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Sir Kenneth Clark’s ‘Civilisation’: a guide and celebration :

By on July 27th, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/civilisation/2020/07/sir-kenneth-clarks-civilisation/

Fifty-one years ago, when the first Apollo astronauts reached the moon, Sir Kenneth Clark (1903-1983), the eminent British art historian, was invited to the National Gallery in Washington DC to accept a medal for Distinguished Service to Education in Art. He had little idea of the frenzied crowd that would be on hand to welcome him. Clark, a modest and private person, found himself walking the entire length of the gallery amidst thunderous cheering. By the time he reached the speaker’s platform, tears were pouring down his cheeks.

The gallery was filled to capacity by an enthusiastic crowd anxious to see the man who had written and hosted the most unexpectedly popular series on culture in the history of television: Civilisation: A Personal View.

The subject of the series was the history of Western art; but this didn’t explain the wild enthusiasm. In fact, Clark had unwittingly tapped into grim, often unspoken fears of the time – that the social fabric of civilized life in the West was being torn asunder; that it was being undermined by endless war, random violence, moral decadence, and the ennui that corrodes any society overwhelmed by unprecedented material prosperity and a consumer mentality.

But now, from a tweedy and genial figure — more at home reading in an English country house than squinting into the brilliant limelight of sudden celebrity — came a sudden shaft of hope … Clark had brought Civilisation. 

Now, half a century on, we are embarking on a fascinating journey into the history and nature of Western Civilisation. This 15-week series will provide a guide to Civilisation: A Personal View. It can be used to accompany the DVD version or the episodes available on YouTube, or it can be read by itself as a synopsis of Clark’s great work.

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Communist China: A History Lesson for Mark Cuban To virtue-signaling corporatists, black lives matter but Chinese lives do not. By Thaddeus G. McCotter

By on July 25th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/24/communist-china-a-history-lesson-for-mark-cuban/

Recently, in what constitutes the modern equivalent of an old-fashioned Texas showdown, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban met in the middle of the Twitter community’s Main Street and exchanged fire.

The genesis of the dispute was conservative talk radio host Mark Davis’ statement that he would be “out” if Mavericks players took a knee during the national anthem in a show of support for the Black Lives Matters movement. Not surprisingly, Cuban defended his players by responding to Davis with “Bye.” 

Not surprisingly, too, Senator Cruz took exception to Cuban’s cavalier attitude toward Texans who believe kneeling for the national anthem is disrespectful. This led to Cuban questioning Cruz’s manhood. Cruz responded in kind.

Though initially about the anthem controversy, the most noteworthy aspect of this Twitter shootout at the “I’m OK, You’re Not Corral,” occurred when Cruz challenged Cuban to criticize Communist China, in general, and Beijing’s mistreatment of Hong Kong and the Uyghurs in particular. 

After Cuban affirmed his support for Black Lives Matter, claimed America is systemically racist, and accused Cruz of not doing enough to stop the COVID-19 pandemic (which Cuban failed to note originated in Communist China), he espoused the amoral canard corporate titans have long used to justify their complicit silence about oppression in the face of massive profits: “But I have never gotten involved in the domestic policies of ANY foreign country. We have too much to do here.”

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The Ben Gurion Legacy: Independent National Security Policy Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on July 23rd, 2020

 https://bit.ly/39lOus0

The Ben Gurion legacy contradicts conventional wisdom. It rejects the assumption that a White House “green light” is a prerequisite for the application of Israeli law to the Jordan Valley and the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria (West Bank).

Ben Gurion’s May 14, 1948 Declaration of Independence was not preconditioned upon a “green light” from President Truman. Ben Gurion demonstrated independence of national security action in defiance of the US State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Furthermore, President Truman was irresolute until the day of the declaration, while the US Mission to the UN was preoccupied with rounding up votes for a UN Trusteeship in Palestine (instead of an independent Jewish State).

