The California Captivity of the Democratic Party. By Matthew Continetti. Washington Free Beacon, May 31, 2013.
Amnesty Made California a One-Party State. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, June 5, 2013. Audio, Daily Rushbo.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Samantha Power’s Five Worst Statements.
Samantha Power’s Five Worst Statements. Washington Free Beacon. June 5, 2013.
Obama Seeks Conflict With GOP in Appointing Rice, Power. By Alexis Simendinger. Real Clear Politics, June 6, 2013.
O’s cynical picks. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, June 6, 2013.
Beck Twists Statement By Obama Adviser To Portray Her As Anti-Israel. By Terry Krepel. Media Matters for America, March 25, 2011.
Video: Former Obama adviser on invading Israel. By Ed Morrissey. Hot Air, October 5, 2008.
Genocide and U.S. Foreign Policy: Conversation with Samantha Power. Interviewed by Harry Kreisler. Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, April 29, 2002. Internet Archive. YouTube.
Obama’s Top Adviser Says She Does Not Believe in Imposing a Peace Settlement. By Shmuel Rosner. Haaretz. Miftah.org, February 26, 2008.
Samantha Power’s World View. By Seth Mandel. Commentary, June 6, 2013.
YouTube clip likely to dog Samantha Power’s appointment as U.S. ambassador to UN. By Chemi Shalev. Haaretz, June 5, 2013.
Video of Samantha Power’s 2002 Remarks on Imposing Peace on Israel Could Haunt Her, Israeli Paper Says. By Christine Hauser and Robert Mackey. New York Times, June 5, 2013.
Samantha Power, Obama’s pick as America’s Ambassador to the UN, will fit right in. By Ed Lasky. American Thinker, June 5, 2013.
Power’s “Mea Culpa” Doctrine. By David Feith. Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2013.
Neocons praise Samantha Power pick. By John Hudson. Foreign Policy, June 5, 2013.
A perfect match. By Melanie Phillips. MelaniePhillips.com, June 5, 2013.
Samantha Power, hater of Israel. By Paul Mirengoff. Power Line, June 5, 2013.
Samantha Power, defender of Israel? By Martin Kramer. Sandbox, June 5, 2013.
Speaking truth to Power. By Martin Kramer. Sandbox, March 3, 2008.
Getting through these dark times: Interview with Samantha Power. By Leigh Flayton. Salon, February 18, 2008.
Samantha Power: the Salon interview. By Noah Pollak. Commentary, February 19, 2008.
Samantha Power and Obama’s Foreign PolicyTeam. By Richard Baehr and Ed Lasky. American Thinker, February 19, 2008.
Force Full: Bush’s Illiberal Power. By Samantha Power. The New Republic, March 3, 2003. Also here.
Samantha and Her Subjects. By Jacob Heilbrunn. The National Interest, No. 113 (May/June 2011).
Samantha Power on the limits of “Holocaustization.” By Joshua Keating. Foreign Policy, June 5, 2013.
To Suffer by Comparison? By Samantha Power. Daedalus, Vol. 128, No. 2 (Spring 1999).
Obama Seeks Conflict With GOP in Appointing Rice, Power. By Alexis Simendinger. Real Clear Politics, June 6, 2013.
O’s cynical picks. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, June 6, 2013.
Beck Twists Statement By Obama Adviser To Portray Her As Anti-Israel. By Terry Krepel. Media Matters for America, March 25, 2011.
Video: Former Obama adviser on invading Israel. By Ed Morrissey. Hot Air, October 5, 2008.
Genocide and U.S. Foreign Policy: Conversation with Samantha Power. Interviewed by Harry Kreisler. Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, April 29, 2002. Internet Archive. YouTube.
Obama’s Top Adviser Says She Does Not Believe in Imposing a Peace Settlement. By Shmuel Rosner. Haaretz. Miftah.org, February 26, 2008.
Samantha Power’s World View. By Seth Mandel. Commentary, June 6, 2013.
YouTube clip likely to dog Samantha Power’s appointment as U.S. ambassador to UN. By Chemi Shalev. Haaretz, June 5, 2013.
Video of Samantha Power’s 2002 Remarks on Imposing Peace on Israel Could Haunt Her, Israeli Paper Says. By Christine Hauser and Robert Mackey. New York Times, June 5, 2013.
Samantha Power, Obama’s pick as America’s Ambassador to the UN, will fit right in. By Ed Lasky. American Thinker, June 5, 2013.
Power’s “Mea Culpa” Doctrine. By David Feith. Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2013.
Neocons praise Samantha Power pick. By John Hudson. Foreign Policy, June 5, 2013.
A perfect match. By Melanie Phillips. MelaniePhillips.com, June 5, 2013.
Samantha Power, hater of Israel. By Paul Mirengoff. Power Line, June 5, 2013.
Samantha Power, defender of Israel? By Martin Kramer. Sandbox, June 5, 2013.
Speaking truth to Power. By Martin Kramer. Sandbox, March 3, 2008.
Getting through these dark times: Interview with Samantha Power. By Leigh Flayton. Salon, February 18, 2008.
Samantha Power: the Salon interview. By Noah Pollak. Commentary, February 19, 2008.
Samantha Power and Obama’s Foreign PolicyTeam. By Richard Baehr and Ed Lasky. American Thinker, February 19, 2008.
Force Full: Bush’s Illiberal Power. By Samantha Power. The New Republic, March 3, 2003. Also here.
Samantha and Her Subjects. By Jacob Heilbrunn. The National Interest, No. 113 (May/June 2011).
Samantha Power on the limits of “Holocaustization.” By Joshua Keating. Foreign Policy, June 5, 2013.
To Suffer by Comparison? By Samantha Power. Daedalus, Vol. 128, No. 2 (Spring 1999).
Game of Thrones Offers a Complex, Nuanced Critique of Patriarchy. By Amanda Marcotte.
Game of Thrones Offers a Complex, Nuanced Critique of Patriarchy. By Amanda Marcotte. The Raw Story, June 5, 2013.
How the Patriarchy Screwed the Starks. By Rowan Kaiser. The American Prospect, June 3, 2013.
“People want to matter more than they want to live”: Rebecca Goldstein’s Talk at Women in Secularism 2. By Greta Christina. Greta Christina’s Blog, May 21, 2013.
Revolution, on Television and in Real Life. By Michelle Dean. The Nation, June 4, 2013.
More on Game of Thrones here.
How the Patriarchy Screwed the Starks. By Rowan Kaiser. The American Prospect, June 3, 2013.
“People want to matter more than they want to live”: Rebecca Goldstein’s Talk at Women in Secularism 2. By Greta Christina. Greta Christina’s Blog, May 21, 2013.
Revolution, on Television and in Real Life. By Michelle Dean. The Nation, June 4, 2013.
More on Game of Thrones here.
Introducing the Grand Old Party to a Brand New Generation. By Alex Smith and Kristen Soltis.
Introducing the Grand Old Party to a Brand New Generation. By Alex Smith and Kristen Soltis. The Daily Caller, June 4, 2013.
Grand Old Party for A Brand New Generation. By Kristen Sotis Anderson et al. College Republican National Committee, June 2013. Video introduction, YouTube.
The O’Reilly Factor: Alex Smith and Kirsten Soltis Anderson | 6/14/13. Video. NationalCRs, June 5, 2013. YouTube.
College Republican National Committee Report Has Grim Findings for GOP. By Jon Favreau. The Daily Beast, June 5, 2013.
College Republican National Committee Report: GOP “Out of Touch” with Young Voters. By Michael Tony. Occupy Democrats, June 3, 2013.
Report: Lack of caring, close-mindedness hurt GOP with young voters. By Ariel Cohen. The Daily Caller, June 3, 2013.
Report: How GOP Lost Young Voters. By Katie Glueck. Politico, June 2, 2013.
