RUTHFULLY YOURS

What Are Your Pronouns?
By Jay Nordlinger —

Friends, I have a piece in the current National Review on the curious and contentious matter of pronouns. I thought I would “blow it out” here in Impromptus — expand it. Let’s get going.

In 2003, I was moderating a “dinner panel” at the annual conference in Davos. I said that I would ask each participant “to say a few words about himself.” It crossed my mind to add “or herself” — but then I thought, “No, we’re all adults here. This is not Oberlin College. People know about English, and language generally.” I was wrong.

The first person I called on was an anthropology professor, a woman, who said, “To begin with, I am not a ‘himself,’ I am a person.” The woman next to her — her companion — burst into applause. It was vigorous, angry applause, and it was lone applause. The lady clapped for about two seconds. Then the professor continued.

This was a terribly awkward moment, and it taught me something, or confirmed something: Standard English — once-standard English? — is risky business.

“To each his own,” we used to say. We did not mean anything sexual by it. We were not referring to people with male genitalia. We were referring to people. So it was with the word “man.” “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” “What a piece of work is a man!”

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/10/27/stealth-jihad-vs-america-on-the-glazov-gang/

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by David Kupelian, the author of the new book, The Snapping of the American Mind and vice-president and managing editor of the online news giant WND.

David discussed Stealth Jihad vs. America, unveiling the Left’s enabling of the Muslim Brotherhood’s offensive. He also outlined the numerous ways the progressive agenda has spawned The Snapping of the American Mind.

The author wishes to remain anonymous …..rsk

Subject: these times.

Hi all,

I feel the need to send out an update about our lives in this situation, but I honestly feel speechless. People’s ability to adapt is uncanny, and so, you just keep going..Today as I packed my bag for work in Jerusalem, I grabbed my water bottle, computer, and…swiss army knife.

When I drive into Jerusalem on the 443 road, I veer to the middle lane to avoid any potential stone throwing. I pass by the petrol station on my route and recall 2 recent terror attacks that took place there..

Earlier this week, I advertised in the community group list, offering a lift to anyone needing a ride to Jerusalem, as I was frightened to drive alone. What would happen if I was stoned, attacked, stuck? A lovely, elderly lady from the kibbutz responded that she would be grateful for a ride. Together we rode and with her beside me, I felt safer. Yes, people were being targeted on the streets but… she had a dentist appointment in talpiot!

Originally from chutz la’aretz, though having lived through many a conflict, war, and intifada, she continued to explain to me, that there was absolutely no where else she would ever imagine being. Uneasily, I dropped her off at a bus stop on French Hill, as I continued onto the campus to teach my class, a course on Trauma & Resilience. In the middle of class, a student apologized and blurted out that she just received word of the wave of terrorist attacks that took place that morning. “I can’t concentrate, I’m freaking out…” The duration of class, became much more practical than theoretical as we discussed what to do, how to cope, and how to move forward.

The government is finally trying to stamp out the fires of terrorism, but seems unaware that it has provided some of the fuel.

Since Hamas has admitted its role, the answer is obvious. But others are major contributors, especially PA incitement, the PLO’s Fatah, its armed wing, terrorist groups like Islamic Jihad, Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, Hamas’ Israeli branch, the Islamic Movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Wakf (the Islamic Authority). They have created a culture of Jew-hatred supported by the Arab world. It’s called Jihad. This isn’t new, but two critical factors have been overlooked.

There are two important explanations for the outbreak of Arab terrorism.

First, the connection with prisoner exchanges – just as occurred previously.

The top propaganda tactics the administration is using to demonize the Jewish State.

After weeks of murderous Palestinian stabbing attacks upon innocent Israelis, how has the Obama Administration responded?

Although Israel has been killing or apprehending knife-wielding terrorists, while Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) has been inciting and glorifying their acts of murder, the Administration presents both sides as morally equivalent, while insinuating or even asserting Israeli responsibility.

Obama officials have been doing this in five ways:

1. Condemning violence and incitement on both sides: Specifically condemning attacks on innocent Israelis, Secretary of State John Kerry nonetheless also called upon “all sides to take affirmative steps to restore calm” and called for “leadership that condemns the tit-for-tat.” And State Department spokesman John Kirby explicitly stated, “we recognize that incitement can go both ways here.”

2. Refusing to identify or condemn PA incitement to violence: Despite disseminating falsehoods about Palestinian terrorists being innocents murdered in cold blood by Israel and Muslim supremacist calls by Abbas for Muslims to block imaginary Israeli take-over and “desecration” of Muslim shrines with “their filthy feet,” Administration officials don’t allude to this, much less condemn it. Quite the contrary: State Department spokesman Mark Toner implied Israel isn’t upholding the status quo on Temple Mount, while Mr. Kirby explicitly endorsed this false Palestinian claim, saying, “certainly, the status quo has not been observed, which has led to a lot of the violence.”