Moreover, Ben Gurion applied Israeli law to areas in the Galilee, coastal plain, the Negev and Jerusalem – which were acquired during Israel’s War of Independence, expanding Israel’s land by 30% – in defiance of a glaring “red light” from the White House and the entire foreign policy and national security establishment in Washington, DC.

According to James McDonald, the first US Ambassador to Israel: “[Ben Gurion] warned President Truman and the US Department of State that they would be gravely mistaken if they assumed that the threat, or even the use of sanctions, would force Israel to yield on issues considered vital to its independence and security…. Much as Israel desired friendship with the US, there were limits beyond which it could not go.  Israel could not yield at any point which, in its judgement, would threaten its independence or its security. 
The very fact that Israel was a small state made more necessary the scrupulous defense of its own interests; otherwise, it would be lost (My Mission in Israel 1948-1951, Simon and Schuster, p. 49)….

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Alan Baker and Michel Calvo: The Indigenous Rights of the Jewish People and the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People

By on July 20th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16258/indigenous-rights-jews-israel

From time immemorial, up to the present day, there has been continuous Jewish presence in this area, with elements residing today within the Jewish people’s own sovereign national State of Israel, and others residing in the areas of the Holy Land in Judea and Samaria that are subject to an ongoing negotiation within the Middle East peace process as to their final political status.

Palestinian claims that they are the indigenous descendants of the Canaanites is a canard that has no basis in fact or history, especially in light of the fact that the entry of Islam into the area of the Holy Land occurred only in the seventh century of the common era.

The premise of the peace negotiation process is the mutual acknowledgment of each party’s basic rights. Thus, the peace negotiation process cannot avoid taking into account the indigenous character and rights of the Jewish People as set out in the 2007 UN Declaration. This premise must serve as the basis for any agreement covering the issues of permanent status, including borders, settlements, Jerusalem and other issues.

It is to be hoped and expected that the Government of Israel will come around to acknowledging the importance and centrality of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and will finally, and without any further delay or excuse, announce its endorsement of this important and central international document.

On September 13, 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted the “UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”. 144 states voted in favor, 4 voted against and 11 abstained (A/RES/61/295).

While those countries that have considerable indigenous populations, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, initially opposed the declaration, they subsequently endorsed it in 2010, with various interpretative declarations.

Representatives of Israel did not participate in the vote, as the day was the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah).

Curiously, even though the vast majority of states have endorsed the declaration, and even though Israel represents one of the oldest indigenous peoples still existing in the world, Israel has never endorsed the declaration.

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James Sinkinson:How Israel rescued the Promised Land from devastation and neglect

By on July 20th, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/how-israel-rescued-the-promised-land-from-devastation-and-neglect/

Part of the Israeli miracle is the restoration of a depleted, deteriorating land through determination, ingenuity and back-breaking work.

 Last week I toured much of northern Israel, from the Jezreel Valley and the Lower and Upper Galilee regions to the Golan Heights. The natural beauty of this part of Israel, as well as the explosive proliferation of agriculture, was striking and inspiring.

The abundance of flora in Israel today makes it easy to forget that this land at the turn of the 20th century was a parched wasteland. It also raises the questions: How did this miraculous transformation take place, and who was responsible?

On his visit to Palestine in 1867, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) called the Sea of Galilee “a solemn, sailless, tintless lake, as unpoetical as any bath-tub on earth.” On the other hand, last week I found the Kinneret (its Hebrew name) a sparkling blue jewel surrounded on its north, south and west by vegetable fields, orchards and forests.

Traveling by horseback through the Jezreel Valley, Clemens noted: “There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent—not for 30 miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles, hereabouts, and not see 10 human beings.”

Clemens continues, “Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. … Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.”

According to Allon Tal’s 2002 book, Pollution in a Promised Land, the Jezreel Valley around 1900 remained an undeveloped swamp—described as “barren and boring, a miserable plain without a tree or river … all in ruins.” Tal relates how one traveler in 1905 described mud so deep that the mules fell and the donkeys almost vanished in it. It wasn’t until 1924 that Zionist settlers finished the herculean two-year task of converting these marshes into the rich, fertile farmland of today.

