Most recent blog entries

Happy New Year, Everyone!

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 16:58:00 GMT

The lights are going out here at dianawest.net, but you can still find me at

Patreon and

Gab and now

Substack

and X

Article 4, Section 4: The Guarantee Clause

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 15:54:00 GMT

A Rip-Roaring Year-Ender With Audrey Russo

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 13:57:00 GMT

Listen here!

Sums It Up

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 14:11:00 GMT

As I try to pack up here and take in these many years of wars, lies, and other means of "death by a thousand cuts" of our world, I find on Twitter/X at the account of Renaud Camus a piece that chronicles the past several decades of Islamization with degrading precision.

Translated from French by Google:

"No problem," by Georges de la Fully [November 12, 2018]:

“When they spoke loudly at the cinema, at the concert, and in the restaurant, it didn’t matter.

When they passed you, even though you had been waiting in line for a while, it was no big deal.

When they put their feet on the subway seats, it didn't matter.

When they smoked on the train, it wasn't a big deal.

When they traveled without paying, it was no big deal.

When they imposed their stupidity and rudeness everywhere, it didn't matter.

When they remained seated while the old people were standing, it didn't matter.

When they spray painted the city walls, it wasn't a big deal.

When they dirtied and damaged the French language, it didn't matter.

When they aggressively asked you for “a cigarette” as they passed you, it didn’t matter.

When they forced you off the sidewalk, it wasn't a big deal.

When they woke everyone up by passing through the streets with their noisy motorbikes or mopeds, it didn't matter.

When they did "rodeos", in the middle of the night, with stolen cars, it wasn't a big deal.

When they insulted their teacher, it was no big deal.

When they spat on the sidewalks, it didn't matter.

When they shit in the street, it didn't matter.

When in the summer they entered the properties of those who had a swimming pool for swimming, it was no big deal.

When they opened the city's fire hydrants, it wasn't a big deal.

When they burned cars, it didn't matter.

When they hit their mother, it wasn't serious.

When they burned the French flag, it didn't matter.

When they prayed in the street, it didn't matter.

When they insulted and harassed the police, it was no big deal.

When they snatched bags from old ladies, it didn't matter.

When they walked out of court free even though they were ten times guilty, it didn't matter.

When they called the girls whores while asking them for their 06, it was no big deal.

When they raped them in cellars, it wasn't so bad.

When they beat up fags, it wasn't that bad.

When they beat a man to death who was photographing streetlights, it wasn't that bad.

When they tortured a Jew, it wasn't so bad.

When they stabbed and slit the throats of young women in the street, it wasn't so bad.

When they tortured little old people at home, it wasn't so bad.

When they drove into kids, it wasn't that bad.

When they massacred 90 people at the Bataclan, it wasn't so bad.

When they shot a young Jewish child in the head at close range, it wasn't that bad.

But when they came to your house, it was really awful. »

Georges de la Fully.

Announcement

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 14:41:00 GMT

Dear Friends,

I want you all to know that December 31 will be the last day that this website, dianawest.net, will be online. My host no longer wishes to run the site, and it turns out that the site's very structure is obsolete, making a simple export of the content to a new host not simple at all -- in fact, not in the realm of doable.

I have mixed feelings about this -- and, I will add, that's progress. Initially, as this crossroads loomed, the thought of all of these years of work -- this record (2007- 2023) -- going dark and disappearing from view in a keystroke or two was rather devastating. Was I dying, too? To be sure, my "presence" online will no longer have this homebase and its files and attic to riffle through, but, on reflection, I find there is something to be said for setting aside the burden and wiggling free. After all, writers of yore, that period which stops with the Internet, never had to carry around with them and display every bit and scrap they ever wrote. Desk drawers, old trunks, mom's attic and, of course, trash baskets were the repositories of choice.

