Displaying posts published in

2016

Erasing the West by Shoshana Bryen

The UNESCO vote seems clearly a response to the expansionist, jihadist aspirations of members of the OIC who sponsored it: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan.

Some analysts consider a vote to abstain to be a victory for Israel, but for Spain, Greece, France, Sweden, Slovenia, and Italy it was blatant appeasement and fear of their own often-violent Muslim minorities: “Please, please, don’t blow up our capital cities. We will reject Jewish and Christian history and pretend Jesus chased the money changers from the steps of Montmartre.”

UNESCO’s Director General Irina Bokova had already announced her opposition to the resolution, a position for which she received death threats.

Having demonstrable historical fact, such as Jewish patrimony on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, subject to the whims of the UN, in which, as the late Abba Eban said, Arabs could muster a majority to decide the sun rises in the West, is not a positive proposition.

The question remains how to convince nations in the West to stand for themselves in the face of Islamists committed to replacing them.

Last week, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted Christian and Jewish heritage off of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; Tuesday they ratified their perfidy. The vote seems clearly a response to the expansionist, jihadist aspirations of members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) that sponsored it: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan. The vote, and the behind the scenes machinations, deserve evaluation.

Upfront:

Group 1: The “in favor” voters are a nasty collection of corrupt, dictatorial, largely Islamist (traditional Islamic theology gives Jews their place on the Temple Mount; these Islamists appear intent on removing all traces of Christian and Jewish presence from the Middle East) or Marxist, and unanimously frightening places. They are, in the immortal words French diplomat Daniel Bernard applied to Israel, “shitty little countries.” Even the big ones. But see below for a caveat.

Group 2: The US, UK, the Netherlands, Estonia Germany and Lithuania had nothing to be ashamed of in the first round; they voted “against.” But see below for a caveat.

Group 3: Some analysts consider a vote to abstain to be a victory for Israel, but for Spain, Greece, France, Sweden, Slovenia and Italy it was blatant appeasement of Group 1 and fear of their own often-violent Muslim minorities: “Please, please, don’t blow up our capital cities. We will reject Jewish and Christian history and pretend Jesus chased the money changers from the steps of Montmartre.”

If the West had stood for its own history, it would have mattered. Democratic Japan and South Korea should have voted “against” as well. There might be a narrow exception for India, which had never before failed to vote in favor of an Arab-led anti-Israel resolution.

Turkey’s Land-Grab Wish List by Burak Bekdil

Erdogan looks determined to fight any war in the hope that all will end with Turkish-Sunni dominance in the region. He is wrong.

Turkey’s “National Contract,” Misak-i Milli, also claimed the former Ottoman province of Mosul as a Turkish province. There is one complication, though. Mosul is not Turkish territory, as envisaged in Misak-i Milli, but Iraqi territory. And the Shiite-controlled Iraqi government does not want Turkish or Turkey-backed Sunni boots on the ground.

“Certain historians believe that the borders set by the National Contract include Cyprus, Aleppo, Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk, Batumi, Thessaloniki, Kardzhali, Varna and the [Greek] islands of the Aegean.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan hopes to build a pro-Ottoman, Sunni region against Iranian dominance.

A few hundred Turkish soldiers in Iraq have been training Sunni militias to help retake Mosul from ISIS. Baghdad wants the Turkish troops out, but Turkey refuses to go.

Each time in recent history that Turkey’s pro-Sunni neo-Ottomans opted for assertive foreign policy in this turbulent part of the world, there were more casualties and no happy ending for any state- or non-state actor, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. As multiple asymmetrical wars in the triangle of Turkey, Syria and Iraq turn more violent and complex, with the U.S.-led international campaign fighting jihadists — while Iran and Russia try to win proxy wars — Turkey keeps raising the stakes with the risky nonsensical wish to revive its imperial past. Erdogan looks determined to fight any war in the hope that all will end with Turkish-Sunni dominance in the region. He is wrong.