Later, in 1918, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Herbert Samuel was named British High Commissioner of the Mandate for Palestine. In his 1921 “Annual Report on the Civil Administration,” Samuel wrote:

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Margaret Thatcher: Retired, but Far from Retiring John O’Sullivan

By on July 18th, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/06/margaret-thatcher-retired-but-far-from-retiring/

Margaret Thatcher embarked on 1989 at the height of her political authority at home and abroad. She was the recipient of Ronald Reagan’s last message as president, as she had been his last official visitor in November 1988. That visit had been a nostalgic celebration of their joint stewardship of the Anglo-American special relationship. She was the guest of honour at dinners given by Reagan and his successor George H.W. Bush and at a farewell lunch given by Secretary of State George Shultz. As a former Thatcher aide living in Washington, I was invited to the last of those occasions, which was bathed in an atmosphere of warm affection. She and Shultz had generally been on the same side in diplomatic rows and even inter-agency disputes within the administration—and to amused applause he gave her a large expensive handbag as a parting gift.

Most observers assumed that the British Prime Minister would continue to enjoy the same warm personal and political alliance with the first President Bush. They had been friends during the previous eight years, liked each other, and were on the same broad ideological wavelength. But the expectation of another Anglo-American partnership unravelled quite quickly.

Bush spent early 1989 conducting a review of foreign policy. The first smoke signals from it suggested that the Bush administration would be tougher than Reagan on the Soviets. That might have helped Thatcher, who since Reykjavik had worried that US policy was dangerously flexible on nuclear weapons. Soon, however, a different mood music began to be heard: the Brits were too obstructive not only on NATO but also on European integration; Germany was the leading economic power in Europe and US policy should reflect that; and Thatcher, though admirably brave and principled, could sometimes be rigid and preachy; and not least, Kohl, a loyal ally, needed NATO’s help to stay in office on the issue of medium- and short-range nuclear weapons in Europe, which Germans feared might one day be landing on both sides of their East-West border.

As Charles Moore makes clear in the third volume of his superb biography of Thatcher, it also became clear by degrees that though Bush liked Thatcher, he wasn’t comfortable or easy with her. He was too much the gentleman to say so. But his aides were not averse to taking her down a peg.

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The Second Islamic Conquest of Hagia Sophia By Cameron Hilditch

By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/the-second-islamic-conquest-of-hagia-sophia/

President Erdogan’s power play should not go unanswered by the liberal-democratic West.

The Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is a purpose-built structure, and its purpose is the worship of the Christian God. This particular function is not incidental to the way the church was designed and built by its two visionary architects at the high meridian of the Byzantine Empire. Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus were what their contemporaries called mechanopoioi, a term that is best translated, according to Richard Krautheimer, as “architect–scientists.” Their elite proficiency in mathematics and physics suited them to the task they’d been given by the emperor: building an originally Christian place of worship. In the sixth century, Christians were still drawing on the aesthetics of pagan antiquity, and the basilicas and colonnades of classical Rome had been accepted as the supreme expression of architectural grandeur. Hagia Sophia changed all that.

When Emperor Justinian entered the church for the first time after its completion, he is said to have boasted, “Solomon, I have vanquished thee!” He, or rather his two architects, certainly had. With an interior space of almost 43,000 square feet, it was at the time the single-greatest building ever constructed. Its crowning jewel was its gravity-defying central dome, which in a single stroke supplanted the basilica as the defining feature of church architecture in Eastern Christendom. The dome serves as a mirror to heaven, believed in late antiquity to be the most distant in a series of concentric spheres, and its 40 windows allow light from above to shine upon the glittering religious mosaics inside the church. But its most important religious function is musical. The interior of Hagia Sophia was designed for the antiphonal singing of the Christian liturgy, with two choir sections alternating chants across from one another. The dome captures and enhances the sound of this exchange. Musical notes usually reverberate for two to three seconds in a modern concert hall. In Hagia Sophia, they resound for up to twelve seconds, enveloping worshippers in the sounds of the liturgy — or at least they did, until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

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The Day That Shook the Earth The Trinity nuclear test brought peace in 1945 and proliferation in decades to follow. By Warren Kozak

By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-day-that-shook-the-earth-11594767449?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Seventy-five years ago, on July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic explosion, code-named “Trinity,” jolted the New Mexico desert just before dawn.

