Rodric Braithwaite is a former British ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yeltsin’s Russia and a specialist in Russian history. Utilizing his extensive personal contacts with Afghan War veterans (known as afgantsy in Russian) and his fluency in the Russian language, Braithwaite has written an account of the Soviets’ involvement in Afghanistan that is detailed,...
For the whole weekend I had the (mis)fortune of attending a Continuing Legal Education course at my old law school in order to remain in good standing with the venerable New York state bar. Now, most of the speakers were older attorneys in the personal injury field. One of them, whom I’ll call “Seymour...
French Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls recently drew howls of politically-correct outrage. Valls, who is according to the BBC, a rising star in Hollande’s administration, said that the sociopathic Gypsy lifestyle, based on chicanery and the avoidance of socially acceptable work, is “clearly in confrontation” with the lifestyle of the French. In response...
Just a few days ago, I heard some attorneys lamenting that we in this country, don’t have a three day weekend every week, “like they do in France”. I smirked into my Kindle, not wanting to cause a tropical downpour on the poor devils’ parade. France doesn’t have three day weekends every week, and...
Even before the recent victory of rightwing Catholic Tony Abbott’s Liberal-National coalition in Australia, the previous Labor government was instituting measures to stem the flow of mass immigration. Outgoing leftist PM Kevin Rudd said of the new measures: “Asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia.”...
From 1920 to 1936, Syria’s Alawites enjoyed their own separate autonomous state in French-ruled Syria. First, it was known explicitly as the Alawite State and from 1930 to 1936, as Latakia Governorate. In response to pressure from the Sunni majority, France dissolved the Alawites’ state and forcibly incorporated it into the Sunni-dominated areas. Needless to...
Author John Lott of “More Guns, Less Crime” fame had this to say about a personal encounter with the future POTUS during his time at the University of Chicago law school in his latest book (hat tip to Mark Brennan and David Gordon): “I first met him in 1996, shortly after my research on concealed...
Last night I came back from a marvelous six-day sojourn in the tropical paradise of Aruba, where I pondered the future of paleoconservatism over many a glass of (Beefeater) gin and tonic. The first thing that stood out in that tiny island of Caribbean Europe (Aruba only became an autonomous part of Holland in 1986)...
Like a broken clock taking its twice-a-day victory lap, the New York Times weighed in this morning on Detroit’s bankruptcy. The reason? It’s finger-pointing time. And, when money is the issue, the Times’ ink-stained fingers reflexively point to banks, all of which are big, bad, and beyond the reach of regulators. And now it looks...
Twenty-seven-year-old Stephanie Bannister was running for office in Australia’s state of Queensland as a candidate for the rightwing One Nation party that takes an admirably strong stance against mass immigration. Several days into her political careers (48 hours according to some reports), Bannister gave an interview in which she made several statements that showed...
After a show trial that lasted for five years and would’ve made Josef Stalin and Andrei Vyshinsky proud, 354 opponents of Tayyip Recep Erdogan’s Islamist regime have been found guilty. The main defendant, Gen. Ilker Basbug, who led Turkey’s armed forces in 2008-2010 was given a life sentence. The head of the socialist-secular nationalist...
Russian authorities set up a detention camp for illegal immigrants, after 4,500 of them were arrested in Moscow during raids on garment factories and markets. The arrested illegals were Vietnamese, Syrians, Egyptians, and Moroccans, along with the usual citizens of former Soviet Central Asian republics. Raids are now taking place in St. Petersburg, where...
American college students never cease to unpleasantly surprise us (hat tip to Mark Brennan). Dan Jordan of the Media Research Center circulated a petition on George Washington University’s campus, asking students to sign in support of fourth (yes, you read it right, fourth!) trimester abortions. Jordan explained to the students that “If you don’t know...
The “resignation” of Rand Paul’s aide Jack “Southern Avenger” Hunter was another broadside cannon shot fired in the war between us paleos and the liberals and neocons over Abraham Lincoln, a war that started with the attack on the late M.E. Bradford. The mainstream howled in outrage over Hunter’s 2004 column “John Wilkes Booth Was Right”. Now,...
Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas passed away last week at the age ninety-two. The most noticeable aspect of her media persona was her life-long support for Islamic terrorists. She openly supported the Shiite terror group Hezbollah, even proclaiming to a CNN cameraman: “Thank God for Hezbollah” and said that Israeli Jews “should go...
Barack Hussein Obama can’t seem to get over the Trayvon Martin case. First, it was his statement that his son would look (and act ?) like Trayvon. Now, he says that “Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago”. One wonders what next pearl of wisdom will escape the lips of POTUS: “I...
