Something's Rotten in the State of Denmark

"Who's there?"

So begins Hamlet, Shakespeare's longest play. It's the story of a young prince who sees his kingdom being destroyed from within, and yet feels himself powerless to stop it.

Today's news: Muslim immigrants rioting in Denmark. Hat tip: Sandmonkey, and no thanks to the lamestream media.

Rosenhøj Mall has several nights in a row been the scene of the worst riots in Århus for years. “This area belongs to us”, the youths proclaim. Sunday evening saw a new arson attack. Their words sound like a clear declaration of war on the Danish society. Police must stay out. The area belongs to immigrants....

Four hours after the short meeting, Falck (Danish privat emergency service – Henrik) sent a group of fire engines under police escort to the nursery Kjærslund on Søndervangs Allé, right across the street from Rosenhøj Mall. Gasoline through the windowA window had been shattered at the back of the house, and the fire had been blazing, apparently because of gasoline poured onto the floor, then lit. Falck stopped on Viby Square, a couple kilometers from the site of the arson attack, waiting for the police to turn up so they could be escorted to the nursery. Two nights earlier, other Falck-employees were threatened, when they were covering up broken shop-windows. Cobblestones had smashed the shop-windows from one end of the mall to the other. The police wrote in their report saturday night, that the youths had their stones with them in bags, when they came to Rosenhøj....

He calls himself 100 percent Palestinian, born in a refugee camp in Lebanon 19 years ago, and now out of work in Denmark.“The police has to stay away. This is our area. We decide what goes down here”.

A crisis of will.

Hamlet knows clearly enough what he must do. He's cautious at first - he won't act on the basis of the words of his father's ghost alone, reasoning that the apparition may be deceiving him. But having set a "mousetrap" for Claudius, and by the evil uncle's reaction judging Claudius guilty, he sets out to kill Claudius - only to be brought up short by his own indecisiveness.

Europe - and certainly not Denmark alone - finds itself in the same situation as Hamlet. Its first task is to determine "Who's there?" Europe must honestly confront the threat of Muslim radicalism - and at the same time recognize the common interest of civilized Christians, Jews, and Muslims in eradicating it. Richard at Hyscience quotes Magdi Allam's speach in Rome:

Dear friends, I won’t hide my emotions as an Italian citizen, a Muslim, a layman in stating my defense of Israel’s unequivocal right to its existence. My dear Israeli and Jewish friends, your fight for Israel’s right to exist is also my fight for the right to life of all, including that of Palestinians who aspire to an independent state, including the many, too many, Muslim victims of barbaric acts of Islamist terror. On the foundations of the right to life, we all build our homes. It is a war of civilization which we will win together.

Go read the full post at the link, and understand what is at stake.


Of honor and honor killings.

I posted earlier about an honor killing in Denmark. A Danish story headlined Bror dræbte sin søster reads in part: "Calm and methodically big brother stoops over his little sister while shooting one projectile after the other into her. Her spouse, affected by several shots to the abdomen, can only look on helplessly, while his wife is executed by her own family." (The English translationbrother kills sister is courtesy of Free Republic.)

Not just in Denmark: "Honour-based violence is happening in Britain on a vast scale," says Kate O'Hara in the Yorkshire Post. 'Such crimes can involve false imprisonment, abduction, rape, men and women being forced into unwanted marriages, or in extreme cases, murders. "This murder (of Mr Ghorbani Zarin) fits the definition of an 'honour killing' absolutely," said Jasvinder Sangher, herself a victim of honour crime who is now studying for a PhD at Derby University. "Honour-based violence is going on in Britain on a vast scale. We are just beginning to scratch the surface," she said. Heshu Yones's father Abdalla Yones, 48, an Iraqi Kurd, was unable to tolerate his 16-year-old daughter's Westernised lifestyle and her relationship with a Lebanese Christian man. He stabbed his daughter 17 times at their London home in October 2002 and was jailed for life after pleading guilty to murder.' Hat tip to KBU News.

What happens when there is a breakdown of basic respect for the law - and not only the law itself, but the very values of humanity that the law represents? What happens when a modern state decides, through indifference or cowardice, that the lives of some of its citizens are not worth defending?


Hamlet's weaknesses: self-doubt, self-hate, nihilism.

