EDWARD CLINE: ON ISLAMOPHOBIA

On Islamophobia First, let’s define phobia.

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (1971):

Phobia: Fear, horror, or aversion, esp. of a morbid character….So Phobist nonce-wd. one who has a horror of or aversion to anything.

Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1956) states:

Phobia: An irrational, persistent fear of a particular object or class of objects.

The Oxford definition does not claim that a phobia is necessarily irrational, but however stresses its cause as being a person. The Webster’s definition does not even mention a person, just objects or classes of objects, which, of course, can include persons. Other dictionary definitions more or less track the Oxford and Webster’s definitions.

And here is the origin of the term Islamophobia, from Discover the Networks.

The term “Islamophobia” was invented and promoted in the early 1990s by the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), a front group of the Muslim Brotherhood. Former IIIT member Abdur-Rahman Muhammad — who was with that organization when the word was formally created, and who has since rejected IIIT’s ideology — now reveals the original intent behind the concept of Islamophobia: “This loathsome term is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliché conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.” In short, in its very origins, “Islamophobia” was a term designed as a weapon to advance a totalitarian cause by stigmatizing critics and silencing them….

Although the term was coined in the early 1990s, “Islamophobia” did not become the focus of an active Brotherhood campaign until after 9/11. Since that time, Islamist lobby organizations (including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR) and Muslim civil-rights activists have regularly accused the American people, American institutions, law-enforcement authorities, and the U.S. government of harboring a deep and potentially violent prejudice against Muslims. The accusers charge that as a result of this “Islamophobia,” Muslims are disproportionately targeted by perpetrators of hate crimes and acts of discrimination.

How would Orwell feel about today’s college campuses? By Amanda Borschel-Dan

As students ‘occupy’ Brandeis University this week, a look at how the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is playing out at universities in a new post-PC world order.

Located on the outskirts of Boston, Brandeis University has been under siege since Friday when a group of some 150 undergrad and graduate students indefinitely “occupied” the Bernstein-Marcus Administration Center. The students, who are taking shifts in the round-the-clock protest, have vowed to remain until 13 demands are met.

On Thursday, the group, which operates under the monikers “Concerned Students 2015” and “Ford Hall 2015,” submitted their 13-point list of demands to acting president Lisa Lynch, giving her 24 hours to comply. The demands include a 10 percent across the board hiring of full-time black faculty and staff, the appointment of a vice president for diversity and inclusion, and mandatory diversity education for all students. (In 2014, the school’s website states the entire student body is under 6,000, of which some five% was black, 6% Hispanic, and 13% Asian.)

In response, over the weekend the acting president wrote the students a multi-page letter validating their feelings and vowing to boost diversity. “The atmosphere described by our students is painful to hear and calls on all of us to address these issues,” Lynch wrote, but she declined to set a timetable for actual action. (In a leaked email, interim Provost Irving Epstein instructs faculty to use discretion in regards to protesters’ class attendance and assignments.)

Canada’s new PM supports Israel at UN Government of Justin Trudeau votes against the six resolutions condemning Israel passed by the UN General Assembly.

The government of Canada’s new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week voted against the six resolutions condemning Israel which were passed by the UN General Assembly, a move hailed by the UN Watch NGO.

In a statement, the group lauded Trudeau’s government for joining the United States in voting against the resolutions “and for being on track to continue without change Canada’s prior policy of firmly opposing repetitive, disproportionate and one-sided resolutions — all drafted by the Palestinians except for two by Syria — that are designed to delegitimize Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy.”

Who has possessed the Golan the longest? Give it up? Victor Sharpe

The Biblical and Post-Biblical Jewish history of Israel’s northwest region, the plateau called the Golan Heights.

Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981. In the midst of the terror wave in Israel, in November 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for Israel to return the Golan to Syria. The EU included the Golan Heights in its anti-Semitic labelling decision.

What impelled Prime Minister Netanyahu recently to ask US President Obama to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights during his recent meeting with Obama?

Surely he knew that Obama would categorically reject any Israeli claim to that territory, just as he rejects any Jewish claims to Judea and Samaria and many parts of Jerusalem. Why then did Netanyahu demean himself and, by extension, humiliate the Jewish state, still only reconstituted in parts of its ancestral and biblical homeland?

The answer would seem to be a deep concern that in the wake of the notorious Obama-Iran nuclear deal, the Iranian-Syrian alliance, Russia’s military presence in Syria, and the ever constant threat of attack by Iran’s terror proxy, Hezbollah, Israel needs an “American pledge” supporting Israeli territorial control over the strategic area. It would also seem to be Netanyahu’s attempt to at least put Israel’s concerns on record.

USA terror alert – this is not a test How afraid do you want us to be? And of what? Jack Engelhard

The State Department and the other US security agencies are telling us to be afraid. Not quite like that, but they’ve issued a dire “travel warning” and “terror alert.”

They overheard “chatter.” Obviously in Arabic and it wasn’t Happy Thanksgiving. Paris wasn’t enough. They want New York, again, though no place is safe.

This is the real deal. Should we be worried? Yes and no.

At a time when our president scoffs at Republicans and makes Jews and Christians feel like second-class citizens, it’s comforting to know that our national security officers (FBI, CIA) care for all of us equally. It is gratifying to know that somebody likes us and means to protect us from the barbarians who keep storming our borders.

That’s a relief, if only we knew exactly what to do about these warnings.

In Israel they don’t need “terror warnings” because the terror is with them every moment of every day.

If I’m being Islamophobic, very well, they made us that way. They made Brussels that way. The capital is on total lockdown because Islam came to town.

In the beginning, there was an Arab with a knife; 100 years of excuses By David Collier *****

A trip down the bloodsoaked timeline of Arab violence against Jews.