In his recent speeches Erdogan often revisited a long-forgotten Arabic phrase that is so dear to every Turk’s heart and mind: Misak-i Milli (“National Contract”).

On February 12, 1920, the last Ottoman parliament proclaimed a set of decisions which Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, adopted as “the main principle of our independence.” Misak-i Milli, among other principles, set modern Turkey’s borders; it was a guideline to determine where the borders of the Turkish Republic would start and end. It would be used as the basis for the new Turkish Republic’s claims in the Treaty of Lausanne.

According to Misak-i Milli, “the future of the territories inhabited by an Arab majority at the time of the signing of the Armistice of Mudros shall be determined by a referendum.” On the other hand, the territories which were not occupied at that time and inhabited by a Turkish majority are the homeland of the Turkish nation. The status of Kars, Ardahan (Turkish provinces since then) and Batumi (a province in the Republic of Georgia) may be determined by a referendum. The status of Western Thrace (in Greece) will be determined by the votes of its inhabitants. Misak-i Milli also claimed that the former Ottoman province of Mosul should be a Turkish province. Instead, Mosul was first left to British control, then became an Iraqi province. Mosul is now Iraq’s second largest city, but tenuously under the control of the Islamic State (ISIS).

At a cabinet meeting this month, Erdogan reportedly told his ministers:

“Turkey can no longer stay the same at this point. The status quo will change somehow. We will either leap with moves forward or we will be bound to shrink. I am determined to make forward moves.”

In another speech, Erdogan said:

“Turkey is not just Turkey. Apart from its 79 million citizens, it is also responsible to the hundreds of millions of our brothers in the geographical area to which we are connected by historical and cultural ties … Certain historians believe that the borders set by the National Contract include Cyprus, Aleppo, Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk, Batumi, Thessaloniki, Kardzhali, Varna and the [Greek] islands of the Aegean.”

The Western Intelligentsia and the Islamist Threat Turning a blind eye to the dangers within. Leslie Stein

Currently, the West is being confronted with foreboding challenges by Islamic States and Islamist groups of one kind or another, all of which view Western democracy and the Western way of life with abhorrence. Perversely, no matter how provocative and despicable the behavior and pronouncements of such entities, the general response of the prevailing Western intelligentsia and some of their governments ranges from sheer indifference and/or disbelief to a search for offenses committed by their own countries in “provoking” an anti-Western animus and, finally, to the actual proffering of assistance to the Jihadists.

While the majority of individual Muslims in the West are decent, law-abiding citizens, the nature of their communal structures and leadership gives rise to concerns that are briskly swept under the carpet. Many, if not most, mosques are officiated by imams trained abroad in madrasas that inculcate a belligerent attitude to Western values and lifestyles, which, in turn, gives rise to Islamic extremism. To the Muslim communities’ credit, Islamist groups have usually been small in size, drawing on only a limited number of active adherents. The Islamists do, however, pose serious security threats and are potentially capable of inflicting appreciable harm.

What compounds the problem is the fact that too few Muslim community leaders are genuinely utterly and unequivocally appalled by any manifestation of Islamic terrorism, no matter who the slain and injured happen to be. In the wake of the slaying on October 2, 2015, of a NSW police department employee by a young Muslim gunman, the Grand Mufti of Australia rationalized the incident as being due to “racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms through securitization, duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention.”[1] Needless to say, the Grand Mufti made no reference to any features within his own Muslim community that could possible engender terrorism.

Such an analysis chimes in with the prevailing views of left-inclined intellectuals who assume that, in the West, Muslims are invariably victims of racism and Islamophobia. What deeply troubles the intellectual elite is that even the slightest disapprobation of any feature of Muslim society is taken as a breach of the spirit of multiculturalism, calling into question the notion that all cultures and societies are equally valid and are entitled to respect. Of all communities, the intellectual elite are particularly protective of and sensitive to the needs of the Muslim one, which they perceive to be especially exposed to wanton discrimination and harassment. One might add, that in virtually all advanced countries, the Muslim community is a strong supporter of left-wing parties and is ardently wooed by them.

