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Here are the Blogs in the NER category.
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Some Recent Issues Of The TLS
by Hugh Fitzgerald (March 2010)
A friend of mine keeps his issues of the Times Literary Supplement (hereinafter known as the TLS) and every few weeks I pick up a batch of those he has read, while taking care not to pick up those he has not yet read, or not read to his heart’s content. This morning I went by his house, and as is my wont entered, went up to the room with the magazines, and taking care to leave everything on top of the table, but not those copies of the TLS that were in a magazine rack under the table, picked up two issues –January 15 and January 22. I’ve had a chance to read through them, and thought I’d share some of what I read with you. more>>> Posted on 03/03/2010 6:09 AM by NER
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Protest of Muslim Capitol Day in Tallahassee, Florida: an Interview with Tom Trento
by Jerry Gordon (March 2010)
Muslim Capitol Day in Tallahassee returns for a second time this March at the start of the Florida legislative session on March 11th. The Florida Security Council (FSC) is protesting this event. Their theme this year is America on Guard against the Muslim Brotherhood agenda in the guise of “supremacist Islam.” more>>>Posted on 03/03/2010 5:15 PM by NER
Monday, 1 March 2010
We Have a Winner!
Mr. Dwight Green of California has won our crossword for February. Richard Rubenstein graciously autographed his book, Jihad and Genocide for him and it will be on its way today.
Honorable mention goes to Aymenn Jawad of Wales and Richard Steinberg of New York.
Thanks to everyone who entered and keep trying! Posted on 03/01/2010 7:45 AM by NER
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Thank You For Not Expressing Yourself
by Theodore Dalyrmple (March 2010)
Not every devotee of reason is himself reasonable: that is a lesson that the convinced, indeed militant, atheist, Richard Dawkins, has recently learned. It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration to say that he has learned it the hard way, for what he has suffered hardly compares with, say, what foreign communists suffered when, exiling themselves to Moscow in the 1920s and 30s, they learnt the hard way that barbarism did not spring mainly, let alone only, from the profit motive; but he has nevertheless learned it by unpleasant experience. more>>>
Posted on 02/28/2010 5:48 PM by NER
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Echoes of the Holocaust
by Rebecca Bynum (March 2010)
by Richard L. Rubenstein
Rowman and Littlefield, 2010
260 pgs.
The first thing that strikes one in assessing Professor Rubenstein’s work, aside from his tight, non-nonsense style and meticulously detailed research, is the overall emphasis he places on what Richard Weaver termed the “metaphysical dream” of the peoples and players in the drama of history. Rubenstein is a man who understands the Nazi worldview as well as anyone alive and understands also that it was not a fluke, but grew from the soil of industrial modernity in which men are measured in terms of production and consumption and the cold facts of competition make the elimination of “surplus populations” a constant, looming temptation for governments both internally and externally. more>>>
Posted on 02/28/2010 5:53 PM by NER
 Sunday, 28 February 2010
Rudyard Kipling, India and Edward Said
by Ibn Warraq (March 2010)
There is a marvellous passage in Kim where Kipling good-humouredly pats himself on the back and is asking for our applause for the way that he has totally immersed himself in India, and has mastered all the nuances of caste, creed and etiquette. Practically every Westerner writing gushingly about India commits unforgiveable solecisms- there are traps for the unwary and untutored. Modern films like the ridiculous “Gandhi’ are the most egregious sinners. more>>> Posted on 02/28/2010 5:56 PM by NER
Sunday, 28 February 2010
The Danish Right and the Resistance 1941-45
by Norman Berdichevsky (March 2010)
The first steps at active resistance in occupied Denmark during World War II were taken by a small “Ultra-Rightist” party, often denounced by many observers before the war as “Fascist” and known as “Dansk Samling” (Danish Unity) led by a charismatic founder, Arne Sørensen (1906-1978). This contradicts the established conventional wisdom that the political Left was everywhere in occupied Europe the source of opposition to the Nazis. more>>>
Posted on 02/28/2010 6:01 PM by NER
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Taking Memes Seriously
by Mark Signorelli (March 2010)
In his book The Selfish Gene, noted nihilist Richard Dawkins ushered the faux-concept of memes into the world by declaring it to be a “unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation,” which is exactly like referring to a unit of literary theory, or a segment of talent, or a yard of affection. Such blatant linguistic hucksterism would be startling from any other man but Dawkins, who, after all, cozened his way into authorial fame by attributing a common psychological state to tiny globs of amino acids, and then swearing up and down that he was doing no such thing. more>>> Posted on 02/28/2010 6:05 PM by NER
Sunday, 28 February 2010
The Pipes of Pan
by Geoffrey Clarfield (March 2010)
January 2010
History does not repeat itself. We cannot return and we shall never return to ancient Rome. We will never witness a meeting of the Roman Senate. We shall never witness the gladiatorial games, we shall never meet an emperor and no matter how hard we try, we cannot get modern science out of our world view or the history of the twentieth century out of our consciousness, although given the state of University education these days, the latter may be possible within the next few decades. No, for all intents and purposes, the ancient world is dead to us. more>>>Posted on 02/28/2010 6:11 PM by NER
Sunday, 28 February 2010
The Worst of Intentions
by Christopher S. Carson (March 2010)
“Dr. Spertzel, it is not a lie when you are ordered to lie.”
