Displaying posts published in

October 2019

The Flag of Hong Kong Samer Abbas

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/10/the-flag-of-hong-kon

“Every day, we have to hear about revolution this or revolution that. Where is the Russian Revolution? What about the Chinese or the Cuban? They all failed and societies pay for them to this day. The American Revolution is the one that was founded on individual rights over that of the collective and, rather surprisingly, that is the reason it persists for groups such as those people fighting for their own liberty in Hong Kong.”

Given the political climate, any expression of patriotism—even of the softer varieties—is given the same weight of judgment as was once reserved for bigotry and prejudice. But we had it once. We did have the flag-waving, and the expressions of pride in ones culture, among other things.

I, for example, don’t mind if a quiet but confident culture chooses to forego the outward expressions of passion and belief that come with some of the more dignified forms of patriotism. What I don’t like, however, is what we currently have. What does a society that was once proud of itself look like? A person living in Britain (or most other Western countries) decades ago might’ve struggled to picture such a world. For us it is much easier. We are living it.

As Christopher Hitchens once remarked, ‘There’s nothing more dispiriting than a drooping and neglected flag and nothing more lame than the sudden realization that the number of them so proudly flourished has somehow diminished.’ It is not about the physical act of owning a flag and waving it about, it is what the flag signifies. In Britain,  for those who don’t hate it, it is one of the ways of displaying an appreciation for a country that did more than any other to propel democracy into the furthest parts of the globe.

France: The Headscarf Debate is Not about Headscarves by Alain Destexhe

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15051/france-headscarf-hijab-debate

The headscarf is, of course, just a symptom of a deeper problem: many perceive it as an invasion by an outside culture into the public sphere.

This behavior seems to worry many French people, who see it as a direct attack on their culture and identity, and a desire to live separately from the rest of society and according to other values.

Behind those claims, they see the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood or religious ideologies, whose ultimate goal seems to be to propagate these values and impose them on the rest of society.

In the end, however, the commotion created by the growing presence of the Islamic headscarf hides the more fundamental issues of how to deal with the rapidly increasing presence of a foreign culture that seems to keep demanding an ever-larger space in its host society.

France’s Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, has reopened the heated debate on the headscarf.

Since 2004, it is unlawful in France to wear “conspicuously” religious signs or clothing in public schools. The interpretation of the law, as applied by the Ministry of National Education, specifies “the Islamic veil, whatever the name given to it, the [Jewish] kippah or a [Christian] cross of manifestly excessive size” as items that students are prohibited to wear in French state schools.

However, women who are escorting children during school trips are still allowed to wear a hijab. As an increasing number of Muslim women have been doing so, this has disturbed some teachers and parents. They believe that the spirit of the law — that headscarves should be banned from schools — is not being respected.

Recently, Blanquer sparked an outcry by saying that “the veil is not desirable” in French society. He added that this was his conception of “women’s empowerment” and “the practice of women wearing a hijab during school trips should not be encouraged.”

Who Will Fall First: Trump or the ‘Praetorian Guard’? Julie Kelly *****

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/24/who-will-fall-first-trump-or-the-praetorian-guard/

The race is on to see who will survive—the duly-elected president of the United States or a modern-day Praetorian Guard comprised of former law enforcement and intelligence officials tasked with taking down that president.

Attorney General William Barr has suggested that top officials in the Obama Administration behaved like a “Praetorian Guard” in their unprecedented and possibly criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

“Republics have fallen because of a Praetorian Guard mentality where government officials get very arrogant, they identify the national interest with their own political preferences and they feel that anyone who has a different opinion, you know, is somehow an enemy of the state,” Barr told CBS News reporter Jan Crawford in May. 

The Praetorian Guard originated in the Roman Empire to protect the emperor and his commanders. The elite cohort quickly grew from a few bodyguards into a massive army, complete with armor, weaponry, and a cavalry. The Guard enjoyed special privileges including a guaranteed tenure and vaunted social status. 