During the height of the second Intifada, the media and politicians in general were adamant, only total desperation could cause one human being to walk onto a bus full of innocent civilians and blow himself up. This twisted logic unashamedly blames the victims for the act of violence that kills them and removes personal responsibility from the terrorist. It is also a logic that only applies in Israel, as we find the same media and the same politicians have no trouble identifying the true cause of the brutal violence when it hits closer to home.

On April 30th 2003, at about 00:45, 22-year-old Asif Muhammad Hanif entered Mike’s Place, a live music tourist pub on the Tel Aviv beachfront. Asif, from London and his friend, Omar Khan Sharif from Derby, had been born, grew up and were educated in the UK. Their entire itinerary had been planned using the latest Lonely Planet Guide book and they had spent the evening with a hundred other tourists at the Hayarkon Hostel, just up the road. Upon entering the pub, Asif detonated his bomb, killing 3 and injuring 50, with the damage restricted by the brave actions of Avi Tabib, the security guard. One of the fatalities was 29-year-old French born Dominique Haas, a personal friend of mine. It would be difficult to argue that Asif and Omar were any more desperate than you or I. Young, British and university educated, they had their whole lives before them, but simply believed there was more to gain from murdering Jews in Tel Aviv instead.

It is now October 2015 and Jews are again being murdered on the streets of Israel. Today, we are being told the reason Arabs are murdering innocent Jews is because the ‘status quo’ on the Temple Mount is being threatened. It is a false rumour that has been used before, but let us embark on an historical exercise and follow this logic to its obvious conclusion.

This from Gaza in October 2015. For those that haven’t watched it, the call for stabbing, the knife, the religious references is highly disturbing viewing.

MY SAY: THE WISDOM AND PRESCIENCE OF PINK FLOYD

Pink Floyd is an English rock band formed in London. Roger Waters, the black belt Israel basher and boycotter is their lead singer. rsk

WE DON’T NEED NO EDUCATION BY PINK FLOYD

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave them kids alone
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall

No, the FBI Didn’t Create Chicago’s Street Gangs A return to the paranoid style in African-American politics Kevin Williamson

From time to time, something will leap out to me as an illustration of the fact that blacks and whites often inhabit separate realities. I’ve often told the story of the editorial in a black neighborhood newspaper in Philadelphia warning African-Americans to flee urban areas in the lead-up to the 2004 presidential elections because George W. Bush was planning to — this was presented as unquestionable fact – use nuclear weapons against the inner cities to suppress the black vote. This wasn’t somebody ranting on Twitter — this was in print, in a regularly published newspaper that was, in the early days of the 21st century, still a going concern.

I’ve come to call this sort of thing (with apologies to Richard Hofstadter) the paranoid style in African-American politics. Mild versions of conspiracy theories play a large role in mainstream American politics in the form of folk beliefs about how government works, the role of lobbyists and campaign contributions, and the like. For right-wing populists, it’s the “Establishment” and the “donor class,” for left-wingers it’s the Koch brothers, Big Oil, Big Money, Big Bigness, etc. We’ve all heard the story of how we could be running our automobiles on seawater if not for the fact that the petro-billionaires are suppressing the technology. The closer you get to the fringes, the more prominent the role of conspiracy theories. But it seems to me that conspiracy theory plays an outsize role in mainstream African-American political discourse.

The Alarming Consolidation of Health Care under Obamacare-Hospitals Merge, Doctors Merge, and Patients Pay More for Less By Scott W. Atlas

Years after the initial rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the American people, the health-care industry, and the courts still struggle to navigate the law. Its heavy regulations and new tax burdens have generated numerous consequences, many of which are harmful to patients and families. Although supporters point to the millions of newly insured under the law, the truth is, that as many as 90 percent of those are estimated to have enrolled into Medicaid, second-class coverage that, according to a 2014 Merritt Hawkins report, most doctors do not even accept.

Even worse, the government’s Department of Health and Human Services reported in December 2014 that 51 percent of doctors on official Medicaid state lists are not available to new beneficiaries. Meanwhile, millions of other families have lost their previous private insurance directly because of ACA decrees. For new private coverage, insurance premiums have continued to skyrocket. Most alarmingly, the premiums of what were low-cost high-deductible plans are accelerating faster than any other coverage after the passage of the ACA, directly countering the promise of more affordability when the bill was passed. Choice of doctors and hospitals through the government’s exchange-based coverage has also narrowed compared with pre-ACA individual market plans.

Obama’s New Counter-Terrorism Guru Caroline Glick

All anti-Western movements – including jihadist movements – are legitimate responses to what Obama perceives as the crime of Western power.Since the Islamic State attacks in Paris on November 13, we have seen the development of a new, and strange justification for the Obama administration’s insistent refusal to jettison its manifestly failed strategy of contending with IS specifically and with Islamic terrorism generally.

In broad terms, Obama’s strategy for dealing with radical Islamic terrorism and jihadist movements is to ignore their motivating ideologies, take minimal action to combat them, criticize other governments for failing to destroy IS and its jihadist brethren on their own, and attack Republicans for criticizing Obama’s strategy for defeating radical Islamic terrorism.

The new justification for Obama’s refusal to revise his strategy was first uttered by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton at the Democratic presidential debate on November 14. Five days later, the Democratic National Committee produced an ad attacking Republican presidential candidates based on this new rhetorical theme.

Obama himself resonated the new message during his press conference in Malaysia on Sunday.

According to the new taking points, Republicans have no right to criticize Obama, or Clinton, for their failure to contend with the nature of the enemy because in ignoring the enemy’s doctrine, ideology and strategic goals, they are merely following in president George W. Bush’s footsteps.