I usually post links I like over at the Garbanzo Annex on Tumblr, but today I thought I'd post them here too.
This one by Melanie Phillips is worth reading and so is the commenter who challenges the Israel bashers with this challenge,
How do you explain the whole Arab world raising against dictators, sacrificing lives in thousands.. everywhere except PA and Israeli Arab sector? - ..these ones are supposed to be first victims of "Zionist genocide".
Here it is, an awful secret. Netanyahu doesn't need to make peace with Arabs because de-facto peace is already established. Israel is not at war with those, even yesterday enemies, who have stopped hostility.
Taking into account the schizophrenic nature of "Arab street" there, and meagre prespectives for political stability, the factual peace is the best available option. And Arabs quietly accept this.
Of course, you should read what Phillips wrote. She is one of the best commentators writing today. And here is more proof of that.
The Times (£) reports that half the board of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics, which has received money from Libya among other Arab dictatorships, has called for a boycott of Israel, the one democracy in the Middle East.
It figures.
Now, apparently, there are some red faces:
The university has already been urged by its own dons to give up the £300,000 it received from a foundation headed by the son of Colonel Gaddafi. Howard Davies, the LSE director, is said to have told academics this week that he was ashamed of the institution’s links to the dictatorship.
Questions have been emerging about the LSE’s wider reliance on finance from authoritarian regimes. One of its lecture halls has been named in honour of a sheikh reputed to have promoted anti-Semitic material.
Hypocrisy on the Left? Who could have imagined that? I've always been assured that hypocrisy is an exclusive failure of conservatives, as are all failures.
As long as were talking about Progressives' willful blindness on Israel and the Middle East, here's a good one by Nick Cohen.
The Arab revolution is consigning skip-loads of articles, books and speeches about the Middle East to the dustbin of history. In a few months, readers will go through libraries or newspaper archives and wonder how so many who claimed expert knowledge could have turned their eyes from tyranny and its consequences.
To a generation of politically active if not morally consistent campaigners, the Middle East has meant Israel and only Israel. In theory, they should have been able to stick by universal principles and support a just settlement for the Palestinians while opposing the dictators who kept Arabs subjugated. Few, however, have been able to oppose oppression in all its forms consistently. The right has been no better than the liberal-left in its Jew obsessions. The briefest reading of Conservative newspapers shows that at all times their first concern about political changes in the Middle East is how they affect Israel. For both sides, the lives of hundreds of millions of Arabs, Berbers and Kurds who were not involved in the conflict could be forgotten.
If you doubt me, consider the stories that the Middle Eastern bureau chiefs missed until revolutions that had nothing to do with Palestine forced them to take notice.
What's really surprising is that this is from a British newspaper. I wonder how Cohen got away with this.
Next up is this piece by Alan Dershowitz, a member of that rare species of pro-Israel liberal, in which he exposes the ACLU's attempt at censorship.
The international campaign to prevent speakers from delivering pro-Israel talks at universities has been assisted by leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union—an organization that is supposed to protect freedom of speech for all. The method used to silence these speakers and preclude their audiences from hearing their message is exemplified by a now infamous event at the University of California at Irvine.
Michael Oren—a distinguished scholar and writer, a moderate supporter of the two-state solution, and now Israel's Ambassador to the United States—was invited to speak. The Muslim Student Union set out to prevent him from delivering his talk Here is the way Erwin Chemerinksy, Dean of the law school, described what the students did:
"The Muslim Student Union orchestrated a concerted effort to disrupt the speech. One student after another stood and shouted so that the ambassador could not be heard. Each student was taken away only to be replaced by another doing the same thing."
Oh well, since they're only censoring pro-Israel speech, maybe it's not really censorship. We'll have to await the ACLU ruling.
And now for something completely different, a disturbing video showing another reason why support for education is not the same as support for the MEA.
And teachers in the audience really cheered this speech? Is that what really what they believe? They'd better hope this video doesn't get the attention it deserves.