Young Voters Give Obama “A” for Effort. By Bethany Mandel. Commentary, June 4, 2013.
No amount of “rebranding” will win back young voters to the Republican party. By Ana Marie Cox. The Guardian, June 5, 2013.
Grand Old Party for A Brand New Generation. By Kristen Sotis Anderson et al. College Republican National Committee, June 2013. Video introduction, YouTube.
The O’Reilly Factor: Alex Smith and Kirsten Soltis Anderson | 6/14/13. Video. NationalCRs, June 5, 2013. YouTube.
College Republican National Committee Report Has Grim Findings for GOP. By Jon Favreau. The Daily Beast, June 5, 2013.
College Republican National Committee Report: GOP “Out of Touch” with Young Voters. By Michael Tony. Occupy Democrats, June 3, 2013.
Report: Lack of caring, close-mindedness hurt GOP with young voters. By Ariel Cohen. The Daily Caller, June 3, 2013.
Report: How GOP Lost Young Voters. By Katie Glueck. Politico, June 2, 2013.
Young Voters Give Obama “A” for Effort. By Bethany Mandel. Commentary, June 4, 2013.
No amount of “rebranding” will win back young voters to the Republican party. By Ana Marie Cox. The Guardian, June 5, 2013.
Ian Morris, Historian on a Grand Scale. By Marc Parry.
The Shape of History: Ian Morris, historian on a grand scale. By Marc Parry. The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 25, 2013.
Ian Morris’s Big Idea: Why the West Will Fall Behind. By Ian Morris. The Daily Beast, March 1, 2013.
Social Development. By Ian Morris. Stanford University. IanMorris.org, October 2010. PDF.
Why the West Rules—For Now. Excerpt. By Ian Morris. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.
Ian Morris’s Big Idea: Why the West Will Fall Behind. By Ian Morris. The Daily Beast, March 1, 2013.
Social Development. By Ian Morris. Stanford University. IanMorris.org, October 2010. PDF.
Why the West Rules—For Now. Excerpt. By Ian Morris. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Oprah, Harvard, and Inequality. By George Packer.
Oprah, Harvard, and Inequality. By George Packer. The New Yorker, June 4, 2013.
Packer:
Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the strange conjunction of America’s ever-widening inclusiveness and ever-growing disparity. Oprah at Harvard is a perfect illustration: her arrival at that summit is improbable and extraordinary, a parable of individual talent meeting social opportunity. She took the occasion to remind her audience of her triumph, and of the blessings that surely come in America today with the right alma mater and the right connections. Her presence was proof that the meritocracy really works, that equal opportunity is real—a reassuring thought in a time and place where social mobility has dwindled and American success stories are more and more likely to be born rather than made.
I don’t think there’s a causal relation between these two essential facts from the past generation: that a poor black girl from the Deep South can grow up to be an empire-builder, and that the gap in income and life chances between Americans with Harvard degrees and Americans without is getting bigger every year. They have happened at the same time, and they pull in opposite directions. One doesn’t necessitate or further the other. But my last column got a critical rejoinder from Samuel Goldman, in the American Conservative. Goldman claims that the two trends are intimately related, and that they’re somehow the doing of post-sixties educated liberals like me, and, perhaps, you, who have gone all in for tolerance, diversity, and lax moral standards while forsaking the troubled working class. It might not even be possible to have Oprah and fairness: “It is hard for a society characterized by ethnic and cultural pluralism to generate the solidarity required for the redistribution of wealth. People are willing, on the whole, to pay high taxes and forgo luxuries to support those they see as like themselves. They are often unwilling to do so for those who look, sound, or act very differently.”
Goldman is conflating a number of things here—among them, the ideal of equality before the law and the reality of a loud, consumerist, gadget-dazzled, indifferent society. Is there something about black enfranchisement, women’s quest for equal pay, and the right of gays to marry that required Americans to start overspending, paying their workers less, and neglecting their children? If so, should we return to segregation, bored housewives, and the closet on the chance that these might restore unions to health and revive public schools? Goldman’s argument is that, beyond a certain level of diversity, a democratic society—that is, one in which equal opportunity means something more than the chance for each of us to have our own TV network—stops being possible. This view takes us back to conservatism of a particular sort—not the universalist creed of the Declaration but the philosophy of the Know Nothings.
On the other hand, there’s this uncomfortable truth, pointed out by Ross Douthat, of the Times: the period of greatest economic equality and social solidarity, the years between the Great Depression and the nineteen-seventies, which I call the Roosevelt Republic, coincided with the doors being firmly shut to immigrants. The decades that came before and after this more secure era—from the Gilded Age to the nineteen-twenties, and the generation since the late seventies, the period of the unwinding—saw those doors swing wide open. Douthat suggests that waves of immigration have created social divisions and competition for jobs at the bottom, both of which have something to do with the fraying of the social contract. If human beings were better, it wouldn’t be so—but they aren’t, so it is. Douthat’s is a more subtle, less partisan argument than Goldman’s, and it poses a problem for liberals who want more equality and more immigration.
My book explores some of these questions in the indirect way of narrative. It makes no explicit arguments supported by statistics, social science, or political theory. There are plenty of good books on inequality, political polarization, institutional instability, the decline of the working class, the economic and social effects of globalization and the Information Age. I didn’t want to write that kind of book; I couldn’t have if I’d tried. I wanted to do something else: create a portrait of the country during years when freedom became maximal and the social contract frayed. I wanted to convey what this condition feels and looks and sounds like, in individuals’ lives, voices, nervous systems.
I saw no need to distribute blame in appropriate portions, in keeping with a political framework. There’s plenty to go around: the characters in “The Unwinding” aren’t helpless victims. They make big mistakes, they get pregnant too young, their marriages break up, they let their businesses collapse, they go broke, they invest their money unwisely, they fill their minds and stomachs with junk, they trust the wrong people, they get themselves fired from jobs they can’t afford to lose, they make bad decisions for their children. One family in particular—the Hartzells, of Tampa, who appear near the end of the book—have had such a hard time that they are currently homeless, with two children, in quite desperate circumstances.
Partly, it’s their own fault. And partly it’s the huge disruptions of recent history: the disappearance of blue-collar jobs, the Walmartization of the economy, the decay of public schools, the collapse of institutional structures that used to support the aspirations of the middle class, the atomization of everyday life where there is no secure living. Those upheavals, in turn, aren’t simply the product of blind forces, like hurricanes and earthquakes. They have happened because Americans have let them happen, sometimes without knowing it, sometimes with deliberate intent. “The Unwinding” has no ideology, but it does subscribe to the view that those with the most power and influence, who have benefitted the most handsomely, bear more responsibility than the Hartzells.
The Unwinding. By George Packer. NJBR, May 20, 2013. With related articles.
Oprah Winfrey Tells Harvard Graduates “Failure is Just Life Trying to Move Us in Another Direction.” By Molly Greenberg. InTheCapital, May 31, 2013.
5 Best Quotes from Oprah Winfrey’s Inspiring Harvard University Commencement Speech. By Vi-An Nguyen. Parade, May 31, 2013.
Oprah Winfrey Harvard Commencement 2013 Speech. Video. Harvard, May 30, 2013. YouTube.
Winfrey:
It doesn’t matter how far you might rise. At some point, you are bound to stumble. If you’re constantly pushing yourself higher and higher, the law of averages, not to mention The Myth of Icarus, predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do, I want you to remember this: There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. Now, when you’re down there in the hole, it looks like failure. When that moment comes, it’s okay to feel bad for a little while. Give yourself time to mourn what you think you may have lost. But then, here’s the key: Learn from every mistake, because every experience, particularly your mistakes, are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are.
. . . .
