This is what we are beginning to think about ourselves, our leader and our nation!
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Obama may never learn or even care to learn that military strength is an important factor when it comes to enhancing our nation's foreign policy and strengthening the protection of our commercial interests.
There are many foreign leaders who know weakness when they see it and are more than willing to take advantage. China, Russia and Iran are not asleep at the switch and their leaders come quickly to mind.
It may take more time for Obama worshipers to recognize what is happening and then they may never acknowledge it because believers often are blinded by reality.
Even Jeb takes a jab at Obama. (See 1 below.)
Then we have all these 'just happens.' (See 1a below.)
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Humorous but also sage comments by some famous people regarding politics and politicians:
"If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates. ~ Jay Leno
The problem with political jokes is they get elected. ~ Henry Cate VIIWe hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. ~ Aesop
If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these State of the Union speeches, there wouldn't be any inducement to go to heaven. ~ Will Rogers
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. ~ Nikita KhrushchevWhen I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it. ~ Clarence DarrowWhy pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you. ~ Author unknown
---Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. ~ John QuintonPolitics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other. ~ Oscar AmeringerI offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them. ~ Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country. ~ Tex GuinanI have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. ~ Charles de GaulleInstead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks. ~ Doug LarsonThere ought to be one day -- just one -- when there is open season on senators. ~ Will Rogers"
I am not condoning Paula Deen but the Progressive PC'ers are full of hypocrisy. Holder lies to Congress and remains in office, Obama lies and the press and media pound Deen, Weiner lies and now is running for Mayor of New York. Deen admitted her error , apologized for something that occurred eons ago and everyone is out for her skin. Black comics and rappers spew forth their filthy language and audiences applaud and laugh.
What kind of a nation have we become and what message are we sending to our youth?
Larry elder is black. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Melanie Philips - my kind of woman!
She is the British female equivalent of David Horowitz and David Mamet. They all left the left because they learned it spewed false dictum, was full of phonies engaged in hypocrisy. (See 3 below.)
And there is France! (See 3a below.)
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Dick
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1)
1a)
Any one of these 'coincidences' when taken singularly appear to not mean much, but when taken as a whole, a computer would blow a main circuit if you asked it to calculate the odds that they have occurred by chance alone. Sit back, get a favorite beverage, and then read and ponder the Obama-related 'coincidences' ... then super-impose the bigger picture of most recent events i.e. Fast and furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal and the NSA revelations ... then pray for our country.
Obama just happened to know 60's far-left radical revolutionary William Ayers, whose father just happened to be Thomas Ayers, who just happened to be a close friend of Obama’s communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who just happened to work at the communist-sympathizing Chicago Defender with Vernon Jarrett, who just happened to later become the father-in-law of Iranian-born leftist Valerie Jarrett, who Obama just happened to choose as his closest White House advisor, and who just happened to have been CEO of Habitat Company, which just happened to manage public housing in Chicago, which just happened to get millions of dollars from the Illinois state legislature, and which just happened not to properly maintain the housing—which eventually just happened to require demolition.
Valerie Jarrett also just happened to work for the city of Chicago, and just happened to hire Michelle LaVaughan Robinson (later Mrs.Obama), who just happened to have worked at the Sidley Austin law firm, where former fugitive from the FBI Bernardine Dohrn also just happened to work, and where Barack Obama just happened to get a summer job.
Bernardine Dohrn just happened to be married to William Ayers, with whom she just happened to have hidden from the FBI at a San Francisco marina, along with Donald Warden, whojust happened to change his name to Khalid al-Mansour, and Warden/al-Mansour just happened to be a mentor of Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and a close associate of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and al-Mansour just happened to be financial adviser to a Saudi Prince, who just happened to donate cash to Harvard, for which Obama just happened to get a critical letter of recommendation from Percy Sutton, who just happened to have been the attorney for MalcolmX, who just happened to know Kenyan politician Tom Mboya, who just happened to be a close friend of Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., who just happened to meet Malcolm X when he traveled to Kenya.