Self-doubt. Hamlet has one opportunity to do in Claudius, while Claudius is praying. But he passes it up, reasoning, "And so he goes to heaven - and so am I revenged?! That would be scanned!" He's thinking of the posthumous reports he's heard from his own father ("a tale ... whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul") regarding the afterlife prospects of one who dies without atoning the benefit of final sacraments ("no reck'ning made"); if he kills Claudius at prayer, he thinks, Claudius will go straight to heaven. But this is dubious theology at best, and Claudius himself doesn't buy it: just a few moments earlier, we've heard Claudius musing, "what can [prayer accomplish] when one cannot repent?" No, Hamlet is only rationalizing. He can't bring himself to do the act when he has the chance.

Self-hate. Hamlet often speaks of how unworthy and ineffectual he feels, particularly in comparison to his late father. He doesn't hesitate to criticize his own culture, chiding his fellow Danes for their drinking habits (in keeping with the pervasive "drinking" metaphor of the play) but his real problem is with himself.

Nihilism. "To be, or not to be?" Hamlet's famous question underscores the most serious internal challenge he faces: his own will to live. Much has been made of Hamlet's relationship with his mother, Gertrude; here I'll just say that the young prince, raised in the sheltered environment of Elsinore, must find the courage to actualize himself as an individual - that is, to come out into the world on his own.

Hamlet is driven in part by a sense of a nation in general decline from a more noble past. (When he says, "O what a falling-off was there", he is referring specifically to the contrast between the honorable, elder Hamlet and the perfidious Claudius, but also to the general condition of his country.)


A spectre is haunting Europe.

Hamlet correctly perceives that "the time is out of joint" and laments that he was "born to set it right". But who else will do it? Who else is there?

The officious bureaucrat Polonius is so busy being a busybody that he can't accomplish anything. He's more interested in micromanaging his children's personal lives than in letting them grow into adults. Sounds like the EU.

(Side note: Polonius' advice to Laertes - "costly thy habit as thy purse can buy ... for they in France are of a most select and generous chief in that" - is not a typo, as some commentators believe. Chief is simply the Old French word for "head", so the line means, "they in France are of a most select and generous head (or mind) in that." Polonius being Polonius, he can't resist throwing in a French word, especially when speaking of France, because he thinks it sounds cool. Later, in V:ii, Hamlet satirizes the pretentious courtly vocabulary by throwing a lot of French words at the courtier Ostricke.)

The point is, Hamlet - given his many shortcomings - seems far from the ideal candidate for bringing down the usurper Claudius and restoring justice to the kingdom. But there isn't anyone else to do the job. It's him, or nobody.

For too long the West has denied the threat of islamist extremism in its midst. Due to a combination of self-doubt ("certainty" is for fanatics), self-hate (all the world's problems are our fault), and nihilism (one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter ... and after all, isn't all this freedom and modernity just a bit too much?) we have allowed the threat to grow almost out of control.


The name of action.

A recent letter published at Irshad Manji's website reads:

"Tell the truth on islam and not all these lies you crazy woman. Ppl like you must pay and will pay." - Abdel

Irshad replies (not to Abdel but to you, dear reader): Judging by his email address, the individual who sent me this message lives in Denmark. His last name is Andersen. Sounds to me a like a convert -- and a “homegrown” or “Western-raised” threat. We're seeing more and more like him. Which is why pretending that the problem exists outside of the West is no longer an option.

What is at stake is not merely an abstract notion of "the West"; it is civilization itself. Proof of this is the fact that progressive Muslims like Irshad Manji recognize the importance of this struggle. In a two-part post at the Belmont Club, Wretchard imagined a jihadi giving the following analysis to Osama bin Laden:

Having lived among them and killed many of them, peace be unto you!, you understood that the West on three occasions just barely escaped destroying itself. Whether in the muddy trenches of the Great War; or in the global bloodbath of the Second World War; or the Cold War, lived in the shadow of thousands of nuclear warheads, you understood the West was like a man who had escaped suicide thrice only through great good fortune.

This yearning for the death of the West comes from Shaitan himself and is proof of their accursed nature, and explains why we will eventually be victorious despite our material weakness. The desire for self-death is embodied in what is called the Left, the unnamed shadow motivating the carnage of the last century. We must remember its name, for we will invoke it again when deciding on how best to pursue the Jihad.

But if the West is like a stone balanced on a precipice, wanting to fall yet held back by those among it who wish to live, still its final plunge requires a lever, some instrument of power which by tipping it the decisive inch will unleash the self-destructive tendencies of the infidel; let them yield to the spirit that haunts them, "the spectre haunting Europe" and like the Gadarene swine of their scripture, hurl themselves into the precipice. That lever will be provided by Islam. ...

