Menacing anti-Israel demonstrations in the street, rabid anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, obsessive anti-Israel boycott resolutions among western academics, relentless anti-Israel headlines in the world media are “politics as usual,” involving the young and the fanatic. Most civilians barely notice it. They are worried about employment, health insurance, college tuition for their children—or about celebrities, whose decadent rise and fall distracts them from their own more ordinary miseries.
What worries me more are the movies and plays that subtly and inexorably shift the civilian point of view, movies which glamorize Arab tyrants and terrorists and demonize Israeli soldiers, “settlers” and politicians. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, ordinary people have come to believe that the Muslim world is peaceful, friendly, safe; that its “rough edges” are due to it’s having formerly been oppressed by Europe; that Islamist terrorism has probably been caused by the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan; that much of this is Israel’s fault—or rather, that much of this may now be solved if only America sacrifices Israel for the sake of world peace, including its own survival.
Take the pre-eminent, planet-friendly magazine, National Geographic. It boasts a readership of nearly eight million people. Courtesy of a gift subscription, it arrives faithfully. Sometimes I look at it, often I don’t. So many glossy photos, so little time. But this issue immediately caught my eye because the cover story is titled: “The Christian Exodus from the Holy Land.” What ho! I thought. So, the animal-friendly magazine “gets” it. My hopes raised, I turned to the article which is also titled “The Forgotten Faithful: Arab Christians.”
Here’s what the article does: It essentially blames the Christian Crusaders, American Christians, and Israel (!) for the persecution and disappearance of Arab Christians from the Middle East. I could not make this up. The lies, omissions, biases, both subtle and overt are mind-boggling. For example, the article, written by Don Belt, does not explain why the Crusades ever took place—namely, to protect the Christian Arabs from being slaughtered and forcibly converted by Muslims. In any event, Belt writes that “ironically, it was during the Crusades (1095-1291) that Arab Christians, slaughtered along with Muslims by the crusaders and caught in the cross fire between Islam and the Christian West, began a long, steady retreat into the minority.”
Just a minute. How has Belt managed to bypass the Arab Muslim conquest of the Christian and Jewish Middle East? For example, according to the pre-eminent scholar, Bat Ye’or, (and cited in Andrew Bostom’s excellent The Legacy of Jihad),
“Abu Bakr organized the invasion of Syria (Syro-Palestine) which Mohammed had already envisioned…the whole Gaza region up to Casarea was sacked and devastated in the campaign of 634. Four thousand Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan peasants who defended their land were massacred. The villages of the Negev were pillaged by Amr b. al As…in his sermon on Christmas day, 634, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, lamented over the impossibility of going on pilgrimage to Bethelehem…Sophronius, in his sermon on the day of Epiphany 636, bewailed the destruction of the churches and monasteries, the sacked towns, the fields laid waste…thousands of people perished in 639, victims of the famine that resulted from these destructions. According to the Muslim chronicler Baladhuri (d.892 C.E.), 40,000 Jews lived in Caesarea alone at the Arab conquest, after which all trace of them is lost.”
Based on scholarly sources, Bostom carefully and comprehensively chronicles the systematic Arab Muslim pillaging of the entire Middle East which included their enslavement and murder of Christians and Jews. What Don Belt fails to note, even in passing, is that more than four centuries of such Arab Muslim persecution of Christians is precisely what led to the Christian Crusades.
Yes, ’tis true: some Caliphs were temporarily kind to their Dhimmi populations; the Egyptian ruler granted asylum to the great Jewish scholar and philosopher, Maimonides who was, however, in flight from Muslims in Spain. Maimonides became the ruler’s personal physician. The Turkish Sultan granted asylum to the fabulously wealthy, Donna Gracia HaNasi, who was, herself, in flight from Catholic persecution in Spain and Portugal. But mainly, Jews lived in enormous poverty and danger and were routinely murdered, jailed for ransom, and exiled, their goods confiscated. The largest untold refugee story of the Middle East is that of Arab Jews in flight from Muslim persecution.
When the First Crusade reached Jerusalem in 1099, Jews and Muslims were massacred. Jerusalem had no Jews until refugees from the Spanish Inquisition began to arrive there after 1492.
Although the percentage of Christian Arabs in Israel has gone down, there is a new population living in Israel of Russian Christians who are married to Jews or are of mixed Jewish-Christian descent.
National Geographic Magazine is an old publication. I remember once browsing over an issue from 1896 about the war of independence in Cuba. There were some black and white pictures and also drawings. My grandfather collected them for years.
I followed suit and ordered the magazine faithfully for about 15 years, then canceled it a few years ago. Why? It is simply depressing. The majority of articles are depressing and some even apocalyptic. Bias is common. In my opinion, they are irredeemable. They are now another liberal publication not different from many others.
Thew best way to reject their bias is to cancel the subscription.
No Jews in Jerusalem until 1492?! Where did the temple wall come from? For that matter, Where did the bible originate? Who did the Egyptians and Babylonians defeat in battle? For that matter, even in the most “liberal” Muslim occupations, Christian churches were often converted to mosques.
Phyllis
Thanks again for an excellent report.
When it is so clear that ignorance and ideology have ganged up against the West, as well as the Jews, it is indeed time to worry. Though ordinary people I come into contact with are innocent of most of the biases and false views of history, it is also clear that they are usually well into or past their middle age.
Very few–thankfully not all yet–of the young men and women, intelligent and imaginative as they may be in other areas of life, have fallen into the vast morass and so are easy prey to the manipulation of the truth by those who hate civilization as we know it. For these people the simplest facts about World War I and II are unknown, matters of indifference, and confused ancient events.
Darned if I know what to do, aside from speaking out at almost every opportunity–and there are fewer and fewer down here at the bottom of the world.
Norman
josil,
There were Jews in Jerusalem before 1099. The Crusaders killed most of them, and a few escaped. Different Jews arrived there from Spain after the expulsion, in the days of the Ottoman Empire.
Good report, Phyllis.
But I believe National Geographic needs to be boycotted; it can’t be reformed. I remember a stomach churning article they did a few years back about Yassir Arafat, being especially carefully to mention how kind, compassionate and charitable he was, collecting little orphan boys to live with him. . .
i have always thought of national geographic magazine as belonging solely in dentist’s offices, so i am not surprised it is depressing. i am surprised that it is putrid. that also cancels my watching national geographic channel on cable.
so far, the number of magazines, newspapers, websites, online news (which also includes ap and reuters)and cable channels i can’t stand looking at is way more than the ones i can stand. that is, given the lies, twists, fake history and general crap in which they are immersed, why bother.
this world we live in now, as bette davis would say, “what a dump”.
NG called female genital mutilation, “female circumcision” and I dropped my subscription.
Maybe we should all boycott the Magazine..
In the meantime, everyone should celebrate Prime Minister Netanyehu, not giving in to President Obama… after all the Arabs also want ALL of the Arab Prisoners released from the Israeli Prisons IN THE TWO STATE SOLUTION , (WHICH IS THE SAME AS THE FINAL SOLUTION THAT ADOLF HITLER WANTED), and we all know the result of doing that the last time around.
MUHAMMED ATTA the head of the 9/11 Suicide Bombers in our Country, was released from an Israeli prison from the Oslo Agreements that Prime Minister Netanyehu signed..
as usual Israel gets nothing… the Kidnapped soldier Giliad Shalit is still supposedly alive in a Palestinian Prison and no one has offered to release him.. or let the Red Cross have access to him…
last time they let thousands out.. they got back TWO DEAD BODIES for a thousand Suicide Bombers.. finally someone is using their head, and not letting the Islamic Terrorists have their way for a change!
THANK GOD NETANYEHU DID NOT CAVE TO OBAMA!
Thank you so much for this information. We are really in a civil war for our country, are we not? It makes me very sad.
I received the latest issue of NG last week and read with incredulity the biased article on Arab Christians. The notion that Western Christians, along with Israelis, are somehow to blame for the decline of Christianity in the Arab world is so far from reality that one has to wonder if the author is somehow in the employ of Saudi Arabia or some other fanatical entity. Mr. Belt only briefly mentions the plight of Christians in Iraq and attributes their situation (killings and forced expulsion) to the American occupation. He describes the Lebanese Christians who are under constant attack and have pretty much lost their country to Muslim fanatics as uncompromising, armed to the teeth, and departing to the West whenever possible. He all but ignores the killing of Christians in Gaza by Hamas and the ongoing plight of Egyptian Christians. All in all one of the most biased pieces of writing I have ever seen in a mainstream publication.
It’s very simple.
You said, “Each time, the editors stood by their story and refused to make any change, issue any apology, or write any articles without a blatant anti-Israel bias.” Why should they? It’s only neocons protesting, and in their world, neocons are sinister conspirators who want to starve the poor, destroy social services, and lead America in to disastrous wars at the behest of a foreign power. It’s for the good of the human race that they expose this evil.
And you’re a “neocon”, too.
Just do what I did years ago, vote with your wallet and cancel your subscription, and urge all your friends and family to do the same.
After about 60 years of family subscription activity with NG, this past Christmas I nonrenewed on all subscriptions.
Why would anyone pay for MSM crap? I don’t subscribe to any newspapers, magazines and don’t watch ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN or MSNBC. I find all the news I need on the internet from various sites. Litmus test, if it is a “blame America” venue, I pass right on by. Why subsidize the enemy?