Obama, Sr. just happened to have his education at the University of Hawaii paid for by the Laubach Literacy Institute, which just happened to have been supported by Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who just happened to be a friend of Malcolm X, who just happened to have been associated with the Nation of Islam, which was later headed by Louis Farrakhan, who just happensto live very close to Obama’s Chicago mansion, which also just happens to be located very close to the residence of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who just happen to have been occasional baby-sitters for Malia and Natasha Obama, whose parents just happened to have no concern exposing their daughters to bomb-making communists.
After attending Occidental College and Columbia University, where he just happened to have foreign Muslim roommates, Obama moved to Chicago to work for the Industrial AreasFoundation, an organization that just happened to have been founded by Marxist and radical agitator Saul “the Red” Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, who just happened to be the topic of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s thesis at Wellesley College, and Obama’s $25,000 salary at IAF just happened to be funded by a grant from the Woods Fund, which was founded by the Woods family, whose Sahara Coal company just happened to provide coal to Commonwealth Edison, whose CEO just happened to be Thomas Ayers, whose son William Ayersjust happened to serve on the board of the Woods Fund, along with Obama.
Obama also worked on voter registration drives in Chicago in the 1980s and just happened to work with leftist political groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Socialist International (SI), through which Obama met Carl Davidson, who just happened to travel to Cuba during the Vietnam War to sabotage the U.S. war effort, and who just happened to be a former member of the SDS and a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, which just happened to sponsor a 2002 anti-war rally at which Obama spoke, and which just happened to have been organized by Marilyn Katz, a former SDS activist and later public relations consultant who just happened to be a long-time friend of Obama’s political hatchet man, David Axelrod.
Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), whose pastor was Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a fiery orator who just happened to preach Marxism and Black Liberation Theology and who delivered anti-white, anti-Jew, and anti-American sermons, which Obama just happened never to hear because he just happened to miss church only on the days when Wright was at his “most enthusiastic,” and Obama just happened never to notice that Oprah Winfrey left the church because it was too radical, and just happened never to notice that the church gave the vile anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan a lifetime achievement award.
Although no one had ever heard of him at the time, Obama just happened to receive an impossible-to-believe $125,000 advance to write a book about race relations, which he just happened to fail to write while using the cash to vacation in Bali with his wife Michelle, and despite his record of non-writing he just happened to receive a second advance, for $40,000, from another publisher, and he eventually completed a manuscript called Dreams From My Father, which just happened to strongly reflect the writing style of William Ayers, who just happened to trample on an American flag for the cover photograph of the popular Chicago magazine, which Obama just happened never to see even though it appeared on newsstands throughout the city.
Obama was hired by the law firm Miner, Banhill and Galland, which just happened to specialize in negotiating state government contracts to develop low-income housing, and which just happened to deal with now-imprisoned Tony Rezko and his firm Rezar, and with slumlord Valerie Jarrett, and the law firm’s Judson Miner just happened to have been a classmate of Bernardine Dohrn, wife of William Ayers. In 1994 Obama represented ACORN and another plaintiff in a lawsuit against Citibank for denying mortgages to blacks(Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank), and the lawsuit just happened to result in banks being blackmailed into approving subprime loans for poor credit risks, a trend which just happened to spread nationwide, and which just happened to lead to the collapse of the housing bubble, which just happened to help Obama defeat John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.
In 1996 Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate and joined the “New Party,” which just happened to promote Marxism, and Obama was supported by Dr. Quentin Yong, a socialist whojust happened to support a government takeover of the health care system.
In late 1999 Obama purportedly engaged in homosexual activities and cocaine-snorting in the back of a limousine with a man named Larry Sinclair, who claims he was contacted in late 2007 by Donald Young, who just happened to be the gay choir director of Obama’s Chicago church and who shared information with Sinclair about Obama, and Young just happened to be murdered on December 23, 2007, just weeks after Larry Bland, another gay member of the church, just happened to be murdered, and both murders just happened to have never been solved. In 2008 Sinclair held a press conference to discuss his claims, and just happened to be arrested immediately after the event, based on a warrant issued by Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who just happens to be the son of Joe Biden.