With the riots in France now approaching their eleventh day, we are out of time. This is not a clash of civilizations; it is a battle for civilization itself. We must understand what is at stake. But we must also understand that we can win - if we have the will.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: For the positive side, read: The Decent Danish.

Dr. Sanity: The Left vs. Liberalism

Great post from Dr. Sanity:

... The Left of today is considerably different from the liberal Left that I became acquainted with during my college years in the late 60’ and early 70’s. At that time, although I disagreed with many of my fellow students about their methods, I could still completely relate to the underlying idealism and desire to improve the world. Back then, the Left was attuned to the values of classical liberalism—freedom; equal opportunity; the rights of the individual. The Left, at that moment in history was compelled to go beyond mere rhetoric and act to promote the liberal ideals and values they espoused. That is when the Civil Rights movement went mainstream in American society. And, even thought there were undercurrents of the ideological rigidity that was to come later, the Left could be proud of the results of that movement.

Those glory days when the Left believed in freedom and individuality; and that the content of one’s character was more important than the color of one’s skin-- are long gone. Nowadays it seems that the Left only pretends to believe in those values and feels it necessary to mouth the words.

But my observation is that today’s Left pretty much stands for nothing—not freedom, not equal opportunity; not individual rights; not even peace. Trying to right the wrongs and injustices of the world is truly ethical and noble goal, but something happened on the road to that beautiful utopia. The Left made a wrong turn and got lost--somewhere in the vicinity of Vietnam, I think.

But I’m not going to rehash Vietnam again. Instead, I’m going to focus on the behavior of today’s Left and antiwar movement.

At this very moment, every issue supported by the Left, and almost all of the behavior exhibited by the Left is completely antithetical to classical liberal philosophies. There is no longer a commitment to personal liberty or to freedom. The Left is far to busy to promote freedom for the common man or woman, because their time is taken up advocating freedom for tyrants who oppress the common man; terrorists who kill the common man; and religious fanatics who subjugate the common woman. ...

Go read it all.

Hyscience: Enemies of Islam

Richard at Hyscience has an outstanding post on "Islam's Worst Enemies":

Salim Mansur, professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, wrote in the Toronto Sun in mid-October that "Extremists' violent perversion of religion threatens us all." I've previously read his piece entitled, "Muslim on Muslim Violence: What Drives It," and after reading his more recent piece in light of having read the earlier one, I find myself struck with a deeper awareness of the very grave dangers we all face from radical Islam, and I'm much more aware of the fact that the "we" that are facing such dangers includes both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. ...

Go read the whole thing.

Ghazal Omid: "Living In Hell"

For a fascinating and often horrifying account of a woman's life in revolutionary Iran, read "Living In Hell" by Ghazal Omid. "Living in Hell" is a long, lyrical, and very rich memoir; the chapters are short vignettes of the author's life.

I remember the resentment I felt toward my father. I despised him early on for making my mother suffer. At age seven, I often questioned my mother, asking her why she brought me into this world when she knew she could not give me a father and why she continued to live and suffer with a person who doesn't love her.

The book's power comes from the vivid descriptions of family and society in Iran, both before and after the Khomeini revolution. Ghazal Omid's testimony is extraordinary and valuable in its ability to humanize the narrator and make her experience real for us. The book describes the workings of a deeply dysfunctional family in a way that many of us can relate to; it also shines a light on some of the dysfunctional aspects of Iranian society that pre-dated the Khomeini regime. This is especially important because it helps activists who look forward to a post-IRI era to understand the other challenges that Iranian society faces.

I strongly believe in religion but religion can change people. Religion is the path to salvation but Islam, like other religions, has been used for personal agendas. It is not the religion that is wrong; it is the preachers who sabotage the word of God. Mum, like most religious women, was naive and the regime's mullahs took advantage of her good heart and flooded her brain and the brains of her like minded sisters with irrational lies and preaching, orchestrated to blindfold the female force.

"Living in Hell" includes harrowing accounts of rape, incest, and sexual molestation. It also recounts the author's first lesbian experience:

... I had a fleeting teenage brush with lesbianism. I had a classmate who was incredibly stunning. She was very beautiful and mature for her age: medium height, very slender, olive skin, long black hair down her back with an incredible flexible body. Like a gymnast, she would bend over backwards and touch the ground with her hands.