That said, I am almost finished cutting and pasting most of the content into documents, and I hope to snap up the rest before the whole thing turns into a pumpkin. These entries, commentaries, bulletins, often several in a day, turn out be a meticulous political and cultural diary of Things They Want Forgotten Over the Past Fifteen Or So Years, which, naturally, inspires me to think about bringing them out in another format. I don't think I will be starting another blog, however. I will continue posting videos on my Patreon channel, and I might pop up on Substack.

For now, I sincerely and gratefully want to thank every reader of this site for your interest and support and emails and engagement through these many years. It's been quite a ride.

Happiest of trails,

Diana

Lessons Learned

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 16:24:00 GMT

What follows is an entry from 2016 which I think captures the essence of a special streak of perversion (one of so many) inflicted by the US government on our people, in this case the US military. It entailed the forced subordination of Americans to the cult of Islam, a mission which parrallels our government-forced subordination to Marxism (aka liberalism, progressivism, woke-ism, etc.). Perhaps it is the case that this breaking of the US military was the main mission of the US government/military in Afghanistan.

Speaking of Petraeus and Mattis -- "the two general officers who catalyzed the new [COIN] doctrine" -- behold Marine Lt . Col. Matt Baker (commanding officer of 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment), practicing a highly catalyzed form of COIN in Nawa, Afghanistan, in late 2009:

"When in doubt, I want you to be nice," Baker told his Marines.

And not just nice. Baker, according to the Pentagon news site, DVIDS, donned the local Afghan garb "out of sincere respect for Afghan culture."

Here is a pic of LTC Baker and SGTMAJ Dwight D. Jones sincerely respecting Islamic culture some more on Islamic New Year in March 2010. (Note the grinning one's hand on Jones' shoulder.)

Of course, COIN was more than "respect the Afghan culture" dress-ups. At this late date, however, maybe something essential will come through this strange gallery of the failed infidel effort to win Muslim hearts and minds -- a crashing, bloody, expensive and predictable failure -- something that may quickly and visually convey the fraudulence of it all, the corruption of it all, when time is of the essence as we await news of whether COIN generals will actually be tapped to take a place inside the new Trump administration.

Please, no.

Service members in the other branches were also forced into the Petraeus-Mattis-McChrystal-Mullen-Allen COIN-catalyzed "petri dish." There was US Army Capt. Michael Harrison, for example, who, the WaPo reported in 2009, "shed his uniform and pulled on a shalmar kameeze" -- a.k.a., manjammies (a.k.a. seven-day-shit-suit, as former Green Beret/embedded photo-journalist Paul Avallone put it) -- in an effort "to show that U.S. and Afghan forces were compassionate and caring" of that wonderful culture all around them. So went the COIN "strategy" of winning hearts and minds.

That would be the tribal and Islamic culture of Afghanistan which institutionalizes the rape of children, practices pedophilia, and makes women chattel.

Photo by Paul Avallone

Alas, there is no picture online of Capt. Harrison in his Afghan togs, so here is a stand-in.

Yes, that's David Petraeus himself, in a real DVIDS photo.

Before I try to take this quick gut-check any deeper, do bear in mind the caliber, the clarity, the morality, the discernment, and, yes, the decency of the American military leaders very much including Petraeus and Mattis, who devised a war-fighting strategy for mainly Christian armies based on currying favor and generally playing sloppy sycophant and major moneybag$ to this same tribal Islamic culture.

Would you want them in your administration?

The first thing COIN leaders had their mainly Christian armies do was supress and deny their own morality and decency when it came to this Islamic treatment of women and children.

In fact, those were orders.

“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death [by an Afghan] at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”

No, it's COIN.

There is so much to say about the COIN fiasco of the Bush and Obama years, which, it is vital to remember, turned on the same axis of ignorance and lies about Islam that imperils us still. At this point, though, maybe it is best simply to pray that COIN leaders do not rise to power again in the Trump years.

If President-Elect Trump were to read one thing about COIN, this single paragraph from Gen. Petraeus's August 2010 Guidance would be just the thing -- the one where Petraeus instructs troops traversing IED-laced roads and booby-trapped towns not to ride when they could walk; and to be sure and take off their protective ballistic glasses.

