Utopia, you are standing in it!

Posted by Sara M. Butler, 16 May 2019.

A more familiar gang of medieval outlaws: Robin Hood, Will Scarlet, and Little John.

The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville (Leics.) played a key role in persuading me to devote my life to researching crime in medieval England. As an undergraduate, reading Edward Stones’ 1957 study of the infamous crime family opened my eyes to the medieval common law’s broad potential for manipulation and creative application of the laws.[1] For those of you unfamiliar with the family, their story comes across as a medieval rendering of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, with a little bit of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid thrown in for good measure. John de Folville, lord of Ashby-Folville, fathered seven sons. Only one of the seven, John the younger, led the typical life of the medieval gentry, obtaining appointments as commissioner of array and keeper of…

This is the fourth in a series of posts by CAMERA Arabic (part 1, part 2, part 3) showing how Arabic language news networks, including those affiliated with Western media outlets, frame the topic of Jews who originate from or live in the Middle East and North Africa, by attempting to distinguish between ‘loyal’ Jews and ‘treacherous’ Zionists.  (All translations, emphasis and in-bracket remarks are by CAMERA Arabic unless otherwise specified. Almost all links lead to English websites, unless no reliable translation was found.)

In previous posts we sought to reveal how some Arabic-speaking journalists and commentators frame the existence (or more commonly, lack thereof) of Jewish communities in Arab states. Through an analysis of three news items, originating in Egypt and Tunisia, we demonstrated that they approached this volatile topic in the following ways:

• Labeling Jews from Arab states, in the pejorative, as “Zionists” or…

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Dr. Thomas Sowell published a book entitled Intellectuals and Society. In his book, Sowell examines a group of people who influence public policy, debates and other institutions. The talk Dr. Sowell gives in this video goes into elements of his book. It includes discussion of some of the personalities profiled in it along with a look at President Barack Obama.

Dr. Sowell also discusses environmentalists too as they are very much intellectuals in that they think they are the enlightened ones who know what is best for everyone else. The only difference is that environmentalists can back their words up with activism in order to make you do their bidding. Not only is the road to hell, as Dr. Sowell quips, paved with Ivy League degrees but hell on Earth is achieved by people thinking they know what is best for others.

Think Tank host Ben Wattenberg converses one-on-one with author Thomas Sowell about his (then) new book, The Vision of the Anointed, which argues that the assumptions and beliefs of America’s liberal elite have created thirty years of disaster. This book can be seen as a precursor to Intellectuals and Society.

In his book, Sowell states: “Whether the issue has been overpopulation, Keynesian economics, criminal justice or natural resource exhaustion, a key assumption is that the public is so irrational that the superior wisdom of the anointed must be imposed to avert disaster. The anointed do not simply happen to have a disdain for the public. Such disdain is an integral part of their vision, for the central feature of that vision is preemption of the decisions of others.”

Before providing examples of Guardian op-eds, cartoons and letters that obfuscated, covered for or excused Jeremy Corbyn’s well documented record of aiding, abetting and, at times, personally engaging in antisemitism, let’s begin with some numbers:

• 87 – The percentage of British Jews who believe Corbyn is personally antisemitic.
• 47 – The percentage of British Jews who would have seriously considered leaving the UK if Corbyn became prime minister.
• 6 – The percentage of Jewish voters who said they would even consider voting for Corbyn.
• 39 – The percentageof all Britons who believe Corbyn is antisemitic.
• 1 – The number of British political parties, other than Corbyn’s Labour, that have been investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission – the public body responsible for the enforcement of non-discrimination laws in England, Scotland and Wales – for institutional racism.  (That other party was the far-right British National Party)

In February