RUTHFULLY YOURS

If all who love liberty are rightly upset by an administration’s harassment of conservative groups for political ends, we should be even more outraged when the administration, while playing political hardball, mistreats an entire state’s ordinary, apolitical citizens.

From the earliest days of his presidency, Barack Obama has shown a particular animus against Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, and has repeatedly held Louisiana citizens hostage to that animus. The latest outrage came via a May 2 letter from the national Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) disapproving Jindal’s brilliant semi-privatization of state hospitals that, in less than a year, already has resulted in better patient services across the board – thus putting at risk hundreds of millions of dollars in ordinary federal reimbursement for indigent care.

We’ll return in a moment to a few more details of this latest cynical maneuver. First, though, consider the litany of Obama’s abusive treatment of Louisiana; the Bayou State is surely the jurisdiction most victimized by the Obamite combination of wrath and pettiness. It began early, after Jindal’s (poorly received) 2009 State of the Union response, which represented the first major high-profile critique of Obama’s gauzy new administration. Clearly, Jindal got under Obama’s skin.

Just two months later, the Obama team was notoriously slow to respond to the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Among a host of mistakes documented by a national commission on the disaster were clearly politicized decisions on numerous fronts, including on the allocation of oil-containing booms. Worse (and despite some media fact-check reports to the contrary), the Obama bureaucracy kept obstacles in place that blocked specialized foreign skimmers from helping to contain the spill — in part, it seems, to placate American unions.

President Obama’s most public early response to the crisis was to ostentatiously upbraid Jindal for supposedly politicizing the problem. (Jindal had sent the administration a letter that was actually a routine administrative matter.) The administration followed by implementing a moratorium, and then “permitorium,” on drilling in the Gulf, doing serious harm to Louisiana’s economy — and continued the slowdown in such contradiction to court rulings that a federal judge found the Obama team officially in contempt of court.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=17451

What do Benghazi, the IRS scandal, climate change, the Administration’s neglect toward increasing Islamic terrorism and proliferation of Sharia law (until the kidnapping of the Nigerian school girls), Senator’s Harry Reid’s perpetual haranguing of the Koch brothers and Monica Lewinski all have in common? They all reflect a decline in civility and a rise in moral turpitude, especially on the part of Democrats in Washington. They represent a theme that runs rampant through the Left’s behavior.

Republicans are not immune to such uncivil behavior, but they are not as patronizing as are Democrats whose antipathy toward their opponents (and, frankly, often open contempt for their constituents) divides the electorate, especially between the haves and have-nots, but also on the basis of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation and age. Republicans are characterized as parochial, intolerant, insensitive, greedy, old, war-mongering, white, rich, male, big-business types, while Democrats see themselves as young, hip, open, charitable, peace-loving, multicultural, working people who alone are sensitive to the needs of children, single women, gays, the poor and the sick.

While it is true that Republicans have been negligent in defining who they are to minorities and the young, the depiction is a crock. There are currently five female governors in the United States, four are Republicans, only one is a Democrat. In 2012, Mr. Obama won eight of the nation’s wealthiest counties, Mitt Romney, just two. Studies show that conservatives consistently give more to charity than do liberals. In the past 100 years, the United States went to war four times – World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam – under Democrat presidents, and three times – Grenada, the First Iraq War, and the War on Terror – under Republicans. While Wall Street gave more cash to Republicans in 2012, in 2008 they gave more money to Democrats. Of the seven largest CEO political contributors in 2012, four gave to Republicans and three to Democrats. Both income gaps and wealth gaps have widened under President Obama, while unemployment among the young and African Americans has been the slowest to recover. Teen-age unemployment is at record levels. Since 2000 two million young people have dropped out of the labor force. Some of those did so because they went to college. But that has been a mixed blessing, as student loans have increased from approximately $700 billion to $1 trillion, since 2008, and jobs are scarce. Once interest rates revert to more normal levels, which they will, the pressure on the young will only intensify.

The Parties differ in that Republicans expect their constituents to be responsible, knowledgeable and independent, capable of discerning right from wrong. They feel people should be largely dependent on themselves. They believe that equality of opportunity is a birthright, but that outcomes are a consequence of aspiration, abilities, education and effort and will vary. Republicans put more faith in faith. Republicans seek a smaller government, in which workers can keep more of what they earn. Democrats want a larger, more intrusive government, one that asks not what you can do for the government, but what government can do for you. They believe that you “didn’t build this” and that it “takes a village,” not a family to raise a child. Very little press coverage was given when Black Democrat South Carolina Representative James Clyburn snidely said of Black South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott, that he “does not vote the color of his skin.” Imagine the reaction had roles been reversed? But his comments were symptomatic of Leftist thinking – that people should vote in blocs, not according to individual preferences.