Angry White Dude
A year or two ago NG did a little story on how Global Warming was affecting the Swiss Alpine ski season. Seems there was less snow and so the ski industry was hurting. I wrote NG and pointed out the irony of relatively well-heeled Europeans and others jetting into quaint Alpine villages to slide down a mountain of snow. As if that whole activity was somehow carbon neutral. Rather than decry yet another GW tradgedy, NG would have been more honest in using the example to indentify an obvious self-correcting negative feedback loop whereby frivolous consumption is naturally reduced as a result (according the NG and the GW believers) its (the skiiers) own activity.
I remember twenty, thirty years ago we evangelicals would wonder how could the whole world turn against Israel and even amass an army against her so long as the US was alive to stop it. I mean we knew it was foretold and inevitable but it was plain it could not happen in OUR lifetimes. Too many things would have to happen. World shattering changes. Perhaps the destruction of the US.
Funny how things turn out, ey?
Phyllis:
Thanks for calling attention to NG’s relentless leftward drift. When I got to the Christian family (pictured) who found it impossible to live under ‘Israeli occupation’, I stopped reading. In the same issue, the feature entitled “The End of Plenty” could have come right out of the 1970′s we’re-running-out-of-everything’ doom-mongering.
Each NG issue contains at least one presumptive indictment or unfavorable comparison of Western/American greed, guilt, culpability, unsophistication, lack of authenticity, etc. — often in features which have nothing at all to do with the West or America.
The ‘Letters’ section is frequently a showcase of astonishingly simple-minded moral equivalence and preening. And don’t get me started on the non-stop hectoring and alarmism about the environment.
Mine is a gift subscription. Otherwise, I’d have no time for it.
Perhaps the Church would be stronger there if its members were taught Hebrews 6:
It is all well and good to be convert to Islam for safety from Muslims. However, there is a price to be paid. Apostasy is one of the only two sins, for which a Christian may never return to the Church.
National Geographic is like Sierra Club for the fossilized.
Worse to me is National Geographic TV–it’s so filled with icky global warming and greenie BS I can hardly stand it. You almost have to wear scuba gear to watch TV there’s so much crap to filter out. Worst of all they’re filling our impressionable kids’ brains with this eco-mush and slimy socialism in those indoctrination centers called “schools”.
There has ALWAYS been Jews in Israel and Jerusalem. The four holy cites: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias have never been without Jews, EVER.
Actually, cancelling subscriptions is fine, but those who do should also take the time to write to advertisers in the magazine and tell them what you are doing and why. Advertisers may be unaware that they are supporting a biased anti-west magazine.
Obama may prove be the president who abandons (or trades) Israel to the Arabs for “peace”. Carter and Clinton came close, but Obama may actually pull the switch. If so, the USA will cause God to remove what little protection He still provides this baby-murdering, sodomite-worshipping, Hollywood-glorifying nation. If we abandon our moral obligation to protect the Israeli people, we and the government leaders we have chosen will have certainly earned the distain of the Almighty.
My most outrageous National Geographic moment was reading an article about Cuba and looking at a picture of young Cuban girls in fancy dresses, standing on street corners and roads. I knew, because I’ve been reading about Cuba, that families will pimp out their pretty daughters to foreigners in order to get enough to eat. The National Geographic caption? Something along the lines of “Cuban girls enjoy dressing up for evening walks.”
National Geographic photographers are pedophiles and support human trafficking. That’s my conclusion. No picture is beautiful if the photographer is a monster.
I commented to my wife just a couple of weeks ago that NG is just getting repetitive in the articles. Everything is how humans are killing the earth blah, blah, blah.
We are not renewing.
You sound surprised. I’ve been jaded by the leftist elite in academia, the media and the entertainment industry since I was in my late teens. Nothing they do could surprise me anymore. I also understand where they’re coming from because I used to be one of them. I was a hardcore liberal growing up but how could you blame me? That’s just the popular culture all kids in the Western world are growing up in.
There’s 2 kinds of liberals. 1) They honestly don’t know any better. They grew up in a completely liberal environment and are brainwashed just like I was but unfortunately never took the time to reseatch a different perspective and properly weigh which side had the superior arguments and overall worldview. Or 2) They have some kind of alternative motive of one kind or another and are actively trying to advance that dubious agenda. Some leftists genuinely hate certain groups of people, or Western civilization, or America, or capitalism, or even humanity itself as crazy as that sounds.
Some people dwell on guilt trips and feel the only way to bandage past grievances is to do damage to themselves. “Well since European Christians did this or that a thousand years ago it’s ok for those people to do something similar back to the European Christians today. I mean how can we blame them? What goes around comes around…” Even though what the European Christians did was nowhere near as bad as what the arab muslims had already done or did afterwards like you said.
Some are simply ignorant of history and are liberal type #1 who have been brainwashed by liberal type #2. And some are politically correct racists frankly. They think brown skinned people aren’t capable of living up to the standards of fair skinned intelligent European people. They treat brown skinned people like small children that they need to handle with kids gloves. Their inner monologue is something like “Don’t be too mean! Remember: They don’t know any better.” So they don’t even feel comfortable criticizing people outside of who they consider to be the #1 denoted oppressor: White Christians (males usually).
They live their whole lives deathly afriad of offending anyone (they’re even afraid of being proud of their own heritage and country lest they offend someone) and profusely appologize to any and everyone for past percieved grievances even if they had nothing to do wth them personally of even if their very own ancestors were victimized by the very same people they’re apologizing to.
Ask how many liberals know that arab muslims from north africa kidnapped and enslaved European and early Americans by the many hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) for hundreds of years. Or ask them how many of them know that arab muslims have invaded Christian Europe multiple times and almost took over the entire European continent. Or ask them about the turkish muslims occupation and genocide of South Eastern European Christians up until only a few decades ago (and still are to this day to be accurate as you eloquently wrote in your article).
Almost all of them would probably blink at you and look like a deer caught in headlights. They’re once again of the liberal variety #1 being brainwashed by the liberal variety #2 where brown skinned muslims abusing and enslaving European Christians doesn’t fit their self-hating and anti-European and anti-Christian narrative of global history.
Me personally I’ve always been extra aware of this liberal revisionist BS because I had recent ancestors in the Balkins who fled from turkish muslim persecution and occupation. Only to wind up in America where they were persecuted and threatened by black Americans. My great grandfather was fresh off the boat and he opened up his own bar in the Detroit Michigan area which he passed down to me grandfather after he got back from WWII. And it eventually became an all black neighborhood so my fathers family were virtually the only white family in the whole area. And when my grandmother died in a car accident my grandfather fell in love with a local black woman and they had children together. This enraged the black community and they attempted burn down his bar and threatened to cut my grandfathers head and genitals off. So if anyone needs to be asking for apologies and demanding reparations it’s my family. But we don’t feel the need to sink to that level because we’re not a pathetic grievance mongers who are looking for a handout and a free ride in life.
And I don’t ever expect any of these liberal elites to expose racism and oppression aimed at European Christians or Israeli’s or Americans or what have you. If anything they’re going to just step up their efforts to demonize those people and heroize the peoples they’re in conflict with. So we can either just get used to it and roll our eyes or do what you’re doing and exposing their white washing of history. We desperately need many more conservatives in the fields influencing popular culture in order to offset the BS liberal narrative.
NG is great photography. It is a little science with dishonesty mixed in that some people are not grounded in science well enough to catch.
It is really a NPR whinning liberal propoganda rag.
I understand it is about money. If research has global warming in its application for funding, it has a chance. If it doesn’t, it gets rejected. The global warming crusades are getting exposed. what a shame for NG.
They can do a Pelosi and claim they were never told.
How about the frost warnings as far south as tennessee today? May 19. Ooopps global warming is erupting.
And this is relevant precisely why?
I let my subscription lapse because I grew tired of the global warming preaching. I don’t mind honest reporting, even if I disagree. I no longer like to read National Geographic because it is condescending to the reader. Sadly, I do not want my young daughter to have the magazine I loved as a child. Like Time, Newsweek, and other “mainstream” magazines, NG has become a voice box for propagandists of elitist views.
“Write to National Geographic to protest these Blood Libels, and to protest Belt’s incredibly anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Israeli piece.”
I’ve written on several occasions when the National Geographic has published articles critiquing the authorship and historicity of the Bible. I’ve told them that I eagerly await similar criticism of the Koran. I’m still waiting….
#28: well said.
I’m going to have to cancel my subscription, and won’t renew my son’s gift subscription.
This is sickening.
I’m sending your piece to everyone I know, and have put it out on twitter- we need to spread the word.
NG used to be the bastion of intellectual integrity when I was a boy, but that changed.
It’s not just one slanted story – it’s their entire lineup of TV offerings. Look at the NG Channel schedule of shows and you can’t help but feel that NG has cast away their intellectual credentials in order to cater to the mob and get ratings and ad revenues.
Ugly. Disgusting. I’m queasy.
Unfortunately, NG is not the only mag to crash and burn in the last decade or so. Popular Science and Scientific American are two examples of “scientific” literature that feature more propaganda than science lately. My biggest disappointment has been the Smithsonian magazine, which was for years simply the best magazine anywhere. Then, a couple of years ago, they started to run articles about how misunderstood Hugo Chavez was and the like. I remember one article describing how a national park had been created in Cuba “by will of the people” and thinking “aren’t those lyrics from the Soviet national anthem?”. After 20 years of reading it, I let my subscription lapse. I was sad to let it go, but I just couldn’t support it anymore.