3. Refusing to identify which side is using terrorism: Secretary Kerry has spoken of “a revolving cycle,” while Mr. Toner has referred to the “recent wave of violence,” not Palestinian terrorism, and refused to “assign blame” for the attacks. So did Mr. Kirby (“this isn’t about affixing … blame on either side”).

President Obama’s top science and technology adviser warned that man-made climate change is putting shrimp, lobsters, crabs and oysters at risk.

John Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said at a White House-sponsored event that some of the excess carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater to form carbonic acid.

Vice President Joe Biden, who also addressed the summit, said there would be “winners and losers” as the U.S. transitions to a sustainable energy source.

“This puts at risk all of the marine organisms that make their shells from calcium carbonate including shrimp, oysters, lobsters, crabs and many of the zooplankton near the base of ocean food webs,” Holdren said at the White House’s Summit on Climate & the Road through Paris: Business & Science. “We know too that climate change will continue for many decades to come.”

According to Holdren, the “pace and pattern of the changes in climate” that have occurred since the industrial revolution match with “great fidelity” what climate science told us would result from the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

Much (and much junk!) has already been written about the most recent wave of terrorism that shook Israel. While random Israeli Jews were being stabbed and shot in the street, much of the Western media was busy, as usual, trying to put a ‘pro-Palestinian’ spin on the ‘story’. This tendency manifested itself, among other things, in a keen effort to discover ‘reasons’ for terrorism. That in itself may not be a bad idea; but for so many of today’s lazy, talent-less and politically regimented ‘journalists’, the term ‘discover’ does not mean ‘investigate’, but rather ‘speculate’. To Israeli ears, such attempts to present ‘reasons’ sound very much like finding justifications for terrorism.

That’s what Yair Lapid – a former Finance Minister who now leads one of Israel’s opposition parties – told BBC presenter Stephen Sackur, who was interviewing him for a programme entitled HARDTalk. Sackur had said:
“The Palestinians are quite clear, as Mahmoud Abbas has said, ‘we are living’, he says, ‘under unbearable conditions’. And when that is the case, you get the kind of desperation, particularly among nihilistic young people, who see no future, that results in violence on your streets.”After Lapid accused him of justifying terrorism, Sackur countered:
“You use the word ‘justification’; I never used that word. I’m trying to place what is happening in a context, trying to maybe explain it, not justify it.”Sounds logical, doesn’t it? He wasn’t justifying terrorism; just placing it in context, ‘explaining’ it. Nothing wrong with that, surely? Well, two things are very wrong with that, actually.
Firstly, such valiant attempts to use European logic in order to ‘explain’ Middle Eastern terrorism are only ever made when Israelis are its victims. Mr. Sackur would not use a similar ‘logic’ to ‘explain’ 9/11, or 7/7. When Muslim terrorists killed a random British soldier outside his barracks, no one at BBC ‘explained’ the act as “desperation, particularly among nihilistic young people, who see no future…”

For ten years, I’ve spent the Jewish holidays in Jerusalem, joining multitudes from all over Israel and abroad who flock here to celebrate. It is a period of festivity, with concerts and events throughout the city. From my apartment outside the Old City, I watch Jews streaming to the Western Wall as generations before them have done, and Christian tourists who come to celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacles.

This year, the holiday begins with the usual exuberance, but events take a dark turn as streets turn into murder scenes, and paranoia grips the city.

Exhorted by their leaders to defend Islam’s holy sites, Palestinians are fed lies about marauding Jews planning to take over the Al-Aqsa mosque. President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel’s purported peace partner, calls on Palestinians to prevent Jews from “defiling” the Temple Mount “with their filthy feet.” He promises that “every martyr will be placed in Paradise.” His call is repeated by political and religious leaders on TV and social media, illustrated with graphic images of bloody knives.

A letter-to-the-editor published in today’s (Friday’s) print edition of the influential British newspaper the Guardian by a group of renowned British figures, among them Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, denounces boycotts of Israel that other cultural figures in London have advocated.

The letter, signed by 151 members of the U.K.’s cultural and political elite, including 14 members of Parliament, reads as follows:

In February 2015 you published a letter from UK artists announcing their intention to culturally boycott Israel.

On Monday evening, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed an Israeli soldier at the central bus station in Beersheba, then stole his rifle and began shooting randomly at commuters.

The soldier died of his wounds in the hospital; the terrorist was killed on location by security forces. About a dozen other people were injured — some seriously, some lightly — and many more left traumatized for life.

In the chaos of the attack, a 29-year-old Eritrean who worked at a plant nursery was mistakenly fingered as a terrorist, and he was shot by a security guard.

As if this weren’t tragic enough, after Habtom Zarhum was shot and “neutralized,” an angry mob began to beat him with anything they could get their hands on.