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June 2017

MY SAY: THIS SONG COULD NOT BE PLAYED TODAY

“The Sheik of Araby” is a song that was written in 1921 by Harry Smith and Francis Wheeler with music by Ted Snyder. It was composed in response to the popularity of the Rudolph Valentino movie ” The Sheik.” It was recorded and sung by almost 100 famous performers and even included in “The Muppets” and the Beatles.

Here are the lyrics:
“I’m the Sheik of Araby,
Your love belongs to me.
At night when you’re asleep
Into your tent I’ll creep.
The stars that shine above,
Will light our way to love.
You’ll rule this land with me.”

In November 1936, Don Albert’s band recorded the first version with the chant “Without no pants on” between the lines of lyrics. This got Albert’s record generally banned from radio.

Palestinians’ Real Tragedy: Failed Leadership by Khaled Abu Toameh

Under the regimes of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, Palestinians are free to criticize Israel and incite against it. But when it comes to criticizing the leaders of the PA and Hamas, the rules of the game are different. Such criticism is considered a “crime” and those responsible often find themselves behind bars or subjected to other forms of punishment.

This, of course, is not what the majority of Palestinians were expecting from their leaders. After the signing of the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the PA more than 20 years ago, Palestinians were hoping to see democracy and freedom of speech. However, the PA has proven to be not much different than most of the Arab dictatorships, where democracy and freedom of expression and the media are non-existent.

Given the current state of the Palestinians, it is hard to see how they could ever make any progress towards establishing a successful state with law and order and respect for public freedoms and democracy.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip may be at war with each other, but the two rival parties seem to be in agreement over one issue: silencing and intimidating their critics. Of course, this does not come as a surprise to those who are familiar with the undemocratic nature of the PA and Hamas.

Under the regimes of the PA and Hamas, Palestinians are free to criticize Israel and incite against it. But when it comes to criticizing the leaders of the PA and Hamas, the rules of the game are different. Such criticism is considered a “crime” and those responsible often find themselves behind bars or subjected to other forms of punishment.

This, of course, is not what the majority of Palestinians were expecting from their leaders. After the signing of the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the PA more than 20 years ago, Palestinians were hoping to see democracy and freedom of speech. However, the PA, first under Yasser Arafat and later under Mahmoud Abbas, has proven to be not much different than most of the Arab dictatorships, where democracy and freedom of expression and the media are non-existent.

Qatar’s Comeuppance Putting Doha on the Well-Deserved Defensive by Ruthie Blum

Qatar’s extensive ties to terrorism and abetting of financiers to bolster it are well-documented.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain issued a statement designating 59 individuals and 12 organizations as having terror ties to Qatar. According to the statement, Doha “announces fighting terrorism on one hand and finances and supports and hosts different terrorist organizations on the other hand,” and harbors “terrorist and sectarian groups that aim to destabilize the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Daesh [ISIS] and Al Qaeda.”

Ironically, pressure from this new anti-Iran Muslim bloc in the Middle East has done more to call the world’s attention to Qatar’s key role in the spread of Islamist terrorism than years of cajoling on the part of previous administrations in Washington to get Doha to live up to its signed commitments.

A mere two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump delivered his first major foreign policy speech in Riyadh to delegates from dozens Muslim/Arab countries, Bahrain announced on June 5 that it was halting all flights to Qatar for being a sponsor of radical Islamist terrorists. Immediately, Saudi Arabia joined the boycott, as did the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Yemen, all of which also shut off access to Al Jazeera, the anti-American, anti-Semitic Qatari television network established in 1996 and operating since then to foment unrest across the Middle East and bolster the terrorist organization the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas.

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and other officials in Doha fiercely denied the charge that their government has been backing terrorism, blaming a “fake news” report on the website of the state-controlled Qatar News Agency for the eruption of the Gulf crisis.

The report, which the FBI and other U.S. security agencies believe was the result of a Russian hacking attack, quoted Al Thani calling Iran an “Islamic power,” referring to Hamas as “the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” and saying Qatar’s relations with Israel were “good.”