In 2003 Obama and his wife attended a dinner in honor of Rashid Khalidi, who just happened to be a former PLO operative, harsh critic of Israel, and advocate of Palestinian rights, and who Obama claims he does not know, even though the Obamas just happened to have dined more than once at the home of Khalidi and his wife, Mona, and just happened to have used them as occasional baby-sitters. Obama reportedly praised Khalidi at the decidedly anti-Semitic event, which William Ayers just happened to also attend, and the event Obama pretends he never attended was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network, to which Obama just happened to have funneled cash while serving on the board of the Woods Fund with William Ayers, and one speaker at the dinner remarked that if Palestinians cannot secure a return of their land, Israel “will never see a day of peace,” and entertainment at the dinner included a Muslim children’s dance whose performances just happened to include simulated beheadings with fake swords, and stomping on American, Israeli, and British flags, and Obama allegedly told the audience that “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine” and there has been “genocide against the Palestinian people by (the) Israelis,” and the Los Angeles Times has a videotape of the event but just happens to refuse to make it public.
In the 2004 Illinois Democrat primary race for the U.S. Senate, front-runner Blair Hull just happened to be forced out of the race after David Axelrod just happened to manage to get Hull’s sealed divorce records unsealed, which just happened to enable Obama to win the primary, so he could face popular Republican Jack Ryan, whose sealed child custody records from his divorce just happened to become unsealed, forcing Ryan to withdraw from the race, which just happened to enable the unqualified Obama to waltz into the U.S. Senate, where, after a mere 143 days of work, he just happened to decide he was qualified to run for President of the United States.
Rich Darden, Ph.D.
2)If Paula Deen Is Out, Please Explain Maher and Sharpton
By Larry Elder
If celebrity cook Paula Deen is out because of her decades-old private use of the "n" word, what about its public AND private use by MSNBC's Al Sharpton? What about HBO host Bill Maher's use of the "c" word?
The crisis Deen must deal with confirms the observation of a former editor of the conservative magazine National Review. "White racism exists," said John O'Sullivan. "But its social power is weak; the social power against it, overwhelming."
Deen has -- so far -- lost her show on the Food Network and her spokesperson gig for Smithfield Foods. QVC, Sears, Wal-Mart and others are deciding whether to continue their relationship with the embattled chef.
What did the 66-year-old native of Georgia do that now threatens their enterprises?
In a deposition given in a harassment lawsuit filed by a white ex-employee at a Deen family-owned restaurant, Deen admitted using the "n-word" in the past, during a private conversation: "When a black man burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head," she said, "I didn't feel real favorable to him." Deen says she didn't use the word during the holdup, but "probably" used it later, "in telling my husband."
Asked if she ever used the word again, Deen responded, "I'm sure I have, but it's been a very long time." When pressed to recall specific instances, Deen could not, saying: "I don't know, maybe in repeating something that was said to me. ... But that's just not a word that we use as time has gone on. Things have changed since the '60s in the South. And my children and my brother object to that word being used in any cruel or mean behavior, as well as I do."
Deen has, so far, apologized, apologized and apologized.
That the ex-employee is white, not black, and worked for her for five years did not seem to matter. Nor does it seem to matter that others have not come forward to corroborate her alleged racism. Does she refuse to hire blacks? Has she mistreated them or paid them below the wages of white workers? And, for what it's worth, Deen supported and campaigned for President Barack Obama.
If Deen's crime is the private use of the n-word, why does the Rev. Al Sharpton, who hosts a nightly hour-long show on MSNBC, get a pass?
Sharpton, of course, rocketed to fame by falsely accusing two white men of raping and sodomizing black teenager Tawana Brawley. A New York grand jury investigation concluded that the whole case was fraudulent and that Brawley flat-out lied to avoid punishment for staying out too late. To this day, Sharpton refuses to apologize to former Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones, one of the men Sharpton accused of rape, even after a jury found Sharpton liable for defamation.
One of Sharpton's top aides became so disgusted with the farce that he turned against his boss. Sharpton, the former aide said, could not have cared less whether Brawley was telling the truth because, according to Sharpton, "We beat this, we will be the biggest n--gers in New York."
Sharpton called the former Marine, magna cum laude graduate, lawyer, professor and then-Mayor David Dinkins -- New York City's first and only black mayor -- a "n--ger whore."
Apparently MSNBC and the Food Network see the "n" word differently.