Too many military leaders in air-conditioned headquarters still see these as perfect COIN tactics "to win the trust of the Afghan people" -- a primary COIN objective that never would be achieved. Indeed, if these same military leaders ever acknowledged the basic and immutable laws of Islam they would know it never could be achieved, no matter how many, many, many, many American limbs and spleens and brains were to blow up on goggle-less foot patrols as a direct result of COIN "guidance" from David Petraeus and the other COINdinistas.

These senior officers should be brought before Congress and the Pentagon to explain themselves -- not elevated to higher office.

But people forget, if they ever even knew any of this in the first place.

Some people know and will always remember because COIN, in all of its moral and strategic bankruptcy, happened to them and their loved ones.

What has never happened to the larger nation is a COIN reckoning -- and it probably won't ever happen, not if President-Elect Trump actually elevates COIN's leading theorists and practitioners, including Petraeus and Mattis.

I will close with an entry from 2012.

"The Tragic End of Staff Sgt. Matthew Sitton in Afghanistan"

On August 2, 2012, while many millions of Americans were either on, refreshed from or perhaps contemplating their summer vacation, Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Sitton and another U.S. soldier stepped on an IED in a mine-riddled field in Afghanistan. They were both killed. Sitton's sacrifice came to our attention all too briefly in September when a letter he had written to his Congressman in desperation about the strategic futility of such patrolling -- a COIN (COunter INsurgency) staple -- became public. In looking back on the year, it is important not to forget what Sitton wrote. The recklessness and failures of COIN must still be addressed by the nation.

Below is an extraordinary, heart-stopping and historic letter. It is a letter SSG Matthew Sitton sent to U.S. Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young after his commanders in Afghanistan told him to "quit whining" about orders to lead patrols without objective "through, for lack of a better term, basically a mine field on a daily basis," as Sitton wrote. Twice daily basis, in fact. On August 2, 2012, Sitton and another US soldier were killed in one the IED-riddled field he spoke of. Eighty-one-year-old Rep. Young, who attends the same church in Florida as the Sitton family, this week announced he no longer supports the presence of US troops in Afghanistan and called for their withdrawal in advance of 2014. Young also held a hearing yesterday to ask the agency in charge of protecting troops against IEDs to explain why so many are still dying and suffering horrific injuries despite an annual budget of nearly $3 billion.

I support immediate withdrawal ("Let it go") and commend the Congressman's resolve -- all but unique among his hundreds of peers in the House and Senate, which is in itself a national disgrace -- but he is asking the wrong people the wrong question. This is a question of strategy that goes to the heart of the whole multi-billion-dollar nation-building endeavor predicated on a Big Lie that Islam and the West are compatible. It is time for Sitton's commanders and their commanders and on up the chain of command to be questioned, to talk to We, the People about who devised and signed off on this morally and militarily bankrupt doctrine -- counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy -- that patriots such as Matthew Sitton have paid for with their lives. It is time for Generals Petraeus, McChrystal, Allen, Dempsey, Admiral Mullen and many more to face us and explain. It is also time for former President Bush and his advisors and President Obama and his advisors to answer for the failure of their misbegotten and irresponsible policy of nation-building in the Islamc world, which COIN supports. This letter by Matthew Sitton, RIP, is the right place to start.

SIR,

Hello my name is SSG Matthew Sitton. I am in the 82{+n}{+d} Airborne Division stationed in Ft. Bragg, NC. I am currently deployed with the 4th Brigade Combat Team in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. I am writing you because I am concerned for the safety of my soldiers. This is my 3{+r}{+d} combat tour to Afghanistan so I have seen the transition in Rules of Engagement and Overall Tactics over the past 6 years.

I am only writing this email because I feel myself and my soldiers are being put into unnecessary positions where harm and danger are imminent. I know the threat of casualties in war and am totally on board with sacrifice for my country, but what I don't agree with is the chain of command making us walk through, for lack of a better term, basically a mine field on a daily basis.