But the Guard became emboldened by its own power. “Over the years, the guard would become a dangerous threat to imperial power and emperors were forced to gain its favour in order to ensure their reign,” according to historian Mark Cartwright. “The body specifically created to protect the emperor’s person had become his greatest liability.”

Sound familiar?

The Empty Absurdity Of The Democrats’ Dangerous Foreign Policy Part 1Thomas McArdle

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/25/th

Despite the huffing and puffing during last week’s CNN debate against President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, the Democratic Party’s deep thoughts about America’s strategic role in the world are more dovish and non-interventionist – and illogical – than ever.

We see this from some members of Congress who may not be household names, but who for years have been vying to be a future Democratic president’s secretary of state.

Take Maryland’s Sen. Ben Cardin, second in seniority among Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Cardin always presents himself as tough against the terrorist state of Iran, having been one of only four Democratic senators who voted against the resolution supporting Obama’s deeply flawed 2015 Iran nuclear deal. He loves to lash out at “one of the most nefarious actors on the world stage, playing a destabilizing role across the Middle East and proudly carrying the mantle of the greatest nation-state threat to Israel today.”

But by the time two years ago that Trump pulled out of the deal, which released $100 billion to Tehran with which to go on a terrorism spree, Cardin had fallen in love with it. He said, “I did not support the agreement, but we want to make sure the agreement is enforced. We don’t want the United States to be the one who walks away from preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state.”

And asked last month on Fox News if there should be a U.S. military response in the event of another attack by Iran on American ally Saudi Arabia, Cardin replied, “there’s really not a military solution to the problem of Iran. We need to make diplomacy work.” He added, “We have to defend ourselves, no question about that, but … It would be disastrous if we got into a fighting war in Iran.”

Ribat: The Truth Behind “Muslim Enclaves” An ancient secret reveals what Islamic “No-Go” zones in the West really are. Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/ribat-truth-behind-muslim-enclaves-raymond-ibrahim/

Last March, 2019, Reuters reported that the “Islamic State’s last enclave in eastern Syria” had fallen.  “Its enclave at Baghouz was the last part of the massive territory it suddenly seized in 2014, straddling swathes of Iraq and Syria, where its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a new caliphate.”

While this was welcome news, it also prompted one to wonder: what of all those other Islamic enclaves, those unassimilated ticking time bombs that proliferate throughout the West, which are packed with ISIS-sympathizers, not to mention ISIS members, and which the West largely fails to recognize as such?  I am referring to those many so-called “No-Go Zones”:   Western cities and regions that have effectively become Islamic ghettoes.  There, Sharia is de facto law; Muslims are openly radicalized to hate infidels; non-Muslims, even police, are afraid to enter lest they get mugged, raped, or killed. 

In short, the ISIS worldview continues to proliferate—and not in some distant theater of war, but right smack in the West itself (an internet search for terms such as “no-go zones” and “Muslim enclaves” demonstrates the prevalence of this phenomenon).

Although these enclaves are unique to the modern era, they have precedents in history and even a nomenclature within the Islamic consciousness.

Wherever the jihad was stopped, there, on the border with their infidel neighbors, jihadis formed strongholds, hotbeds of jihadi activities.  These became known as the ribat (رباط), an Arabic word etymologically rooted to the idea of a tight fastening or joining and found in Koran 3:200: “O you who have believed, persevere and endure and remain stationed [رابطوا] and fear Allah that you may be successful.” 

In Islamic history, the ribat referred to the chains of jihadi fortresses erected along and dedicated to raiding the borders of non-Muslims. 

Turkey Advertises Its Koranic “Ecumenism” Accompanied by the image of a blood-splattered cross and star of David. Andrew Bostom

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/turkey-advertises-its-koranic-ecumenism-andrew-bostom/

Billboards belonging to the traditionalist Muslim Justice and Development Party (AKP) municipality are on public display in Konya, central Turkey, featuring the verbatim text of Koran 5:51 (in accurate Turkish translation). Accompanied by the image of a blood-splattered cross, and star of David, the text simply re-states Koran 5:51:

O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians as Auliya’ (friends, protectors, helpers, etc.), they are but Auliya’ to one another. And if any amongst you takes them as Auliya’, then surely he is one of them. Verily, Allah guides not those people who are the Zalimun (polytheists and wrong­doers and unjust).

Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai was (d. 1981) a towering modern Muslim religious scholar and philosopher, dubbed a “theosopher.” Allameh [Allamah] Tabatabaei [Tabatabai] University, named in honor of this celebrated authority and “theosopher,” is the largest specialized state social sciences university in Iran and the Middle East, with 17000 students and 500 full-time faculty members. Affirming his continued lofty stature, and relevance, an Iranian national conference was held on May 3, 2012, in Qom, dedicated to “recognizing the interpretative methods and principles used by Allameh [Allamah] Tabatabaee [Tabatabai] in [his Koranic] exegesis.” Tabatabai’s al-Mizān fi tafsir al-Qurʾān “The measure of balance/justly held scales in the interpretation of the Quran,” a 21-volume Arabic opus, is regarded as the most important contemporary Shiite Koranic commentary, and one of the seminal Koranic commentaries of the contemporary era, Sunni, or Shiite.

Tabatabai’s  modern Sunni counterpart is the late Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (d. 2010). Not only was Tantawi the Grand Imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, from 1996 to 2010—the Papal equivalent of Sunni Islam’s Vatican of religious teaching and authority—he was also arguably the most important modern Sunni Koranic commentator of the contemporary era. Tantawi produced a contemporary magnum opus 15-volume Koranic commentary, “al-Tafsīr al-wasīṭ lil-Qurʼān al-karīm,” “The Broad Interpretation of The Koran.” He also oversaw the establishment of the largest online resource for Koranic interpretation, ALTAFSIR.COM, which has published ~100 full-text, verse by verse searchable classical & modern commentaries on the Koran, including his own.

NYU Newspaper Pulls Ad for Lowry’s Nationalism Book Out of Concern It Might ‘Marginalize People of Color’ By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nyu-newspaper-pulls-ad-for-lowrys-nationalism-book-out-of-concern-it-might-marginalize-people-of-color/

The editor of New York University’s independent student-run newspaper, Washington Square News, pulled an advertisement for National Review editor Rich Lowry’s upcoming book from the paper because exposure to the ad may have “marginalized people of color,” according to a statement released Thursday.

Lowry purchased the ad in order to promote a talk he will deliver Thursday night at NYU on his new book, The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, And Free, which will be released on November 5th.

The paper’s business team accepted the ad and charged Lowry for its placement last week. He found out that it would not appear in the paper’s Monday edition only when he saw that his payment had been refunded.

When no explanation was forthcoming, Lowry wrote a post informing National Review readers that his ad, which “invited people to learn why their pre-conceptions about nationalism are incorrect,” had been pulled without justification.

In response, the Washington Square News editor explained that she had unilaterally decided to pull the ad in order to shield “people of color on campus” from exposure to the phrase “Nationalism is a good thing,” which, in keeping with the book’s topic, was placed prominently at the top of the page.

Harvard’s Student Newspaper Chooses Ethical Journalism over PC Mob’s Demands By Katherine Timpf

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/harvards-student-newspaper-chooses-ethical-journalism-over-pc-mobs-demands/ 

The Crimson had the audacity to present balanced coverage of an anti-ICE protest.

Harvard University’s student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, was accused of “cultural insensitivity” and “blatantly endangering undocumented students” last month — all because it had adhered to journalistic ethics.

It’s true: According to an article in the Washington Post, all that the newspaper had done to deserve this was ask U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement representatives for comment on a story about an “Abolish ICE” protest. In other words? The paper’s reporters were attacked because they demonstrated basic journalism skills. It is, after all, not only not controversial to ask both sides for their views in a straight-news piece; it would actually be controversial not to.

Despite this, the Post reports that “hundreds” of students signed a petition calling on the newspaper to stop talking to ICE completely. Their cause was quite obviously absurd, and it depresses me that hundreds of our nation’s (supposedly) best and brightest could actually be ignorant enough to sign something like that.