Sharpton has called Jews "diamond merchants" and described whites moving businesses into Harlem as "interlopers." Sharpton helped incite three days of anti-Semitic rioting in Crown Heights, where two people died and over 100 were wounded. A Columbia University professor called Crown Heights "a modern-day pogrom."
Then there's Freddy's Fashion Mart. A Jewish store owner in Harlem was accused of driving a black record store subtenant out of business by raising his rent. At one of many rallies meant to scare the Jewish owner away, Sharpton said, "There is a systematic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear ... that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Later, one of the protestors, a black man, stormed Freddy's Fashion Mart with a pistol, screaming: "It's on now! All blacks out!" In addition to the shooting, he set fire to the building, eventually killing seven before turning the gun on himself.
If Paula Deen is out because of the "n" word, what about HBO's Bill Maher and his use of the "c" word?
Maher, on more than one occasion, publicly called former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin the "c" word. He has called her a "dumb tw-t" -- a derisive slang word for female genitalia. He has described her son Trig, who has Down syndrome, as "retarded."
But, to be fair, neither Sharpton nor Maher -- at least to our knowledge -- has called Palin the "n" word. That must explain it.
2a)How Will America Hold Together?
Victor Davis Hanson
By A.D. 200, the Roman Republic was a distant memory. Few citizens of the global Roman Empire even knew of their illustrious ancestors like Scipio or Cicero. Millions no longer spoke Latin. Italian emperors were a rarity. There were no national elections.
Yet Rome endured as a global power for three more centuries. What held it together?
A stubborn common popular culture and the prosperity of Mediterranean-wide standardization kept things going. The Egyptian, the Numidian, the Iberian and the Greek assumed that everything from Roman clay lamps and glass to good roads and plentiful grain were available to millions throughout the Mediterranean.
As long as the sea was free of pirates, thieves cleared from the roads, and merchants allowed to profit, few cared whether the lawless Caracalla or the unhinged Elagabalus was emperor in distant Rome.
Something likewise both depressing and encouraging is happening to the United States. Few Americans seem to worry that our present leaders have lied to or misled the Congress and the American people without consequences.
Most young people cannot distinguish the First Amendment from the Fourth Amendment -- and do not worry that they cannot. Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln are mere names of grammar schools but otherwise unidentifiable to most.
Separatism is believed to bring dividends. Here in California, universities conduct separate graduation ceremonies predicated on race -- sometimes difficult given the increasingly mixed ancestry of Americans.
As in Rome, there is a vast disconnect between elites and the people. Almost half of America receives some sort of public assistance, and another half pays no federal income tax. About one-seventh of Americans are on food stamps.
Yet housing prices in elite enclaves -- Manhattan, Cambridge, Santa Monica, Palo Alto -- are soaring. The wealthy like to cocoon themselves in Roman-like villas, safe from the real-life ramifications of their own utopian ideology.
The government and the media do their best to spread the ideals of radical egalitarianism while avoiding offense to anyone. There is no official war on terror or against radical Islamism. Instead, in "overseas contingency operations" we fight "man-caused disasters" while at home dealing with "workplace violence."
In news stories that involve crimes with divisive racial themes, the media frequently paper over information about the perpetrators. But that noble restraint only seems to incite readers. In reckless fashion they often post the most inflammatory online comments about such liberal censorship. Officially, America celebrates diversity; privately, America is fragmenting into racial, political and ideological camps.
So why is the United States not experiencing something like the rioting in Turkey or Brazil, or the murder of thousands in Mexico? How are we able to avoid the bloody chaos in Syria, the harsh dictatorships of Russia and China, the implosion of Egypt or the economic hopelessness now endemic in Southern Europe?
About half of America and many of its institutions operate as they always have. Cal-Tech and MIT are still serious. Neither interjects race, class and gender studies into its engineering or physics curricula. Most in the IRS, unlike some of their bosses, are not corrupt. For the well driller, the power plant operator and the wheat farmer, the lies in Washington are still mostly an abstraction.
Get up at 5:30 a.m. and you'll see that most of the nation's urban freeways are jammed with hard-working commuters. Every day they go to work, support their families, pay their taxes and avoid arrest -- so that millions of others do not have to do the same. The U.S. military still more closely resembles our heroes from World War II than the culture of the Kardashians.