The intellectuals’ fantasy of practically all Muslims in the West being hounded by hostile bigots is one that is widely shared but not well substantiated. In the United States the FBI disclosed that of the 1,149 anti-religious hate crimes committed in 2014, only 16.1% were directed against Muslims. By contrast, 56.8% of such offenses were inflicted on Jews without causing any disquiet whatsoever in left-wing or liberal circles.[2] In France all religious-based murders of Jews have been carried out by Muslims and in the wider Western community members of the general public have lost their lives in indiscriminate Islamist outrages perpetrated in New York, San Bernardino, London, Madrid, Paris, Brussels Orlando and Nice. If truth be told, within the West, it is mainly non-Muslims rather than Muslims, who have been encountering loss of life and limb as a result of hate crimes instigated by Islamist fanatics. However, whenever an act of Islamic terrorism occurs, Western political leaders regularly deny that such deeds are in anyway linked to Islam.

DNC Operative Reveals Plans to Stage Bullying of Women at Trump Rally (VIDEO) Daniel Greenfield

http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/264555/dnc-operative-reveals-plans-stage-bullying-women-daniel-greenfield

It’s the same old “chicks up front” protest ethos of the left. Except it’s being routed through billion dollar campaigns as part of a presidential bid. This is the left in its full executive and corporate glory while still relying on its same old protest tactics which involve manufacturing images that make them appear to be the victims.

Here James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas showcases Aaron Black, a DNC operative, discussing a plan to push back against images of Trump supporters being attacked by DNC thugs to show instead anti-Trump protesters being attacked in very selective ways.

What we’ve been seeing in the media is a very effective manufactured narrative. The DNC ops manufactured the images while the media ran with them. And now, as before, the media will fact check the Veritas videos and will tell you not to believe your own lying ears.

University of Chicago Champions Hamas-Driven BDS Movement An amendment supporting the continued self-determination of the Jewish people and the existence of Israel was proposed and rejected.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center continued its ongoing poster campaign at the University of Chicago last night, denouncing the Chicago chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine for their support of anti-Israel terrorism and their role in driving the campus’s widespread endorsement of the genocidal and Hamas-driven Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

One of the posters distributed on the Chicago campus depicts U. Chicago Law student Osama Alkhawaja who is identified on the poster as “SJP Activist, BDS Activist, Supporter of Hamas Terrorists.” Osama Alkhawaja earned his Bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University where he served as president of Students for Justice in Palestine and as vice president of the Muslim Students Association.

In April 2016, Osama Alkhawaja was one of seven SDSU students whose names appeared on Freedom Center posters targeting the Hamas-sponsored BDS movement which stated that those students had “allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetrate BDS and Jew Hatred” on campus. When SDSU President Elliot Hirshman defended the posters as free speech, Osama Alkhawaja led the SDSU chapters of SJP and the MSA in an angry protest, holding Hirshman hostage in a police cruiser for two hours until he was forced to apologize to students for hurting their feelings by not condemning the posters more harshly, and later leading a call for his resignation.

The University of Chicago is home to a highly active BDS campus movement, U of C Divest, which has gained the support of over 20 student organizations on the campus and succeeded last spring in passing a BDS resolution in Chicago’s student government. During the debate over the measure, an amendment supporting the continued self-determination of the Jewish people and the existence of Israel was proposed and rejected.

U. Chicago’s SJP chapter has brought numerous anti-Israel speakers to campus including BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti who condoned anti-Israel terrorism in his address to students. Chicago SJP also interrupted an Israeli Independence Day celebration with a commemoration of the “Nakba,” an Arabic word used by Hamas to describe the creation of Israel as a “catastrophe,” and has held numerous other events attempting to delegitimize Israel and make the argument that “resistance” against the Jewish state (a euphemism for terrorism) is justified.