Aside from her beauty, I envied the distinctive, burgundy, ballet type leather shoes she wore. ... The other thing that I think made us kindred souls was remarks she made that caused me to suspect that her brother was also molesting her.

... Slowly but surely, I found myself becoming sexually attracted to her. Even now, it is puzzling how a naive kid like me suddenly found herself, in the middle of mathematics class, fondling her friend's breasts. ... I had never had any attraction toward women. I grew up around women it large public, Roman style bathrooms where all the women were naked and never had a lustful twinge.

The afternoon after fondling my friend's breast, I came home from school, excited and a little nervous about the next step. As usual, I was daydreaming and sort of studying and thinking about tomorrow's adventure. Mum was praying in the same room that was my study/living room. She suddenly stopped and read to me the translation of the chapter from the Koran that said that women were sisters and that they should not touch each other sexually. If they did they will pay the consequences of their actions since it is considered a great sin in the eyes of God.

... I was silent for a few minutes. There is no word to describe how I felt. ...

"Ghazal Omid" is a pen name meaning "lost soul"; the author now lives in Canada. I had the honor of speaking with her on the phone the other night; she is as lively and articulate in conversation as she is in print.

By age 18, I had seen so many deaths and my heart had become so hard that I couldn't cry. After the war was over, I couldn't have cried if I tried. ... Then one night, I had a dream.

I saw myself in my school uniform, waiting to meet Abo-al Fasel, a holy man, who had been dead over a thousand years. He died for the sake of helping others and is the symbol for dkindness and virtue in Shiah Islam. In my dream, I, together with many others, was waiting in a cemetery for his holiness to appear. for a long time, Abo-al Fasel didn't come. I was impatient to leave. I left the graveyard, still searching for him at the exit door. Suddenly he came riding on a great white horse, just as we had been told he would do. As he came near me, I greeted him and he looked at me with compassion and said, "Be kind to others; love other people."

-All quotations from "Living In Hell" by Ghazal Omid.

Now I have to say a few words about the awful review the book received in "Publishers' Weekly". Please ignore this hatchet job. I contacted Powell's Books to complain about their inclusion of the PW "review" in the Powell's online listing for "Living in Hell". It turns out Powell's is under a contract that requires them to post all PW reviews, favorable or not, on their website; but the good folks at Powell's did add some more favorable reviews of "Living in Hell", which I commend to your attention. Thank you, Powell's Books, for doing the right thing.

Folks, I don't think I have to explain this for my regular readers but I think it needs to be said: People everywhere are just the same; and people everywhere are unique individuals. Those who live under dictatorships do not become less human because of it; their personal conflicts, their family problems, their inner struggles are not magically blotted out by the force majeure of an oppressive regime. And to believe otherwise is nothing but a variation of the slaveholder mentality that sees enslaved persons as "happy little slaves" with no volition or agency of their own.

The problems and complexities of a personal life are not a "privilege" reserved for the citizens of free societies alone, and living under fascism does not grant immunity from the mundane cruelties that individuals inflict on one another. Let me quote the Iranian scholar Azar Nafisi, in the portion of her literary memoir devoted to Jane Austen:

A girl is raped, carried in the trunk of a car and murdered. A young student is killed and has his ears cut off. There are discussions of prison camps, of death and destruction in Bellow, in Nabokov we have monsters like Humbert, who rape telve-year-old girls, even in Flaubert there is so much hurt and betrayal -- What about Austen? Manna had asked one day.

Indeed, what about Austen? ... Austen's heroines are unforgiving, after their own fashion. There is much betrayal in her novels, much greed and falsehood, so many disloyal friends, selfish mothers, tyrannical fathers, so much vanity, cruelty and hurt. Austen is generous towards her villains, but this does not mean she lets anyone, even her heroines, off easily. ...

Modern fiction brings out the evil in domestic lives, ordinary relations, people like you and me -- Reader! Bruder! as Humbert once said. Evil in Austen, as in most great fiction, lies in the inability to "see" others, hence to empathize with them. What is frightening is that this blindness can exist in the best of us (Eliza Bennett) as well as the worst (Humbert). We are all capable of becoming the blind censor, of imposing our visions and desires on others.