Like diverse imperial Roman citizens, we are united in some fashion by shared popular tastes and mass consumerism. The cell phones and cars of the poor offer more computing power and better transportation than the aristocracy enjoyed just 20 years ago.
Youth of all races and backgrounds in lockstep fiddle with their cell phones as they walk about. Jeans are an unspoken American uniform -- both for the Wall Street grandees and the homeless on the sidewalks. Left, right, liberal, conservative, professor and ditch digger have similar-looking Facebook accounts.
If Rome quieted the people with public spectacles and cheap grain from the provinces, so too Americans of all classes keep glued to favorite video games and reality-TV shows. Fast food is both cheap and tasty. All that for now is preferable to rioting and revolt.
Like Rome, America apparently can coast for a long time on the fumes of its wonderful political heritage and economic dynamism -- even if both are little understood or appreciated by most who still benefit from them.
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3)The woman Britain’s left loves to hate
3)The woman Britain’s left loves to hate
Brave columnist or ignorant bigot? Controversial writer Melanie Phillips launches a new platform to reach middle England and spread her truth
Walking around the offices of The Guardian newspaper, journalist Melanie Phillips bumped into the lead editorial writer, Geoffrey Taylor. It was June 1982, and while Britain was preoccupied with its war in the Falkland Islands, Israel had invaded Lebanon.
“Well, now, Melanie,” said Taylor, an old-fashioned English gentleman and an Arabist. “What on earth are we going to say about your war?”
Phillips, a British Jew who had never written about Israel, was shocked to realize that by “her” war, he was referring to the Israeli one, turning her into an outsider.
“At that moment, the iron entered my soul,” she writes in “Guardian Angel,” her new memoir.
“At that moment, the iron entered my soul,” she writes in “Guardian Angel,” her new memoir.
The book chronicles her evolution from the one-time darling of the British left to one of its most hated figures – “she-devil of the Western world,” as Phillips puts it.
From her platform in Britain’s second-largest newspaper, The Daily Mail, she has become famous for stinging attacks on the establishment, accusing it of deliberately destroying the fabric of British life by promoting multiculturalism and denying the religious nature of Muslim terrorism. She is Israel’s staunchest defender in the British press, a global warming “denier” and an opponent of gay marriage.
Her admirers consider her one of Britain’s bravest columnists, a reputation on which she is capitalizing by launching Melanie Phillips Electric Media, a digital publishing company (which also has its own merchandising line flogging mugs and tote bags).
She hopes this platform will allow her to expand the public conversation on the subjects she cares about, and reach further into the English-speaking world, particularly America. “Guardian Angel” is one of the first offerings of its eBook division, emBooks; there are also titles on subjects as diverse as Islamism, Prince William and bringing up teenage girls, by other writers.
Melanie Phillips’s new book, ‘Guardian Angel’
But more than any other commentator on Britain’s right (a designation she does not actually accept), Phillips also seems to attract venom and contempt.
In columns in the Guardian and the Times, she has been called “routinely insane,” a “spoof columnist,” “one of the Daily Mail’s routine monsters,” an “authoritarian writer,” and accused of displaying “depths of ignorance and bigotry that can scarcely have been matched.” According to Nicholas Lezard in the Independent, she “eats broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth.”
On one occasion, she overheard a left-wing acquaintance saying that the thing that most frightens him is “turning into Melanie”
Phillips says that such remarks hurt: “I’m a human being.”
What is it exactly that drives her opponents so crazy? Many of her views are politically incorrect, but she is not the only one to hold them. Perhaps it is her blunt style; she is routinely accused of hyperbole, hysteria and anger.
Phillips thinks she is hated because she is an “apostate.”
“I was considered to be a signed-up member of the liberal left. I departed and they won’t forgive me,” she says.
Her journey makes the left feel insecure about its own positions, she adds.
“The left is obsessed by me because it knows this right-wing label they’ve pinned on me isn’t true,” she says, settled into a large armchair in her central London apartment. “Where I stand is the true left. I remain where I was originally – standing for a better society, standing up for the vulnerable, fighting oppression and tyranny, standing up for truth against lies. The change was that I came to believe that the people who I thought were on my side in that great battle were on the other side, keeping the poor mired in disadvantage.”