Yeah I agree. The amount of self-hatred and self-blame for practically everything just gets hilariously absurd. My history professor actually tried to convince us that European imperialism and conquest of Japan and Asia resulted in the Japanese themselves becoming a colonizing empire in the region. Therefore Europeans are now somehow ultimately responsible for the Japanese raping and pillaging of China in WWII… Because the Japanese and Asians themselves aren’t capable of being imperialist. Nope. Only white devil Europeans are.
Honestly, self-criticism and introspection is a healthy and necessary part of creating a decent and advanced society and I think it’s something we can be proud of. Especially since that kind of self-criticism and introspection is extremely rare in the world. Have you ever seen arab muslims marching on their capitals demanding peace with Israel? No, you haven’t and most likely never will. But that kind of self-criticism can become too extreme and turn into self-hatred and excuse making for the evil of others.
We didn’t cause 9/11. We didn’t force the islamists to behead journalists and womens rights activists. We didn’t cause the islamists to suicide bomb girls schools and market places. Islamists did that all on their own accord. And they need to be held responisble for their actions in this world and the next. Not heroized and protrayed as the victims by leftists.
Just because we gave islamists aid in Afghanistan 20 years ago doesn’t mean we created Osama or his international terrorist organization. Like leftsists and islamists have shamefully claimed. That would be like blaming us for the creation of the Soviet Union because we gave them aid in WWII. I know this may shock many leftists but non-white, non-Christan, non-Israeli and non-American people are perfectly capable of coming up with and creating their own backwards and violent societies and ideologies. They don’t always need the guiding hand of America, the CIA, Israel, the West, Europeans, Christians, FOX News, Bush, Dick Cheney, or whoever else they want to shift the blame onto.
One correction to what you wrote in your article. The Crusades didn’t occur in order to protect Christians in the Middle East. The objective of the Crusaders was to protect the Holy Sites from the Muslims, and guarantee access to them for Western Pilgrims. On occasion, Crusaders who came across Christian Arab civilians during a battle killed them by accident, because they wore the same attire as their Muslim neighbors. This being said, the situation in the Middle East is, as you point out, more complex than they make it out to be; and leaving the Muslim conquest of the region out of the equation is laughably bad history.
Secularists must believe all this is simply the current trend in western society. That is, the entire media/academia/political realm sliding off into collectivist hell. Well its not. It is orchestrated from the spiritual realm. The Evil One’s greatest work so far has been to convince the majority of western man that he does not exist. Then his other great work, in the East has been the promotion of Mohammedanism. Not sure just how the caca will hit the fan but the US selling Israel down the river in return for ‘peace’ (spit) sounds highly plausible.
I’m surprised that Chesler just noticed this! I stopped National Geographic way back in the 70s over its socialist/muslim bias and anti-American stories.
Someone told me once that the right is anti-science.
I never believed them….till now.
Great article. Funny thing is, and I’m not going to “document” it here, just do your own research if you want to…Muslims across the Middle East are becoming Christians in record numbers, but it is completely overlooked or dismissed by the media in Arab and western countries, because for the most part it is kept private by those who have “secretly” converted. For their own safety, and the safety of their families, they stay “hidden” and call little if any attention to themselves.
Obviously, Don Belt has no clue. The bias toward Israel blinds him and others to what is truly happening below the surface. The Christian “Church” (and by that I mean TRUE believers, not just a “religion”) is growing in Muslim countries, just like it is growing in China, where there are now more believers than anywhere on the planet…but they must stay below the radar of authorities, and those wishing to kill them for their beliefs.
After my father died in 2003 my subscription to National Geographic came up for renewal. In some ways it was a moment of rememberance.
My Great Grandfather had the magazine in his waiting room begining with his first office. My Grandfather’s sisters had those back issues going back to the leather bound editions in 1910. I read every issue going back into the 1920′s when I was in high school. For me it was 80 years of ties to the culture of America. But the magazine that I held in my hand, the ones published that year and every year since had no connection to those years.
I dropped the subscription.
National Geographic for me is the image of Clint eastwood in “Madison on the road”
This article is right on. I read that article last night and felt the usual disgust after reading that magazine. A feeling that I was violated and in need of a shower. That’s what leftist propaganda, masquerading as science will do. Sort of being date raped by the ManBearPig himself.
Blackwater—keep it up! Good stuff! Tx!
“Ask how many liberals know that arab muslims from north africa kidnapped and enslaved European and early Americans by the many hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) for hundreds of years.”
Please a link or reference.
Marie Claude:
êtes-vous vraiment blindé? Que s’est-il votre réputation d’être à voir avec le français?
les États-Unis parce que de la France, de Rochambeau et Lafayette. Il est maintenant temps pour Presaident Fantomas-Sarkozy, roi de Bling-Bling.
Début de préparer la Burqa dans Brittaine, venir comme un météore.
En lieu et place des “Parapluies de Cherbourg”, d’être prêt pour la “Burqas de Vitré”
Just as in Roman times Christians and Jews are about to be fed to the lions,and we’re letting it happen!!
“I’ve written on several occasions when the National Geographic has published articles critiquing the authorship and historicity of the Bible. I’ve told them that I eagerly await similar criticism of the Koran. I’m still waiting….”
Since all 3 are Abrahamic religions based on the Bible a critique of the Bible is a critique of all three – the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims. If aliens came here they would not be able to see the difference – its like the distinctions between House, Drum and Bass and Techno – it’s all Electronica and the people who are into it see clear distinctions but to everybody else it is all the same.
“Sort of being date raped by the ManBearPig himself.”
cross your legs and say no
“For me it was 80 years of ties to the culture of America.”
has it crossed your mind that maybe it is you that has lost touch with America?
“39. scott:”
I adore “end of days” people. One question: how long before we can all safely agree that it’s not going to happen? Do we wait 10 years, 100, 1,000, 20,000? I understand that you believe this stuff like all the cooks that built bunkers or went hiding in the mountains during the Cold War but isn’t there a time limit for how long you are willing to wait. Seem pathetic to die still waiting for what you must believe will be your shining moment.
“10. dephine:
Thank you so much for this information. We are really in a civil war for our country, are we not? It makes me very sad.”
There is no war – the conservative movement already lost. It always looses because of it’s nature. Life and society constantly changes – dare I say it? It evolves. There are people who push for change, people who ecxept change, people who resist change and finally the conservatives like you who fight against change. They are the road kill left in the wake of progress.
Cichawoda:
On the enslavement of europeans by islamic states in N. Aftrica:
http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Slaves-Muslim-Masters-Mediterranean/dp/1403945519
When questioning the Ambassador of Algiers about this continuing piracy and enslavement (like the European countries, the US was paying “protection money” to the N. African states to the tune of about a fifth of our GDP), Thomas Jefferson reported the following reply from Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja: that it ” . . . was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority [i.e. accepted to live in submission to the authority of islam/islamic states] were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Hence our first real projection of naval power – the ‘Barbary Pirate’ war.
MiamaMan, you’re studdying me now LMAO
uh but you really nead some french lessons !
50. Cichawoda:
Allow me to tip my hat for you. Right on the money. At least the Jewish invented/revealed most of it, as the other 2 followers: Christianity and Islam, they copied like schoolboys.
Now, the Old Testament is the Hebrew Tanakh, right, which is called the Bible? The Torah, the most sacred part of the Tanakh, the 3 first sections of the Bible composing the 5 books of Moses; namely, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the Christian rechristen the Pentateuch.
Somewhere a Jew, Jesus, whose follower believed to be the Messiah, wanted to enlarge Judaism to include the gentiles (goy). A Church was established, and the New Testament added.
Mohammed came and had several revelations in the cave, took a trip on heavenly horse Harak to Jerusalem, wrote “scriptures”, and an Arabized version of Christianity was born, now named Islam.
There is a tinge of intolerance through the whole sequence. The Jews are the “chosen people”, other stay away. The Christians, well you must believe in Christ as “the only Son of God”, mein gott, if you don’t believe in Christ the Redemer you just go to Hell. This is a hard pill to swallow.
Islam, now you must believe and imitate Mohammend in everything you do, God be with you my friend, Islam will give you the choice to convert OR ELSE. The Heaven has now been sweeten with virgins (blow up dolls, as they lack a soul).
Compare that to Sanatana Dharma. Many scripture, acceptance of almost everything that now is little by little incorporated. Total tolerance, as persecuted people from all religions ended up as refugees in India. The parable of the Avatars in the Hindu Vishnu Puranas is a parable of evolution and accept several Avatars (some may consider Jesus one of them, but not the only son of God, we are all sons of God). Reincarnation (metempsychoses) accepted (it was forbidden as Anathema by Christian religious fanatics in the Council of Nicea in AD 325). And there is more.
Odd. Some people are so dumb, they thing NG is a scientific magazine. I’m slowly coming to the rude awakening that a large swath of the population, maybe the majority, not only don’t know science, but they don’t even know what science is.