Gathered to witness the detonation was an extraordinary conglomeration of intellect. There were European émigrés Edward Teller, Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi as well as Berkeley’s Ernest Lawrence and Harvard’s James Conant. The project was led by physicist Robert Oppenheimer and Army Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves. If only the U.S. could establish an equally strong partnership among the military, industry and academia today.

The device, nicknamed the “Gadget,” was around 5 feet in diameter and covered with cables, metal fuse boxes and masking tape, not at all like today’s immaculate weapons. It could have been a component of an elevator. The plutonium core was transported separately in the back seat of an Army sedan. Oppenheimer didn’t want to risk blowing up any towns along the way.

There was a betting pool among the scientists on the bomb’s yield (its TNT equivalent in kilotons). Norman Ramsey, the pessimist, guessed low at zero. Edward Teller wagered high at 45 kilotons. Nobel laureate Isidor Isaac Rabi won the pool at 18. He entered late and that was the only number available.

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Never Forget: Republicans Ended Democrat-Backed Slavery And Segregation Lewis K. Uhler and Peter J. Ferrara

By on July 13th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/13/never-forget-republicans-ended-democrat-backed-slavery-and-segregation/

Black Lives Matter and Antifa are not organizations of “protestors” seeking justice for Black people. They are defacing and seeking to overturn monuments to the very historical leaders who fought and ended slavery, former U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant.

The Republican Party was formed in 1854 to abolish slavery. By the 1850s, Lincoln  was a rising leader of the National Abolitionist movement, and the new Republican Party.

In 1858, Lincoln challenged the re-election of Illinois Democrat Senator Stephen Douglas, spawning the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.  Douglas argued for “popular sovereignty”, with each new state to decide the issue of slavery by popular vote.  Lincoln argued against this expansion of slavery, proclaiming “all men are created equal” as set forth in our Declaration of Independence.

Douglas won the election, but Lincoln won the debate. In 1860, Lincoln ran for president, nominated by the anti-slavery Republicans, winning in a four-way race.  Even before his inauguration, Democrat southern states began to secede from the Union, creating the Confederate States of America.

War began in April 1861, when Confederate artillery fired on the U.S. Army at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.  The Civil War involved southern Democrats shooting and killing northern Republicans, and visa versa, a much more partisan affair than currently recognized and remembered.

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Rage Produces Much Heat but Little Light by Amir Taheri

By on July 12th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16220/rage-riots

When he attended theology classes in Medina, Malcolm X was known as “the American brother” because he did not wish to discard his American-ness. His message was one of hard work and self-betterment rather than moaning and commerce with victimhood.

In recent weeks, anti-American cabals have unleashed much sound and fury but little of substance; much heat, but little light. Their aim is to terrorize the majority by pretending that hatred of America is more widespread than it really is.

In Texas, during the Mexican-American war, Ulysses S. Grant, then a lieutenant, accompanied by another officer, goes to investigate the howling of what sounds like a huge pack of wolves. When they arrived, they saw that: “There were just two of them; they had made all the noise we had heard. I have often thought of this incident since when I have heard the noises of a few disappointed politicians… There are always more of them before they are counted.”

It is too early to tell whether the recent riots in the United States were inspired by genuine concern about chronic racism in parts of American society or fostered by political calculations linked to the next presidential election.

However, one thing is certain: traditional America-bashing circles in Europe and elsewhere have seized the opportunity to portray the United States as a nation unwilling to even acknowledge the grievance felt by the “African-American” component. Skimming through magazines gives the impression that the European elites have been observing events in the US with a more than usual degree of smugness. They ignore a few facts.

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