‘Where I stand is the true left. I remain where I was originally – standing for a better society, standing up for the vulnerable, fighting oppression and tyranny, standing up for truth against lies’
She wrote “Guardian Angel” to show that she wasn’t the creature of caricature.
“It was important to set the record straight,” she says. “I was being so misunderstood and misrepresented, it was getting in the way of my ability to convey what I was trying to say.”
Normally intensely private, in the book Phillips writes for the first time about her difficult family background, which both shaped her basic attitudes and stifled her. Her struggle to break free paralleled her political journey to detach herself from her other “family,” the left.
Born in 1951, her father Alfred sold women’s dresses to shopkeepers from a van. While Phillips writes that she loved him, she portrays him as a weak figure, unable to stand up to his domineering mother, break out of poverty, properly take care of his wife – or protect his daughter from her control. Phillips’ mother had Multiple Sclerosis, and was emotionally fragile. Even as a child Phillips felt responsible for her, and until Mabel’s death in 2004, her life revolved around her to a significant extent.
Both parents were staunch socialists who instilled in Phillips the importance of helping those who were less well-off. But her mother also pushed her academically and culturally. Phillips did a degree in Oxford and then, newly married to journalist Joshua Rozenberg, completed an award-winning stint in a local newspaper.
In 1977, at the age of 26, she joined The Guardian, the left-wing paper of Britain’s establishment. It seemed like the perfect fit politically, and Phillips, who calls her younger self “Little Miss Guardianista,” happily shared her colleagues’ belief that they were more civilized than everyone else, “the embodiment of virtue itself.”
She blames the changing cultural landscape on a deliberate effort by the left to take over Britain’s institutions of power and subvert them.
Considered a young star, she rose quickly through the ranks until she became news editor – which she admits was a disaster – and in 1987 was “demoted” to columnist, the position which was the making of her.
By then, the ideological cracks had begun to show. Her experience reporting in poor housing estates and schools, as well as the rise of Margaret Thatcher, made her question essential leftist dogmas about the “deserving poor” and the role of the state. She was also shocked by the double standards to which Israel was held.
By the time she departed the Guardian’s sister paper, The Observer, for the Sunday Times in 1998 and moved on to the Mail in 2001, she had concluded that the policies of the left, which dominated Britain’s elites, were harmful to disadvantaged people. In the name of equality and tolerance, education standards were allowed to fall, the poor were kept on welfare, and the traditional family unit was undermined.
She blames this changing cultural landscape on a deliberate effort by the left to take over Britain’s institutions of power and subvert them. Many of its ideas – “this rubbish” – came from America, “but in Britain it found very fertile soil.”
The key was the collapse of public religion, she says, with no alternate ideology arising that could fight the left’s advance. Following World War II, the country had lost its empire and was in debt to its allies, and its administrative class believed their role was the orderly management of decline.
“They were powerless to resist what became the ‘march through the institutions,’” she says, using the phrase coined by Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci. “They didn’t have any strong basis to defend Britain against it.”
Phillips once described herself, per American neo-con Irving Kristol, as ‘the liberal who has been mugged by reality’
Phillips once described herself, per American neo-con Irving Kristol, as “the liberal who has been mugged by reality.”
Phillips once described herself, per American neo-con Irving Kristol, as “the liberal who has been mugged by reality.”
If few others have followed her path, it is because “once [the left] got rid of the idea that there was any such thing as truth, ideology filled the vacuum. They start with ideas, then everything else has to be made to fit. They can’t follow the evidence.”
So why did she soldier on at the Guardian group of newspapers for 21 years, when she was isolated by colleagues and increasingly unhappy?
“It was like family to me,” she explains. “It was like a divorce. You can’t believe that your family members are so abusive because you are locked in with them. It takes a very long time to be able to stand back and say this is really over. I didn’t feel I had any home to go.”
The rift still hurts.
In the book she describes going back to the Guardian in 2012, for the first time in 16 years, and weeping when she left the building.
Even today, she does not completely feel at home in the British right.
“At root, I felt that they weren’t animated by what animated me – a passion for tikkun olam,” or repairing the world, she says. “That’s what you get on the left. I have that. What people who are not on the left brought to the party was common sense, a very rational approach. It’s valuable because it’s tethered to earth. But what was lacking was the idealism that says, I really want to improve everything.”