Herb @ #41. National Geographic may be many things, but it is neither geographic (except in so far as it draws its distortions from a variety of places) nor is it science. NG, geography itself (I’m sorry to say since I hold a PhD in the field), along with anthropology, political science, and the other “social sciences” are no more science than is a reality TV show “real life”. They have simply become intellectual areas of “touchy-feelly” observation and self importance.
Islam is NOT an Abrahamic religion. That is a blasphemy. The Bible is not even remotely akin to the koran, and only a truly ignorant person would even suggest that it is.
“Since all 3 are Abrahamic religions based on the Bible a critique of the Bible is a critique of all three – the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims.”
Nice twist of words. Critique of the Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible (OT and NT) is not the same as a critique of the Koran. They are all separate documents written in different eras. How about this simplistic metaphor? Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi may all be based on the same storyline and characters, yet they do not tell the same story. A critique of one would not necessarily reflect on the quality of the other two. And, just because all three were conceived by George Lucas doesn’t mean they are the same in content, subject matter or style.
Excuse me lady,
This has nothing to do with the truth. Gobals did the same thing in Germany.
However, Christians are included with you Jews this time. This time, it is Global, and the hate appears supernatural to me.
What is really depressing is that it’s hard to see any end to this very destructive nonsense. The responsibility for this ultimately lies with the universities that are miseducating their students. Those students then go out into the world (of course, that includes the media) and spread this garbage. Since there is no sign of change in our education, it is hard to see how any of our important institutions can change. The only hope is that enough people begin a bit of self-education.
Excuse me,
Mohamed is nothing like Christ. Mohamed murdered, and raped. Christ loved, and died for your sins. But, I will not cut your head off if you do not believe me.
Have a nice day.
You too need some “Inglish” lessons.
Ich bin nicht perfekt, nur die Franzosen perfekt!
Ich entschuldige mich für meine unvollkommenheit, sie Celtic Madame.
Damned! Oooopp! Pardon My French!
#47 Cichawoda:
Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White slavery in the Mediterranean, The Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 Robert C. Davis – Early Modern History: Society and Culture, Rab Houston and Edward Muir, General Editors, Palarave/Macmillan, 2003
“The result, then, is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly a million and uite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast….In fact, enen a tenative slave count in Barbary inevitably begs a host of new questions. To begin with, the estimates arrived at her makes it clear that for most of the first two centuries of the mondern era, nearly as many Europeans were taken forcibly to Barbary and worked or sold as slaves as were West Africans hauled off to labor on plantations in the Americas. In the sixteenth century especially, during which time the Atlantic slave runners still averaged only around 3,200 Africans annually, the corsairs of Algiers – and later Tunis and Tripoli – were regulary snatching that many or more white captives on a sing rading voyage to Sicily, the Balerics, or Valencia. Hardest hit in these escalating raids were the sailors, merchants, and coastal villagers of Italy and Greece and of mediterranean Spain and France. Testimony abounds of the near-paralysis of commerical shipping and the desolation of many coastal lands, which was so severe in some areas that the cosairs themselvs scarcely bothered to raid there:
Everyone…could see with their own eyes the desolation of the Spanish, French, and Italian coasts, htanks to the pertinacious infestation of these pirates: the wretched beaches, the abandoned islands, the shacks [reduced to] ashes, the fisherman in flight and the vessels of the Barbarian rovers loitering about on the sea.
Sorry about the typos
I wouldn’t say Vitré is celtic but “Gallo”, a patois, some roman lanuage mixed with frank language and local dialects, therefore I’m not Celtic. Though it’s funny how some words have a Brit pronounciation in our Gallo patois
What about the current practice of keeping foreign nationals passports while working as domestics/labourers for the folks in the magical Kingdom of $and and oil?
( oh and there is one Canadian Liberal MP-Ruby Dallah, of east Indian origins, who is currently under investigation for doing this to her Filipino maids, but I digress. )
Forcing little kids, not of their own of course, to be camel jockeys’s. They actually tie the poor kid, some as young as six years old, to the camel! The smaller the kid the faster the camel can go right?
And who controls the land and money controls the sex slave industry.
NG is as close to being a scientific magazine as LSM is at being ‘balanced’ these days.
Use to get the NG, but no longer.
And oddly enough, way less junk mail.
We moved recently, had boxes of these rags – why?
- don’t know, but they were burnt in a big pile with a lot of other burnable junk.
I let my subscription lapse because I grew tired of the global warming preaching. I don’t mind honest reporting, even if I disagree. I no longer like to read National Geographic because it is condescending to the reader. Sadly, I do not want my young daughter to have the magazine I loved as a child. Like Time, Newsweek, and other “mainstream” magazines, NG has become a voice box for propagandists of elitist views.
As a kid in the 40s and 50s, I read NG quite a lot. Much of it was pretty good – real transcultural visits, with some history included, although the writing even then was deadly condescending. At least they liked to photograph decorative ladies with their shirts off, which more or less balanced the dreary text.
But somewhere they’ve been captured by the academic left, and today are just NPR with visuals, scolding us in every paragraph for being arrogant honkies who do nothing but exploit the picturesque natives and wreck the earth.
And those are not ‘elitist’ views as much as faith-based propaganda against capitalism. Amazing how they have corrupted a magazine founded by intellectually curious people like Alexander Graham Bell, and imposed on it an editorial layer of converts to green totalitarianism who cannot tolerate dissenting viewpoints.
I don’t subscribe to the magazine but I watch the National Geographic HD Channel once in a while and have yet to see this kind of creepy bias. Is the ‘channel’ totally unrelated to the mag? Hmm.
Anyway, interesting article, Ms. Chesler. There’s a lot to digest.
You mean Gallic? But the Gallic were Celts. When I used Vitré, was as a famous example of the area you live. However, Brittany is Celtic per excellence, and it is recognized as one of a few areas left in Europe where a Celtic language or dialect is used, thus I called you in Boche…sie Celtic Madame.
I must have some Celtic blood too. Go to Brest in the map and jump down to the western tip of Iberia, and you are in Galicia, from where my ancestors were.
“60. JB:
Islam is NOT an Abrahamic religion.”
Knowledge is good – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic – all 3 are faiths of the book. Silly as it may seem the OT is the foundation for them all.
“66. Ralph Volpi: almost certainly a million”
A very different situation more akin to the activities of the Vikings in Europe, the Golden Hoard and Cossacks in the Russian steps, the Turks in the Balkans or the Chinese in South East Asia. Tragic but not on the same scale as what happened to Africans.
Simple test: can you point to distinctly European comunities or racial influences in N Africa left from the slave trade? Let me point out the influence of Africans on both North and South America.
Pardon me for my ignorant conservative beliefs, Cichawoda, but I choose NOT to be among those who ‘accept’ the brand of change the leftists are attempting to ram down the throats of Americans. So I guess that means you could count me among the “people who ‘ecxept’ change”.
Simply vote with your wallet folks! That hurts them the most.
Both NG and their advertisers know what they are doing and who their audience is. Sending a letter will have next to no impact. You know, it may not take too many cancellations to bring this liberal rag to a financial tipping point.
When that happens, we will have Al Gore and John “I served in Vietnam” Kerry calling for federal funds to bail them out. Then you will know your actions had an impact.
National Geographic is not Scientific American, even though I also get turned off by SciAm’s liberal bent.
Since when do conservatives not believe in “science?” Just an engineer asking. Oh, you mean the whole “creation vs. evolution” thing. IC.
Insufficiently Selfish,
“Faith Based Propaganda” exactly. A perfect description. I’ve watched this religion, Humanism, grow for 40 years now and it is indeed a spiritual cancer on the earth. C.S. Lewis perfectly describes it in his little book, “The Abolition of Man”.
Miamaman, Gallo was spoken between the border of Normandy until Rennes
Celtic dialects are still left in the land’s ends
http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/365362
Obama is am Islamist. His pals are all anti Jew.(even the so called Jewish ones). I think it is sort of funny how all these Jews voted for a man who plans to destroy them and Israel and even now they refuse to see it! What do Jews think Rev. Wright was preaching to Obama for the past 20 years? Dang! I use to think Jews were smart people. I guess the smart ones are in Israel cause they sure not in the USA.
I was an avid fan of the National Geographic from the late 60′s through the 80′s. The photographers and writers were practically heros to me.
I agree with many of the comments above. This magazine has been dramatically dumbed-down and cheapened since then. I just can not stand to read it anymore. Like dozens of American magazines and hundreds of newspapers, it has been utterly infected with the usual left-liberal mindlessness. Before I cancelled the magazine, I could tell you what almost every article was going to say after reading the first sentence or two, because they were all pushing the same predictable liberal baloney, rather than actually doing anything of value. Their greatness has gone – a hero has fallen.
I really feel for today’s youth. Unlike in my generation, all they have these days is this idiotic, profoundly dishonest garbage to guide them, and they don’t know any better. Today it’s all totalitarian brain washing and vicious personal destruction of anybody who has a differing opinion. I hope to live to see the return of enlightened intellectualism in this country, after people get tired of all this ignorant, vicious liberal facism.
Cichawoda and Miamiman:
Off the top of my head:
1. Separation of church and state:
Islam: Mohammad founded a state and established a system of (extremely brutal and stupid) laws. The ultimate goal and truest manifestation of islam is a perpetual holy war (Jihad) to acquire land and power in order to establish a world wide Caliphate in which everyone is forced to live in a state of submission to islamic law (see Q: 8:39). Because islam was, is, and aspires to be a form of government and a system of laws, it’s extremely resistant to separation of church and state (e.g. all true islamic states are theocracies).