Although the report did turn out to be a hoax, Qatar’s extensive ties to terrorism and abetting of financiers to bolster it are well-documented. A Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) study, titled “Qatar and Terror Finance: Private Funders of al-Qaeda in Syria,” shows that while Doha has pretended for more than a decade to be partnering with the United States to defeat Al Qaeda, the monarchy, in fact, has taken no action whatsoever against the Qatari financiers of the terrorist organization’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, which continues to plot attacks against the West. One of the reasons that this group eluded U.S. strikes operating in Syria was that it, like America, has been fighting ISIS. Another was that it changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS or the Front for the Conquest of Syria), in an effort to distance itself from Al Qaeda. This effort was led by Qatar.

Babette Francis: Multicultural Mythology

When a Senate committee sought perspectives on the future of multiculturalism I shared the thought that, given some of the odious and appalling customs and beliefs made immune to criticism by official policy, it shouldn’t have a future. Here is what our elected representatives refused to accept.

The recent atrocious behaviour of the Saudi national team at the World Cup football qualifying match in refusing to observe a minute’s silence in remembrance of Australians killed in the London terrorist attack has rightly been criticized in our media. However the issue goes beyond the Saudi team’s insult to innocents who have been killed. During the apartheid era in South Africa, that country was not allowed to participate in international sport because of its racial discrimination. Many Islamic countries practice total gender discrimination — their women are not allowed to participate in international sport, indeed in some of these countries women, particularly in Saudi Arabia, are not allowed to participate even in domestic sport but spend their lives in any public area encased in all-encompassing black burqas.

Why are men’s teams from these countries allowed to participate in international sport? Isn’t gender discrimination as serious as racial discrimination?

International sporting federations need to examine this issue. And that brings me to the issue of multiculturalism and the myths surrounding this latest cult of the Left’s intelligentsia. Yes, I know “Left’s intelligentsia” is an oxymoron, but let it pass for the moment.

Recently, an Australian Senate Committee, dominated by ALP and Greens, called for submissions on strengthening multiculturalism. I put in a submission expressing the view that multiculturalism should not be promoted; rather, it be rejected as it implied promoting a number of obnoxious cultural practices alien to Australia.

My submission was initially accepted, but I was informed it had been rejected as it did not comply with the terms of reference. The rejection is, I suppose, technically correct because the Senate Committee had called for submissions on strengthening Multiculturalism, and my submission rejected the concept.

Now that my submission is rejected, I am free to circulate it so here it is:

To: the Senate Select Committee on Strengthening Multiculturalism

Dear Committee,
This is a submission on behalf of Endeavour Forum Inc. which is a women’s NGO having special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN. We are opposed to the “strengthening” or promotion of multiculturalism. This does not mean disrespecting ethnic groups other than those of British origin, but it does mean that the unsavoury aspects of some other cultures should be acknowledged.

1/ I was born in India and lived there until my marriage to an Australian, after which I came to live in Australia.

2/ India is a fascinating “laboratory” for multiculturalism because it is probably the most multicultural country in the world. India has 15 main languages, about 150 dialects and several religions. This has not created harmony; and, in fact, led to the Partition of India in 1947 into India and Pakistan, because the Muslim-majority provinces could not tolerate the idea of living in a secular democracy.

Islamic culture does not give priority to democracy, freedom of speech or freedom of religion, with death sentences prescribed for apostates and blasphemers. Currently there are several prisoners, both Muslims and Christians, on death row in Pakistani jails on spurious charges of blasphemy.

3/ Even nearer to home, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, the popular former governor of Jakarta in moderate, supposedly secular Indonesia, has just been sentenced to two years in jail on a charge of blasphemy. Similarly in Turkey, a member of NATO and supposedly democratic and moderate, has arrested and jailed hundreds of journalists, generals in the army, and civilians from all walks of life, on charges alleging treason.

4/ All this should enable you to understand that that the culture of Islam is simply incompatible with democracy and basic human rights.