Now It’s Up to the Voters Will they gauge the one very obvious take-away from this campaign? Bruce Thornton

The third debate was a rerun of the other two. Even moderator Chris Wallace scolded both candidates for repeating stale talking points and talking over each other like squabbling fishwives. Neither Trump nor Clinton said anything that will change this race one way or the other, although the media will shriek over Trump’s refusal to say he wouldn’t contest the results. There still may be an October surprise, but Trump’s persona is pretty much fixed, and any further scandals about taxes or women are already baked in. Hillary is more vulnerable to the unexpected, given her numerous scandals filled with potential bombshells, but it would have to be spectacularly damaging to overcome the media’s studied indifference to anything that might hurt their candidate. Now it’s time for the voters to decide.

So what have we learned from this election campaign? This race, the candidates, and the three debates have been analyzed and commented on ad nauseam. But the analyses with some exceptions have not been even-handed, or based on clear principles objectively applied. Both candidates are obviously flawed, and these deficiencies are plain to everyone, as both candidates’ high disapproval ratings show. Indeed, their flaws are glaring to an extent unprecedented in modern presidential candidates. Trump’s in-your-face, braggadocios, hyper-egoistic character, lack of preparation, addiction to superlative adjectives, and his crude, sometimes vulgar rhetoric, have been a year-long obsession of the pundits and media. Not so much with Clinton’s 25-year-long catalogue of scandal––from cattle futures, the Rose Law firm, Whitewater, and brutally managing Bill’s bimbo eruptions; to server-gate, email-gate, pay-for-play Clinton family foundation, auctioning off the State Department, collusion with the FBI, and giving perjurious testimony to Congress.

This brings us to one very obvious take-away from this campaign: the mainstream media are utterly enslaved to progressive ideology. Their cheerleading for Obama should have made it clear that their protestations of objectivity, “speaking truth to power,” “comforting the afflicted afflicting the comfortable,” and being the “watchdogs” of the public weal are gross lies.

The mainstream media are the “power” in our image-besotted, celebrity-obsessed superficial age. They are the “comfortable,” with the same elite credentials and zip codes as the political elite of both parties. They are not “watchdogs,” but spaniels, perched on the laps of the progressive commissars and eating from their hands. They occasionally snarl and nip, but never risk their privilege and influence by investigating and reporting the truth. You know the media are shameless hacks when Trump’s decades-old vulgar sexual banter and unproven charges of sexual groping get 23 minutes of television news coverage for every one minute on Hillary’s emails and their revelation of her corruption of the State Department, her debauchment of the FBI, her endangerment of national security, and her campaign flunkies’ dirty tricks against her opponent.

The Third Debate: ‘What Kind of Country Are We Going to Be?’ Two fundamentally different visions of America clash on stage for the last time. Robert Spencer

The peculiar self-contradiction of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was on abundant display Wednesday night during her third and last presidential debate with Donald Trump: running as the anointed heir of a two-term president in whose administration she served, she has to maintain both that everything is going great and that the nation in general is in drastic need of repair. Above all, amid all the bluster and platitudes, she and Trump took up opposing sides on virtually all the major fault lines of contemporary America, emphasizing yet again that this election is for all the marbles: either the U.S. will continue on the road to socialist internationalism, or recover a sense of itself. This may be the last time that question is at stake in a presidential election.

“What kind of country are we going to be?,” Hillary Clinton asked near the beginning of the debate, and that indeed was the question. The Supreme Court, she told us, needs to stand on the side of the American people, not on side of the wealthy. What would a Supreme Court that stood on the side of the people, rather than the plutocrats, look like? Why, of course it would be one that said no to Citizen’s United, and yes to Marriage Equality and Roe vs. Wade: as far as Hillary Clinton is concerned, anyone who stands for traditional values is simply not of the people, or any people she has any interest in representing. Nor, presumably, among Hillary Clinton’s people are those who respect and want to uphold the Second Amendment – in which she firmly believes, she assured us Wednesday night, as long as it is gutted of any actual substance.