I am in a platoon of 25 soldiers. We are operating at a tempo that is set for a full 35-40 man infantry platoon. We have been mandated to patrol twice daily for 2-4 hours each patrol on top of guarding our FOB and conducting routine maintenance of our equipment. There is no endstate or purpose for the patrols given to us from our higher chain of command, only that we will be out for a certain time standard. I am all for getting on the ground and fighting for my country when I know there is a desired endstate and we have clear guidance of what needs to be done. But when we are told basically to just walk around for a certain amount of time is not sitting well with me.

As a Brigade, we are averaging at a minimum an amputee a day from our soldiers because we are walking around aimlessly through grape rows and compounds that are littered with explosives. Not to mention that the operation tempo that every solider is on leaves little to no time for rest and refit. The moral and alertness levels on our patrol are low and it is causing casualties left and right.

Here is an example of how bad things have gotten. Our small FOB was flooded accidentally by a local early one morning a few days ago. He was watering his fields and the damn he had broke and water came flooding into our Living Area. Since our FOB does not have any portable bathrooms, we had to dig a hole in the ground where soldiers could use the bathroom. That also got flooded and contaminated all the water that later soaked every soldier and his gear. Instead of returning to base and cleaning up, our chain of command was so set on us meeting the brigade commanders 2 patrols a day guidance that they made us move outside the flooded FOB and conduct our patrols soaked in urine.

That is just one single instance of the unsatisfactory situations that our chain of command has put us in. At least three of my soldiers have gotten sick since that incident and taken away from our combat power because of their illness caused by unhealthy conditions.

I understand that as a commander you are to follow the orders of those appointed over you however there needs to be a time where the wellness of your soldiers needs to take priority over walking around in fields for hours a day for no rhyme or reason, but only to meet the Brigade Commanders guidance of you will conduct so many patrols for such an allotted time.

I'm concerned about the well being of my soldiers and have tried to voice my opinion through the proper channels of my own chain of command only to be turned away and told that I need to stop complaining. It is my responsibility to take care of my soldiers and there is only so much I can do with that little bit of Rank I have. My guys would fight by my side and have my back in any condition and I owe it to them to have their best interest in mind. I know they would and I certainly would appreciate it if there was something that you could do to help us out. I just want to return my guys home to their families healthy. I apologize for taking your time like this Sir, and I do appreciate what you do for us. I was told to contact you by my Grand Mother (name blacked out) who said that you had helped her son (my uncle) (name blacked) out many years ago. He also was serving in the military at the time. Thank you again for allowing soldiers like me to voice their opinion. If anything Please Pray for us over hear. God Bless

Very respectfully,

SSG Matthew Sitton

Will Doubts About Kissinger Die With Him?

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 13:48:00 GMT

Some years ago, when it still seemed possible to mount a defense if only we could just unmask the enemy, a retired senior intelligence officer passed along an essay about Henry Kissinger by "one Charles Viar," whom the retired officer described as a friend of the late James Jesus Angleton. It is called "The Curious Case of Henry Alfred Kissinger." I don't know the author; I don't know if his essay was ever published. My friend, however, thought it was worth reading. And so it is, if only for Viar's claim:

After his enforced departure from the Agency in 1973, Angleton publicly stated with qualified precision that Kissinger was “objectively, a Soviet agent.” But for a man who had once trained at Harvard Law School, objective and witting were entirely different things. He remained agnostic until his death in 1987.

I think I just heard an echoing gun from the battle, or, perhaps, Phony War, over Harry Hopkins.