The good news? Rather than back down from the pressure, the newspaper stood its ground. Earlier this week, Crimson editors Angela N. Fu and Kristine E. Guillaume published a defense of the paper’s work.

Our Untenable Alliance with Turkey By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/untenable-alliance-is-no-turkish-delight/

Turkey opposes, if not detests, almost every American ally in the region, and befriends almost every U.S. enemy.

There are about 5,000 members of the U.S. military, mostly airmen, stationed at the huge, strategically located air base in Incirlik, Turkey, northwest of the Syrian border.

The American forces at Incirlik are also the custodians of about 50 B61 nuclear bombs. Data on these weapons is classified, but at their maximum yield each is ten times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to Stars and Stripes.

It’s a “Dr. Strangelove” scenario: No one quite knows how the American contingent could manage to secretly remove the deadly nukes from their concrete vaults, bring them out to the tarmac, load them on planes and fly them out safely over Turkish objections.

Turkey in the past has threatened to go nuclear itself should the U.S. ever dare to transfer the lethal arsenal. Apparently, Turkey’s theory is that possession of bombs in one’s territory is nine-tenths of the law of nuclear weapons ownership.

In the aftermath of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, which led to a U.S. arms embargo, Turkey shut down all U.S. operations at Incirlik. American forces were expelled for three years — until Washington caved and resumed arms supplies.

In 2016, Turkey cut off power to the base and forbid U.S. flights, fearing that the dissident Turkish generals of a failed coup attempt might use the American facility as a sanctuary.

It Should Be Illegal To Give Children Transgender Hormones And SurgeryBy Chad Felix Greene

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/24/it-should-be-illegal-to-give-children-transgender-hormones-and-surgery/

The left uses children as political pawns in the gender war and calls it a moral good, but the consequence of forcing kids into transition is denying them the ability to choose their own future.

When I was a child, I was fascinated with makeup. My grandmother would often let me sit on a small pink crushed velvet stool in her bathroom while she “put on her face,” as she liked to say. After putting every platinum blonde curl in place, she would carefully pout her lips and apply a thin layer of ruby red lipstick.

I watched, captivated by her transformation and the satisfaction on her face when every line, every shade was perfectly applied. My mother remembers catching me modeling my sister’s clothes, unaware of her presence and therefore entirely un-selfconscious of my movements. Everything about the female world inspired my imagination, and I longed to be connected to it.

A large contributing factor into this obsession was my grandmother’s open and repeated wish that she had a beautiful granddaughter to dress up and show off at social events. Per my father’s wishes, I was denied the ability to see my mother until I was about seven years old or so, and thus my need for a female role model fell squarely on my grandmother’s shoulders.

My grandmother improvised, highlighting my hair, painting my fingernails, and surrounding me exclusively with her female friends. Around my father, I had to pretend, as he grew aggressively angry whenever I presented the slightest feminine tendency.

At school I blended in with my female peers, who seemed to appreciate having a boy to give them attention, but it was safety for me. The boys were cruel and aggressive, and they never ceased in tormenting me daily. I only felt safe and free to be myself when I was alone with women. I would cry myself to sleep praying for G-d to turn me into a girl when I woke up so I could finally be free from the constant stress and conflict of my daily life. Each day I woke up sad and afraid.

My Struggle with Gender

As I grew up, I learned how to mimic my male peers just enough to avoid suspicion and to exploit my gentle nature as something adults found positive around their daughters. I was just “creative” or “sensitive” or, as was popular at the time, “in touch” with my feminine side to anyone who observed me.

But to me, I was struggling to feel a sense of holistic unity, divided by too many outside expectations that never quite fit into place. I explored transgender transition as a young adult and attempted to dress as a girl, change my voice, and wear makeup, but as the years passed, none of this felt quite right.

Eventually I found a balance between adolescent self-obsession and adult responsibility that did not allow for endless changes in identity or character, and I essentially grew up. Who I am now is everything left over from when I gave up on trying to be someone else, and for that I am grateful.