Islam mandates death for infidels, apostates, homosexuals, and for Christians and Jews who will not convert or cannot pay an additional tax. Some of the “multicultural” aspects of Islam include polygamy, child marriage (following the example of their “Prophet”), female genital mutilation, requiring rape victims to produce four pious male witnesses to the assault or if unable to do so, be stoned for adultery, and sex-slave taking by the victors in any tribal war.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are the main examples of Sunni Muslim culture and Shia Muslim culture respectively. In Saudi Arabia women are forbidden from driving cars, and women in Iran are forbidden from cycling in public as these practices will allegedly damage their “virginity”.

The New York Times’ Knack for Misidentifying Colluders with Russia A sordid story of hypocrisy and double standards. Humberto Fontova

“A New York Times story about alleged Trump team contacts with Russian officials was “in the main not true.” (The New York Post quoting James Comey, 6/8.)

Now over to the opposite end of the media’s political spectrum:

“The assumption of the critics of the president, of his pursuers (especially the New York Times) …is that somewhere along the line in the last year the president had something to do with colluding with the Russians…and yet what came apart this morning was that theory,” (Chris Matthews, MSNBC 6/8.)

In brief, after last week’s Senate hearings it looks like we have (at least a semblance) of a media consensus regarding the famous claims by The New York Times against Trump and his team. The claims involved “collusion” with the Russians—and they appear bogus.

Interestingly, earlier this week in an editorial, The New York Times bewailed the lack of collusion between Trump and Russia’s historic colluders on our doorstep.

“To the long list of Barack Obama’s major initiatives that President Trump is obsessed with reversing, we may soon be able to add Cuba…Mr. Trump promised in his campaign to return to a more hard-line approach. If he does, as seems likely, he will further isolate America, hurt American business interests and, quite possibly, impede the push for greater democracy on the Caribbean island.” (New York Times, 6/5)

It’s a fascinating thing to watch. And it never fails. Let the issue of American “robber-barons” doing business with the Stalinist/kleptocratic Castro family (who already stole $8 billion from U.S. businessmen and tortured and murdered a few who resisted the burglary)—let this issue pop-up and presto!

Like clockwork, the most historically pinko, the most relentlessly anti-business entities in the U.S.– from Bernie Sanders to the New York Times—the very folks who habitually foam-at-the-mouth for keelhauling and tar & feathering all “greedy businessmen!” suddenly morph into Calvin Coolidge.

Recall President Coolidge’s famous (and universally denounced by liberals) quip: “The business of America is business.” Let’s also throw in General Motors’ CEO Charlie Wilson’s famous, “if it’s good for GM it’s good for America-and vice versa.” You might call these the favorite captions when liberal demonize “greedy U.S. robber-barons!”

The Weakness of the West An interview with Shillman Fellow Bruce Thornton. Niram Ferretti

Bruce Thornton, professor of classics and humanities at California State University and research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is today one of the most scathing voices in the academic and intellectual American landscape. In various books and essays he has contributed to demystify the myths and fetishes of liberal thought and enabled us to understand better the origin of the crisis which affects Western society.

Among his books we wish to remember: Plagues of the Mind (1997), Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow Motion Suicide (2007), The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama’s America (2011).

Professor Thornton, let us start from a quotation coming from your last article about Islamic terrorism written for Frontpage Magazine, “Committed only to material goods and pleasures, how can we battle a foe passionately loyal to the spiritual? Despising our own civilization, how can we confront those fanatically assured of the superiority of their own? How can we defeat such an enemy when there is nothing we believe is worth killing and dying for?” These are compelling questions which address dramatically the core of the problem. Let me ask you the first one. How can we battle a foe passionately loyal to the spiritual?

We must fight the battle on two fronts. First, we must recommit our civilization to its spiritual roots, the Classical/Judeo-Christian foundations from which flow our goods such as equality, freedom, tolerance, and human rights. This is a difficult task, but we cannot give up that fight in our work and lives. Second, we must press our leaders to recognize that we are at war, and must fight as fiercely as we did against Nazism. If the jihadists love death more than we love life, then we must give them what they love.

The despising of our own civilization has gone on for many decades now. The West, according to its western critics, is responsible for every evil in the world. We have been projecting on the so called Third World the myth of pureness and innocence in order for us to feel more guilty for our wrong doings. What are, according to you, the origins of this of this self-flagellation?