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous admonition to “live not by lies” was the first thing that came to mind when the long-suffering George Zimmerman was finally acquitted. However, I am hesitant to engage to in jubilant ululation since justice would’ve truly been served if Zimmerman was not indicted and put on trial. Zimmerman’s ordeal reminded me of...
Yesterday, Poland commemorated the 70th anniversary of the 1943-44 Volhynia and Eastern Galicia massacres perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) led by Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. Bands of armed Ukrainians descended upon Polish villages in Galicia and Volhynia and massacred at least 40,000...
Just yesterday, according to the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency, a court in central Israel sentenced an Israeli Arab to 30 months in prison for joining the anti-Assad rebels in Syria. The defendant crossed over to Syria from Turkey and spent six days training with the Islamist rebels, who asked him to carry out a...
In light of the recent untimely passing of James Gandolfini, I could not help but contrast his character Tony Soprano with the cinematic mafiosi of earlier times, especially the main characters of Sam Francis’ and Pat Buchanan’s favorite “The Godfather”. In many ways, Tony Soprano was a broken man, like Gandolfini himself. After all, could...
A judge in the Eastern District of Michigan held that a high school economics teacher violated his student’s free speech rights for kicking him out of class (hat tip to Mark Brennan). The student, Daniel Glowacki, dared to voice disapproval of homosexuality – a major offense in today’s educational institutions. This took place back in...
The NYT recently published a brief op-ed piece by one Judy Nicastro – a self-described “non-religious”, “old school liberal” from Seattle. In fashionably maudlin prose, Nicastro writes about aborting her son at 23 weeks. That repulsive little article is a good example of the worldview of abortion proponents. Now, what was the reason for Nicastro’s decision...
Looks like the British government will finally be able to rid its long-suffering citizens of the Muslim terrorist preacher (what a string of redundant adjectives!) Abu Qatada. After almost a decade of trying to throw out this troublemaker, who called for the murder of Jews and apostate Muslims and their families, Britain and Jordan...
The small neo-Gothic chapel in the confines of St. John’s cemetery in the New York City borough of Queens was filling up quickly on that brisk autumn Sunday. The cemetery itself is something of a New York landmark—a resting place for the heroes and villains of its turbulent past. The modest tombstones of firefighters killed...
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s latest book is an ambitious yet incomplete survey of Jerusalem’s history. It begins with the Exodus from Egypt and concludes with the reunification of the Holy City under Israeli rule in 1967. Unlike the author’s magisterial biographies of Stalin, which demonstrated an excellent knowledge of the relevant material and brought to light...
Sacré Coeur (Sacred Heart) Basilica draws your eyes from every point in Paris. The white Romano-Byzantine domes of this marvelous church dominate the skyline of the grittier neighborhoods of northern Paris. Observed from atop the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré Coeur’s domes seem to levitate above Paris. I decided to save Sacré Coeur for my last...
Pat Buchanan’s new book is another tour de force. Suicide of a Superpower builds on the prophetic warnings first articulated in such earlier books as The Great Betrayal; A Republic, Not an Empire; and, most importantly, Death of the West. The current work exhibits the most famous paleoconservative’s trademark word-crafting verve, encyclopedic knowledge of history...
The long-awaited new edition of Srdja Trifkovic’s work on the genocidal Ustaša—Croatian Revolutionary Movement is a pivotal contribution to modern Balkan studies, an area regrettably mired in deception, half-truths, and outright lies served up with a noxious dosage of outright Serbophobia. This work is a painstakingly detailed study of the bloodthirsty Croatian Nazis and their...
Orlando Figes’ new book does much to shed light on a conflict long neglected by contemporary historians and is likely to become the preeminent work on the Crimean War. However, the book suffers from serious shortcomings that prevent it from becoming a military history of such caliber as Antony Beevor’s and Max Hastings’ works. Figes...
Richard Miles presents a new history of Carthage, which aims to show the land of Dido and Hannibal in a new light and rehabilitate the Punic state from what the author considers neglect and prejudice on the part of later historians. Miles especially succeeds in his descriptions and analysis of the military history of Carthage...
Michael Burleigh’s new history of World War II is the latest in a seemingly endless procession of works on that subject. Antony Beevor, Max Hastings, Norman Davies, and Rich Atkinson have all produced well-written and well-received histories of the war, and the reader is justified in questioning whether there is need of yet another one. ...
Recent developments in Moldova have placed the former Soviet republic, strategically placed at the hub of Central and Southeastern Europe’s energy corridors, at the center of Russia’s occasionally tense relations with the West. On February 7, echoing the rhetoric and mindset of half a century ago, Senator Richard Lugar, a leading NATO expansionist and...