–Dr. “Germ” Rihab Taha, former head of Saddam’s bioweapons program, in response to UNSCOM inspectors when asked why she continued to lie in the face of proof, 1995
Although it hardly made the American news, the Rt. Hon. Anthony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007, was called to the hot seat in London in February, testifying before Britain’s Chilcot “Iraq Inquiry” in what was ubiquitously referred to as his “Day of Judgment.” It seemed the political and media classes in Great Britain expected him to beat his breast in biblical lamentation for his vile sin of deposing Saddam Hussein’s monstrous regime in 2003. Perhaps the media and political classes at least hoped to see him sweat, or even see him beg for forgiveness, the way Richard Clarke did when he testified histrionically before the 9-11 Commission just as his Bush-bashing book hit the stores. more>>>Posted on 02/28/2010 6:14 PM by NER
Sunday, 28 February 2010
In Praise of Pointlessness
by Mary Jackson (March 2010)
A film of a book can disappoint; it is better to see the two as separate than to fret over why plain Jane Eyre is pretty, or Mr Knightley young and handsome, or why Emma speaks in a South London accent. Nevertheless, I had high hopes of the 2006 film Notes on a Scandal. The novel by Zoë Heller, on which it is based, came out in 2003, so there would be no anachronisms to grate. And Judi Dench was in it. Judi Dench, like Juliet Stephenson and Helen Mirren, can transform the trashiest of films into a classic. more>>>Posted on 02/28/2010 6:17 PM by NER
Sunday, 28 February 2010
The Kings and Queens of England
by Esmerelda Weatherwax (March 2010)
Probably the most famous pub in England is the Queen Vic in the fictional Albert Square of the totally inaccurate serial East Enders. The Kings Arms, or Queen’s Head, or maybe a specifically named monarch are some of the most common pub names. These are a few. As is my usual practice with mosaic pictures clicking on them should take you to the Flickr photoshare site for a larger version. more>>> Posted on 02/28/2010 6:23 PM by NER
Sunday, 28 February 2010
An Interview with Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein
by Jerry Gordon (March 2010)
Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein is an ordained rabbi, noted theologian and author. He began his religious training at Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College, receiving the B.A. from the University of Cincinnati. He was ordained and received the Master of Hebrew Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary. He earned the Master of Theology from Harvard Divinity School and the PhD in the History of Religion from Harvard. He was also a post-doctoral fellow at Yale. For a quarter of a century he taught religious studies at Florida State University where he was named a Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor, the University’s highest academic honor. Following his retirement from FSU, Dr. Rubenstein served from 1994 to 1999 as President of the University of Bridgeport (UB), Connecticut, where he continues to serve as Distinguished Professor of Religion. Upon retirement as president, UB’s trustees named him President Emeritus for his years of meritorious service. more>>>Posted on 02/28/2010 7:33 PM by NER
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
In The Dark -- And Whistling
by Hugh Fitzgerald (February 2010)
Islam is not a hieratic mystery, where only the initiated, a special priesthood, can possibly understand. It is, rather, sufficiently grasped by more than a billion people, who save for a handful, have been born into it, and have grown up in societies suffused with it, societies where it is impermissible to question Islam, to ponder whether its directives make moral or intellectual sense, and where any open display of questioning is punished, and any open admission of apostasy can result, in many cases, in a death sentence carried out not necessarily by the Musliim state, but left up to the informal meting out of Muslim justice by Believers quick to take offense. more>>> Posted on 02/09/2010 4:22 PM by NER
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
President Grand-Père Sarkozy
by Nidra Poller (February 2010)
Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the wife of the French president’s second son, Jean, gave birth to a boy on January 13th. By no fault of his own the child was born on the day of the catastrophic Haitian earthquake. more>>> Posted on 02/03/2010 11:54 AM by NER
Monday, 1 February 2010
We Have a Winner!