Are you just a physical entity, ultimately reducible to the physical entity known as your brain? Is that organ—a bundle of neurons weighing about three pounds—the source of all your thoughts, feelings, and any illusion you may have of a “soul” or a “spirit”?

I recently finished reading a 600-plus-page book by a group of academic psychiatrists, psychologists, and philosophers, called Irreducible Mind, that argues exactly the opposite. The book presents a huge body of evidence from scientific studies of psychokinesis, split personalities, psychic healing, near-death experiences, and other phenomena that seems to constitute powerful proof that, while the mind and the brain obviously interact, the former is not reducible to the latter and there are circumstances where consciousness clearly exists and functions independently of the brain.

Irreducible Mind is a subversive endeavor, swimming against the tide of about a century of scientific reductionism (though not, it should be stressed, in quantum physics) that says all phenomena, including your most delicate or exalted sentiments, are ultimately physical. The book has definitely had some impact; googling the title gets almost two million results, and though published back in 2007 it keeps selling well on Amazon.

One of the coauthors is Bruce Greyson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia and leading researcher of near-death experiences. A few months ago a video surfaced of a lecture Greyson gave in India in 2011. It’s about an hour long, fascinating, and seems to point to even more dramatic findings since Irreducible Mind was published seven years ago.

Greyson presents four lines of evidence for the mind as an independent entity, which I’ve taken the trouble to summarize, and they could be an eye-opener. First he gives this caveat:

The evidence that I’m going to discuss…is derived entirely from scientific research. But I do not want to give you the impression that this evidence is…accepted by Western scientists. In fact, most Western scientists are completely unaware that this evidence even exists.

Chicago University Professor David Nirenberg’s 2013 book Anti-Judaism received rapturous reviews from most Jewish media, including by Michael Walzer at New York Review of Books (via Mosaic) and Adam Kirsch at Tablet. My review at First Things was less enthusiastic: Nirenberg, in my view, got lost in the labyrinth of error that arises when secular Jews try to judge religious matters by their own standards. Below is a draft of my review, which is due to come out from behind the paywall at First Things momentarily.

by David Nirenberg

W.W.Norton, 624 pages, $35

David P. Goldman, a former senior editor of First Things, writes the “Spengler” column for Asia Times

World history is the history of Israel, averred Franz Rosenzweig, meaning that the nations of the West so hearkened to the Jewish promise of eternal life that their subsequent history was a response to Israel, whether they emulated or abhorred it. By contrast, . By contrast, David Nirenberg contends that the West has defined itself for two thousand years by its rejection of Israel. . Both cases can be argued. The difference is that Rosenzweig propounded a clear and mainly traditional concept of Judaism, whereas Nirenberg means by “Judaism” whatever he wants it to mean at different points in time. In its better moments Nirenberg’s account of Western anti-Judaism is conventional; in its worse moments it is arbitrary. His aversion to thinking of Judaism in traditional terms gets him into repeated trouble.

Until the nineteenth century, “Judaism” meant the normative tradition embodied in Hebrew Scripture, Talmud, rabbinic responsae, and observances that had remained consistent throughout the two millennia-long Jewish diaspora. The past two hundred years have produced any number of deviant interpretations, none of which has had much staying power. Nirenberg, a professor of history and social thought at the University of Chicago, tells us that he is searching for yet another non-traditional reading: Judaism is not only the religion of specific people with specific beliefs, but also a category, a set of ideas,” he declares. The trouble is that we never are told what this, except ad hoc as the opinion of particular Jews at particular times. Nor is anti-Judaism “simply an attitude toward Jews and their religion, but a way of critically engaging the world.” Neither the Jews nor the anti-Semites have a clear idea of what they are about in his account. Nirenberg’s recourse to the postmodern idea of self-definition via the “Other” does not help, for his protean depictions of Judaism and anti-Judaism chase each other into infinite regress. It recalls Heinrich Heine’s “fog-figures that rise up out of the ground/and dance a misty reel in weird chorus.”

Our hungry, would-be censors are stealing up on Americans under the guise of protecting the public.