Christianity: Christ did not establish an earthly kingdom. Instead, he expressly rejected earthly power, stating “my kingdom is not of this world” and “render unto Caesar what is Caesars,” making separation of church and state not only theologically feasible, but desirable as well.
2. Adultery:
Islam: Mohammad ordered the stoning of an adulterous woman. As a result, stoning for adultery is enshrined as a central feature of islamic law up to the present day.
Christianity: Christ forgave the adulterous woman, saying, “Whoever is without sin, cast the first stone.”
2. Enemies:
Islam: Mohammad had his critics assassinated (e.g. Asma Bint Marwan, Abu Afak), and ordered his men to fight those who do not accept islam until they “feel themselves subdued and pay the jizyah (protection money to muslim overlords) with willing submission.” Q 9:29. This is why muslims find it intolerable when non-muslims violate islamic law – e.g. “cartoon rage” was world wide murderous hissy fit precipitated by a violation of islamic laws against blasphemy.
Christianity: ” . . . But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you, and persecute you.”
Apostasy:
Islam: Mohammad said, “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.” According to all schools of Sunni islam, as well as the Shia, up to the present time, the punishment for apostasy for a sane, muslim male, is death. There are numerous recent stories out of somalia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Saud, illustrating that this is a very abiding feature of islamic law.
Christianity: Apostasy and blasphemy are not punishable offenses under the New Testament (See treatment of ‘Enemies,’ above).
Women/marriage:
Islam: Islam permits polygamy and also allows a muslim male an unlimited number of female sex slaves. Enforced concubinage of women as ‘fruits of jihad’(so called “holy war”) was one of the primary drivers of islamic expansion. The on-going jihad against christians and animists in Sudan is the most recent example. Marriage, niqa, is basically a contract to f*ck for a term of years, with many of the various terms up for negotiation, including, as in the case with the Shia mutah marriages, the term, which can be as short as a couple of hours (rending the clerics who arrange such marriages on a serial basis, basically “pimps” operating with religious sanction.)
Christianity: Conceives of marriage as a permanent covenant between one man and one woman.
Golden rule:
Islam: You won’t find it because it doesn’t exist in islam. There’s one set of rules for muslim men, and another for muslim women and non-muslims. How you are treated under islamic law is entirely dependent on your sex and your religion. (e.g. muslim woman’s testimony worth half of man’s, Muslim cannot be executed for killing a non-muslim, blood price varies depending on sex and religion of victim with non-muslim women at the bottom, etc.)
Christianity:
Golden rules is Christianity’s core ethical teaching: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you . . ” and “love one another as I have loved you. . .”
Those are just the differences that occur to me off the top of my head. Quite frankly, anyone who thinks that islam is indistinguishable from christianity is profoundly ignorant of both subjects.
I subscribed (and sent those gift subscriptions) for almost 30 years. Until last year, I too tired of the subtle anti-Christian and anti-American bias, so I let my subscription lapse and didn’t send any gift subscriptions.
I should’ve written a letter too.
An informative article on slavery (with bibliography) and the differences between Christian and Islamic attitudes about it are at truthandgrace.com: http://www.truthandgrace.com/muslimslavery.htm
Cichawoda said: Simple test: can you point to distinctly European comunities or racial influences in N Africa left from the slave trade? Let me point out the influence of Africans on both North and South America.
Here is your answer in an excerpt from the above article:
“A comparison of the Muslim slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts. While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Muslim slave trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.
While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Transsahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%!
While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service.
While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive.
While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth.
It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States).
82. Omar: – here is a start:
Exodus 34:11–27
11 Observe what I command you today. See, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
12 Take care not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going, or it will become a snare among you.
13 You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles
14 (for you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God).
15 You shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to their gods, someone among them will invite you, and you will eat of the sacrifice.
16 And you will take wives from among their daughters for your sons, and their daughters who prostitute themselves to their gods will make your sons also prostitute themselves to their gods.
17 You shall not make cast idols.
18 You shall keep the festival of unleavened bread. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt.
19 All that first opens the womb is mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep.
20 The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem.
No one shall appear before me empty-handed.
21 For six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in ploughing time and in harvest time you shall rest.
22 You shall observe the festival of weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering at the turn of the year.
23 Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel.
24 For I will cast out nations before you, and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year.
25 You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, and the sacrifice of the festival of the passover shall not be left until the morning.
26 The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God.
You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
I received NG through a subscription that my grandpa had. For years we got them every month in the mail. I loved to look at their photography and eventually learned to read it without constantly reaching to the dictionary which improved my English from 70 to 90% cabability of understanding. But not too many years ago after I emmigrated to the US in 1990 I canceled my subscription because it became more and more a spokes person for climate change, irresponsible logging, and a whole slew of agendas that I could not and would not agree with. A shame that a magazine as wonderful as it was became such a spokes organ for all the liberal extreme left leaning quack.
And if I may add to Omar’s comment:
“According to Christian ethics lying is a sin; In Islamic jurisprudence and theology, the use of taqiyya against the unbelievers is regarded as a virtue and a religious duty.”
http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/25320
I heard the Arab Christians became extinct because American soldiers passed out Bibles in Iraq before the Pentagon had the chance to seize these “Infidel Manuals” and have them burned. Maybe that was a different magazine, then …
An awful lot of people here are saying, paraphrasing, “Gee the NG used to be a good magazine but it’s gotten messed up in the last few years because of leftist MSM bias etc. etc.” But the truth is NG has *always* been extremely hostile towards the Jewish state, barely recognizing that it even exists and has generally been condescending towards Jews at best and downright bigoted at worst. If you wonder why, just consider who is their greatest hero – Charles Lindbergh.
We are all wasting our breath. All schools of “journalism” are as surely schools of Socialism as BibLe Colleges are schools of fundamentalist Christianity. All the major popular magazines, NG, Audobon, Smithsonian, Popular Science, Scientific American, are edited and staffed by committed Socialists (they prefer to call themselves Liberals), whose objective is a one-party Republic – totally in the tank for Obama and his Stalinsky Chicago cabal. They are drunk with eupohoria, in control of the White House and the Congress.
They are so damn dumb that they don’t care whether their circulations plummet, though they cannot survive on a socialist subscription base.
They figure the government will take them over. But even socialists will soon get fed up reading the same gospel in every publication. It is the same with artists and actors. When the Big Man takes over, only the bigest brown-nosers will survive, so long as they do exactly what they are told, and accept whatever compensation is provided. No negotiating. No recourse to unbiased adjudicators. No courts of appeal. Those who achieved the material rewards of high recognition in our Excetioanlist Culture, will become serfs, just as surely as the dishwasher in the State’s official hamburger “cafes”.
They are so drunk with the joys of campaigning. they are going to keep on doing it, while the realities of running an economy are about to bring them down.
This Administration, with its eagerness to jam socialism down our throats and up our rectums as fast and hard is possible, is dizzy with the ecstasy of “We Won. You lost. Deal with it!”. It pulled off a brilliant scam, a bloodless coup based on “Rules For Radicals”. What they didn’t learn from Stalinksy is what you have to do to actually run a country. They have a totally disorganized administrative force of opportunists, and doctrinaire hacks, frantically creating an economic nightmare certain to generate a powerful and bitter backlash.
Socialist magazines, united for a glorious Socialist Republic of America.
Basically, #82 says it all in a nutshell. Great entry!!
And now, for a bit of levity.
Did these terrorists know that the bit about the 72 virgins is actually a mistranslation from the original Arabic?
It was supposed to be ONE 72 year old virgin!!
#77 — Since when do conservatives not believe in “science?” Just an engineer asking. Oh, you mean the whole “creation vs. evolution” thing. IC.
Yep. That’s the one. Dirt simple to prove it, too.
Most conservatives profess to accept the reality of evolution (i.e. a natural explanation) but then turn around and think that morals came from Abraham’s god.
Ummm… no. If evolution is reality and science is about understanding nature then *all* human attributes came about via evolution. Somewhere along the way sentience begets morality. Evolution isn’t limited to fingers, bipedalism, and spleen structure.
Now, watch the conservatives start howling in 3…2…1…
#88 — But the truth is NG has *always* been extremely hostile towards the Jewish state…
Conversely, it could also be a lack of fawning and emphasis on reportage of verifiable fact as opposed to “commonly held belief” or oral history. Or maybe an editorial position that tries to maintain an appearance of not cheerleading. It would be a bit difficult for a magazine to maintain institutional bias like what you assert. How would they do it? Litmus test reporters and accept anti-semites only?
The NG position re global warming is an example; they are reporting what they believe to be scientific truth. I don’t think there’s a secret editorial board buried in a bunker who says “OK, the truth is X but we’ll report Y to appease our socialist master plans… bwa ha ha ha!” More likely, it’s a function of science reporters being innumerate journo majors and not scientists.
This argument is easier to accept since you can see the same thing in war reporting. Reporter covers the dog show in Peoria in March, and in May she’s reporting from Iraq. She knows nothing about tactics, logistics, what’s right, what’s wrong, and so on. So what does she do? Take pictures of dead kids from a checkpoint tragedy because she’s shocked out of her skull and then breathlessly reports that ultimately, she doesn’t really know anything useful, but the pics show that war is a nasty business. Later, mom and pop back home see her report as a leftist plot to make soldiers appear to be baby killers.