I believe it begins in something precious and unique to Western civilization: what I call critical consciousness: the willingness to question received wisdom and dogmas as Socrates did. But for most of Western history, critical consciousness was grounded in the transcendent, a spiritual reality that assured us there was the truth and the good for which we should be striving. Modern secularism destroyed that ground, and reduced critical consciousness to the “hermeneutics of suspicion” that typifies modernity’s trinity of Marx, Darwin, and Freud. Now we furiously attack our beliefs in the name of materialist, contingent ideologies that deny the spiritual reality of the human person, reducing us to mere things in the world driven only by our base appetites and the laws of physics.As for our idealization of the Third World it is a retread of the old Noble Savage myth that compensates psychically for the trade-offs of civilization, even as we have no intention of actually living in such backwards, tyrannical countries. This Disney version of history is then given a spurious political rationale by being cast as “anti-colonialism” or “anti-imperialism.”

Postmodernism, deconstructionism, multiculturalism, have been among the factors which have powerfully contributed to the erosion of our identity and to a long established tradition of values which were able to give us coherence and stability. Are we really destined to succumb to Islam with “smug blindness and arrogant ignorance” as you write at the end of your article?

Contrary to those movements you cite, humans are defined by spiritual freedom and free will, so we are not destined or determined to do anything. If we do succumb, it will be by choice, the same choice Eve and Adam made in Eden: to believe Satan’s lie that we can be gods, answerable to no transcendent power, and governed only by our transient and shifting bodily desires and comforts. Maybe when we are once again cast out of this material paradise will we will turn back to God.

Can a Divided America Survive? History has not been very kind to countries that enter a state of multicultural chaos. By Victor Davis Hanson

The United States is currently the world’s oldest democracy.

But America is no more immune from collapse than were some of history’s most stable and impressive consensual governments. Fifth-century Athens, Republican Rome, Renaissance Florence and Venice, and many of the elected governments of early 20th-century Western European states eventually destroyed themselves, went bankrupt, or were overrun by invaders.

The United States is dividing as rarely before. Half the country, mostly liberal America, is concentrated in 146 of the nation’s more than 3,000 counties — in an area that collectively represents less than 10 percent of the U.S. land mass. The other half, the conservative Red states of the interior of America, is geographically, culturally, economically, politically, and socially at odds with Blue-state America, which resides mostly on the two coasts.

The two Americas watch different news. They read very different books, listen to different music, and watch different television shows. Increasingly, they now live lives according to two widely different traditions.

Barack Obama was elected president after compiling the most left-wing voting record in the U.S. Senate. His antidote, Donald Trump, was elected largely on the premise that traditional Republicans were hardly conservative.

Red America and Blue America are spiraling into divisions approaching those of 1860, or of the nihilistic hippie/straight divide of 1968.

Currently, some 27 percent of all Californians were not born in the United States. More than 40 million foreign-born immigrants currently live in the U.S. — the highest number in the nation’s history.

Yet widely unchecked immigration comes at a time when the country has lost confidence in its prior successful adherence to melting-pot assimilation and integration. The ultimate result is a fragmenting of society into tribal cliques that vie for power, careers, and influence on the basis of ethnic solidarity rather than shared Americanness.

History is not very kind to multicultural chaos — as opposed to a multiracial society united by a single national culture. The fates of Rwanda, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia should remind us of our present disastrous trajectory.

Either the United States will return to a shared single language and allegiance to a common and singular culture, or it will eventually descend into clannish violence.

Does the unique American idea of federalism still work, with state rights and laws subordinate to federal law? We fought a Civil War that cost more than 600,000 lives in part to uphold the idea that individual states could not override the federal government.

Trump and the End of the Beginning By Roger Kimball

“……when it comes to craven cowardice we shouldn’t leave out poltroons like James Comey, who couldn’t leak his own memorandum to the press without drawing in a close friend to do the dirty work…..”

Here in New England, there comes a moment, generally in March, when you can tell that Winter has turned the corner. The nights are still frigid. The ground is still strewn with filthy snow, cold but angry mounds, pitted black with icy gravel. And there might be more snow on the way. But there is something in the slant of the afternoon sunlight, something in the scent and texture of the air, that tells you that Spring is nigh.