You will find true success and happiness if you have only one goal. There really is only one, and that is this: To fulfill the highest, most truthful expression of yourself as a human being. You want to max out your humanity by using your energy to lift yourself up, your family, and the people around you. Theologian Howard Thurman said it best. He said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Packer:
Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the strange conjunction of America’s ever-widening inclusiveness and ever-growing disparity. Oprah at Harvard is a perfect illustration: her arrival at that summit is improbable and extraordinary, a parable of individual talent meeting social opportunity. She took the occasion to remind her audience of her triumph, and of the blessings that surely come in America today with the right alma mater and the right connections. Her presence was proof that the meritocracy really works, that equal opportunity is real—a reassuring thought in a time and place where social mobility has dwindled and American success stories are more and more likely to be born rather than made.
I don’t think there’s a causal relation between these two essential facts from the past generation: that a poor black girl from the Deep South can grow up to be an empire-builder, and that the gap in income and life chances between Americans with Harvard degrees and Americans without is getting bigger every year. They have happened at the same time, and they pull in opposite directions. One doesn’t necessitate or further the other. But my last column got a critical rejoinder from Samuel Goldman, in the American Conservative. Goldman claims that the two trends are intimately related, and that they’re somehow the doing of post-sixties educated liberals like me, and, perhaps, you, who have gone all in for tolerance, diversity, and lax moral standards while forsaking the troubled working class. It might not even be possible to have Oprah and fairness: “It is hard for a society characterized by ethnic and cultural pluralism to generate the solidarity required for the redistribution of wealth. People are willing, on the whole, to pay high taxes and forgo luxuries to support those they see as like themselves. They are often unwilling to do so for those who look, sound, or act very differently.”
Goldman is conflating a number of things here—among them, the ideal of equality before the law and the reality of a loud, consumerist, gadget-dazzled, indifferent society. Is there something about black enfranchisement, women’s quest for equal pay, and the right of gays to marry that required Americans to start overspending, paying their workers less, and neglecting their children? If so, should we return to segregation, bored housewives, and the closet on the chance that these might restore unions to health and revive public schools? Goldman’s argument is that, beyond a certain level of diversity, a democratic society—that is, one in which equal opportunity means something more than the chance for each of us to have our own TV network—stops being possible. This view takes us back to conservatism of a particular sort—not the universalist creed of the Declaration but the philosophy of the Know Nothings.
On the other hand, there’s this uncomfortable truth, pointed out by Ross Douthat, of the Times: the period of greatest economic equality and social solidarity, the years between the Great Depression and the nineteen-seventies, which I call the Roosevelt Republic, coincided with the doors being firmly shut to immigrants. The decades that came before and after this more secure era—from the Gilded Age to the nineteen-twenties, and the generation since the late seventies, the period of the unwinding—saw those doors swing wide open. Douthat suggests that waves of immigration have created social divisions and competition for jobs at the bottom, both of which have something to do with the fraying of the social contract. If human beings were better, it wouldn’t be so—but they aren’t, so it is. Douthat’s is a more subtle, less partisan argument than Goldman’s, and it poses a problem for liberals who want more equality and more immigration.
My book explores some of these questions in the indirect way of narrative. It makes no explicit arguments supported by statistics, social science, or political theory. There are plenty of good books on inequality, political polarization, institutional instability, the decline of the working class, the economic and social effects of globalization and the Information Age. I didn’t want to write that kind of book; I couldn’t have if I’d tried. I wanted to do something else: create a portrait of the country during years when freedom became maximal and the social contract frayed. I wanted to convey what this condition feels and looks and sounds like, in individuals’ lives, voices, nervous systems.
I saw no need to distribute blame in appropriate portions, in keeping with a political framework. There’s plenty to go around: the characters in “The Unwinding” aren’t helpless victims. They make big mistakes, they get pregnant too young, their marriages break up, they let their businesses collapse, they go broke, they invest their money unwisely, they fill their minds and stomachs with junk, they trust the wrong people, they get themselves fired from jobs they can’t afford to lose, they make bad decisions for their children. One family in particular—the Hartzells, of Tampa, who appear near the end of the book—have had such a hard time that they are currently homeless, with two children, in quite desperate circumstances.
Partly, it’s their own fault. And partly it’s the huge disruptions of recent history: the disappearance of blue-collar jobs, the Walmartization of the economy, the decay of public schools, the collapse of institutional structures that used to support the aspirations of the middle class, the atomization of everyday life where there is no secure living. Those upheavals, in turn, aren’t simply the product of blind forces, like hurricanes and earthquakes. They have happened because Americans have let them happen, sometimes without knowing it, sometimes with deliberate intent. “The Unwinding” has no ideology, but it does subscribe to the view that those with the most power and influence, who have benefitted the most handsomely, bear more responsibility than the Hartzells.
The Unwinding. By George Packer. NJBR, May 20, 2013. With related articles.
Oprah Winfrey Tells Harvard Graduates “Failure is Just Life Trying to Move Us in Another Direction.” By Molly Greenberg. InTheCapital, May 31, 2013.
5 Best Quotes from Oprah Winfrey’s Inspiring Harvard University Commencement Speech. By Vi-An Nguyen. Parade, May 31, 2013.
Oprah Winfrey Harvard Commencement 2013 Speech. Video. Harvard, May 30, 2013. YouTube.
Winfrey:
It doesn’t matter how far you might rise. At some point, you are bound to stumble. If you’re constantly pushing yourself higher and higher, the law of averages, not to mention The Myth of Icarus, predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do, I want you to remember this: There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. Now, when you’re down there in the hole, it looks like failure. When that moment comes, it’s okay to feel bad for a little while. Give yourself time to mourn what you think you may have lost. But then, here’s the key: Learn from every mistake, because every experience, particularly your mistakes, are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are.
. . . .
You will find true success and happiness if you have only one goal. There really is only one, and that is this: To fulfill the highest, most truthful expression of yourself as a human being. You want to max out your humanity by using your energy to lift yourself up, your family, and the people around you. Theologian Howard Thurman said it best. He said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
The U.S. Should Be In the Dock, Not Bradley Manning. By Owen Jones.
The United States should be in the dock, not Bradley Manning. By Owen Jones. The Independent, June 2, 2013.
Seven Myths About Bradley Manning. By Chase Madar. The Nation, June 3, 2013.
Jones:
There has always been a somewhat Orwellian quality to US foreign policy: “we have always been at war with Islamic fundamentalism”, for example. And yet in the 1980s, US arms were distributed through Pakistan’s secret services to the Afghan mujihadeen: they were freedom-fighters, you see. Then we ended up in a never-ending war in Afghanistan, battling on behalf of a corrupt and undemocratic government, against Islamic fundamentalist elements. Several hundred miles away, the US is proactively backing Syria’s jihadists alongside its Islamist fundamentalist ally, Saudi Arabia. Waves of Islamist fighters were recruited by the calamity of Iraq.
There is nothing patriotic about the poorly scrutinised actions of the US foreign policy elite. Scores of young men or women are sent to be killed or maimed: those who call for bringing them to safety are smeared as “unpatriotic”. US civilians are put at risk of “blowback”, a CIA word for the unintended consequences of foreign interventions. They can even fail disastrously on their own terms. Back in the 1950s, the US helped overthrow Iran’s last democratically-elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, fuelling anti-American sentiment that helped drive the Iranian Revolution.
That is why Manning has done us such a service. He has encouraged us to scrutinise the hidden realities of US power, and consider the dire consequences of decisions shrouded in secrecy. His actions should compel us to build a more open, balanced world, where great powers are less able to throw their poorly understood weight around. It would be a long-term investment: the US is in long-term decline, and autocratic China may take its place, quite possibly using its power more unjustly. Better, then, to challenge this world order now.
I happen to believe the creation of such a world is not a naïve fantasy. It can and must be built. And however your trial goes, you, Mr Manning, will be remembered for your own contribution in building it.
Seven Myths About Bradley Manning. By Chase Madar. The Nation, June 3, 2013.