Trump, on the other hand, affirmed that he would appoint justices who would interpret the Constitution as written, repeal Roe v. Wade and return the abortion question to the states, and protect gun rights. Chicago, he pointed out, has some of the nation’s toughest gun laws, yet also has more gun violence than any other city. This was a telling point; in response, Clinton promised she would give us both the Second Amendment and “reform,” but did not explain how this sleight-of-hand would be performed.

The situation was the same when the topic turned to immigration. Trump spoke of the need for strong borders, pointing to the drugs pouring into the country over the Mexican border as the reason why a border wall was needed, and declaring: “We have no country if we have no border.” In response, Clinton spoke about not wanting to send illegal immigrant parents away from their children who are citizens – an answer that may have tugged at Leftist heartstrings, but left the drug problem unaddressed.

Clinton danced all night. When moderator Chris Wallace quoted her earlier statement saying she wanted open borders, Clinton turned the question into one about Wikileaks, and pressed Trump over whether he would condemn Russia, which she insisted was behind the leaks, for meddling in an American election. “That was a great pivot,” Trump noted drily, “from her wanting open borders.”

Schneiderman: ‘Unfair’ to single out Clinton Foundation for foreign donations By Colby Hamilton

FOR NEWS ON NEW YORK CHECK OUT THIS GREAT SITE: REPORT: www.empirereportnewyork.com

http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2016/10/trump-foundation-investigation-offers-no-parallels-to-clinton-for-schneiderman-106520

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said on Wednesday that Donald Trump’s foundation is “responding professionally” to his requests to cease and desist fundraising activities in the state, and said calls for a similar investigation into the family foundation of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, are without merit.
Earlier this week, Schneiderman’s office announced that the Donald J. Trump Foundation had agreed to halt fundraising, after attorneys in the attorney general’s office determined the foundation was out of compliance with reporting standards. The foundation asked for an extension to file financial paperwork, including audits, that was granted by the attorney general’s office.

“As far as I can tell, the Trump lawyers are handling things professionally,” Schneiderman told POLITICO New York after an unrelated event in Manhattan.
A Trump campaign spokesman had accused Schneiderman of being a “partisan hack” for investigating the foundation, saying it amounted to “nothing more than another left-wing hit job.” The two have sparred publicly in the past over Schneiderman’s investigation of Trump’s defunct real estate academy, Trump University.
Schneiderman said concerns about the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising did not rise to the level of an investigation.
He said compliance issues with the Clintons’ foundation amounted to “ministerial, routines stuff” such as late filings or missing paperwork, and that the foundation “is properly registered and properly filed,” unlike Trump’s foundation.
Critics of the Clinton Foundation have called for an examination of the hundreds of millions of dollars from individuals who met with the then-secretary of state after either donating or promising to donate in the future, which included funding from foreign governments.

Schneiderman said that the rules for reporting government funds have not been found to apply to foreign governments.

“No New York State attorney general, Republican or Democrat, has ever interpreted that [rule] to require foundations to report on funding from foreign governments,” Schneiderman said. “We’re not in a position to check that out and enforce it. We leave that to our federal counterparts.”

ISIS Could Stage ‘Spectacular Attack’ to Draw Eyes Away from Mosul Battle By Bridget Johnson

ARLINGTON, Va. — The commander of U.S. ground operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria warned today that the offensive to take back Mosul could spark a large attack by the terror group elsewhere in reaction to their land losses.

There’s precedent in the global attacks — including on home soil — launched during the battle in which ISIS lost another key Iraqi city.

Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, commander of Combined Joint Forces’ Land Component Command for Operation Inherent Resolve and commander of the 101st Airborne, told reporters via video from Baghdad on Wednesday that he couldn’t give a timeframe for when forces would be in Mosul as he’d rather “under-promise and over-deliver.”

