Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Spies and shrinks



Looks like Stephen Schwartz was right after all.

Atomic Bombshell

New research uncovers a link between Freud’s inner circle and the Soviet atomic bomb

The capital for Eitingon’s philanthropies originated in his family’s lucrative international fur trade, which prospered thanks to a near monopoly on export of Soviet pelts that made it, through the 1920s, the largest private U.S. importer from the USSR and gave the Eitingons a strong motivation to cooperate with successive incarnations of Soviet intelligence. Another intriguing clue was the name of a leading chekist, Gen. Nahum, aka Leonid, Eitingon, who was responsible, among other exploits, for staging Trotsky’s assassination. The debate in 1988 over whether and how Gen. Eitingon was related to Max has since been resolved by his colleagues and descendants: The two men were cousins.

Little doubt now remains about the Eitingon clan’s collaboration with the Soviets—particularly by Max’s New York-based cousin (and his sometime brother-in-law) Motty, who shortly after claiming a dramatic escape from the Bolsheviks in 1918 was cutting million-dollar fur deals with them. Besides Motty’s support of pro-Soviet intellectuals, trade unions, and causes, his name has popped up in KGB documents that the journalist Alexander Vassiliev was allowed to copy in the chaotic days around the disintegration of the USSR.


HT: Intel news

More recent research on Eitingon here.

From his wiki page:

Eitingon was cofounder and president from 1920 to 1933 of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Polyclinic. He was also director and patron of the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag (1921-1930), president of the International Psychoanalytic Association (1927-1933), founder and president of the International Training Committee (1925-1943), and founder of the Palestine Psychoanalytic Society (1934) and of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Israel.[2]

Sunday, July 15, 2012

A little shot of Chesterton



It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation (such as bricklaying or writing books) there are only two ways (in any special sense) of succeeding. One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating.

"The Fallacy of Success" in All Things Considered (1908)


The Poles do not forget



Poles honor Reagan, John Paul II with new statue

Polish officials unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II on Saturday, honoring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago.

The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organizing or taking part in strikes against the communist regime.


HT: Ace of Spades

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Line of the day



Headline:

Jesse Jackson Jr’s office: He’s being treated for a “mood disorder”


Ace: "Turns out he's not in the mood to go to jail."

Power Line takes Dana Milbank to the woodshed



They might be giants, but Dana Milbank wouldn’t know

Milbank being Milbank, his incarnation of the “where have all the giants gone” lament is largely a vehicle for attacking conservative Republicans. Orrin Hatch and John McCain might be giants, he concedes, but for the fact that McCain now acts consistently like a Republican and Hatch no longer pals around much with Democrats. To Milbank, this means they that Hatch and McCain have “stooped to joined the Lilliputians,” by which Milbank means Senators with whose ideology he disagrees.