RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/fjordman/academics-or-agitprop-artists/

In late 2012, the academics Øystein Sørensen, Bernt Hagtvet and Bjørn Arne Steine, among others, published a work in Norway called Høyreekstremisme. Ideer og bevegelser i Europa (“Right-wing extremism. Ideas and Movements in Europe”) I figure prominently in this book, which in my view symbolizes the decay and intellectual dishonesty in modern academia.

Co-editors Bernt Hagtvet and Øystein Sørensen, both of them professors at the University of Oslo, suggest that my ideology is anti-democratic and dangerous and will lead to oppressive and authoritarian societies. It is unclear how this could be the case, since I want to move power away from unelected supranational organizations such as the EU, and back to the people, and reduce state interference in the lives of individual citizens. I must be the first alleged “Fascist” in history who wants less state power over the lives of individual citizens.

The chapter written by Vidar Enebakk on “Fjordman’s radicalization” is particularly incompetent and ridiculously politicized. For example, he refers totally uncritically to the report “Fear, Inc. The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” from 2011, which was published by the left-wing organization The Center for American Progress, with several Muslim collaborators.

This report was clearly intended to smear people in North America and other Western countries who oppose Islamization and sharia law in any significant way. It also tied Breivik’s terror attacks directly to the emergence of so-called “organized Islamophobia.”

Yet Enebakk claims without a single critical remark on page 63 that the authors of this report mapped and identified “a small network of experts on disinformation, who have largely defined the anti-Muslim hate rhetoric in the USA in the wake of September 11th 2001.”

Knowledgeable individuals such as the Harvard-educated Daniel Pipes are dismissed without further evidence or explanation as “experts on disinformation,” while the words of those who warn against the dangers of Islamic global expansionism and Jihadist aggression are smeared unfairly with the label “hate rhetoric.” If anything, they are warning against hate.

Mr. Enebakk and too many others like him in this manner take the partisan ideological statements of decidedly left-wing organizations at face value and treat them as the Gospel Truth. At the same time, they casually dismiss conservative viewpoints simply as unfounded and irrational “hate.” Enebakk has done virtually nothing to check if some of the statements made by these “Islamophobes” are actually correct, a behavior that violates the most fundamental principles of genuine research and critical investigation.

What we see here is classic agitprop, or agitation propaganda directed against ideological opponents. This kind of aggressive character assassination unfortunately has long traditions among left-wing activists, dating back at least to the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union.

Science is a method, not a title. Vidar Enebakk likes to wrap himself in the mantle of “science” and pretends to be a scientist, but he does not behave like one, and is therefore unworthy of the title.

Among those allegedly engaged in “systematically spreading Islamophobia in the USA,” Enebakk names Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz. He claims that not only do they spread propaganda and disinformation in the darkest corners of the Internet, they also operate a “well-organized and interconnected network that has systematically financed, produced and disseminated rhetoric of hate and Islamophobia in the United States.”

Notice how hopelessly unscientific this is statement is, written by a person who is supposed to have had scientific training. This is politics, not science. Enebakk describes “rhetoric of hate” (hatretorikk) and “Islamophobia” as being virtually the same thing. He has repeatedly accused me falsely, but very aggressively, of encouraging violence. I have written that I support both the First and the Second Amendment to the US Constitution; that is, freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. I stand by this statement and see nothing wrong with it.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/leaving-the-totalitarian-left-on-the-glazov-gang/
How the Left Cripples African-Americans — on The Glazov Gang »
by Frontpagemag.com

The racial hate behind the “progressive” mask.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/michael-kravshik/canadian-left-calls-for-neutrality-on-honor-killings-female-genital-mutilation/print/ Cultural relativism has reached a new point of absurdity in Canada when the “barbarity” of female genital mutilation and honor killings is questioned and becomes a controversy. A recently introduced manual by the Government of Canada intended to teach newcomers about Canadian values and Canadian society has been met with ongoing hostility from left-wing […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/kerry-in-israel-blind-alleys-and-empty-words/

Secretary of State John Kerry was in Israel on Monday and Tuesday, after a stop in Turkey. Reports indicate the usual mix of Obama-administration delusions and dubious promises.