I have a kindred feeling about the progress of the anti-Trump hysteria that has been plaguing the country since the early hours of November 9, 2016. The hysteria, I admit, has gone on far longer, and has been far more virulent, than I anticipated. I thought the insanity would dissipate quickly after January 20, when Donald Trump was inaugurated. Instead, it has accelerated, abetted by a scurrilous and irresponsible media and grandstanding Democratic politicians encouraged by their deep-state enablers.

The hysteria reached a crescendo over the last week. There was Kathy Griffin and her ghoulish ISIS-by-proxy photo shoot depicting her holding a blood-soaked likeness of Donald Trump’s severed head. There is the ongoing production in New York of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, replete with a Donald Trump lookalike in the title role and lots and lots of stage blood spilled when we come to the Ides of March. There was James Comey’s truly bizarre testimony before Congress last week. Then there was the disgusting treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions by his former colleagues in the Senate: the names of Martin Heinrich and Mark Warner will occupy a place of special obloquy in the annals of disgraceful and nakedly partisan vilification. These anti-Trump players, each in his own way, helped to create the toxic environment into which James Hodgkinson, an anti-GOP zealot and Bernie Sanders supporter, strode Wednesday morning when he showed up at a congressional baseball practice session in Alexandria, Virginia. “Democrats or Republicans?” he was overheard to ask. Told that the field was occupied by Republicans, he took out a high-powered rifle and began shooting, seriously injuring several, including Steve Scalise, the House majority whip, before being felled himself by the Capitol Police.

What’s the take-away of all this? That we’re on the verge of a Civil War? There are some who say so. Certainly, as I have noted elsewhere, what all those who style themselves part of the “resistance” to Donald Trump are actually resisting is the result of a free and open democratic election. Trump met the qualifications to run for president of the United States: he was old enough and was a native-born American. And then he won the race by racking up more electoral votes than his opponent, despite being outspent nearly two to one.

I fully expect there will be additional arctic blasts from the media-engineered campaign against Trump. Doubtless many of the blasts will come from James Comey’s very good personal friend (“brothers in arms”) Robert Mueller, recently appointed special counsel to investigate allegations of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. It’s conceivable that Mueller will be forced to recuse himself, but in the meantime, he is busy packing his investigative staff with Obama and Clinton loyalists.

As has been pointed out by many observers, the charge against Trump has subtly modulated away from “collusion with the Russians.” Unfortunately for The Narrative, there was no collusion with the Russians, at least not with Trump or his surrogates (perhaps Mr. Mueller will develop a healthy curiosity about the connection between the Clinton Foundation and Russian’s acquisition of 20 % of our uranium assets. Perhaps). The new tort is “obstruction of justice,” but—again, unfortunately for The Narrative—there is no evidence of obstruction. So I expect that the volume on the radio, though the station is playing only static, will be turned way up. (Maybe I mean that because it is playing only static, the volume will be turned up.)

Where does that leave us? There is a small pen of chihuahuas yapping wildly that Trump should be impeached because, because, because—the doggies will get back to us later with a reason. (The real reason is simply that they don’t like Mr. Trump.) Were that to happen, it would precipitate the gravest crisis since South seceded.

But I don’t expect it to happen. Why? Because Trump is succeeding like gangbusters nearly everywhere: judicial appointments are one thing all his supporters point to, but there is also his roll-back of the regulatory burden, his plan to cut taxes and to ditch and replace Obamacare (it’s happening), his enforcement of the immigration laws, his revitalization of the military, and on and on. The man has had a startling string of successes, though the media won’t tell you that. CONTINUE AT SITE

Fox News Channel Retires its ‘Fair & Balanced’ Motto By Peter Barry Chowka

It’s official – according to the New York Times. The “newspaper of record,” citing a June 14 article by Gabriel Sherman in New York magazine, reports that the Fox News Channel (FNC) has retired its motto of “Fair & Balanced,” which it had used prominently since the channel started in 1996. Back then, FNC founder Roger Ailes came up with the slogan to distinguish the channel from its competitors, CNN and MSNBC, and the rest of the mainstream media, which Ailes and millions of Americans considered to be biased in favor of the left.