Jones:
There has always been a somewhat Orwellian quality to US foreign policy: “we have always been at war with Islamic fundamentalism”, for example. And yet in the 1980s, US arms were distributed through Pakistan’s secret services to the Afghan mujihadeen: they were freedom-fighters, you see. Then we ended up in a never-ending war in Afghanistan, battling on behalf of a corrupt and undemocratic government, against Islamic fundamentalist elements. Several hundred miles away, the US is proactively backing Syria’s jihadists alongside its Islamist fundamentalist ally, Saudi Arabia. Waves of Islamist fighters were recruited by the calamity of Iraq.
There is nothing patriotic about the poorly scrutinised actions of the US foreign policy elite. Scores of young men or women are sent to be killed or maimed: those who call for bringing them to safety are smeared as “unpatriotic”. US civilians are put at risk of “blowback”, a CIA word for the unintended consequences of foreign interventions. They can even fail disastrously on their own terms. Back in the 1950s, the US helped overthrow Iran’s last democratically-elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, fuelling anti-American sentiment that helped drive the Iranian Revolution.
That is why Manning has done us such a service. He has encouraged us to scrutinise the hidden realities of US power, and consider the dire consequences of decisions shrouded in secrecy. His actions should compel us to build a more open, balanced world, where great powers are less able to throw their poorly understood weight around. It would be a long-term investment: the US is in long-term decline, and autocratic China may take its place, quite possibly using its power more unjustly. Better, then, to challenge this world order now.
I happen to believe the creation of such a world is not a naïve fantasy. It can and must be built. And however your trial goes, you, Mr Manning, will be remembered for your own contribution in building it.
Monday, June 3, 2013
The War Prayer. By Mark Twain.
The War Prayer. By Mark Twain. The Writings of Mark Twain Vol. 29: Europe and Elsewhere. New York. Gabriel Wells, 1923. Also here and here.
War Is Hell and Don’t Forget It. By Allen L. Roland. Tikkun Daily, May 27, 2013.
The War Prayer: Mark Twain. Video. ricshinn, June 26, 2008. YouTube. Epilogue to the PBS 1981 production: A Private History of a Campaign That Failed.
Jacksonians have always understood Twain’s message quite clearly: that praying for the victory of their soldiers means wreaking havoc, death, and destruction on the enemy. Jacksonians have no romantic illusions about war. The Jacksonian way of war calls for using all of America’s economic, technological, and military resources to force the total defeat and unconditional surrender of the enemy. For Jacksonians war is total war, a life-and-death struggle to defend the community and the nation against its enemies and to assert American honor. Jacksonians agree with General Sherman that war is hell. So they have no problem with inflicting massive collateral damage to the enemy’s civilian population, women, and children, turning their lives into a living hell, if that’s what it takes to win.
War Is Hell and Don’t Forget It. By Allen L. Roland. Tikkun Daily, May 27, 2013.
The War Prayer: Mark Twain. Video. ricshinn, June 26, 2008. YouTube. Epilogue to the PBS 1981 production: A Private History of a Campaign That Failed.
Jacksonians have always understood Twain’s message quite clearly: that praying for the victory of their soldiers means wreaking havoc, death, and destruction on the enemy. Jacksonians have no romantic illusions about war. The Jacksonian way of war calls for using all of America’s economic, technological, and military resources to force the total defeat and unconditional surrender of the enemy. For Jacksonians war is total war, a life-and-death struggle to defend the community and the nation against its enemies and to assert American honor. Jacksonians agree with General Sherman that war is hell. So they have no problem with inflicting massive collateral damage to the enemy’s civilian population, women, and children, turning their lives into a living hell, if that’s what it takes to win.
Palestine, Peoples and Borders in the New Middle East. By Ahmad Samih Khalidi.
Palestine, Peoples and Borders in the New Middle East. By Ahmad Samih Khalidi. London School of Economics, May 30, 2013.
Why Can’t the Palestinians Recognize the Jewish State? By Ahmad Samih Khalidi. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Summer 2011). Also here.
Palestinian statehood: Thanks, but no thanks. By Ahmad Samih Khalidi. The Guardian, December 12, 2007.
History is irrelevant: Why Palestinian Arabs can never accept a Jewish state. The Elder of Ziyon, August 30, 2011. [Comments on Khalidi]
Nakba nonsense floods in. The Elder of Ziyon, May 11, 2008. [Comments on Khalidi]
Abbas: PLO Charter Reflects What Palestinians Want. By Evelyn Gordon. Commentary, June 6, 2013.
Muslim scholars assert normalization with Israel is treason. Al-Qassam Brigades, June 3, 2013.
When your neighbor unfurls a Nazi flag. By Abraham Cooper and Howard Brackman. Jerusalem Post, June 2, 2013.
Even if there is a peace settlement, which is doubtful in the near or midterm future, the Israeli and Palestinian historical narratives will not be reconciled, nor can they be. The respective Israeli and Palestinian national identities are based on the historical and moral priority of their own claims to the land, and the illegitimacy of the other’s. Palestinians will always believe that their land was stolen by the Jews, deny the moral legitimacy of a Jewish state, and look to a Judenrein Palestine as their ultimate ideal.
Of course when it comes to the subject of Israel and the Jews it’s rarely possible to be calm, neutral, or objective. For Israel and the Jews push too many hot buttons for too many people – religious, historical, cultural, psychological, and political, positive and negative – for Jews and Gentiles alike.
Why Can’t the Palestinians Recognize the Jewish State? By Ahmad Samih Khalidi. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Summer 2011). Also here.
Israel’s celebration remains a Palestinian catastrophe. By Ahmad Samih Khalidi. The Guardian, May 11, 2008.
Palestinian statehood: Thanks, but no thanks. By Ahmad Samih Khalidi. The Guardian, December 12, 2007.
History is irrelevant: Why Palestinian Arabs can never accept a Jewish state. The Elder of Ziyon, August 30, 2011. [Comments on Khalidi]
Nakba nonsense floods in. The Elder of Ziyon, May 11, 2008. [Comments on Khalidi]
Abbas: PLO Charter Reflects What Palestinians Want. By Evelyn Gordon. Commentary, June 6, 2013.
Muslim scholars assert normalization with Israel is treason. Al-Qassam Brigades, June 3, 2013.
When your neighbor unfurls a Nazi flag. By Abraham Cooper and Howard Brackman. Jerusalem Post, June 2, 2013.
Even if there is a peace settlement, which is doubtful in the near or midterm future, the Israeli and Palestinian historical narratives will not be reconciled, nor can they be. The respective Israeli and Palestinian national identities are based on the historical and moral priority of their own claims to the land, and the illegitimacy of the other’s. Palestinians will always believe that their land was stolen by the Jews, deny the moral legitimacy of a Jewish state, and look to a Judenrein Palestine as their ultimate ideal.
Of course when it comes to the subject of Israel and the Jews it’s rarely possible to be calm, neutral, or objective. For Israel and the Jews push too many hot buttons for too many people – religious, historical, cultural, psychological, and political, positive and negative – for Jews and Gentiles alike.
Professors Are About to Get an Online Education. By Andy Kessler.
Professors Are About to Get an Online Education. By Andy Kessler. Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2013.
Professors Running Scared, MOOC Future is Now. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, June 3, 2013.
An Open Letter to Professor Michael Sandel From the Philosophy Department at San Jose State U. The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2, 2013.
More on MOOCs here, here, here, and here.
Professors Running Scared, MOOC Future is Now. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, June 3, 2013.
An Open Letter to Professor Michael Sandel From the Philosophy Department at San Jose State U. The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2, 2013.
More on MOOCs here, here, here, and here.
Middle East Genocide. By Ralph Peters.
Middle East genocide. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, June 1, 2013. Also here.
The Arab Collapse. By Ralph Peters. NJBR, May 20, 2013.
The Counterrevolution in Military Affairs. By Ralph Peters. NJBR, January 1, 2013.