- Azar Nafisi, "Reading Lolita in Tehran"

This is why the Publishers Weekly critic's conclusion that "Iran would seem to be the least of her worries" is so galling. It demands that Ghazal Omid make a choice: "Either you can complain about being oppressed by the Iranian regime, missy, or you can complain about your personal problems - but you can't do both." Still more offensive is the reviewer's statement that the author only "claims to have been raped" (my emphasis). It would seem that Nafisi's blind Iranian film censor is alive and well and working for Publishers' Weekly.

Please visit Ghazal Omid's website: Living In Hell - Ghazal Omid on Iran which is now also linked on my sidebar.

Lightning vs. Lightening

For those of you who are confused, which apparently is about 50% of the English-speaking world, the title of this blog is "Dreams Into Lightning". That's L-I-G-H-T-N-I-N-G. Not "lightening". (See here).

"Lightning" (spelled without an e) refers to a discharge of atmospheric electricity, of the sort usually accompanied by thunder.

"Lightening" (with an e) refers to the act of making something less dark or less heavy.

For pictures of lightning go here.

For lightening pictures on your TV set, turn up the "brightness" knob; with a camera, widen the aperture and/or increase the exposure; for large, heavy oil prints, take the picture to a professional frame shop and replace the heavy frame with a lighter one.

For advice on lightening your hair please consult your local beauty salon. Do not under any circumstances do this.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by Dreams Into Lightning. (Not "Lightening".) We now return you to your regularly scheduled rants and ravings.

Rabbi Natan Gamedze: Getting Off the Conveyer Belt

Swazi prince on his conversion to Judaism. Aish has the story of 40-year-old Natan Gamedze, born into a royal family in Swaziland. (Hat tip: Winds of Change.)

Aish.com: It is unusual, to say the least, for someone of your background to find his way to Judaism.

Gamedze: I was never interested in religion, per se. I was interested in what was going on in the world. What is our reason for being here? Okay, so you get up in the morning, you eat, go to work, have a shower, watch TV, go to bed, get up and start all over again... Hey, I did that yesterday!

I felt that life was like being on a conveyer belt, and eventually you get off. So what was the point? I couldn't accept that.

Aish.com: An existential question.

Gamedze: Yes. In other words, I wasn't searching for a way to give my life meaning. Rather, I was trying to find out what was going on, like a detective. I felt there's something going on in this world, something behind the scenes. And I wanted to know what it is.

Aish.com: If you weren't looking for religion, how did you find it?

Gamedze: I was sitting in a boring Italian literature class one day. I think we were studying D'Annuncio. And as people do when they are bored, they look around, and I noticed some guy was writing backwards in funny letters. So after class I asked him what he was doing. He said he was doing his Hebrew homework. I thought: That's really interesting. Imagine if I could write like that! And then I forgot about it. But later on, I needed a credit to complete my degree. I wanted to take Russian, but I had a scheduling conflict. Then I remembered about Hebrew. It fit my schedule, and so I began studying it.

Aish.com: So what was the moment of awakening?

Gamedze: The first text we got was the biblical passage of the Binding of Isaac. Coming as I did from a moderately Christian home, I was familiar with the text, but I was surprised at how Hebrew appeared to convey much more than could be conveyed in any other language. I couldn't figure it out.

But what was so compelling was that I thought it was telling me something about myself. It was like opening an inner dimension that perhaps many people don't even know exists. It wasn't like an archeologist trying to find out about, say, ancient Incans, an interest which has really nothing to do with him. Here, I felt it was telling me something about myself. I thought it had to do with the language itself. I didn't know at the time it was the religious dimension.

Aish.com: And from there?

Gamedze: I began to discover the beauty of Judaism. I got interested in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah. ...

Read the rest at the link, and be sure to read the comments (scroll down, then click link for more) for stories of other Jews from nontraditional backgrounds.

Mohammed on Election Season

Mohammed at Iraq the Model reports:

The media has extensively covered the press conferences of the big slates and it was easy to see the divisions that happened inside the united alliance because their spokesman today was Abdulaziz Al-Hakim instead of Ali Al-Dabbagh or Ahmed Al-Chalabi who were the usual spokesmen in front of the press but not anymore since they departed the alliance and formed their own separate slates.
Dabbagh announced the formation of a group of independent technocrats and emphasized that religion and politics have to be separated and that religion must take the role described in the constitution but that would be all and “policies and development plans should stay far from religious beliefs”.