The slogan “Fair & Balanced” hung on until last August when, according to an unnamed source cited by Sherman, it was quietly ditched because of its association with Ailes. The founder of FNC had become persona non grata after being unceremoniously removed from Fox News the month before as a result of allegations that he had sexually harassed a number of female Fox employees. (Allegations, it should be noted, that were denied by Ailes and his representatives and that were never heard in a court of law.)

The new Fox News motto is “Most Watched, Most Trusted.”

In terms of “most watched,” it is true that ratings for Fox News held strong through May of this year. But in the wake of the 2017 departures of marquee talent including Bill O’Reilly in April, and Fox News co-president Bill Shine, an Ailes loyalist, in May, FNC’s ratings are not the consistent powerhouse they once were.

For example, the latest posted cable news ratings for Tuesday June 13, a day that was slightly unusual because of live coverage of the Attorney General Jeff Sessions Senate hearings that ran until after 5 PM EDT, are mixed news for FNC. In the prime time total viewers category, Fox beat MSNBC by 276,000 viewers – 2.888 million to 2.612 million. Third place CNN was far behind in prime time with only1.124 million. In the so-called demo (viewers 25-54 that advertisers prefer and that determine a channel’s ad rates), MSNBC was first with 620,000 viewers followed by Fox (592,000) and CNN (448,000).

The number one show in all of cable news prime time – this is becoming a trend – was uber liberal Rachel Maddow’s on MSNBC at 9 PM EDT with 743,000 viewers in the demo, beating FNC’s The Five by 232,000 viewers. CNN at 9 PM was a distant also-ran. Maddow also had the largest number of total viewers (all ages) with 3.055 million of them. This number beat Maddow’s FNC competition, The Five, which had 2.695 million viewers.

Also worth reporting about in the view of many is the already faltering career of Megyn Kelly, the one-time Fox News superstar who quit Fox for NBC last January with high hopes of maybe being the next Oprah or Barbara Walters. Kelly’s new prime time NBC network show, Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, premiered on June 4, but its second run on June 11 had half as many total viewers and came in second to CBS News’s five decade old newsmagazine 60 Minutes.

Cambridge University warns against ‘sexist’ terms like ‘genius’ and ‘brilliance’ By Thomas Lifson

Evidently, one of the dons at Cambridge University thinks women can’t cut it when it comes to extraordinary feats of intellect. Naturally, she is part of the gender industrial complex. The U.K. Independent reports:

Cambridge University examiners have been warned against using words such as “flair”, “brilliance” and “genius” when assessing students’ work because they are associated with men, an academic has revealed.

Lucy Delap, a lecturer in British History at the top-ranking institution, said History tutors are discouraged from using the terms because they “carry assumptions of gender inequality”.

She told The Telegraph: “Some of those words, in particular genius, have a very long intellectual history where it has long been associated with qualities culturally assumed to be male.

Well, then, isn’t it time to smash some of those assumptions? Apparently not:

“Some women are fine with that, but others might find it hard to see themselves in those categories”.

News flash: Most people aren’t geniuses and have a hard time seeing themselves in those categories for excellent reasons. This includes most men.

And even if we limit ourselves to the very far end of the bell curve of intelligence distribution, lots of people have a hard time of thinking of themselves as geniuses. There are lots of very smart people on the faculty at Cambridge, and some people, even of the highest level of intelligence, might have some emotional difficulty thinking of themselves as so far above that peer group. Even males! Especially if they are students, the sort of people who might be awed by the erudition of their dons.

I spent about two decades at Harvard, as a student and faculty member, and can report that the word “genius” was used sparingly in faculty conversations about students. Not that there weren’t some amazing people, but once you start categorizing that way, it leads to more conversations about others who may or may not merit the label. It is easier to avoid that term. “Brilliant” and “brilliance” were far more widely applied, perhaps because those terms don’t connote a status so different from the others who are also smart.

What is it about the left that makes them want to “ban” words?