Lose the Bible, Lose Your Cultural Heritage. By Ralph Peters. Family Security Matters, May 24, 2012.
The Arab World’s Endless Failures. By Ralph Peters. Family Security Matters, January 26, 2012.
12 Myths of 21st-Century War. By Ralph Peters. The American Legion Magazine, November 2007. Also here.
Ethnic Cleansing Is Better Than Genocide. By Ralph Peters. National Review, August 13, 2007. NJBR, July 9, 2013.
Faith’s civil wars. By Ralph Peters. USA Today, June 24, 2007.
Dream warriors: Our enemies fight for fantasies, not freedom. By Ralph Peters. Armed Forces Journal, May/June 2007. Also here.
Ralph Peters on Gaza. Hannity and Colmes transcript. Real Clear Politics, June 15, 2007. Also here.
In Gaza’s Shadow: Iraq and the Arab Suicide Cult. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, June 14, 2007. Also here.
What to Give Up . . . and What Land to Hold: Israel’s Toughest Choice. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, May 6, 2007. Also here.
Rebels and religion: How fighters become fanatics. By Ralph Peters. Armed Forces Journal, January 2007.
Arabs’ Last Chance. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, August 24, 2006. Also here.
Living, and dying, with suicide bombers. By Ralph Peters. USA Today, January 3, 2006.
New Glory. Ralph Peters interviewed by Jamie Glazov. FrontPageMag, September 7, 2005.
After Words with Ralph Peters. Video. Peters discusses New Glory with Anatol Lieven. C-Span, August 18, 2005.
The Frozen Civilization of the Desert. By Ralph Peters. New Glory: Expanding America’s Global Supremacy, Chapter 15. New York: Sentinel, 2005.
Ralph Peters and John Bolton on the “Middle East genocide” of Christians and Jews. Video. America Live with Megyn Kelly. Fox News, June 3, 2013. YouTube. Also here, here, here, here, and here.
Peters:
We are witnesses to murder, and our governments are accomplices. The relentless destruction of the last remnants of the Middle East’s Judeo-Christian civilization is well under way. And we are silent.
Captives of political correctness, our governments cater to radical immigrant tantrums as our leaders contort the truth to deny the existence of Islamist terrorism. Meanwhile, our Middle Eastern “allies” and foes alike eradicate thousands of years of Jewish and Christian heritage. Our diplomats treat the persecution as a minor embarrassment, best ignored.
The banishments and butchery aren’t new, but the breakdown of the last rotting order in the wake of the “Arab Spring” has empowered psychotic fanatics who do not even value the lives of the faithful, let alone the lives of unbelievers. This is the end-game, the final persecution of Christians clinging to lands they’ve called home for 2,000 years. Except for Israel and the rarest exceptions elsewhere, Jews are already gone from the realms that nurtured them since the early years of their faith.
A thousand years ago, there were more Christians in the Middle East than in Europe, and Jewish communities prospered from the Nile to the Tigris. Even a century ago, more than 20% of the region’s population was Christian, and Jews still adorned Arab cities with their talents.
Today, estimates put the Christian population of the region at under 5% and sinking rapidly — and only that high because of the 9 million Copts who remain, for now, in Egypt.
The birthplace of Christianity, Bethlehem, now has a Muslim majority of as much as 80% — a reversal that coincided with the West’s decision to embrace Palestinian terrorists as “partners for peace.” A few decades ago, Lebanon had a Christian majority. Now, with Christian numbers fading, it’s tugged between Shia Hezbollah and Sunni fanatics.
Slighted by the US occupation — as our government pandered to Muslim hardliners — the Christian population of Iraq has fallen by two-thirds over 10 years. And the most ferocious elements in the Syrian insurgency see no place for Christians in Syria’s future. Even Jordan, struggling to appease its own Islamists, has cracked down on Christian activities.
The Jews, of course, are already long gone.
But the stones of ruined churches cry out, and vanished synagogues haunt decayed Arab neighborhoods.
If you read the New Testament or study the formative centuries of Christianity, there are few references to western cities other than Rome. The names that dot the Epistles of St. Paul and histories of the church are now in Muslim hands: Alexandria, Damascus, Tarsus, Carthage, Ephesus, Nicaea, Constantinople and so many others. Even Mecca and Medina had thriving Christian and Jewish quarters before the first jihads.
But all they possess does not suffice for Islamist fanatics. Israel must be blotted from the earth, and the last Christians must be driven out.
This is an old, old story, nearing its end. We shroud it in lies to excuse ourselves from taking a stand, even accepting the preposterous Arab claim that Muslim failures today are the fault of the Crusades, a brief interlude when Christians occupied a coastal strip hardly larger than Israel. In fact, it was the Mongols, then the Muslim Turks, who shattered Arab civilization. And as for conquests, Muslims occupied Spain in all or part for 800 years — and brutalized the Balkans for half a millennium. The Crusades were hardly a burp.
We also accept extravagant claims that “civilized” Arabs rescued the classical texts that formed our civilization. That’s utter nonsense. The Arab hordes that burst out of barren Arabia in the 7th century were composed of illiterates. Conquering at a time when the warring Byzantine and Persian empires had exhausted themselves, the new rulers found that tribal practices didn’t suffice to run provinces. So they took over the existing bureaucracies, staffed by Greek-speaking Christians and Jews. It was those officials who saved the Greek classics for Europe’s future Renaissance — and their descendants designed Islam’s greatest monuments.
Yes, some Arab rulers came to value learning — but the Arab world never produced a Homer, Plato, Sophocles or Thucydides whose appeal transcended their culture.
Islam was a religion spread by war. It was only a “religion of peace” where it had conquered. True, Islam sometimes proved more tolerant of minorities than Europeans, but that was at the zenith of the faith’s power.
There’s yet another illusion of ours — that Islam is gaining strength. Islam is on the ropes. What we’ve seen in the pogroms and outright genocides over the last 150 years has been the spleen of a once-triumphant faith whose practices and values can’t compete in the modern age.
Consider today’s Middle East, apart from Israel. Despite the massive influx of oil wealth, there isn’t one world-class university. Nothing of quality or technological complexity is manufactured between Morocco and Pakistan. Not even Saudi Arabia has first-rate health-care. Research is nil. Patent applications are statistically zero. Women are regarded as lesser beings, wasting half of the region’s human capital. Not one Arab society’s a meritocracy. And corruption cripples all.
A handful of glitzy hotels and shopping centers do not make a civilization (especially when the merchandise is all imported). Should Islamist fanatics succeed in driving all minorities from the region, they’d be left with a human wasteland of comprehensive failure, seething with hatred and uncontainable violence. The self-segregation of the Islamic heartlands would be a tragedy for humanity — but, above all, for Muslims.
Birth rates are a red herring. More mouths to feed are not magic sources of strength in lands of scarcity and poverty. The Middle East is self-destructive, morally brittle and falling ever further behind a world that’s charging ahead. Islamists can’t even get terrorism right — today, we’re terrorizing the terrorists. So they turn on the weak in their midst, the last minorities.
The initial wave of destruction and slaughter began almost a millennium ago, when the Muslim world first felt itself under threat. But, more recently, as the West shot to power (thanks to science, learning, hard work, religious tolerance and organization), the creaking Ottoman Empire could not shake off its centuries-old stupor to keep up.
Enraged by failure, the Ottomans turned on their most-productive minorities — whose successes outraged yesteryear’s fanatics. Beginning in the 1880s and accelerating in the 1890s, pogroms against Armenian Christians stunned Western witnesses. But European leaders turned a blind eye, just as we do today. So during the First World War, the Young Turks who had seized power decided to finish the job.
It was genocide. At least a million Armenians — perhaps twice that number — were systematically exterminated . . . although not without being tortured, raped, starved and death-marched first. The scale of the butchery was such that it obscured other, concurrent genocides, most notably that of Assyrian Christians at the hands of Turks and other Muslims. Estimates of Assyrian deaths run from just under 300,000 to one million.