Viar's essay presents an elegantly constructed biographical study of Kissinger, his origins as a poor refugee of Nazi Germany who arrived in New York City as a teenager with his family; his stint in the armed forces during World War II, which included courageous service at the Battle of the Bulge; his elevation into military intelligence and later guidance to Harvard through the offices of a man we might call "one Fritz Kraemer," an older German refugee of a similiarly provocative effect. It was at Harvard where Kissinger would eventually be "discovered" and elevated by Harvard historian, later-JFK-advisor and professional liberal Arthur Schlesinger Jr, who was really a socialist who did not wish to be known as a "Socialist." I make this last remark, and with insufficient tact, to indicate that had young war/intelligence veteran Kissinger spread his wings as an anti-communist in the late 1940s, just as Whittaker Chambers et al were spilling at least some of the beans on the communist/socialist subversion of the US government, it is safe to assume he would not have been taken up by Harvard or Schlesinger, or, later, the Council on Foreign Relations or the Rockefeller network -- David, Nelson and more, very much including Rockefeller banking interests.

The rest is history? No, the rest is spider webs, bum steers, and a theatrical kind of darkness that descends with the curtain as we stagger up the aisle into a blizzard of Kissnger obituaries which obscure what is most intriguing and alarming about this disastrous architect of the "new world order."

Here is a reminder from "The Curious Case of Henry Alfred Kissinger":

Kissinger had fallen under suspicion long before public doubts as to his allegiance ever arose. Lingering questions regarding Kissinger’s inexplicable success in post-war Germany and his unreported trip – or trips – to Moscow invited close scrutiny, as did his increasing access to classified information as a government consultant. During the closing years of the 1950’s, a Polish intelligence officer by the name of Col. Michael Goleniewski provided the CIA with thousands of pages of Polish and Soviet Bloc intelligence documents, and the identities of scores of Soviet and Bloc spies while still serving as an agent-in-place. After arriving in the United States in January of 1961, he identified Kissinger as a Soviet agent and provided plausible details as to his alleged recruitment. That Goleniewski later went mad has encouraged some to discount his testimony – and others to suspect his sanity was deliberately destroyed by drugs, to discredit his claims.

Whatever the actual truth, Goleniewski’s accusation gained additional credence in December of 1961, when KGB Major Anatoily Golitsyn defected to the United States. A graduate of the KGB’s High Intelligence School, Golitsyn had been a NATO analyst before being assigned to the KGB’s strategic planning unit. In the course of his career he had been exposed to a wealth of Soviet intelligence data, which he exchanged for asylum. Although Golitsyn’s analysis of Soviet strategy later provoked an enormous controversy, there was never any doubt as to the validity of the information he provided during his initial debriefing: he accurately detailed the massive Soviet penetrations of the French, German, and British foreign intelligence services, and revealed a high ranking penetration agent in the United States. In contrast to the Soviet penetrations of the European intelligence services, his knowledge of the American penetration was slight. The traitor was a naturalized citizen who had been born in Europe, and his last name began with “K.”

Although public reports of the investigation that followed have asserted that the “mole hunt” was confined to the CIA, the Agency’s Counterintelligence Staff cast a much wider net. In actual fact, the investigation reached deep into the Department of Defense, the State Department, and far beyond. Fritz Kraemer – who then held an important post in the Pentagon – fell under immediate suspicion, but was quickly cleared. His one time protégée was not.

Suspicions continued to mount after Kissinger’s appointment as national security advisor. According to unconfirmed reports, President-elect Nixon dispatched Kissinger on a secret, post-election mission to Moscow to solicit Soviet support for his plan to end the Vietnam War. Although the story may be apocryphal, the mission is said to have been a catastrophic failure: after listening to Kissinger’s presentation, the Soviet leadership – which had thus far been reluctant to extend more than token aid to their North Vietnamese allies – decided to bleed the United States instead. Within a matter of weeks, massive amounts of Soviet weapons and supplies began flowing to North Vietnam through their Far Eastern port of Vladivostok. According to former

intelligence officers who believed the story to be true, Kissinger’s failure doomed America’s effort to defend South East Asia – and without exception, they also believed it was deliberate.