# As security has been strengthened in the West Bank and suicide bombings have virtually disappeared -- thanks overwhelmingly to Israel's much criticized security fence -- the tourism industry in the Palestinian areas has rebounded nicely. The city of Bethlehem saw 1 million tourists in 2008, an increase of 500,000 from the previous year. The city of Jericho saw 500,000 tourists in '08, an increase of over 100,000 from 2007. To put it in perspective, the entire state of Israel had 1 million tourists in 2008. # The unemployment rate in the West Bank in 2002 was a whopping 31 %. This was during the second Intifada, when Palestinian terrorism was at its peak, and the Israeli security fence had not yet been erected. Today, that unemployment rate stands at 15 %. To put it in context, Israel's unemployment rate right now is at 9%, and the U.S. rate is hovering around 10 %. In the longtime West Bank terror hotbed of Nablus, which has now become an unlikely shopping destination, unemployment has dropped all the way down to 6 %. # 229,000 trucks passed between Israel and the West Bank in the first half of 2009, a 41 % increase from 2008. This has helped lead to a 29 % increase in fuel deliveries to the West Bank between '08 and '09.
But wait. There's more!
Stock market: A 12.5% rise since the beginning of the year.
· Foreign investments in the West Bank: A six-fold increase (!) compared with the corresponding period last year, as a result of the economic conferences that were held in Bethlehem and Nablus, and of the improved security in the area (this figure was provided by the Palestinians and the Joint Economic Conference held on September 2).
Hmm, things certainly do change when change your outlook from murder and destruction to growth and prosperity. I wonder if this will burst any bubbles.
Everyone (or at least it seems like everyone) has demonstrated their disgust at the Mumbai massacre. Some news sources even used the words "Islamic" and "terrorists" in the same paragraph. It may have been accidental, but some of us noticed. The truly stupid are still scratching their heads wondering what could have set these young militants on their murder spree. Melanie Phillips, who should always be listened to, said:
We should pay the closest possible attention to what happened in Mumbai because something on this scale could well happen here.
But because we don't understand what we are actually up against, we are not doing nearly enough to prevent this — or something even worse — occurring; and if it were to happen here, we would be unable to cope.
The Mumbai atrocities show very clearly what too many obdurately deny — that a war is being waged against civilization.
It is both global and local. It is not 'our' fault; it has nothing to do with Muslim poverty, oppression or discrimination.
The Islamic fundamentalist fanatics use specific grievances — Kashmir, Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya — merely as recruiting sergeants for their worldwide holy war against all 'unbelievers'.
The Mumbai attackers targeted British, American and Indian citizens simply because they wanted to kill as many British, American and Indian 'unbelievers' as possible.
Where they found Muslims, they spared them.
They also singled out for slaughter the occupants of an outreach organization geared to Jews with no Israeli or political agenda — underscoring the point that at the core of the Islamists' hatred of Israel festers their hatred of the Jews.
This was not, as is so often described, 'mindless violence'.
The biggest problem we're facing is not the Islamic terrorists though. It's the idiots in the MSM and other opinion makers, who sit with their heads firmly entrenched up their elite buttocks, preferring to wallow in the stench of their own crap rather than admit to the reality of today's world. Small minority . . . hijacking of a great religion . . . How ignorant must someone keep themselves to believe that crap?
Despite the evidence presented, there is an incredible disconnect from reality by otherwise rational and reasonable individuals, people in leadership, and some at higher levels in our own law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Why else would one treat with sickening malaise the existence of a bullet-ridden school bus situated on the grounds of a private Islamic commune located at the base of the Catskill Mountains in New York State? This would be the same Islamic compound “of Qu’ranic study” that is outfitted with a firing range, where area residents often hear the sounds of automatic and semi-automatic weapons fire.
How was this group dealt with by local community leaders? Not with the slightest scintilla of suspicion or even curiosity, but with a parade. An actual parade, through the streets of Binghamton, NY, to celebrate interfaith dialogue. What about law enforcement? Well, they consider this commune “good residents,” mostly because they have not had to respond to any “trouble calls” to that location.
It is truly the fault of cowardly leaders in the West, in Europe and the United States that the Islamo Nazis have made this much progress against us.
Will the massacre in Mumbai cause any of our politically correct elite to remove their heads from the comfort of their own asses? Maybe, but I'm guessing they will be few in number. If we are to actually ever fight back it will be in spite of our leaders, not because of them.
“Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you. Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth.”
This is a busy time of year. It's even busier due to my son's impending graduation from high school. I thought if I just gathered a few links from other sites, I could have a post done in a few minutes. Those few minutes have been few and far between. I began this two weeks ago. The previous two posts were timely so this one had to wait longer than I had planned.
This photo was swiped from American Digest. (He swiped it from another site.)
Others have already linked to it, most notably (because that's where I first linked from) American Digest, then Melanie Phillips. David Mamet, in the Village Voice, offers an essay he calls: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'. It's beautiful. It's concise and intelligent. I'm sure liberals and progressives hate it. Some of his story is also my story. I've read it twice so far.
I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.
I also read his book, The Wicked Son. It's kind of a polemic on Antisemitism and anti-Semitic Jews. It's not for everybody, but it was one of those books that I had to pick up and read immediately.
I once heard a conservative comedian on the radio tell the audience something to the effect that he used to be a liberal. Then he learned to read.
Once I was headed in that direction, reading Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, F. A. Hayak, Victor Hanson, Eric Hoffer, Robert Kaplan, and Daniel Boorstin helped clarify my thinking. But I'm still reading. I'm a slow learner.
As I was examining links to include in this post, I came upon this one, in which a liberal reviewer laments Mamet's change and wonders if his writing will suffer because of it. Of course we know that talent is function of one's liberalality and that the amount of talent one has is directly proportional to how progressive one is. What a dope. I'm betting that Mamet's change in thought will change the thoughts of this and other reviewers.
In the interest of appeasement (at least in my opinion) the Detroit News gives runs an occasional column by local imam, and Hezbollah supporter, Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi No matter what the subject of his columns are, he almost always throws in at least one gratuitous slap at Israel, and the occasional anti Bush jab. A few years ago, he made the idiotic statement:
"There are Jewish extremists who believe those do not confess the Torah must be killed".
It made no sense except to insult Jews so I googled the statement and ended up at a Nazi website on their fake Talmudic Quote page. They also had fake Zohar (kabbalah) quotes, but nothing from the Tanakh (bible) because those would be too easy to refute. As unknown as the Talmud is even among most Jews, the Zohar is very obscure. Neither the Imam or the Nazis he admires know that Jews do not "confess the Torah", whatever that means. Not only did I write to local Jewish leaders about it, getting zero response, but I did a post on it. I always wondered, did the Nazis make up these quotes?
Nope, they stole them from the original source. I found that source at Melanie Phillips who linked to Harry's Place. Why the sudden interest in these anti-Jewish defamations? Because now they're showing up on the BBC message board and the BBC doesn't object. According to the post at Harry's Place,
BBC Radio 5 Live message board moderators have refused to remove a posting from the 5 Live website, which states that
“Zionism is a racist ideology where jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths. This is found in the Talmud. There is a law called Baba Mezia which allows jews to lie as long as its to non-jews. many pro jewish supporters will cringe at this being exposed because they know it exists, yet they keep quiet about it, hey frip, jla and co The Law of Baba Mezia!! Tsk tsk tsk! Its in the Talmud.”
When I brought the mailing to the attention of the moderator, “The BBC Communities Team” emailed back, stating
“we have decided that it does not contravene the House Rules and are going to leave it on site”.
Apparently, at least three others have also complained to the BBC.
The message was posted by “Iron Naz”. A brief Google search on this name suggests that he is unlikely to be a (bottom of the class) Jewish theological student.
Only “Iron Naz” himself knows how he came to hear of the supposed Law of Baba Mezia. The bastardisation of Talmud quotes, however, is normally rooted within “The Talmud Unmasked”, a classic core antisemitic text written at the end of the 19th Century by a Jew hating Russian Catholic Priest, Rev. Father Justin Praniatis, who gave evidence at the infamous Beilis blood libel trial in Kiev, 1913.
Praniatis argued that the Talmud advocated ritual murder, but was shown by Jewish and Christian scholars to be a charlatan with no knowledge of the Talmud. The all Christian jury found Beilis innocent. The influence, however, of Rev. Praniatis’ work has of course spread well beyond the confines of Imperial Russia.