Nor did the slaughters stop there. In British-created Iraq, massacres of Christians recurred from 1933 to 1961.
City names we know from our recent wars, such as Mosul, Basra or Tikrit (Saddam’s home town), once were centers of Christian culture, with bishops, cathedrals and monasteries famous for learning.
Gone. And the last pale ghosts, those Christians holding on to homes their blood knew for 20 centuries, are soon to go. Meanwhile, our president assures us that “Islam’s a religion of peace.”
Mr. President, go to Iraq and speak those words in the bomb-torn churches amid desecrated graves.
Mr. President, go to Egypt and explain to the brutalized Copts why your embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood government’s good for them.
Then go to Israel, Mr. President, where Christians worship freely, and tell the Israelis they should “return Palestinian land” after Muslims seized the homes that sheltered Jews for 3,000 years.
Explain to Jews why their temples were profaned and obliterated by the adherents of that “religion of peace.”
Of course, the real tragedy for the Arabs in the last century wasn’t the Naqba, Israel’s close-run struggle to survive attacks by an arc of Arab armies. The tragedy was that the most-backward, intolerant and indolent Arabs, primitive tribesmen, got most of the oil wealth and used it to spread their Wahhabi cult throughout the Islamic world. The intellectuals in the great Arab cities never had a chance.
My wife and I spent our honeymoon on a long bus trip through Turkey, a country for which I have great, if frustrated, affection. All went fine amid splendid hospitality . . . until we reached the east. Along the roadsides in what had been Armenia (the first Christian kingdom, by the way) desolate villages, razed to their foundations, scarred the landscape between drab modern towns. When asked what those ruins were, a Turk would avert his eyes and mutter, “Abandoned.”
Those villages weren’t abandoned. They were the site of the last century’s first great genocide. No one stood up for those inconvenient Christians.
And no one’s standing up for the Middle East’s tormented Christians now, or for the last handful of Jews left beyond Israel.
Even the dust cries for justice, and we look away.
The Arab Collapse. By Ralph Peters. NJBR, May 20, 2013.
The Counterrevolution in Military Affairs. By Ralph Peters. NJBR, January 1, 2013.
Lose the Bible, Lose Your Cultural Heritage. By Ralph Peters. Family Security Matters, May 24, 2012.
The Arab World’s Endless Failures. By Ralph Peters. Family Security Matters, January 26, 2012.
12 Myths of 21st-Century War. By Ralph Peters. The American Legion Magazine, November 2007. Also here.
Ethnic Cleansing Is Better Than Genocide. By Ralph Peters. National Review, August 13, 2007. NJBR, July 9, 2013.
Faith’s civil wars. By Ralph Peters. USA Today, June 24, 2007.
Dream warriors: Our enemies fight for fantasies, not freedom. By Ralph Peters. Armed Forces Journal, May/June 2007. Also here.
Ralph Peters on Gaza. Hannity and Colmes transcript. Real Clear Politics, June 15, 2007. Also here.
In Gaza’s Shadow: Iraq and the Arab Suicide Cult. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, June 14, 2007. Also here.
What to Give Up . . . and What Land to Hold: Israel’s Toughest Choice. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, May 6, 2007. Also here.
Rebels and religion: How fighters become fanatics. By Ralph Peters. Armed Forces Journal, January 2007.
Arabs’ Last Chance. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, August 24, 2006. Also here.
Living, and dying, with suicide bombers. By Ralph Peters. USA Today, January 3, 2006.
New Glory. Ralph Peters interviewed by Jamie Glazov. FrontPageMag, September 7, 2005.
After Words with Ralph Peters. Video. Peters discusses New Glory with Anatol Lieven. C-Span, August 18, 2005.
The Frozen Civilization of the Desert. By Ralph Peters. New Glory: Expanding America’s Global Supremacy, Chapter 15. New York: Sentinel, 2005.
Ralph Peters and John Bolton on the “Middle East genocide” of Christians and Jews. Video. America Live with Megyn Kelly. Fox News, June 3, 2013. YouTube. Also here, here, here, here, and here.
Peters:
We are witnesses to murder, and our governments are accomplices. The relentless destruction of the last remnants of the Middle East’s Judeo-Christian civilization is well under way. And we are silent.
Captives of political correctness, our governments cater to radical immigrant tantrums as our leaders contort the truth to deny the existence of Islamist terrorism. Meanwhile, our Middle Eastern “allies” and foes alike eradicate thousands of years of Jewish and Christian heritage. Our diplomats treat the persecution as a minor embarrassment, best ignored.
The banishments and butchery aren’t new, but the breakdown of the last rotting order in the wake of the “Arab Spring” has empowered psychotic fanatics who do not even value the lives of the faithful, let alone the lives of unbelievers. This is the end-game, the final persecution of Christians clinging to lands they’ve called home for 2,000 years. Except for Israel and the rarest exceptions elsewhere, Jews are already gone from the realms that nurtured them since the early years of their faith.
A thousand years ago, there were more Christians in the Middle East than in Europe, and Jewish communities prospered from the Nile to the Tigris. Even a century ago, more than 20% of the region’s population was Christian, and Jews still adorned Arab cities with their talents.
Today, estimates put the Christian population of the region at under 5% and sinking rapidly — and only that high because of the 9 million Copts who remain, for now, in Egypt.
The birthplace of Christianity, Bethlehem, now has a Muslim majority of as much as 80% — a reversal that coincided with the West’s decision to embrace Palestinian terrorists as “partners for peace.” A few decades ago, Lebanon had a Christian majority. Now, with Christian numbers fading, it’s tugged between Shia Hezbollah and Sunni fanatics.
Slighted by the US occupation — as our government pandered to Muslim hardliners — the Christian population of Iraq has fallen by two-thirds over 10 years. And the most ferocious elements in the Syrian insurgency see no place for Christians in Syria’s future. Even Jordan, struggling to appease its own Islamists, has cracked down on Christian activities.
The Jews, of course, are already long gone.
But the stones of ruined churches cry out, and vanished synagogues haunt decayed Arab neighborhoods.
If you read the New Testament or study the formative centuries of Christianity, there are few references to western cities other than Rome. The names that dot the Epistles of St. Paul and histories of the church are now in Muslim hands: Alexandria, Damascus, Tarsus, Carthage, Ephesus, Nicaea, Constantinople and so many others. Even Mecca and Medina had thriving Christian and Jewish quarters before the first jihads.
But all they possess does not suffice for Islamist fanatics. Israel must be blotted from the earth, and the last Christians must be driven out.
This is an old, old story, nearing its end. We shroud it in lies to excuse ourselves from taking a stand, even accepting the preposterous Arab claim that Muslim failures today are the fault of the Crusades, a brief interlude when Christians occupied a coastal strip hardly larger than Israel. In fact, it was the Mongols, then the Muslim Turks, who shattered Arab civilization. And as for conquests, Muslims occupied Spain in all or part for 800 years — and brutalized the Balkans for half a millennium. The Crusades were hardly a burp.
We also accept extravagant claims that “civilized” Arabs rescued the classical texts that formed our civilization. That’s utter nonsense. The Arab hordes that burst out of barren Arabia in the 7th century were composed of illiterates. Conquering at a time when the warring Byzantine and Persian empires had exhausted themselves, the new rulers found that tribal practices didn’t suffice to run provinces. So they took over the existing bureaucracies, staffed by Greek-speaking Christians and Jews. It was those officials who saved the Greek classics for Europe’s future Renaissance — and their descendants designed Islam’s greatest monuments.
Yes, some Arab rulers came to value learning — but the Arab world never produced a Homer, Plato, Sophocles or Thucydides whose appeal transcended their culture.