Although no one actually completed this puzzle perfectly, we decided to award this month's prize to the person who completed it first, Huguette Simmonds of Trinidad & Tobago.
Congratulations Huguette! Honorable mention goes to George McCallum who writes:
The puzzles are getting harder. I couldn't solve December, and this one was almost impossible. I have a vision of a roomful of Bartlebys at Lexcentrics, cut off from sunlight, who would "prefer not" to make it easy for anyone. Oh, and I am not sure that all of my answers are correct, but that's the way it goes sometimes! Posted on 02/01/2010 8:47 AM by NER
Monday, 1 February 2010
Please Feel My Pain
by Theodore Dalrymple (February 2010)
Shortly before Mr Blair was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain, a newspaper discovered that I had not had a television in my home for about thirty years. This struck the editor of the newspaper as an extraordinary circumstance; so extraordinary in fact, rather like having been an anchorite in the Syrian desert subsisting on locusts and honey, that he contacted me to ask whether I would agree to having a television installed in my home so that I could tell readers, after a week of watching it, what I thought of it. This I consented to do on one very firm condition: that the newspaper took the television away at the end of the week. The newspaper agreed. more>>> Posted on 02/01/2010 2:59 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Why I Have Written "Jihad and Genocide"
by Richard L. Rubenstein (February 2010)
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I sat at my desk happily putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of the second edition of Approaches to Auschwitz which I co-authored with Professor John K. Roth of California’s Claremont-McKenna College.[1] I began that morning with an enormous sense of satisfaction that I was finally completing my share of a very arduous task. At the time, I had devoted the better part of a career of half a century to research, writing and lecturing on the Holocaust and the terrible phenomenon of genocide. more>>> Posted on 01/31/2010 2:38 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
The Progressive Diminishment of Man
by Rebecca Bynum (February 2010)
It may be argued that what man believes himself to be determines not only his conduct, but the substance of what he feels is possible, thus determining the scope of art and culture. The ostensible purpose of science is to serve man through the ever-expanding knowledge of facts, and yet as science has ascended, many scientists have mounted a purposeful attack on the ancient concept of man in order to diminish him in his own estimation. The feeling among scientists seems to be that man does not deserve a privileged place in the universe. more>>>
Posted on 01/31/2010 2:47 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
The Wager of Immortality
by Mark Signorelli (February 2010)
But that either this or something very like it is a true account of our souls and their future habitations – since we have clear evidence that the soul is immortal – this, I think, is both a reasonable contention and a belief worth risking, for the risk is a noble one. -the Phaedo
Nothing is more lamentable about the present intellectual condition of our society than the great flippancy with which contemporary authors regularly treat the most momentous of topics. The journalistic attitude, comprised of a pernicious congeries of arrogant self-assurance, fashionable bigotry, and incurable mental indolence, is all pervasive, and ushers into the world on a weekly basis dozens of trite, insipid, often sarcastic treatments of the gravest and most consequential questions which, for eons, have resisted the most pertinacious inquiries of philosophy and theology. There are times when the mass of contemporary authors appears like nothing so much as one large crowd of schoolchildren, dressed up in their parents' over-sized formal wear, play-acting at some adult concern, like a wedding or a funeral, yet possessing none of the maturity or sophistication to carry it off in the least convincing manner. Bishop Butler lamented how much the reverence for truth had waned in his own time; what would he say had he lived to our own age? One of the most notable evidences of this intellectual unseriousness is the habitual disrespect displayed toward the name of Blaise Pascal, and the ignorant and dismissive contempt leveled towards his famous argument of the Wager. more>>> Posted on 01/31/2010 2:51 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Jihad versus Jahiliyya: The Seminal Islamist Doctrine of Sayyid Qutb
by Richard L. Rubenstein (February 2010)
Those who wish to understand the genocidal potentialities of jihad would do well to examine, however briefly, the ethic of war and peace of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), one of the twentieth century’s most influential Muslim thinkers.[i]
Qutb and radical Islamists such as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and their followers take the behavior of Muhammad and his Rightly Guided Companions as the paradigmatic role models for the vanguard that is to overcome jahiliyya, defined by Qutb as the “state of ignorance of the guidance of God,” and restore the sovereignty of Allah to humanity. more>>>
Posted on 01/31/2010 2:55 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
The Dhimma’s Return
Edited excerpts from The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom
by Mark Durie (February 2010)
When the Ayatollah Khomeini ushered in the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979, Muslims all over the world greeted this event with enthusiasm. At last, so it was thought, Islam would be implemented rigorously to reinstitute an Islamic utopia on earth. Yet along with the Islamization of Iran came the return of the laws of the dhimma. more>>>Posted on 01/31/2010 2:58 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Dhimmitude Dominates
by Jerry Gordon (February 2010)
The Third Choice- Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom
by Mark Durie
Deror Books, 2010, 288 pgs.