Today, the core text, “The Talmud Unmasked” is distributed by neo-Nazi booksellers via the internet. It gained a brief surge of publicity in the UK in the early 1990s as part of a series of mass antisemitic mailshots by a coterie of veteran Jew haters led by the notorious Dowager Lady Jane Birdwood. She was eventually convicted in 1994 of distributing “threatening, abusive and insulting material” on account of an antisemitic compendium, “The Longest Hatred”, the contents of which included the Talmud material.
Attacks on the Talmud are also an increasingly routine component of Arab and Islamist antisemitism, anti-Zionism and Israel hatred. Until now, however, the BBC was not known to have joined this particular part of the club.
It is bad enough that it is up to readers to police what the BBC publish on their own websites, but it is far sadder that this public body should actively refuse to remove the filth, and give no explanation for their actions - or perhaps its just that “The BBC Communities Team” agree with the essential element of the posting:
“Zionism is a racist ideology where jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths.”
Even though they deny it, the MSM, especially in Britain where the BBC and other news sources are especially blatant in their Jew hatred, have allowed some nasty antisemitism to filter up from the deranged, paranoid hate mongers to the mainstream. In the U.S., the claim is that both sides have to be represented, but if you look at what they choose to publish, with the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, and the NY Times all giving their oped pages over to Hamas, you know that's a lie.
Of course, "The Talmud Unmasked" can be found in its entirety on the Internet. It's also available from Amazon. Reading some of the reviews there from reviewers who accept its veracity, you can feel the insanity. Cruising the Internet, there is a lot of hatred and insanity. It does not have to be fed by the BBC. If I were a British Jew, I'd be looking to emigrate.
As always, Melanie Phillips is on top of the situation and lays it out correctly for even the dimmist among us.
If, heaven forbid, this does turn into a second Holocaust, we can now discern the key difference from the first one. This time the Jews will be blamed for their own destruction. And this time, the political left and the media will have blood on their hands. Indeed, they already do. The lies, libels and distortions, the selective reporting and omissions, the egregious double standards, the moral inversion which turns jihadi murderers into resistance fighters and their victims into war criminals, the willingess to report Hezbollah propaganda as the truth while disparaging Israeli statements as lies (when they are even reported at all), not to mention the ancient canards against the Jews now being blurted out everywhere from California to Canary Wharf – all are not only creating a lethal climate of increasingly hysterical hatred against Israel and the Jews, but are also egging on the terror-puppeteers of the jihad and recruiting yet more to the cause of murdering Jews and waging holy war against the west.
Yes, you really need to read the whole thing. She tells the truth, not "her version of the truth", but the truth, you know, that thing, that if you're paying attention, you can see with your own two eyes.
No matter how anyone tries to spin the facts, it was not Israeli ordinance that killed a family on the beach in Gaza on June 9. Melanie Phillips gives us this report.
After Israel said last week that it could not have been responsible for the shell that killed the seven Arab family members on the beach at Gaza, various British newspapers published prominent stories contradicting this account, largely based on claims made by a member of Human Rights Watch, whose own record of impartiality leaves something to be desired (see reports by NGO Monitor)
Now there are two more pieces of information to consider. According to this report, a German newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung, has pieced together evidence which suggests not just that Israel was innocent of the killing, but that the event was deliberately staged to hold Israel falsely responsible.
The pictures that went round the world of the child screaming in shock and grief over the body of her dead father on the beach were taken by Zakaria Abu Irbad, a cameramen with the Palestinian independent news agency Ramattan.
Did Hamas men hide evidence from the scene, as claimed by eyewitnesses interviewed by Israeli broadcasters?
The newspaper said Irbad evaded most of the questions addressed to him.
Asked why he didn’t try to calm Hadil instead of filming her he said: “She asked me to film her. She wanted to be seen next to her father to show the world the crimes that Israel is committing.”
The newspaper finally asks: ‘Did the shocked 10-year-old girl, who had lost her father minutes earlier, give the cameraman direction instructions?’
Some of you may have been following the tragic story of a Gazan family that was destroyed by some sort of bomb last friday. The world of course chose to blame Israel - without verifying any facts. The fact that Israel immediately accepted all the victims to its hospitals was seen as an admission of guilt, and not as a humanitarian gesture.