“I would just say tomorrow we’ll be a lot closer to Mosul than we are today,” Volesky said. “My concern is making sure that they’ve got the combat power, they sustain that combat power, and don’t go so fast that they start to, you know, give opportunity to the enemy.”

Peshmerga Command tweeted that the Kurdish forces today began “a major advance from three fronts in North and North East of Mosul.”

“The objectives are to clear a number of nearby villages and secure strategic areas to restrict ISIL’s movements,” the Pesh continued. “This operation follows recent gains by Peshmerga forces in East Mosul and advances by ISF in South Mosul.”

Iraqi and Peshmerga forces are being advised to advance in a way so that they don’t “have to turn around and go back and fight an enemy that has gone to ground and stayed behind,” the general said.

“Because that’s what we expect the enemy is going to do. I mean, we’re seeing it already in the Euphrates River valley. The enemy knows they’re losing. I mean, Baghdadi has said as much, you know, ‘We’ll go back out to the desert where we’ve traditionally been and wait.’ Well, he’ll get the opportunity to do that here in the next period of time,” Volesky continued.

“But I expect that they’re going to go into an insurgency mode and they’ll try to do these high-profile, spectacular attacks to draw attention away from the losses that they’re suffering. I mean, we’ve seen them do that before. When they lose terrain in Iraq, there’s — they try to do a spectacular attack to tell everybody, you know, they’re still a relevant organization.”

During the battle to retake Ramadi from ISIS, which the Islamic State lost in February, terrorist attacks attributed to ISIS included the October 2015 downing of a Metrojet flying from Sharm El Sheikh to St. Petersburg, the November terror spree by an ISIS cell in Paris, the December attack in San Bernardino, and the January attacks on a Starbucks and police station in Jakarta.

Volesky said the coalition is “not doing any detainee operations” for any ISIS fighters taken into custody during the battle for Mosul, but instructions are understood to “treat people with dignity and respect or the fight becomes much, much harder.”

Iraq will be responsible for keeping any captured ISIS terrorists. CONTINUE AT SITE

How Diversity Came to Mean ‘Downgrade the West’ Daphne Patai

Editor’s note: This article is crossposted from Minding the Campus, the original article can be viewed here.

There was a time, within living memory, when the term multiculturalism was hardly known. More than twenty years ago, Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and in late July speaker at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, wrote a book with fellow Stanford alum David Sacks called The Diversity Myth: ‘Multiculturalism’ and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford (1995).

The book’s title refers to the pretense that embracing “diversity” actually promotes diversity of all types, a claim commonly heard to this day. Thiel had been a student at Stanford when, in January 1987, demonstrators defending “the Rainbow Agenda” chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s got to go!” This protest led to the infamous “revision” (i.e., suppression) of the Western Culture requirement at Stanford, replaced with a freshman sequence called Cultures, Ideas, and Values, mandating an emphasis on race, gender, and class.

In her foreword to Sacks and Thiel’s book, the well-known American historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese referred to Stanford as “a surreal world of social engineering and institutional arrogance” and highlighted the school’s efforts to wage a “campaign to reshape thought and behavior.” She noted that while the term “affirmative action” had been replaced by “diversity,” the latter term, far from actually promoting intellectual diversity, rested on “a series of interlocking attitudes and practices.”

Furthermore, “multiculturalism” did not involve greater emphasis on mastering foreign languages or carefully studying cultures other than those of the English-speaking world. Instead, work in literature and culture programs was (and still is) done increasingly in English and focused on contemporary writers. Nor did multiculturalism, any more than the word diversity, mean familiarizing students with a diversity of views. Rather, as Fox-Genovese summarized it, it meant requiring students “to agree with or even applaud views and values that mock the values with which they have been reared.” And all this, she observed, was being accompanied by rampant grade inflation.