Islam was a religion spread by war. It was only a “religion of peace” where it had conquered. True, Islam sometimes proved more tolerant of minorities than Europeans, but that was at the zenith of the faith’s power.
There’s yet another illusion of ours — that Islam is gaining strength. Islam is on the ropes. What we’ve seen in the pogroms and outright genocides over the last 150 years has been the spleen of a once-triumphant faith whose practices and values can’t compete in the modern age.
Consider today’s Middle East, apart from Israel. Despite the massive influx of oil wealth, there isn’t one world-class university. Nothing of quality or technological complexity is manufactured between Morocco and Pakistan. Not even Saudi Arabia has first-rate health-care. Research is nil. Patent applications are statistically zero. Women are regarded as lesser beings, wasting half of the region’s human capital. Not one Arab society’s a meritocracy. And corruption cripples all.
A handful of glitzy hotels and shopping centers do not make a civilization (especially when the merchandise is all imported). Should Islamist fanatics succeed in driving all minorities from the region, they’d be left with a human wasteland of comprehensive failure, seething with hatred and uncontainable violence. The self-segregation of the Islamic heartlands would be a tragedy for humanity — but, above all, for Muslims.
Birth rates are a red herring. More mouths to feed are not magic sources of strength in lands of scarcity and poverty. The Middle East is self-destructive, morally brittle and falling ever further behind a world that’s charging ahead. Islamists can’t even get terrorism right — today, we’re terrorizing the terrorists. So they turn on the weak in their midst, the last minorities.
The initial wave of destruction and slaughter began almost a millennium ago, when the Muslim world first felt itself under threat. But, more recently, as the West shot to power (thanks to science, learning, hard work, religious tolerance and organization), the creaking Ottoman Empire could not shake off its centuries-old stupor to keep up.
Enraged by failure, the Ottomans turned on their most-productive minorities — whose successes outraged yesteryear’s fanatics. Beginning in the 1880s and accelerating in the 1890s, pogroms against Armenian Christians stunned Western witnesses. But European leaders turned a blind eye, just as we do today. So during the First World War, the Young Turks who had seized power decided to finish the job.
It was genocide. At least a million Armenians — perhaps twice that number — were systematically exterminated . . . although not without being tortured, raped, starved and death-marched first. The scale of the butchery was such that it obscured other, concurrent genocides, most notably that of Assyrian Christians at the hands of Turks and other Muslims. Estimates of Assyrian deaths run from just under 300,000 to one million.
Nor did the slaughters stop there. In British-created Iraq, massacres of Christians recurred from 1933 to 1961.
City names we know from our recent wars, such as Mosul, Basra or Tikrit (Saddam’s home town), once were centers of Christian culture, with bishops, cathedrals and monasteries famous for learning.
Gone. And the last pale ghosts, those Christians holding on to homes their blood knew for 20 centuries, are soon to go. Meanwhile, our president assures us that “Islam’s a religion of peace.”
Mr. President, go to Iraq and speak those words in the bomb-torn churches amid desecrated graves.
Mr. President, go to Egypt and explain to the brutalized Copts why your embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood government’s good for them.
Then go to Israel, Mr. President, where Christians worship freely, and tell the Israelis they should “return Palestinian land” after Muslims seized the homes that sheltered Jews for 3,000 years.
Explain to Jews why their temples were profaned and obliterated by the adherents of that “religion of peace.”
Of course, the real tragedy for the Arabs in the last century wasn’t the Naqba, Israel’s close-run struggle to survive attacks by an arc of Arab armies. The tragedy was that the most-backward, intolerant and indolent Arabs, primitive tribesmen, got most of the oil wealth and used it to spread their Wahhabi cult throughout the Islamic world. The intellectuals in the great Arab cities never had a chance.
My wife and I spent our honeymoon on a long bus trip through Turkey, a country for which I have great, if frustrated, affection. All went fine amid splendid hospitality . . . until we reached the east. Along the roadsides in what had been Armenia (the first Christian kingdom, by the way) desolate villages, razed to their foundations, scarred the landscape between drab modern towns. When asked what those ruins were, a Turk would avert his eyes and mutter, “Abandoned.”
Those villages weren’t abandoned. They were the site of the last century’s first great genocide. No one stood up for those inconvenient Christians.
And no one’s standing up for the Middle East’s tormented Christians now, or for the last handful of Jews left beyond Israel.
Even the dust cries for justice, and we look away.
Erika Brannock, Last Marathon Bombing Victim, Leaves Boston Hospital. By Bella English.
Erika Brannock, last Marathon bombing victim, leaves Boston hospital. By Bella English. Boston Globe, June 3, 2013.
Nicole Brannock Gross, Victim in Iconic Boston Bombing Photo, Tells Her Story For First Time. NJBR, May 30, 2013.
Nicole Brannock Gross, Victim in Iconic Boston Bombing Photo, Tells Her Story For First Time. NJBR, May 30, 2013.
 |
|
Erika
Brannock is being released Monday, June 3, from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center. She is the last bombing victim to go home and will return to Maryland.
She lost her left leg in the first Boston Marathon bombing April 15. She made
her way around her floor where get well cards line the hallway. Globe staff
photo by John Tlumacki. |
Spare the Risk, Spoil the Child. By Walter Russell Mead.
Spare the Risk, Spoil the Child. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, June 3, 2013.
Risk-Averse Culture Infects U.S. Workers, Entrepreneurs. By Ben Casselman. Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2013.
Is America’s Entrepreneurial Spirit In Trouble? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 3, 2013.
Risk-Averse Culture Infects U.S. Workers, Entrepreneurs. By Ben Casselman. Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2013.
Is America’s Entrepreneurial Spirit In Trouble? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 3, 2013.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Palestinian pawns: Egypt’s refugees. By Sarah Mousa.
Palestinian pawns: Egypt’s refugees. By Sarah Mousa. Al Jazeera English, May 27, 2013.
Zionism and Israel Are Anti-Semitic. By Joseph Massad.
The last of the Semites. By Joseph Massad. Al Jazeera English, May 21, 2013. Originally posted May 14, 2013.
Zionism, anti-Semitism and colonialism. By Joseph Massad. Al Jazeera English, December 24, 2012.
Truths, facts, and facts on the ground: Support for Israel is based on lies. By Joseph Massad. Al Jazeera English, November 18, 2011.
The language of Zionism. By Joseph Massad. Al-Ahram Weekly, May 6-12, 2010.
The Gaza Ghetto Uprising. By Joseph Massad. The Electronic Intifada, January 4, 2009.
Israel’s right to be racist. By Joseph Massad. Al-Ahram Weekly, March 15-21, 2007. Also at The Electronic Intifada.
Jewish volunteers for racial supremacy in Palestine. By Joseph Massad. The Electronic Intifada, August 4, 2014.
The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians. By Joseph A. Massad. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Curriculum reform should start in the U.S. and Israel. By Joseph Massad. The Electronic Intifada, August 18, 2003.
Tenure Track Bigotry: Columbia prof unleashes “anti-Jewish screed.” By Adam Kredo. The Washington Free Beacon, May 14, 2013.
Joseph Massad tries to equate anti-semitism with Zionism. The Elder of Ziyon, May 14, 2013.
Answering Joseph Massad. The Elder of Ziyon, March 15, 2007.
Al Jazeera management orders Joseph Massad article pulled in act of pro-Israel censorship. By Ali Abunimah. The Electronic Intifada, May 19, 2013.
Al-Jazeera runs then deletes anti-Semitic screed by Columbia Univ. Prof. Joseph Massad. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, May 19, 2013.
Congratulations, al Jazeera: You’ve just posted one of the most anti-Jewish screeds in recent memory. By Jeffrey Goldberg. Twitter, May 14, 2013.
Joseph Massad’s Stunningly Ignorant Al-Jazeera Essay on Zionism and Anti-Semitism. By Dana Goldstein. DanaGoldstein.net, May 15, 2013.