So… is it more likely that there’s really a secret cabal of marxists using the unwitting dupes at NG to further their nefarious agenda, or simple incompetence?
“Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” — Napoleon Bonaparte
Yes, Phyllis, cancel subscriptions to NG and let them know. But even more, may I suggest, that money that went to NG should now be diverted to puboishers and journals who are cocnerned with fairness, truth, and moral principles. No one will notice the loss of subscriptions until that money–and all the intelligence, experience, and skill–creates something powerful and effective to take the place of NG.
Norman
Just two quick notes:
1) I agree with #24 DD: “Actually, cancelling subscriptions is fine, but those who do should also take the time to write to advertisers in the magazine and tell them what you are doing and why. Advertisers may be unaware that they are supporting a biased anti-west magazine.
and #94 Norman Simms: “… money that went to NG should now be diverted to publishers and journals who are concerned with fairness, truth, and moral principles.”
2) I have friends in North Africa who are Berbers and who, BEFORE ISLAM forced them to convert, were actually Jews! They are totally supportive of Israel, speak & write Hebrew, love and pursue their Hebrew roots but continue to practice Islam openly because of the pressures on them if they don’t!
To #1 George: If you really think that what you said is true, you don’t know history or at least history of the Middle East at all!
The blame placed on Israel, American Christians etc. is ridiculous. But Phyllis gives the Crusaders a pass she should not. The murders committed by Crusaders against Jews in Europe on the way to the Middle East are well documented and as George J. pointed out Jews in Jerusalem and Muslims were slaughtered by the Crusaders (and in Haifa too). Islam did conquer the Middle East and did establish dhimmitude with its many disabilities but for the most part life under Islam was not as difficult as life for Jews in Christendom until the modern age (and even then there was the Holocaust). The romanticizing of a Golden Age for Jews under Islam has been corrected in the last two decades (it held for a time in Spain before Maimonides; but dissolved when Maimonides was growing up as Phylllis noted when the Almohades gave Jews conversion or death or exile as a choice). But there seems in the light of the terrors of jihadist Islam today a revisionism among Christians and some Jews about life for Jews under Christian rule that is contrary to fact. Standing against jihadist Islam today does not require whitewashing the Christian demonization of Jewry for 2,000 years. The key is for us to see that we must take the political steps to stop and defeat jihadist Islam and to note that today the Vatican has diplomatic relations with Israel and has dropped the false charge of deicide; the Lutheran church apologized for Martin Luther’s anti semitism etc. One day, perhaps, Islam will follow suit. Establishing democracy and democratic values will help though it will take a long time. Meanwhile let’s not re-write history. Much of modern Islamic demonological views of Jews stems from Christian anti-semitism of the 19th century brought in by European colonialism and later by the alliance with Nazi Germany and also by the post WWII alliance with the Soviet Union which demonized Jews at the end of Stalin’s reign and during Brezhnev’s rule. Bat Yeor makes many excellent points about dhimmitude and about the Koran’s negative attitudes towards Jews but the deep demonology about Jews is not present in classical Islam the way it is in classical Christianity. Contempt is however and this is key to the hatred of Israel which represents an almost cosmic violation to Islam since dhimmis may worship according to their traditions but may not hold sovereignty anywhere. The current state of affairs stems from the confluence of all these factors. Again, the modern post Holocaust Christian-Jewish alliance (looking for modern Muslims to join) against Jihadist Islam is essential; but let’s not re-write history.
Some books to read in addition to Bat Yeor’s excellent work:
Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages by Marc Cohen
The Jews of Islam by Bernard Lewis
The Satanizing of the Jews by Joel Carmichael
The November 1980 issue of Midstream “Muslim Scholars on Peace with Israel” by Ronald Nettler
Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred by Robert Wistrich
National Socialism and Anti-Semitism in the Arab World by Mattias Kuntzel in Jewish Political Studies Review Spring 2005 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
“94. Norman Simms:
…should now be diverted to puboishers and journals who are cocnerned with fairness, truth, and moral principles.”
Pray tell which magazines you would suggest?
Here’s another great(and very short) resource about the differences between islamic violence and christian violence by the author of “The Al Qaeda Reader,” Raymond Ibrahim:
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/ibrahim040607.html
For those who have been subjected to the extremely slanted and incomplete history courses which completely whitewash and sometimes utterly delete the role of islamic supremacism in history, I would suggest Andrew Bostom, “The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims.”
To the extent that preachy bias is increasingly evident in the pages of National Geographic, it is hoped that that publication will see a decline in circulation, â la Newsweek et al.
Editors and writers of national magazines seem more and more inclined to use their publications as vehicles to promote personal ideology. Recall, for example, that “respected” British medical journal, The Lancet, that came to be somewhat less respected when its ideologist in chief, Dr. Richard Horton, used its pages for promulgation of a very questionable Johns Hopkins survey which grossly exaggerated numbers of Iraqi deaths.
#92 GAlston – What? “If evolution is reality and science is about understanding nature then *all* human attributes came about via evolution. Somewhere along the way sentience begets morality.”
You sound very pompous man! My science training taught me to keep an open mind about things but I can also accept that there are absolutes in the world. You presume to know what I believe and then you spout a bunch of jibberish that shows you don’t even think before you engage your mouth, I mean index fingers.
So, if evolution began with a big bang, where did the chamber come from within which the big bang could occur? What provided the “spark” that ignited the big bang? What provided the initial material that generated the first life form? If the Second Law of Thermodynamics is that “all things tend towards chaos,” how did millions of life forms develop on this earth? I’m not sure. I know you don’t know, no matter how much you claim to be able to prove your view.
As far as morality is concerned, most life exists in a symbiotic, elegant design. Man is the one to have morals whether good or bad. The liberal/socialist believes that their god is government. It will make things “fair” since life on its own is not fair.
I posit that liberals are freaks of nature because they do not live in symbiotic relationship with reality. They have mental disorders and inferiority complexes that make them want to control others.
Publications like Nat Geo are not science but reports twisted to fit the disturbed view liberals have of the world. They may be based on “observation” but their conclusions are pre-determined. Not very scientific in my book.
My “news” of choice is becoming more and limited.
I hope everyone will cancel their NG subscriptions and stop watching their channel or supporthing them in any way. I haven’t read or even looked at one of these magazines in years – it’s funny because when I have in the past, it never felt “right” to me – must have just been intuition because I was much younger and non-involved in political thoughts at that time.
There is no morality in evolution. Evolution is about survival of the fittest, and what animal gets to have some other animal for lunch. Winner takes all.
REPLY TO GEORGE JOCHNOWITZ’S REVISIONIST HISTORICAL CLAIM THAT THERE WERE NO JEWS IN ISRAEL BETWEEN THE CRUSADES AND 1492.
JEWS NEVER LEFT ISRAEL. THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JEWS IN THE LAND. WHERE DID GEORGE JOCHNOWITZ GET HIS REVISIONIST HISTORY FROM?
TRY READING THE TALMUD. IT IS QUITE CLEAR AND YOU WILL BE ENLIGHTENED.
Rachel, here’s an article that helps make your point: http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~samuel/presence.html
Speaking of Jews, Crusaders and Palestinians. . . when the First Crusade stormed Jerusalem, the Moslem inhabitants looked for help—from Egypt. There was no resident “Palestinian King”, oligarchy, or army willing, or able, to mount a defense. Islamic Jerusalem, at that time, apparently considered itself subservient to Egypt.
Mad Hakim, the guy who actually helped bring down the wrath of the Crusaders, was from the Fatmid Dynasty. Again—no “Palestinian” king, oligarchy, army, nobles, etc. This article also shows how much fun (sarc.) it was for Jews, Christians, and those Moslems who weren’t considered quite up to snuff in Islam at the time. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1592498/alhakim_the_mad.html?cat=37
Rachel Saidi,
I didn’t say that there were no Jews in Israel between the Crusades and 1492. What I said was that there were no Jews in Jerusalem after 1099, when the Crusaders killed every Jew who didn’t manage to escape. Among my many sources are Cecil Roth;s A SHORT HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, Salo W. Baron’s multi-volume HISTORY OF THE JEWS, and James Carroll’s CONSTANTINE’S SWORD. Historian after historian has written about the murders of Jews by the Crusaders. Under no circumstances can the view that the Crusaders killed the Jews in Jerusalem be considered revisionist
I haven’t read all the Talmud, but I have certainly read parts of it. The Talmud has nothing to say about events in 1099, since it was completed cceturies before that.
#99 — You presume to know what I believe and then you spout a bunch of jibberish…
The modern anti-scientific premise is that evolution is real but man is special. Even the Catholic church uses this one.
Although off-topic, I’m happy to answer your questions.
So, if evolution began with a big bang, where did the chamber come from within which the big bang could occur?
Evolution didn’t start with the big bang. That’s astrophysics and cosmology stuff. Darwin described how life adapts, not how it came to be.
If the Second Law of Thermodynamics is that “all things tend towards chaos,” how did millions of life forms develop on this earth?
Ahhh, the entropy argument. I’ll take “the earth isn’t a closed system” for $1000. This explains it better:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/creationism.html
***
If you have any other questions, fire away. My gibberish-fu is at a peak this month.