The Jerusalem Post reported Israeli officials’ “astonishment” at statements Kerry made in Istanbul on Sunday, when he praised the Turkish government’s “sensitiv[ity]” and lack of “triumphalism” in responding to Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s “apology” over Israel’s Mavi Marmara raid.

That apology was made by phone to Turkish prime minister Erdogan over two weeks ago at the tail-end of President Obama’s visit to Israel. Some believe Obama pressured Netanyahu into making the call; some sources in Israel have said Israeli officialdom was itself keen on mending fences with Turkey out of a hope of renewed strategic cooperation on regional threats.

But what is clear is that Turkey’s response has been less than heartwarming and tends to confirm those who stressed Erdogan’s ideological hostility (if not outright anti-Semitism) toward Israel. As Israeli officials reminded the Post, the Turkish press has been full of reports and interviews with Erdogan and his foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu “gloating over the apology.” A day after the apology, billboards in Ankara gave a clear triumphalist message.

Erdogan has announced plans to visit Hamas in Gaza. Davutoglu hosted a dinner for relatives of Turks killed on the Mavi Marmara and members of the Al-Qaeda-linked IHH organization that sent the ship. Meanwhile Israeli-Turkish talks on supposedly renewing ties have been delayed by two weeks.

Kerry appears to respond to such developments with Orwellian inversions instead of serious stocktaking.

Once in Israel, Kerry surprised no one by pursuing the Palestinian issue, meeting with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad (reportedly soon to be sacked by Abbas). The UK’s Telegraph reports that Kerry “wanted to adopt the Arab Peace Initiative…as a basis” for restarting Israeli-Palestinian talks.

The Arab Peace Initiative was a plan broached by Saudi Arabia in 2002 in an effort to rehabilitate its post-9/11 image. It purports to offer Israel full diplomatic relations with Arab countries in return for withdrawing to indefensible borders and being inundated with Palestinian “refugees.” The Telegraph says Kerry

was said to have proposed wording that would soften the initiative’s demand for Israel to withdraw to pre-1967 borders, saying they could be modified by mutual agreement, while inserting stronger security guarantees for Israel.

It also says Abbas turned him down flat, insisting on full Israeli return to the 1967 lines and the release of terrorists from Israeli prisons. No surprises there either, since Abbas has, on various pretexts, refused talks with Israel since Kerry’s boss assumed office in 2009.

Yet the Telegraph goes on to say that Kerry “is expected to visit Israel and the West Bank every fortnight in an effort to give momentum to efforts at renewing the peace process….”

If accurate, this will be a remarkable waste of American energy and resources on something that has repeatedly proved to be a dead-end at best.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/basic-competencies-and-the-mooc-surge?f=puball It is difficult to know if MOOC’s (Massive Open On-line Courses) are a conspiracy to undermine the Academy or mankind’s final redemption, a way to open the avenues of higher education. However one sees it, millions of people are already taking on-line courses. There is a revolution taking place driven by technology and cost […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/muslims-attack-coptic-cathedral-in-cairo?f=puball On the afternoon of Sunday, April 7, Egyptian police surrounded and protected Saint Mark’s Coptic Cathedral of Cairo, the headquarters of the Coptic Pope, after four hours of attacks on the church by Muslims throwing Molotov cocktails, rocks, and firearms, and where Christians gathered to mourn their dead. A liturgy was being held for […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/jews-in-boxes

Golly Moses! What a great idea! Leave it to the Germans to come up with really great ideas for solving the problems of the Jews.

The Jew in a box exhibit in the Berlin Jewish Museum is really what was needed to bring the Jews and Germans together. Especially when the Jews in a box, according to the New York Times, have no special knowledge about the Holocaust, Judaism, or Israel.