Similar suspicions arose regarding Kissinger’s efforts to negotiate a series of strategic arms limitation treaties, known respectively as SALT I and SALT II. Because Kissinger viewed these treaties as foundational for his larger policy of Détente, he was untroubled by the fact or the perception – depending upon one’s point of view – that they conferred an asymmetrical advantage upon the Soviets. Some American intelligence officers regarded the treaties as fool-hardy, while others thought them treasonous – interpretations that hardened after James Angleton, the CIA’s chief of counterintelligence, informed the U.S. Senate the Agency lacked the ability to verify Soviet compliance. Angleton was soon dismissed, and while public source accounts based upon “deep background” interviews and officially sanctioned leaks attributed this to his allegedly disruptive search for “Agent K,” the story is untrue. Angleton had spoken truth to power, the most heinous of Capitol crimes. For that, he was forced to walk the plank.

The story unfortunately continued long after Angleton slid beneath the waves. Angleton’s staff were transferred or fired, their files were shredded, and the counterintelligence function was redefined and redistributed. By the end of the 1970’s the CIA’s counterintelligence capability – then the only existing national counterintelligence capability – was so reduced that it no longer merited the name. By that time Kissinger had retired from government, Détente had collapsed, and the Cold War resumed in earnest. Whatever questions remained as to Kissinger’s loyalty became moot or nearly so; and in any event, what little evidence the CIA held against him had been long since destroyed.

XI.

For those familiar with Washington politics, it is entirely plausible to view Angleton’s dismissal and the evisceration of his staff as no more than an exercise in intra-governmental rivalry. Angleton’s testimony had threatened Kissinger’s policies, and with them, his power and position. From that same perspective, it is also possible to view the contretemps in terms of a courtier protecting his patron’s interests. Kissinger’s association with the Rockefeller family ran deep, and the Rockefellers’ had a vested interest in Détente. Because Chase Manhattan Bank had extended some tens of billions of dollars in loans to the Soviet Bloc, increased trade and commerce had become a form of surety.

But from a counterintelligence standpoint, these same events can be interpreted with equal plausibility in at least three other ways. One obvious interpretation is that of a powerful and highly placed penetration agent successfully protecting himself from exposure. Another is a successful Soviet provocation designed to sow discord within the U.S. policymaking elite through the dispatch of false defectors or – far more likely – the deliberate mis-briefing of officers suspected of disloyalty. A third possibility is the evidence is either misleading or entirely wrong for reasons other than those cited above. But in the absence of conclusive proof, it is impossible to ascertain the truth in any case. The debate will continue, perhaps for generations as historians sort through what remains of the data.

Now more than three decades after Kissinger left government service, the lingering suspicions are far more important than the truth. For the inability of American counterintelligence to determine Kissinger’s bona fides both illustrates and underscores a systemic weakness that has haunted American counterintelligence efforts from their inception – quite specifically, the lack of an effective and reliable methodology capable of resolving these and other like questions within a reasonable timeframe, and with a high degree of confidence.

Within the realm of intelligence, analytical methodology has never attracted the attention or the talent it deserves. After he was recalled to the Agency in 1981, Angleton resumed work on a new methodology but it remained incomplete at the time of his death. Since then methodological efforts have languished, and this has been especially true with regard to counterintelligence. For that reason, on-going efforts to enhance America’s counterintelligence capabilities are unlikely to achieve their full potential. Questions of loyalty will continue to arise, suspicions will moot; the shadows of doubt will grow.

But like the Gypsy Maiden of lore, certainty will dance and twirl around the campfire. Beautiful, tantalizing and seductive – and ever beyond our reach.

London Metro Police Are Dhimmi Fascists

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 13:40:00 GMT

This is fascism telling Tommy Robinson that his presence in London will cause "alarm and distress" -- "reason enough," he writes, "for them to arrest me and remove me from the area and prevent me from reporting on the antisemitism march."

CONGRATULATIONS, GEERT, NETHERLANDS, WESTERN WORLD

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 20:21:00 GMT

On with the Breggins & Audrey Russo

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 22:19:00 GMT

The best thing about bad news is talking about it all with good people.

On with Dr. Peter and Ginger Breggin here.

On with Audrey Russo here (...wahhh)

Still to come: interview with Curtis Bowers.