What she does feel a connection to is “middle Britain,” the ordinary people whom, she says, understand that their political and cultural establishment is out of touch with reality, and feel disenfranchised. (In America as well, she says, many on the right feel that they are not represented by the Republicans, the Tea Party or Fox News, and it is these people she wishes to engage with emBooks.)
Exhibit A is the reaction to the Woolwich terror attack in May, when two Islamists beheaded a soldier on a London street, citing the Koran. Successive politicians, including Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, denied that their actions had anything to do with Islam.
According to Phillips, whose 2006 book ”Londonistan” documented the rise of a terror hub in Britain, the political class insisted that the act was “senseless” because they don’t understand religion.
“Like the rest of the West, they are incapable of understanding how people can be irrational, how people can be not-Western,” she says. “The official class will not accept this is a religious war because they can’t accept that religious feeling really can make sentient adult human beings believe they can take over the world and that it’s a good thing to destroy millions of people.”
By contrast, she says, the British people understood that this was religiously-based terrorism, and want it tackled. Beneath the surface, this gap is “fueling a terribly dangerous rage.”
“If this was France, the slightest provocation and everybody takes to the streets,” she says. “The British don’t do extremes – they are stoical and fairly bovine. It’s one of the great strengths of Britain… But people have very strong feelings. It’s bottled up.”
‘The British don’t do extremes – they are stoical and fairly bovine. It’s one of the great strengths of Britain’
When it comes to Israel, “middle England” may very well disagree with Phillips, who is one of its fiercest defenders in the British media. Surprisingly, until about a decade ago, she did not feel particularly strongly about it.
When it comes to Israel, “middle England” may very well disagree with Phillips, who is one of its fiercest defenders in the British media. Surprisingly, until about a decade ago, she did not feel particularly strongly about it.
“The way I was brought up, Israel was very important for other Jews, but not us,” she says. “We were British, living in the best possible place for Jews.”
All this changed during the second Intifada, when making Israel’s case seemed “a matter of truth and justice.”
The “extraordinarily vicious reaction” to her columns “made me realize more clearly that it was all over for British Jews. Never again could we have the illusion that this was the best possible world for us.”
Nevertheless, she adds, “It is very unwise to say that it’s all anti-Semitism. The vast majority of people who have hateful views on Israel are not animated by hateful views of Jews, although some are. They are motivated by the highest ideals of justice and standing up for the oppressed. The problem is they have it completely back to front as to who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor.”
The blame, she says, lies “almost entirely” with Israel itself, which has failed to offer an alternative narrative about the Middle East.
“It has vacated this ground over many years. It believes it is pointless to engage with Britain.”
Promoting its case, she says, must be seen as a “strategic weapon of war,” a form of psychological warfare, and given appropriate resources.
Nowadays, she spends significant time in Israel.
Britain could still reverse its decline, she says, if Christianity returns
“I am transfixed by the romance of it,” she says. “It is a place of such joy and hope among people who are living on the edge of a total nightmare. Here in Britain where everyone has everything and there is no existential threat, everyone’s so gloomy and cynical. Which is more life-enhancing?”
“I am transfixed by the romance of it,” she says. “It is a place of such joy and hope among people who are living on the edge of a total nightmare. Here in Britain where everyone has everything and there is no existential threat, everyone’s so gloomy and cynical. Which is more life-enhancing?”
Despite everything, Britain could still reverse its decline, she says, if Christianity returns (“this is a very, very unfashionable thing to say,” she admits). While unlikely – the Church of England pews are famously empty – she cannot rule it out. She does see smaller hopeful signs, such as the popular feeling against the European Union, which she says is “an anti-democratic institution,” the people’s desire for a crackdown on Islamism, and the current government’s attempts to reform the education system and welfare.
So despite all its flaws, does she still like Britain?
“I am British,” she replies. “It made me and I was brought up to love what it once stood for. Britain gave the world a concept of liberty that is unmatched. It has had characteristics of tolerance, decency, fairness, fair play, stoicism and emotional restraint. These things are priceless to me. I’ve watched these things going down the pan and I can’t bear it, I will fight for these things to be restored.”