There is now incontrovertible proof that Israel did not cause the tragedy - shell fragments extracted from one bomb victim match the types of bombs made by Hamas - and not Israeli artillery shells. How do I know? I received the victim last Sunday (at 2:00 am), operated on her until 5am, and have re-operated every night since. Now she’s out of danger, and will survive to rejoin her family.
The Israelis may be criticised for many things but they do not generally tell lies. Yet the British media assume they do, while failing to investigate the obvious inconsistencies that alerted the journalists on Suddeutsche Zeitung.
The Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv has released an unusual statement, saying that that 21-year-old Ayham Ghalia, who was injured in the Gaza beach explosion , was 'cleansed' of shrapnel before arriving at the hospital.
According to new findings, testimonies and hospital records, deadly blast at Gaza beach, which killed Ghalia family members, occurred at time of shelling, not after; British Guardian, Independent, Times newspapers publish findings casting doubt on Israel's claims Full story
The report casts further doubts over what happened in Gaza about a week and a half ago. The Israel Defense Forces said it was not involved in the explosion after completing an investigation it conducted, while the Palestinians continue to claim that explosion was caused by an IDF shell.
[ . . . ]
"We would like to make clear that no shrapnel was found in Ayham's body except one piece which was not accessible surgically. What is clear beyond any doubt is that part of the injuries were caused by shrapnel… this does not fit our medical experience in hundreds of injuries of terrorist attacks and explosions who usually arrive with pieces of shrapnel in various parts of their body," the hospital said.
Even the afore mentioned member of Human Rights Watch, Marc Garlasco was forced to retract his earlier immediate and irresponsible charge of Israeli responsibility.
On Monday, the Human Rights Watch, while sticking to its demand for the establishment of an independent inquiry into a blast on a Gaza beach 10 days ago that killed seven Palestinian civilians, conceded for the first time since the incident that it could not contradict the IDF's exonerating findings.
[ . . . ]
"We came to an agreement with General Klifi that the most likely cause [of the blast] was unexploded Israeli ordinance," Garlasco told The Jerusalem Post following the meeting. While Klifi's team did a "competent job" to rule out the possibility that the blast was caused by artillery fire, there were still, Garlasco said, a number of pieces of evidence that the IDF commission did not take into consideration.
[ . . . ]
Garlasco told Klifi during the meeting that he was impressed with the IDF's system of checks and balances concerning its artillery fire in the Gaza Strip and unlike Hamas which specifically targeted civilians in its rocket attacks, the Israelis, he said, invested a great amount of resources and efforts not to harm innocent civilians.
"We do not believe the Israelis were targeting civilians." Garlasco said. "We just want to know if it was an Israeli shell that killed the Palestinians."
Lucy Mair - head of the HRW's Jerusalem office - said Klifi's team had conducted a thorough and professional investigation of the incident and made "a good assessment" when ruling out the possibility that an errant IDF shell had killed the seven Palestinians on the Gaza beach.
'We differ when it comes to other pieces of information from other sources that don't relate to the military strike such as the timing and the type of injuries," Mair explained. "While they [the IDF] made a very good presentation, we still think there are enough unanswered questions that have not been examined by Klifi's team…and that is why we believe there should be an independent investigation."
In other words, "even though it's obvious that the IDF is telling the truth and the Palestinians have once again been caught sacrificing their own children in a disgusting attempt to smear the Israelis, we still must hold the Israelis to a ridiculously high standard of humanity even as we allow the Palestinians to feed their children to Moloch. But we're not anti-semitic."
But even this debased "human rights" organization is many steps ahead of the Muslim world. In their deeply ingrained hatred of Jews, they will never let the facts, no matter how obvious or compelling get in the way of their belief if Israeli culpability.
The invaluable Melanie Phillips has the skinny on the riots down under. You know, the ones being caused by white racists and men of "middle eastern appearance", or as Melanie Phillips correctly refers to them, Muslims.
