israel; and permanent recognition of their status as refugees, dispossessed at the hand of Israel with the participation of the international community. A corollary demand is that the international community must sustain all Palestinian “refugees” through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) until the Palestinians themselves, somehow, declare the “refugee crisis” resolved.

This fundamental element of the Arab-Israeli conflict has eluded both many Western observers and Israelis, who have focused on the territorial aspect of the conflict. In fact, it is the right of return that fundamentally powers the conflict, while UNRWA serves as captain of the ship.

Both Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, authors of The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, have a liberal Israeli background and are supporters of the two-state solution. Wilf is a former Israeli politician who served as a member of Knesset for the Independence and Labor parties, while Schwartz is a former staff writer for the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz turned academic.

To Wilf’s credit, she was one of the few Israeli politicians to take on the UNRWA issue when she was in office; she launched an international parliamentary campaign to restructure UNRWA and “combat the inflation of the numbers of refugees” in order to make a two-state solution possible.

The Need to Discuss Black-on-Black Crime By Barry Latzer

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/12/22/the-need-to-discuss-black-on-black-crime/?utm_

In defense of a term

Thomas Abt’s book Bleeding Out (2019) has garnered a fair amount of attention for its proposals to deal with gun violence in mainly black urban neighborhoods. The entire focus of the book is on interventions in high-crime locations to stem the violence, including: hot-spots policing, working with young males at high risk of engaging in violence by offering carrots (“we’re here to help you”) and sticks (“we’ll stop you if you don’t let us help”), and locking up known violent offenders.

Lest you think this book is not about black crime, Abt states quite explicitly that “race matters when it comes to urban violence.” He points out that homicide-victimization rates for black men were 3.9 times the national average and that 52 percent of all known homicide victims were black (2017 data). He might have added that the perpetrators of these crimes were overwhelmingly African Americans. In 2018, where the homicide victim was black, the suspected killer also was 88 percent of the time. And this is not an exceptional situation. From 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of black victims were killed by other African Americans. In fact, as I will demonstrate, high rates of black-on-black killing have been the norm for well over a century. But this is not an issue Abt wants to address.

To the contrary, Abt abjures the phrase “black on black.” He calls it “deeply misleading” and says it “perpetuates deeply harmful stereotypes about African Americans.” So Abt has written an entire book addressing the problem, but he and everyone else must refrain from calling it what it is: a black-on-black phenomenon. Why?

Abt offers three reasons. First, violent crime is commonly intraracial, i.e., whites kill whites, Hispanics kill Hispanics, and so on. But, Abt says, we don’t talk about white-on-white violence. Well, that’s simply not true. Many analysts, myself included, discuss white violence, especially where it had a major impact on crime in the United States. This was the case with southern whites especially from the 18th through the 20th centuries, a situation studied extensively by crime historians and criminologists.

Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win David Horowitz’s new book is a guide to the wars that are engulfing the nation. J. Christian Adams

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/blitz-trump-will-smash-left-and-win-j-christian-adams/

When David Horowitz wrote his latest book Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win (Humanix, 2020) he didn’t know that ANTIFA-fueled mobs would be burning and looting cities across America, and even threatening the White House itself.  Then again, knowing how Horowitz understands the Left as well as anyone else in the conservative movement, perhaps he actually did anticipate the events of the last few days.

Blitz is the go-to recap of the first Trump term, from the first days of the so-called “Muslim ban” through a deconstruction of the “partisan impeachment,” as Horowitz labels it.

Blitz is a comprehensive reset at the end of the first Trump term. It is catalog of how we got here and how the Left have lost their minds over President Trump’s new way. Horowitz diagnoses the causes and effect of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  He also documents how Trump has thrived despite the unhinged hatred aimed at him.

One reason Blitz suggests Trump is unlike his Republican predecessors, is that he didn’t let personal attacks change his tactics.