80. Listen up:
That’s because all the Jews that voted for Obama are the self-hating kind.
As usual, follow the money trail.
I suspect that NG’s bias is the product of a carefully researched attempt to resonate with the biases of the audience. That audience, in broadest terms, is what might be called the second-string hinterland intelligentsia; NEA teachers, cow-college faculty and grad students, local “art and culture” pretenders, low-level investors, small time media professionals, and bourgeois status-seekers of every sort. This class lacks historical perspective, to say nothing of strategic insight, but is exquisitely attuned to media trends and to at least the possbility of a gain in financial status.
That road leads firmly to the trough through which petro-dollars are recycled in the form of grants, gifts, and laxly unmonitored investment capital.
At some point you folks have to wonder, “Why is everyone against us?”
This is just one of the reasons we allowed our subscription to lapse 11 years ago. Yes, it has been leaning left for at least that long.
Chesler needs to condense her argument into one simple article: “The Whole Universe Is Anti-Israel.” That would release her from the chore of writing inadvertently comic polemics against the most determinedly inoffensive, venerable publication on the planet.
#105 George Yohsnowitz
I have digged in your link and appreciated to read your articles about yiddish languages… blank slate
BettyBlue said:
“There is no morality in evolution. Evolution is about survival of the fittest, and what animal gets to have some other animal for lunch. Winner takes all.”
Incorrect, at least the survival of the fittest part. Evolution which is still a “theory” is based on natural selection, sometimes the biggest and the baddest animals that are having anything they want for lunch end up being the losers. Sometimes the meekest and mildest but more adaptable end up being the winners. “Natural selection” is not “survival of the fittest”.
Even after the Crusades, there were still Jews in the Holy Land. They were kicked out of Jerusalem, I believe, but they were still in the Holy Land. Safed was one place they lived.
In the Talmud, G-d promises the Holy Land to to Jews. For always.
I think we got an anti-semite at #109. How very charming. . .
/Sarc.
Sentience does not beget morality. As far as Darwinian logic is concerned, there is nothing better than stealing another’s mate, and rape is a close second. After all, what could possibly be better to pass on your genes than to trick another into raising your offspring as his own, or failing that, force a female to bare your offspring involuntarily? You invest nothing, but reap full benefit.
However, our morality says that adultery is evil, and rape is even worse. Get a clue.
George Jochnowitz
It’s easy for any historian to state that x amount of people were wiped out in a given city because archeologists found y documents , remains and other historical relics that depicted the massacre committed by the invaders a thousand years ago . Here is the problem , unless those historians you quoted were literally there and were able to see the actual massacre , interviewed the survivors and all that jazz , what we have is just a very limited account of what really happened there . Hell , for all we know , there might be a third of the Jewish population that survived in Jerusalem after the sack of the city , they just managed to pass themselves off as Christians , or was saved due to circumstances of luck , mercy , wealth or cunning . One more thing , explain to me the other Jews that were living in towns and cities in the Levant or small villages . Heck , if truth be told , the Christian Crusades killed a large number of the Jewish population after the fall of Jerusalem and send the rest fled in fear and they and many Jews living at the surrounding lands returned to Jerusalem not in numbers that existed after the sack of Jerusalem , but significant enough for Iberian Jews to live in Jerusalem to intermarry and flourish until the 19th century when European Jews started resettling the Holy Land .
One more thing , the implications of what you are stating is extremely disconcerting at the very least . What you are implying is this , since the original Jews were wiped out in Jerusalem during the First Crusade and the next group of Jews were exiles of the Spanish Inquisition , I can safely assume that you are arguing that the ownership of the land called Israel or Palestine defaults to the Arabs or those so called Palestinians because there was a 393 yr gap in which there was no Jews alive in Jerusalem and in the Holy Land and therefore Israel have no right to exist and the Palestinians have a complete and total right to the land .
sheesh,
In a fallen world the good are persecuted. It has been ever thus.
Wil,
I absolutely am not saying that the land defaults to the Arabs. I am a strong supporter of Israel. What I am saying is that the Crusaders were murderous.
Betty Blue – Why use “G-d” at all? Trying not to be offensive to someone? Wanting to be PC and all that?
Look, if you believe in God, just use God. No one is going to reach through the monitor and slap you. If you don’t believe in God, still use God. Don’t let the PC police use their intimidation to mold you to their views. This is just another example of socialism at work. And by using “G-d” you are abetting their power.
#108 GAlston – I have to give you credit for trying. Like a good liberal, it is your intent that matters.
Fact is you display your ignorance by proclaiming to have all the answers. You are the one that stated that morals are a direct result of evolution. I was speaking about the scientific method and inquiry. Why don’t you understand that I am going past the evolution step to the creation of the universe before life existed. Just being dense I guess. Can’t even stay on point.
As for entropy, that would be the First Law of Thermodynamics which states that the amount of energy in existence remains constant. It only changes forms over time. Hah, and you answer “the earth isn’t a closed system.” What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Go ahead smartass, give it a go with another answer.
Yes, you do have all the answers and your mind is a closed system. It has liberal programming. Garbage in, garbage out.
Yes, the Crusaders were murderous. So were the Moslems, when they wiped out Jewish tribes, invaded India and sacked Constantinople.
And this has something to do with today—why, exactly? When I last checked, the Crusades ended centuries ago.
And, no, Crusader brutality to the Jews does not mean that the land defaults to the Arabs. G-d does not break His promise to the Jews, because of the cruelty of other nations.
As for the Palestinians—a lot of them didn’t actually live in the Holy Land until the Zionists began reclaiming it. At that time, they streamed in, looking for work.
Arafat himself, that puffed-up symbol of “Palestine”, was born in Egypt.
http://www.gpii.precaution.ch/?cat=15
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)
Robert Spencer
is not contradicting G Jochnowitz
And, yes, it’s too bad the Crusaders were murderous. Seeing as they were mainly a French endeavor, I guess you’d have to try and pin the blame on the French—of course, they’ve got problems of their own, at the moment. Anyway, most of the great French families who were the descendants of the nobles who organized the Crusades, lost their heads, their fortunes, or both during the Revolution. So, I’m not exactly sure who we can blame at this point. Maybe Sarkozy could issue an apology, but that seems pretty silly.
Maybe it’s better if we focus on the problems of today?
Geneva Convention: A country which is attacked has the right to keep the land it gains in trying to protect itself from its enemy.
Betty Blue, may-be you ignore that the Crusaders who murdered the Jews were Germans… in Germany, Many french nobles and chuch responsibles voiced against that. Though if the French murdered any in Orient, it was mainly becuz they were siding the muslims against the crusaders (they did so cuz they heard of germany’s acts), otherwise, the Jews preferred to be ruled under the french protection
http://www.histoiredesjuifs.com/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=8719
also these nobles didn’t lose their heads during french revolution, they mostly belonged to the templars order
When I’m in a dentist/doctor’s office and find a copy of NG, rather than behave like a dirty hippie vandal, I politely turn it cover down and bury it under copies of Southern Living, Archetical Digest and Womens World.
Same for Time and Newsweek, try it yourself.
On Evolution:
“The Descend of Man” was published in 1871, twelve years after “The Origin of Species”. The basis of these works are atheist and materialist, very much in accordance with the times. That is all fine as long as they prescribe the outward evolution occurring on the material realm.
Behind stands the spirit driving the material evolution. This more esoteric part deals with the involution of the divine in matter. Its explanation is in how the divine ascends to knowledge (vidya) from the cosmic ignorance (avidya). Up to recent times, it was an unconscious process, for the first time in the 20th century, spiritual evolution has become conscious, meaning humans have a role to play in it.
Without spiritual evolution, there is no reconciliation of life and spirit. Regular religious lore splits life into the spiritual and the mundane. Truly at first man had to affirm, make distinct and rich, possess and develop, his own individuality. Further discovery that the true individuality is not the ego, but the spiritual core in the soul that carries knowledge from life to life, a process that cannot be completed in one single lifetime, points fundamentally to an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place all along in Nature, of which the material part is but its grosser manifestation.
Mind has been established on earth for thousands of years, resulting in Mental Man. Human life is imperfect because mind is imperfect, an imperfect organ of knowledge that at best gropes in opposites, and does not reflect the native dynamism of Gnostic knowledge. Man is not final. However, help is needed because imperfection can never grow by itself to perfection.
I posit that liberals are freaks of nature because they do not live in symbiotic relationship with reality. They have mental disorders and inferiority complexes that make them want to control others.
This is such a perfect description. I will use this daily. Thank you.
120. scott . . . “In a fallen world the good are persecuted. It has been ever thus.”
I have gay freinds who say the same thing.
Marie Claude :
S’il vous plaît permettez-moi de pratiquer mon français.
Commissaire Juve – Robert Spencer ensemble avec les juifs Daniel Pipes et David Horowitz sont à l’avant-garde de démasquer l’islam aux États-Unis. Consultez ce site, très intéressant: http://www.frontpagemag.com/.
Certaines personnes soutiennent qu’il existe un islam radical, mais c’est un oxymoron. L’Islam est radical, sans aucune aide extérieure! Geert Wilders est toujours en nous rappelant de ce fait.