There is no doubt that Australia’s worsening civil disorder, in which Muslims and indigenous Aussies have been fighting pitched battles now for days, has been caused in part by white racists. However, the widespread spin that has been placed on this disorder, that it has been caused by white racists and that what it reveals is that, under its veneer of multiculturalism, Australia is a fundamentally racist society positively heaving with people with despicable views who have been itching to have a pop at blameless Lebanese Muslims, is very wide of the mark. For it appears that the current unrest was sparked by Lebanese Muslim attacks on two indigenous lifeguards, and that this was only the tip of an iceberg of aggression by this minority which — thanks to the censorship imposed by multiculturalism — has gone all but unreported.
An important article by Tim Priest, a retired Australian Police detective, reveals three deeply alarming developments in Australian society: 1) the extent of the aggression and violence by these gangs, 2) the extent of Australia’s denial of this phenomenon, and 3) the extent to which this denial has prevented the police from addressing and controlling it. These gangs were involved in heroin smuggling, extortion, armed robbery, gun running, organised factory and warehouse break-ins and large-scale car theft and conversion. They were extremely violent. But a loss of professional nerve in the Australian police led to a mindset that was more concerned with avoiding hostility by ethnic minorities than tackling crime (identical to the situation in Britain). Confronting even the most minor of misdemeanours in Muslim areas tended to provoke a terrifyingly violent response — to which the police response was abject surrender:
Read it all and pass it on, before political correctness leads to the death of Western Civilization. And while your at it, read the entire Tim Priest article. Then cross your fingers in hope that our leaders and wake up and smell the jihad.
The Anglican Church, as I've read, has become one of the denominations denying the truth surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian situation, has bought into the Muslim-inspired, anti-semitic lies, and has joined the Presbyterians and others in blaming Israel for all of the troubles in the Middle East. As I have also discovered, there are members within all of these denominations who have kept their moral compass intact and are active in the battle to support Israel. One of them is Anglicans for Israel. I originally found them on Melanie Phillips' site. Their stated aims are:
1. To resist the call for a boycott of Israel.
2. To support the people of Israel and to secure defensible borders for the State of Israel.
3. To promote bonds of fellowship and interfaith understanding between Anglicans and the Jewish people.
4. To recall the Church to G-d's Covenant with the Jewish people and to call the Church to affirm the centrality of Israel to the Jewish faith.
5. To call Anglicans to repentance for the wrongs-of both word and deed- inflicted by Christians on the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.
6. To fight all libels against Israel and the Jewish people and their State.
7. To promote reconciliation and ties of friendship between the people of Israel and the righteous Arabs who oppose terrorism and wish to have peaceful relations with Israel.
8. To protect the Christian communities threatened by Islamic extremism in the Middle East.
9. To bring the Church back to an understanding of the Jewish roots of our faith.
They're obviously on the side of honesty and morality.
Multiculturalism is a popular topic these days. I can remember, many years ago, arguing in favor of Multiculturalism. This was before I understood how far the Multiculturalists are willing to go to destroy Western culture. My thinking moved to Multiculturalism as stupid, now I see it as evil. Other commentators have weighed in. Here is Diana West.
Only one faith on Earth may be more messianic than Islam: multiculturalism. Without it — without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same — the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail.
It's as simple as that. To live among the believers — the multiculturalists — is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place un-repulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal.
Muslims have been presented not as the community which must take responsibility for this horror, but as its principal victims.
This moral inversion is the result of the cultural brainwashing that has been going on in Britain for years in the pursuit of the disastrous doctrine of multiculturalism. This has refused to teach Muslims — along with other minorities — the core of British culture and values. Instead, it has promoted a lethally divisive culture of separateness, in which minority cultures are held to be equal if not superior to the values and traditions of the indigenous majority.
Even worse, multiculturalism causes the moral paralysis of ‘victim culture’, whereby to say an ethnic minority is at fault is to invite immediate accusations of racism. When Lord Ouseley reported on the 1999 race riots in Bradford, he concluded that many local people did not dare challenge wrongdoing among young ethnic minority people because they feared being labelled 'racist'.
When Ray Honeyford, the Bradford headmaster, warned strongly against multiculturalism in the schools in the eighties, he was branded a racist and hounded from his job. Now those Yorkshire chickens have lethally come home to roost.