At the same time the founder of the united alliance Chalabi and his INC pulled from the alliance too and I think Chalabi is expecting the alliance to lose its leading position after the government it led showed a lot of weaknesses in running the country’s affairs in the past several months, add to that, Ayatollah Sistani so far refrained from endorsing the alliance.

Chalabi is obviously dissatisfied with the places his INC was offered within the alliance (only 3 places) and that is certainly not equal to their influence and position. Anyway, I don’t expect Chalabi would get a lot more than the 3 seats he was promised by the alliance.

The parties that remained in the alliance’s slate are the SCIRI, the Da’wa (two branches), the Sadrists, Fadheela party, Iraqi Hizbollah and some other smaller parties like the Islamic Turkmen union. This shows that this slate has assumed a pure sectarian identity after the few relatively liberal elements that used to be part of it decided to leave.
Al-Hakim promised his supporters a majority in the parliament but I actually doubt; things are much different now and no one slate can form a majority by itself.

This religious trend is facing stronger competition from the growing secular ...

Retraction and Apology from PSU Vanguard

Portland State University's student newspaper, the Vanguard, has withdrawn a virulently anti-Semitic article that appeared in its Opinion section a few days ago. The editors are to be commended for doing the right thing in response to public outcry.

The editorial staff write: "Column 'A City Divided' Should Not Have Been Published":

On Oct. 18 the Vanguard published an opinion column by Caelan MacTavish, titled “A city divided,” about conflict over the city of Jerusalem.

The column was riddled with factual inaccuracies and overbroad generalizations of the Jewish faith, people and history.

The column was met with an outpouring of response from members of the student body, academia and the Jewish community, expressing outrage and disappointment at the column’s publication.

Our goal in publishing opinion columns is to advance educated debate about issues that impact or are of importance to our readers. To fulfill that goal our mission is to publish thoughtful, well-researched commentary that provides a unique or interesting analysis of complex situations.

In the case of “A city divided,” we find that the column failed gravely to meet that goal or to meet the editorial standards that we at the Vanguard aim to uphold. ...

The Vanguard deeply regrets that the column was not given as much editorial attention as it deserved, and realizes in retrospect that the column simply should not have been published. ...

Giliad Ini of CAMERA writes, Provocative Ideas Require Civil Discourse:

It is probably clear that the false and contemptible statements ideas in Caelan MacTavish’s Oct. 18 column, and the Daily Vanguard’s decision to publish his piece, are protected by the first amendment [“A city divided,” Oct. 18.]. Because the Bill of Rights established that “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech,” MacTavish’s offensive words are legal — and, most agree, they should be.

What might be less clear is whether the legal right to “free speech” requires a newspaper to publish every idea. ...

PSU's Jewish Student Union see a city divided, a campus united:

The writer’s justifications for the Holocaust are appalling, as well as the reference to it as “The Great Burning.” He was factually wrong on numerous accounts, including statements such as “Nobody can really convert to Judaism—you are born Jewish, or you are not.” There are in fact several converts to Judaism within our student group alone. There are too many false statements to address here. ...

As students we have a responsibility and a right to attend classes in a safe and hate-free environment. The Code of Conduct states that, “the University recognizes the intrinsic value of individual differences and diversity. The University supports the right of all people to live and learn in a safe and respectful environment that promotes the free and vigorous expression of ideas. Policies and procedures are designed to protect these freedoms and the fundamental rights of others. Students are expected to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with these principles.”

Freedom of opinion is allowed, as long as it does not impinge upon another’s right to that “safe and respectful environment.”

In that spirit, the Jewish Student Union would like to encourage more constructive dialogue about religious and cultural difference, especially among student groups, with the support of our professors and the administration. We are proud of our beliefs and our way of life. We also respect the beliefs and rights of others. But the presence of multiple beliefs and cultures is worthless unless it is partnered with an ongoing dialogue that acknowledges the differences, and then celebrates them. ...

And finally, there's this response from PSU faculty:

In the course of his essay, Mr. MacTavish tells us that: "Nobody can really convert to Judaism — you are born Jewish, or you are not." This is simply untrue, as anyone with a passing familiarity with the Jewish religion knows. This sentence is found in a paragraph beginning, “Currently, Jerusalem is deep inside the West Bank…” In fact, Jerusalem is not “deep inside” the West Bank as commonly understood, but on its perimeter. (And since there are no plans we are aware of to move the city to another location, we expect it will be there not only “currently” but for a long time to come.)