While browsing through a Barnes and Noble in Westport, Connecticut in 1988, I chanced upon a book on the bottom shelf of the Judaica section with the curious title, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, by Bat Ye’or. Bat Ye’or is a nom de plume meaning in Hebrew “daughter of the Nile.” I perused the paperback volume shocked by the revelations that the Muslim realm was not the tolerant Islam that Medievalist scholars had conveyed. I bought the book and it remains a vital part of my personal library along with several of her others works, including Eurabia: The Euro Arab Axis. Subsequently, I have been privileged to both meet and befriend the author. more>>>Posted on 01/31/2010 3:02 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Freedom for Kurdistan – An Authentic Nation
No Multiple States for the Palestinian Trojan Horse!
by Norman Berdichevsky (February 2010)
No other people, numbering close to 30 million in the Middle East and at least another million living in exile in Europe and the Americas, can rightfully come close to the claim of the Kurds of being the largest stateless people on the face the earth. It is certainly not the Palestinian Arabs with less than one quarter that number. Contrary to all the media hype over two generations that has elevated the “Palestinian” Arab cause into the world’s leading international issue, milking the consciousness of the so called “international community,” it is a sham and an affront to both geography and the historical truth. Moreover, it threatens continued instability throughout the entire region. more>>>Posted on 01/31/2010 3:08 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Turkey's Great Musical Gamble
by Geoffrey Clarfield (February 2010)
Today the status of music and musicians in the Islamic world is grim. In Europe and North America, municipal, regional and national authorities compete with each other to support the arts-music, theatre, dance, sculpture, film and architecture. With few restrictions artists and musicians are free to express themselves. What was considered obscene twenty years ago, today gets broadcast with barely the blink of an eye. And, in the West the Internet remains completely uncensored. more>>> Posted on 01/31/2010 3:13 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
More Silence about Islamist Ethnic Cleansing
by Richard L. Benkin (February 2010)
In a few weeks, I again will be with Bangladeshi Hindu refugees in a number of illicit camps throughout North and Northeast India. They fled to the world’s largest democracy and the country most closely identified with their faith, hoping for aid and comfort after being victimized next door by Islamic radicals, a government that supports minority oppression, and everyday Bangladeshi Muslims who are made to profit from attacks on their Hindu neighbors. more>>>
Posted on 01/31/2010 3:16 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Smears, Lawsuits and Geert Wilders
Personal Liberty and Freedoms On Trial in The Netherlands or
The Limits of Islamist Intimidation
by Rabbi Jonathan Hausman (February 2010)
Remarks delivered at the Zionist House – Toronto
20 January 2010
As this is a Jewish sponsored event, I suppose that I should begin by saying Erev Tov l’kulam. We just watched a film which contains much Arabic, perhaps I should say ahlan wa’sahlan ya ashabi. We find ourselves in Toronto . Therefore, I will say Good Evening and Bonsoir e merci d’etre venu! more>>> Posted on 01/31/2010 3:20 PM by NER
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Don't Talk. Eat!
by Esmerelda Weatherwax (February 2010)
I saw yet another article last week imploring parents to eat with their children and talk round the meal table as if that alone was all that was required to turn out well adjusted children and happy families.
They paint a terrible picture of children having their meal early to the sound of the television while their parents grab a ready meal at odd hours as the sole reason for the decline of western civilisation. more>>>
Posted on 01/31/2010 3:24 PM by NER
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