The moral bankruptcy of this victim culture is all around us. Thus the BBC instructed its journalists not to refer to the London bombings as ‘terrorism’ because this was a subjective value judgment. And yet it allowed John Simpson, its World Affairs editor, to call these terrorists ‘misguided criminals’ an astounding value judgment which diminished the nature of the atrocity.
The problem is that this inversion of morality can be lethal. Such is the ethos of political correctness in our public services that librarians who want to complain about the potential danger of young Muslims logging onto websites instructing them in making bombs or nerve gas are told to say nothing for fear of being accused of prejudice.
For years now we in the West have indulged a whole set of destructive ideas whose bitter fruit we will all continue to harvest, as more and more unassimilated and disaffected immigrant children turn against the countries that welcomed their parents and provided them with a prosperity and freedom unknown in their countries of origin.
This baneful idea goes by the name of multiculturalism. Don't be fooled by marketing: multiculturalism is not simply a call to respect cultures different from one's own. In reality multiculturalism is a therapeutic melodrama of Western crimes against peaceful peoples “of color” who were subjected to racism, sexism, slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and environmental degradation. Given its record of evil, the West owes reparations to all those victims, especially those who emigrate to the West. There these victims will be given public assistance and soothed with repeated public assertions and recognitions of their culture's superiority, coupled with ritualistic confessions of Western guilt and dysfunction.
Some consider this “cultural relativism,” but it isn't really. A genuine cultural relativism would hold that there are no universal standards by which to judge any culture. But most of the time, those who claim that cultures can be judged only in their own terms have no compunction in judging and condemning the West. Nor will they accept that Nazi Germany or the antebellum South or apartheid South Africa were just “different” and so beyond our judgment. And of course, if you pin them down on the standards and values and principles on which they base their condemnations, these will all turn out to be ideals like freedom or human rights or equality that have their origins and most complete development in the West.
This intellectual contradiction suggests that something other than coherent principle lies behind “Occidentalism,” the multicultural caricature of Western culture. Mythic ideas like the Noble Savage account for some of multiculturalism's allure: ever since the Greeks, visions of peoples living simpler, more spontaneous lives have attracted those living in more complex and sophisticated societies. The Romantic fascination with the exotic explains too the West's relentless appropriation of non-Western cultural artifacts.
So, in conclusion, Multiculturalism is an ideology of self-defeat, self-loathing, and suicide. And it's been forced upon us. No matter how they dress is up, or make excuses for it, Multiculturalism is an evil ideology.
There are blogs I have to read every day for insight into what's really going on in the world. One of the best is Melanie Phillips. Usually it's depressing reading because the growing and accepted anti-semitism in England does not bode well for Jews, Christians, or the west. Don't forget what happened the last time virulent anti-semitism of that magnitude was allowed to take hold in Europe. I'll keep on reading her though. She reports on important events and trends, and she's a fine writer.
Tonight's cure for depression is, Dexter Gordon - Manhattan Symphonie. I'm listening to side 2 right now . . . oh yeah, it's a record, you know, vinyl; flat, black, and circular. When this was recorded (in 1977, I believe, I could search the web and find out exactly, but it's not that important right now) Dexter Gordon had just returned from a lengthy self-imposed European exile and was treated as an elder-jazz-statesman. He deserved it.
He's backed by George Cables on piano, Rufus Reid on bass, and Eddie Gladden on drums; all young guys, but man, they can play. The four of them coalesce nicely as a group. This album, along with "Homecoming", which features the severely underrated Woody Shaw on Trumpet (also on vinyl, but I may get the CD some day as it has some of those treasured "unreleased bonus tracks") are my favorites from this period in Dexter Gordon's recording career.
Melanie Phillips analyzes the situation and motivation of the latest anti-semitic resolution from the British Association of University Teachers. It's well worth reading.
And here are some of the medical innovations from Israel. So AUT members might want to avoid these life saving medical discoveries. This is only one area Israel has made contributions in. And from the Palestinians that the AUT supports we get . . .what? I don't even have to say it, do I?
"No one can find a safe way out for himself if socety is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result." -- Ludwig von Mises
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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CHALLAH AKBAR