Three news items appeared recently, back-to-back, which is too creepily coincidental. And the creepers are wearing squeaky shoes made in George Orwell’s totalitarian state of Oceania, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, so one can hear them make their way to your computer and front door. The coincidence may only be happenstance, but when the subject is calls for censorship, it should trigger alarm bells.

On May 5th, Tim Cushing of TechDirt reported that the federal government is experimenting with mandatory “driver’s licenses” for Internet users in Michigan and Pennsylvania. On May 6th, the Washington Post ran an article in its Religion section by a fellow I’d never heard of before, Omar Sacirbey, who suggested that Sharia gags should be imposed on Internet speech to prevent “hate speech.” And, on May 7th, in a Washington Examiner article, Paul Bedard reported that the chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) warned that the sentiment in the federal government is to classify “conservative” Internet sites and talk shows as Political Action Committees (PACs) and to regulate what they say and perhaps when they say it.

All three articles, of course, simply report the presence of Ninja censors in our midst. Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs broke the Sacirbey story that appeared in the Post, but one must read the original story to believe the brazenness of the suggestion. And not be startled by the goofy photograph of Omar Sacirbey, who looks like he’s gritting his teeth in expectation that Geller is about to deliver a roundhouse that will knock him flat on his keester, or posing for a “Big Brother is Watching You” poster. Creepy.

Tim Cushing of TechDirt wrote:

An idea the government has been kicking around since 2011 is finally making its debut. Calling this move ill-timed would be the most gracious way of putting it.

The current extremely successful campaign of aggression by Russia’s dictator-candidate Vladimir Putin illustrates two of the fundamentals of geolitical history:

A demagogue’s capability of achieving remarkable results through bluff.

How history often turns on relatively small margins only later to be disremembered.

Putin, with a home front in near crisis, has nevertheless won an important strategic victory by his covert invasion of the Crimea and wresting it, at least temporarily, from Ukraine. The disarray in Kiev after an unbelievably corrupt regime was dismembered by a popular street revolt has facilitated his pretense of superior power. That a rapidly declining Russian population, beset with all sorts of economic and social ills has embraced his new nationalist fervor, is no surprise. The old bandwagon effect of propaganda is notorious; pace Germany in the Nazi takeover after 1933 when the celebrated “good Germans” were increasingly few and far between – as long as Hitler was winning..

Putin’s victorious march from one propaganda feat to another is occasioned more by the utter collapse of a naïve U.S. policy in regard to Russia. Not least has been Washington’s inability to present a common front with the European Union. It is one of the many contradictions of the current scene that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, presumably the most exposed of the EU’s members to blackmail because of its heavy [one-third] dependence on Russian energy imports, has taken the firmest line, at least publicly. Pres. Obama’s statements, on the other hand, ring hollow as more of past “red lines” which turned out meaningless.

Putin’s success is all the more “illogical” given the fact that he appears to have no ideology – other than a vague wish to return Russia to Soviet and/or Tsarist glory. Yet he dare not maximize that nostalgia given the still unresolved issue of Stalin and his domestic terror within the living memory of at least a few Russians. Nor, one suspects, is he moving systematically from one strategic move to another, but rather improvising tactically as he goes along.

What is clear is that his aim is to reassert Moscow authority over the former “lost” areas of Soviet dominance. Ukraine with its 45 million people, great agricultural resources and ancillary industry to the old Soviet decentralized industrial networks [not the least munitions] is a special prize and first in his agenda That would suggest that rather than proceed with dismembering it – that is, repeating the process of detaching Crimea and linking it to Russia which he might be able to do in Eastern and Southern Ukraine — he may well want a weak and subservient Ukrainian central regime.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/05/11/egyptian-pop-star-chaaboula-to-sing-i-hate-israel-at-morocco-world-music-festival-featuring-alicia-keys-justin-timberlake/#

Egyptian singer Shaaban Abdel Rahim, known as Chaaboula, plans to sing I Hate Israel, the infamous song that ended his contract for McDonald’s in 2008, at Morocco’s Mawazine world music festival, which is also featuring international stars Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake, Ricky Martin and Kool and the Gang.

Egypt’s Youm7 news site reported on Saturday that Rahim said he will open his concert with I Hate Israel.

Arabic entertainment news site FilFan cited Rahim as saying that he’ll be wearing a costume with the colors of the Egyptian flag and will also sing his ode to former Egyptian defense minister and now presidential candidate Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, We Love Sisi.

Rahim was cited by FilFan as saying it’s “an honor for me to be the only Egyptian singer in the festival this year, it is the first time that I have taken part in such a big event.”