In between these two sentences of demonstrable falsity, Mr. MacTavish offers a summary of Jewish history that makes one cringe in embarrassment for its historical and moral distortion. Ignoring or unaware of a rich, millennia-long history of cultural exchange with other groups, Mr. MacTavish leaves out 2000 years of Jewish history since the first-century Diaspora, with the single exception of the Holocaust, which he perversely suggests the Jews brought upon themselves because of their “exclusive religion.”

Later in his essay, he refers to Jews as a “race,” a falsely biologistic notion discredited since the Nazis gave such thinking a bad name.

A few comments:
It's good that the editors of the Vanguard have done the right thing here. What remains, of course, is a frank and open discussion of anti-Semitism in today's world. I hope that the repercussions from this incident will wake up some of the students and faculty - not only at PSU, but throughout the academic world.

It has become very easy in recent years to become complacent about anti-Semitism. I know I have been guilty of this myself. Even 9/11 did not, I think, immediately bring the message home; certainly there was vile Jew-hatred at work among the terrorists, but it was harder for some of us to think of judaeophobia as a home-grown phenomenon.

A second perception that may need to be re-considered is the idea that anti-Semitism is the exclusive province of the uneducated (or of "rednecks", "hillbillies", insert your favorite stereotype here). I've read enough and learned enough that I now no longer believe this. There are some highly educated people who are profoundly anti-Semitic. Beyond this, many Jews with connections to the academic world are becoming concerned that anti-Semitism has acquired an aura of "respectability" on the campus.

The author of our Vanguard piece is certainly no scholar; but we need to ask: How did this screed get approved for publication? In other words, how was the message sent that it was "OK" to publish this kind of stuff in a university newspaper? What kind of climate exists that fosters the notion that this drivel constitutes a contribution to intelligent discourse?

My first experience with overt anti-Semitism at PSU did not come from other students. It came, instead, from a rap artist who'd been invited as a guest speaker in a Women's Studies class. The gentleman delivered himself of a "performance piece" that consisted of a lengthy rant against the Government in general and, wait for it, "Zionists" in particular. The guest waxed eloquent about the suffering of Palestinians (one of only two nations mentioned by name - guess what the other one was) but could find no time to mention the African victims of Arab genocide in Sudan. Violence, it would seem, is only a crime when it is committed by Jews.

Finally - and without getting too political - I would submit that anti-Semitism is not confined to a particular area of the political spectrum. It's amazing how right-wing skinheads and left-wing anarchists sometimes sound a lot alike. Whether your politics are liberal, progressive, conservative, libertarian, or none-of-the-above, remember that no ideology is exempt from crackpots and crypto-fascists.

UPDATE: Please read Caelan MacTavish's response at the link. I will post comments on this shortly.

Ex-Leftitsts Speak Out

Also via Tammy, five former leftists speak on their political journeys in this symposium on "Leaving the Left" at FrontPage. The guests are Tammy Bruce, Phyllis Chesler (another hero of mine), Dr. Paul Kamolnick, John R. Bradley, and Keith Thompson.

More on Rosa Parks

Tammy Bruce has some information on Rosa Parks' activist background. Tammy argues that the popular image of Parks as an "everywoman" diminishes her:

The actual history of Rosa Parks is a reminder of what an individual can accomplish. That big things happen by those who plan; the lesson is that we can and should as individuals make commitments and set out to make a difference.

RTWT.

Condi Photo Manipulated

Demonic, triangular-shaped, black-centered eyes were added to a photograph of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as From the Pen demonstrates.

The USA Today version on the right was deliberately altered to make Condi Rice look more menacing. Notice how the whites of the eyes are highlighted to make her BLACK eyes look BLACKER and HATEFUL.

Go to the link to see a Rathergate-style animation of the original and retouched photos.

Powerline and Michelle Malkin are on it.

Times of India on Communist Chinese threat to US

An article on the PRC threat to the United States appears in The Times of India:

The greatest threat to America is not terrorism but a belligerent communist nation that is over billion strong, says Constantine Menges, an unknown figure even to the scrupulous China experts, in his recent book, China: The Gathering Threat . ...

... Bill Gertz, the national security reporter for The Washington Times and New York Times reporter writes in the foreword, "Menges explains why we need to go on the political offensive against Beijing's communist rulers and bring democracy to China."

In fact Gertz opens his foreword by saying that the challenge posed by the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation represent the most serious long-term threat to American national security, now and for the foreseeable future.

Full article at the link.