But her heart seems only half in it.
“I’m not sure what home is any more,” she adds. “Britain is increasingly leaving me, it’s leaving a lot of people, it’s becoming something quite different. I will continue to fight in my own way for it. One can’t say what the future will hold – the way it’s going doesn’t inspire much confidence. Wherever I end up, it will always be part of me.
“A bit like leaving The Guardian, I can never completely leave it.”
3a)Leading critic of French al-Dura coverage convicted
Philippe Karsenty found guilty of defamation for accusing France 2 of staging Palestinian boy’s death
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A Paris court fined Philippe Karsenty 7,000 euros (NIS 33,000) in the defamation casefiled by network France 2. Karsenty accused the network’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Charles Enderlin, of fabricating parts of the segment.
The 55 seconds of edited footage, broadcast on September 30, 2000, showed the terrified boy, Mohammed al-Dura, and his father amid a furious exchange of fire in the Gaza Strip. It then cut to the boy slumped in his father’s lap. The report blamed Israeli forces for the death.
Karsenty called the verdict “outrageous.” A lawyer for France 2 said it was a victory for journalists.
Karsenty was convicted of libel in 2006, a judgment that was overturned on appeal in 2008. France 2 subsequently appealed that appeal at the “Cour de cassation,” France’s highest court. Last year, the Cour de cassation annulled the ruling acquitting Karsenty of libel in 2008.
Over the past decade Karsenty has amassed hours of video about the day of the shooting. At the heart of his claim is the fact that, according to the reporting by France 2, father and son received a total of 15 high-velocity bullets but in the video, neither appears to be bleeding. He says the firefight is real, but the shooting of the man and boy was staged for the camera.
“I am serene because I know the truth will come out,” Karsenty said. “Despite 15 bullets not one drop of blood was on their clothes, their bodies, the wall they were leaning against.”
Benedicte Amblard, a lawyer for France-2, said the verdict would allow journalists to retain confidence in their work.
Enderlin, the France 2 Jerusalem correspondent, said he and France 2 parent company France Televisions welcomed Wednesday’s decision.
“Today’s result is a relief,” he said, but added it did not put the matter to rest. Enderlin, a French-Israeli national, said conspiracy theorists continue to hound them over the incident. He said despite years of litigation and Israeli officials accusing him of fabrication, he welcomed an investigation.
“We are ready whenever Israel wants to go for a professional investigation following international standards,” he told The Associated Press.
Professor Richard Landes, a Boston University Historian who runs The al-Dura Project, said the decision was “bad news” for free speech and democracy.
“This is a victory of a state owned press using its immense financial and political resources to bully independent critics,” Landes told The Times of Israel. “In principle, this is bad news for freedom of speech… Given the terrible damage that al-Durah did — a poster-boy for the linked phenomena of virulent anti-Semitism and global Jihad — this decision is nothing short of suicidal for a Western democracy.”
Gaza’s Hamas rulers said the ruling confirmed that Israel and their supporters lied about the military’s practices in the coastal territory.
“They deceive and cover their crimes in front of the media and the world,” said spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said he had no comment on a case that delved into the intricacy of French defamation law. He said, however, that the Israeli position on the al-Dura case remains unchanged.
“It is improbable, not to say impossible, that the bullets which hit Jamal and Mohammed al-Dura came from the Israeli position,” he said. “Where they did come from remains subject to many hypotheses, though none can be proven.”
Last month, an official Israeli government report concluded that al-Dura was not harmed by Israeli forces and did not die in the exchange of fire.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who commissioned the report in 2012, said the accusations aired on France 2 were “a manifestation of the ongoing, mendacious campaign to delegitimize Israel.”
After the report was released, al-Dura’s father, Jamal al-Dura, told Ynet that he and his son were both hit by Israeli fire in the incident. He said he would be willing to exhume the body to prove that his son had in fact been killed.
Israel initially did not dispute that IDF troops had inadvertently killed the child.
“It could very much be — this is an estimation — that a soldier in our position, who has a very narrow field of vision, saw somebody hiding behind a cement block in the direction from which he was being fired at, and he shot in that direction,” the IDF’s southern commander Maj. Gen. Yom-Tov Samia said at the time.
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