The festival, which is expected to draw 2.5 million attendees over nine days and a hundred concerts in Rabat and suburb Salé, is considered to be one of the largest music festivals in the world.

According to the festival organizers, Rahim worked in a laundry mat where he sang to friends until the 1980s, when the owner of a record store offered to produce his first album. After decades of Egyptian pop, Rahim turned to political themes.

In 2008, Rahim lost a contract to be featured in a McDonald’s commercial for the McFalafel after Jewish human rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, alerted the company to his song, which they accused of inciting hate against Israel and Jews.

Rahim had another hit song, Hey Arab Leaders, in which he accused the U.S. and Israel of masterminding the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

The ADL has published the lyrics of his songs (see below) and Palestinian Media Watch flagged his music video as examples of anti-Semitism and hate speech in popular Egyptian culture.

On Sunday, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of The Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Algemeiner that he hoped the other international musicians at the festival used their stage time to promote peace, rather than hatred.

“Remember that Alicia Keys delivered a message of peace last summer in Tel Aviv, despite the BDSers hypocritical hysteria,” Rabbi Cooper said referring to anti-Israel ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ activists who tried to pressure Keys to cancel her performance. “I hope she and the other western talent urge the organizers to make the festival a hate-free zone and that they counter the anti-Israel hate with their music.”

As for Chaaboula, Cooper said he “may want to update his tired lyrics.”

“He writes one of the reasons he hates Israel is because of the Golan,” Cooper said. “Has he checked with the steady stream of severely injured Syrians coming to the Golan to Israel’s ‘no questions asked’ hospital who hate Assad not the Israeli medics saving their lives?”

“Hate in his neighborhood is in all too abundant supply. How about trying the old Beatles ‘All you need is love’ for a change?” Cooper asked.

Read Chaaboula’s hate-filled lyrics below, as posted by the ADL:

On May 4th we posted about an article by Guardian Middle East editor Ian Black that whitewashed the radical anti-Israel agenda of the NGO, Zochrot. However, what we didn’t address at the time was Black’s characteristic whitewash of the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands in the following passage of the article:

Zochrot’s focus on the hyper-sensitive question of the 750,000 Palestinians who became refugees has earned it the hostility of the vast majority of Israeli Jews who flatly reject any Palestinian right of return. Allowing these refugees – now, with their descendants, numbering seven million people – to return to Jaffa, Haifa or Acre, the argument goes, would destroy the Jewish majority, the raison d’etre of the Zionist project. (Israelis often also suggest an equivalence with the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who lost homes and property after 1948 in Arab countries such as Iraq and Morocco – although their departure was encouraged and facilitated by the young state in the 1950s.)

We were going to comment on Black’s historical revisionism today when we learned that Lyn Julius – one of the more knowledgeable commentators on the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries – had submitted a letter to the Guardian in response which (unsurprisingly) the paper declined to publish.

Here’s her letter:

Ian Black’s article (Remembering the Nakba: Israeli group puts 1948 back on the map) promotes a fringe Israeli NGO’s sick objective: the destruction of the state of Israel through the Palestinian ‘right of return’, while virtually ignoring the ‘Jewish Nakba’ of 856,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries at the same time.

Wringing their hands about depopulated Palestinian villages, Zochrot remain ignorant, silent and unmoved by the depopulation of scores of Arab cities of their age-old Jewish communities.

There are almost no Jews living in Baghdad, Alexandria, Tripoli, Sana’a and Damascus today. While the Palestinians were the tragic by-product of a war their leadership launched and lost, a larger number of Jews became refugees through an Arab policy of scapegoating and ethnic cleansing.

Over the years I have been a friend of your works, from “Elsewhere, Perhaps” onward.

These are all first-rate. I read them as translated into the English from the Hebrew, which (the Hebrew) makes it especially precious (to me personally) as you avail yourself of the same living and restored language used by King David some 3,000 years earlier…history’s first literary stylist besides Torah itself.

You write with clarity, with brevity and with conscience.

As a man of conscience, you would be expected to wake up two in the morning in a cold sweat and mutter into a soaked pillow:

“What have I said! What have I done!”

To equate any Jew, any Israeli, with any Nazi, as you did here is astonishing and repellant. I cannot bring myself to quote you directly otherwise I too will have nightmares, so I have provided the attachment, and even to do that much is disturbing. Surely those words were not meant to increase your fame.

You already have an international reputation. When we speak of Israeli writers, most often you top the list. For good reason, as I have suggested.