Votre ami qui désire le meilleur pour vous,
Fanfan La Tulipe (MiamaMan)
Please check out interesting follow up article about Demjanjuk affair in Munich in Der Spiegel:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,625824,00.html
#132 YOLO – de nada!
Awww, poor Sheesh and his gay friends. . . because people say mean things about them, that makes it okay for you to be anti-semetic, I guess.
Makes sense. (Not).
I have believed for some time that NG was deceptive in that it makes the most squalid scenes seem beautiful through its photography. I suggest that if every photograph had a ‘scratch and sniff’ attached to it, the magazine would be more honest.
Marie, I think you missed the whole point of my post—mainly, that I think it’s ridiculous to try assigning past guilt to contemporary problems, or hash over the crimes of the past, arguing about who was guilty of what. Whoever did what back then, German, French, Rastafarian, whoever, they’re long dead.
And whatever the Crusaders did, it shouldn’t be used to decide whether or not Jews have a place in the Holy Land today.
And the Crusades have been used as sort of a baseball bat, to whack everybody upside the head when the subject of modern day problems in the Middle-East comes up, and the original topic gets lost in a history hash.
(Myself, I blame the Knights Templars, who, as is well known, were in cahoots with reptilian space aliens, planning to steal earth women, and put flouride in our drinking water.)
Er, not surprised, I use “G-d” in difference to some Jewish posters, who are uncomfortable with “taking the lord’s name in vain.” It’s not PC, just respect for Judaism, which, in my opinion, doesn’t get enough respect these days.
Myself, I do believe in G-d. Not that it’s any of your business. And the only slap through the screen I’ve ever gotten for doing this is from you, hissing and spitting, “IT’S JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF SOCIALISM AT WORK!”
Chill.
110. Jimmy Reynolds:
As usual, follow the money trail.
You nailed it, dude.
117. BettyBlue:
Oh no, I love Jews. More than many of them love themselves
I loved National Geographic from the age of 7 – sharks, faraway places, new science. I read it for decades. We also subscribed to Traveler and the kid’s magazine once I had little ones. Then about ten years or so ago, the whole tenor of the magazine changed. Suddenly a lot of very liberal PC type comments started showing up in articles. Instead of articles on faraway places, we saw repeat articles on Harlem and inner city life, junk science and similar topics. I canceled all the subscriptions.
I bet there’s a market out there for the old style National Geographic – may be after the crash of the MM is finished, some survivor will start one up.
Ms. Chesler – Thank you, as always.
To any readers who appreciate Ms. Chesler’s perspectives, you may want to check out Carolyn Glick, if you don’t already know of her. She writes with incredible lazer sharp intelligence on issues pertaining to Israel, the Middle East, U.S. policy and such. Truly illuminating work:
http://www.carolineglick.com/e/
As for introducing energy to closed systems, my very favorite method of writing a novel is to take a bucket of ink, a couple cherry bomb firecrackers, and put this all into a box with a couple hundred sheets of paper. Light a long fuse….
Wa la, New York Times bestselling novel.
It makes far more sense than believing that importing energy from the sun can cause the earth to suddenly bloom with millions of lines of genetic information. We only know one source for information–Mind.
And if I want to finish my comedic novel on Darwin, I’m going to have to work at it. Evolution ain’t going to help me.
(Myself, I blame the Knights Templars, who, as is well known, were in cahoots with reptilian space aliens, planning to steal earth women, and put flouride in our drinking water.)
uh, ????
“Uh????” was kinda my reaction to your post, Marie.
#123 — Fact is you display your ignorance by proclaiming to have all the answers.
Undoubtedly you know this from all of your science training. Good stuff, that.
Regarding your lame attempt at insulting me: it makes me appreciate just how effective and rare good insults are.
#118 — Sentience does not beget morality.
You could argue the opposite arrangement but “Cogito Ergo Sum” suggests otherwise.
#144 — Wa la, New York Times bestselling novel.
The phrase you wanted is “voila.” (‘There it is’)
Don’t spell it as Viola, either. You’ll upset the orchestra geeks no end.
ah OKKee, a fairy tale !
My parents started my subscription to NG in 1964 and after an article in 2008 that was blantantly pro-Palestinian and biased against Israel I asked them to cancel (44 years later). In addition, I called NG to complain.
This degradation of the institution of National Geographic is shameful and a result of the leftist pollution of our educational system … especially in the arts.
Allez Marie Claude cesser les combats avec des gens d’ici et d’imposer votre tryint politiquement correct soupe français.
Buvez un Pastis, fumer un Gauloises et laissez les personnes vivant seules.
uh, ????
I did not read the article as I canceled my subscription years ago. I was also weary of the global warming propaganda. This is appalling. Islam is a very dangerous political/religous ideology with only one goal, to convert all of us to Islam. There is no moderation. It is considered the word of God, and changing it would mean God is wrong and God cannot be wrong. Those who are the most radical are actually following it most truly. I agree with 19 about telling liberals the truth. In fact I used the same phrase. When you try to explain how dangerous this is and that Islam is not a religion of peace and that Mohammed was just a blood thirsty camel raider with a great idea to conquer the world, you get a “deer in the headlights” look and the subject gets changed. If we throw Israel under the bus we will deserve what we get. Shame on you National Geogrphic for perpetuating this garbage
MiamaMan, the opinions, it’s you ! je n’ai fait que rapporter des faits historiques
Man, that 72 year old virgin must be very tired!
Oui, oui, bien sûr, les faits historiques en fonction de Madame Marie Claude.
Avez-vous déjà acheté votre Burqa? Rappelez-vous, il vient à toi comme un météore. Il ya maintenant un peu de qui utilise un ventilateur de l’intérieur, vous le savez Al Gore du réchauffement de la planète.
#140 Betty Blue -
So angry! I was merely stating my observation, more than just your use, of bloggers who seem to be PC by using “G-d” as if to spell out “God” will be offensive to those who do not want any discussion of God or religion in the public forum.
So let’s evaluate what you said:
“Er, not surprised, I use “G-d” in difference to some Jewish posters, who are uncomfortable with “taking the lord’s name in vain.” It’s not PC, just respect for Judaism, which, in my opinion, doesn’t get enough respect these days.
Reply: using the word God in a discussion is not “using the lord’s name in vain,” although I understand there may be Jewish sects that shy away from any use of God, El, Elohim, El Shaddai, Addonai in a verbal way.
Myself, I do believe in G-d. Not that it’s any of your business.
Reply: I did not ask whether or not you believed, I said “if …”
And the only slap through the screen I’ve ever gotten for doing this is from you, hissing and spitting, “IT’S JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF SOCIALISM AT WORK!”
Reply: I’m sorry you took my comments as a slap through the screen. I was only stating that I am sick, and tired of political correctness, especially when it comes to God and religion in the public square.
I’ve read your other posts and tend to agree with you in your opinions. I am only talking about the “G-d” thing. What we are learning about Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is the importance of removing religion from our culture in order for socialist strategies to be effectively implemented. We need to fight this at every turn.
Please accept my inputs as just that and not some kind of personal attack. I don’t know if other’s use this same designation as a “bow” to Jewish readership. But it is widely used, I presume by liberals and not as a “bow” to jewish folks.
Note: Just another input “… in difference to some Jewish posters” should read “in deference …” I think that is what you meant.
#156 — I was only stating that I am sick, and tired of political correctness, especially when it comes to God and religion in the public square.
What PC are you referring to here? Are there forces seeking to squelch discussion of same?
WhyamInotsurprised—Oh, please! That wasn’t a personal attack? Yah. Right. Try another. “IT’S JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF SOCIALISM AT WORK!”
I’m sorry that you’re tired of political correctness. But, as I explained, I wasn’t being politically correct. I have posted on other blogs where Jewish posters would spell God, “G-d”. I didn’t realize that by doing so I was abetting liberal power.
I was not following Alinsky’s rules. I’ve never heard of liberals doing that, and, no, we’re not going to get into a debate about whether this is, or isn’t, taking God’s name in vain, from either a Christian or Jewish point of view, or nitpick about “deference” as opposed to “difference”—you knew what I meant.
Next time you might want to think before going into attack—er, “input” mode.
There is no attempt to squelch discussion of either God, or religion here—at least on my part. Not surprised is reacting to what he mistakenly thinks is political-correctness on my part.
80. Listen Up –
<>
I agree. Maybe they’ll wake up once the mignight, torch lit, marches start, but I bet they wait for burning synagogues and streets full of glass before they snap out of their “Progressive” hypnosis. It’s sad to watch.
Regards
This article is no surprise to me. It is just another example of the battle that rages between good and evil. Folks,we’re are in a spiritual war which pits Islam against Judaism and Christianity and which began when Abraham and Sarah didn’t wait on the promise of God for a son, but took matters into their own hands and had Ishmael with Hagar. Islam came through Ishmael’s bloodline; Christianity came through Isaac’s bloodline. And now, thousands of years later, we are still feeling the effects of Abraham’s decision. Galations4:21-31.
Do not be deceived, Jesus Christ said of himself that He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that no one comes to the Father (God) except through him. John 14:6.
I also know though, that many who read these words will not believe or understand because God himself, through His Word, states that the natural man cannot receive the things of the spirit of God because they are foolishness to him and neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14.
My prayer is that there will be more and more unbelievers, misguided souls, and Muslims led to the redemptive power and love of Christ.
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