The Berlin Museum’s idea was to give the German people a greater opportunity to learn about Jews in a country which has so few of them. Only 0.025% of the population. Gee, I wonder why?

Isn’t this what the German people wanted, yearned for, fought for, worked so hard for? Judenrein.

But now things are altogether different, according to the good people at the Berlin Museum. Germans are different now, human nature has caught up with the twenty-first century and modern tolerance. They want to meet Jews, see what they’re like, mix with them, touch them, maybe pinch them, just a little…maybe stick needles into them…just a little…just to see what will happen. There’s nothing like satisfying scientific curiosity.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/margaret-thatcher-a-singular-ambition A refreshing antidote to Nock’s Our Enemy, the State is John Blundell‘s Margaret Thatcher: A Portrait of the Iron Lady (New York: Algora Publishing, 2008). For a time, as Prime Minister of Great Britain, Thatcher not only retarded the progress of statism but reversed its course. There certainly was nothing fatalistic in her or […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324050304578411030629324960.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond

The glowing reports about Fidel Castro that New York Times NYT -1.48% journalist Herb Matthews wrote from Cuba’s Sierra Maestra have often been used to explain why, in the late 1950s, the U.S. so underestimated the Jesuit-educated megalomaniac who would destroy his own country. More than a half century later, the 1960 National Review cartoon featuring a smiling Castro above a caption that read, “I got my job through the New York Times,” still resonates with exiles.

Now Cuban editor and writer Roberto Zurbano has the opposite problem: He lost his job through the New York Times. To be more precise, Mr. Zurbano, it seems, got fired from his job in Havana because he wrote a March 24 opinion piece for the New York Times that contradicted two of the dictatorship’s most sacred teachings.

Cuban propaganda holds that the revolution elevated the island’s black populations and ended oppression. It also holds that the island is now undergoing reforms that are creating opportunity for everyone. Well, not quite, according to Mr. Zurbano. “Change,” he wrote, “is the latest news to come out of Cuba, though for Afro-Cubans like myself, this is more dream than reality.”

He reminded Times readers that “racial exclusion” has deep roots on the island, adding that “a half century of revolution since 1959 has been unable to overcome it.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324100904578401083677703420.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Ten more Marines per ship won’t matter if there aren’t ships in the Mediterranean Sea to deploy from.

In the rush to paper over its delinquencies in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the Obama administration seems unaware that its failures are fundamental rather than merely anomalous. They are, unfortunately, a portent of the future.

On March 26, this newspaper reported that “In the wake of the attack, the military has examined how to improve its rapid response forces,” specifically by “adding special operations teams of roughly 10 troops to ships carrying larger Marine Expeditionary Units.” MEUs shipborne in amphibious ready groups usually number 2,200 Marines in special forces, reconnaissance, armored reconnaissance, armor, amphibious assault, infantry, artillery, engineer and aviation battalions, companies and platoons. They can get over the beach fast, and they fight like hell.

On March 21, 2011, during Operation Odyssey Dawn, an American F-15 went down in Libya. Immediately after the Mayday, the 26th MEU started rescue operations from the USS Kearsarge, and a short time later two of its Harrier fighter jets, two CH 53 helicopters, and two MV 22 Ospreys were at the scene, with more than a hundred Marines. Hundreds more might easily have arrived if required. Forces like this could have shattered the assault in Benghazi in minutes. Adding 10 men to such echelons rich in special forces would have little relevance. Fine in itself, the proposal is an obfuscation. The issue is not the composition of already capable MEUs but rather that one was not available when the attack took place.

From World War II onward, the U.S. Sixth Fleet stabilized the Mediterranean region and protected American interests there with the standard deployment, continued through 2008, of a carrier battle group, three hunter killer submarines, and an amphibious ready group with its MEU or equivalent. But in the first year of the Obama presidency this was reduced to one almost entirely unarmed command ship. No MEU could respond to Benghazi because none was assigned to, or by chance in, the Mediterranean.