Joseph Massad Update. By David Bernstein. The Volokh Conspiracy, May 31, 2013.
Joseph Massad: Zionism, Antisemitism, and the Question of Palestine. Video. Second Palestine Solidarity Conference, Stuttgart, Germany, May 10-12, 2013. publicsolidarity, May 16, 2013. YouTube. Also at Public Solidarity website.
Zionism, anti-Semitism and colonialism. By Joseph Massad. Al Jazeera English, December 24, 2012.
Truths, facts, and facts on the ground: Support for Israel is based on lies. By Joseph Massad. Al Jazeera English, November 18, 2011.
The language of Zionism. By Joseph Massad. Al-Ahram Weekly, May 6-12, 2010.
The Gaza Ghetto Uprising. By Joseph Massad. The Electronic Intifada, January 4, 2009.
Israel’s right to be racist. By Joseph Massad. Al-Ahram Weekly, March 15-21, 2007. Also at The Electronic Intifada.
Jewish volunteers for racial supremacy in Palestine. By Joseph Massad. The Electronic Intifada, August 4, 2014.
The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians. By Joseph A. Massad. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Curriculum reform should start in the U.S. and Israel. By Joseph Massad. The Electronic Intifada, August 18, 2003.
“No Common Ground”: Joseph Massad and Benny Morris Discuss the Middle East. By Andrew Whitehead, Benny Morris,
and Joseph Massad. History Workshop Journal, No. 53 (Spring 2002).
Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission? By Joseph Massad. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Autumn 2000).
Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission? By Joseph Massad. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Autumn 2000).
Tenure Track Bigotry: Columbia prof unleashes “anti-Jewish screed.” By Adam Kredo. The Washington Free Beacon, May 14, 2013.
Joseph Massad tries to equate anti-semitism with Zionism. The Elder of Ziyon, May 14, 2013.
Joseph Massad loves the word “colonialism.” The Elder of Ziyon, May 7, 2010.
Answering Joseph Massad. The Elder of Ziyon, March 15, 2007.
Al Jazeera management orders Joseph Massad article pulled in act of pro-Israel censorship. By Ali Abunimah. The Electronic Intifada, May 19, 2013.
Al-Jazeera runs then deletes anti-Semitic screed by Columbia Univ. Prof. Joseph Massad. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, May 19, 2013.
Congratulations, al Jazeera: You’ve just posted one of the most anti-Jewish screeds in recent memory. By Jeffrey Goldberg. Twitter, May 14, 2013.
Joseph Massad’s Stunningly Ignorant Al-Jazeera Essay on Zionism and Anti-Semitism. By Dana Goldstein. DanaGoldstein.net, May 15, 2013.
Joseph Massad Update. By David Bernstein. The Volokh Conspiracy, May 31, 2013.
Joseph Massad: Zionism, Antisemitism, and the Question of Palestine. Video. Second Palestine Solidarity Conference, Stuttgart, Germany, May 10-12, 2013. publicsolidarity, May 16, 2013. YouTube. Also at Public Solidarity website.
Why We Should All Work Like Putin. By Michael Bohm.
Why We Should All Work Like Putin. By Michael Bohm. The Moscow Times, May 30, 2013.
The Economy Needs More Than the Tech Sector. By Joel Kotkin.
Economy needs more than tech sector. By Joel Kotkin. Orange County Register, May 31, 2013.
A Rise in Wealth for the Wealthy; Declines for the Lower 93%. By Richard Fry and Paul Taylor. Pew Research, April 23, 2013. PDF.
A Rise in Wealth for the Wealthy; Declines for the Lower 93%. By Richard Fry and Paul Taylor. Pew Research, April 23, 2013. PDF.
What Is Reform Conservatism? By Ross Douthat.
What Is Reform Conservatism? By Ross Douthat. New York Times, May 30, 2013.
Signs of Life in the GOP: A “Reformocon” Policy Program. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, June 1, 2013.
What Is Reform Conservatism? By Ross Douthat. NJBR,
Signs of Life in the GOP: A “Reformocon” Policy Program. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, June 1, 2013.
What Is Reform Conservatism? By Ross Douthat. NJBR,
Why the United States Intervenes Abroad, and Why It Doesn’t. By Adam Garfinkle.
Why the United States Intervenes Abroad, and Why It Doesn’t. By Adam Garfinkle. The American Interest, May 29, 2013.
Middle East In Flames: The Fruit of White House Policy In Syria. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, June 2, 2013.
As Syrians Fight, Sectarian Strife Infects Mideast. By Tim Arango, Anne Barnard, and Duraid Adnan. New York Times, June 1, 2013.
Measuring the U.S. impact in Syria. Video Panel. Meet the Press. NBC News, June 2, 2013.
Middle East In Flames: The Fruit of White House Policy In Syria. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, June 2, 2013.
As Syrians Fight, Sectarian Strife Infects Mideast. By Tim Arango, Anne Barnard, and Duraid Adnan. New York Times, June 1, 2013.
Measuring the U.S. impact in Syria. Video Panel. Meet the Press. NBC News, June 2, 2013.
Moira Johnston, Topless Crusader, Causes Quite a Stir in Philadelphia.
Topless Crusader Causes Quite a Stir in Philadelphia. MyFoxPhilly.com, May 31, 2013. YouTube.
Topless Moira. Moira Johnston webpage.
Moira Johnston Facebook.
Philadelphia News, Weather and Sports from WTXF FOX 29
Moira Johnston Bares Her Breasts in New York City in the Name of Freedom. By David Moye. The Huffington Post, July 31, 2012.
Moira Johnston Goes Topless in N.Y.C. to Raise Awareness of the Right to a Bare Chest. By Lizzie Crocker. The Daily Beast, July 29, 2012.
Moira Johnston: Topless in NYC. BTR Pulse, Episode 80. Video. BreakThruRadioTV, June 22, 2012. YouTube. Also here.
Topless Moira. Moira Johnston webpage.
Moira Johnston Facebook.
Philadelphia News, Weather and Sports from WTXF FOX 29
Moira Johnston Bares Her Breasts in New York City in the Name of Freedom. By David Moye. The Huffington Post, July 31, 2012.
Moira Johnston Goes Topless in N.Y.C. to Raise Awareness of the Right to a Bare Chest. By Lizzie Crocker. The Daily Beast, July 29, 2012.
Moira Johnston: Topless in NYC. BTR Pulse, Episode 80. Video. BreakThruRadioTV, June 22, 2012. YouTube. Also here.
The Myth of Gatsby’s Suffering Middle Class. By Amity Shlaes.
The Myth of Gatsby’s Suffering Middle Class. By Amity Shlaes. New York Times, June 1, 2013.
A Middle-Class Wife. By Alice Austin White. The New Republic, January 20, 1917.
A Middle-Class Wife. By Alice Austin White. The New Republic, January 20, 1917.
Belief Is the Least Part of Faith. By T.M. Luhrmann.
Belief Is the Least Part of Faith. By T.M. Luhrmann. New York Times, May 29, 2013.
First-Date Sex: Myths and Realities.
First-date sex doesn’t lead to love for men – but disdain for women. By Emma Wall. The Telegraph, May 30, 2013.
First-date sex: it’s time to bust the slut myth. By Ian Douglas. The Telegraph, May 30, 2013.
First-date sex: it’s time to bust the slut myth. By Ian Douglas. The Telegraph, May 30, 2013.
Chinese Spring Festival Operas, 2012 and 2013.
Chinese Spring Festival Opera 2012, Year of the Dragon. Video. XinWenNews, March 20, 2012.
Chinese Spring Festival Opera 2013, Year of the Snake. Video. XinWenNews, February 11, 2013.
Chinese Spring Festival Opera 2013, Year of the Snake. Video. XinWenNews, February 11, 2013.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)