Displaying posts published in

2016

Peter Smith: A Discordant and Delusional ‘Harmony’

This talk we hear of inter-faith amity and understanding, how does Islam meld with that kumbaya narrative? Not well, or so it strikes me. As Mohammed denied Christ’s divinity, the Trinity and Resurrection, what common ground is it possible to find?
Francis Kalifat, the newly elected president of France’s Jewish communities, said this: “The fight against anti-Semitism is our main cause because French Jews are in the most difficult situation they have experienced since World War II.” I wonder why? My goodness, don’t we need to build religious harmony!

Who could possibly object to building harmony? Well, unless I am mistaken, harmony is what appeasers have sought down the ages. So count me as one of those who retains a healthy degree of scepticism about pursuing harmony. Don’t misunderstand me. I am all for harmony between those of goodwill. It’s harmony with the bad guys and the perpetually precious that worries me.

Interfaith dialogue is about harmony. One description of the process is Christians kowtowing to discordant Muslims. What else is it about? Without Muslims, interfaith dialogue these days would be a movement with a substantive cause. Here are just a few of the many examples of Christian overtures:

Established in 2003 by the National Council of [Christian] Churches in Australia, the Australian National Dialogue of Christians, Muslims and Jews provides “opportunity for the national bodies of each faith to come together to build understanding and harmony in the Australian context.”

In 2014 Pope Francis called for interfaith dialogue to help end fundamentalism and terrorism during his first visit to Turkey. And only with considerable distaste is it possible to bring to mind Pope John Paul II kissing the Koran in 1999 at the Vatican. No doubt this was observed with satisfaction by his Muslim visitors.

European Union Declares War on Internet Free Speech by Soeren Kern

Opponents counter that the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe. They say that the European Union’s definition of “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the EU itself.

Some Members of the European Parliament have characterized the EU’s code of online conduct — which requires “offensive” material to be removed from the Internet within 24 hours — as “Orwellian.”

“By deciding that ‘xenophobic’ comment in reaction to the crisis is also ‘racist,’ Facebook has made the view of the majority of the European people… into ‘racist’ views, and so is condemning the majority of Europeans as ‘racist.'” — Douglas Murray.

In January 2013, Facebook suspended the account of Khaled Abu Toameh after he wrote about corruption in the Palestinian Authority. The account was reopened 24 hours later, but with the two posts deleted and no explanation.

The European Union (EU), in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, has unveiled a “code of conduct” to combat the spread of “illegal hate speech” online in Europe.

Proponents of the initiative argue that in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, a crackdown on “hate speech” is necessary to counter jihadist propaganda online.

Opponents counter that the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe. They say that the EU’s definition of “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the European Union itself.

Some Members of the European Parliament have characterized the EU’s code of online conduct — which requires “offensive” material to be removed from the Internet within 24 hours, and replaced with “counter-narratives” — as “Orwellian.”

The “code of conduct” was announced on May 31 in a statement by the European Commission, the unelected administrative arm of the European Union. A summary of the initiative follows:

“By signing this code of conduct, the IT companies commit to continuing their efforts to tackle illegal hate speech online. This will include the continued development of internal procedures and staff training to guarantee that they review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.

“The IT companies will also endeavor to strengthen their ongoing partnerships with civil society organisations who will help flag content that promotes incitement to violence and hateful conduct. The IT companies and the European Commission also aim to continue their work in identifying and promoting independent counter-narratives [emphasis added], new ideas and initiatives, and supporting educational programs that encourage critical thinking.”

Excerpts of the “code of conduct” include:

“The IT Companies share the European Commission’s and EU Member States’ commitment to tackle illegal hate speech online. Illegal hate speech, as defined by the Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law and national laws transposing it, means all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin….

Charles J. Cooper:Terry McAuliffe vs. the Rule of Law The governor defied Virginia’s constitution, and centuries of precedent, with the stroke of a pen.

Virginia’s Gov. Terry McAuliffe recently signed an executive order restoring, with the stroke of a pen, the right to vote for all 206,000 Virginia felons who have completed their terms of incarceration and supervised probation. This includes more than 40,000 felons convicted of violent crimes. The order also restores the rights to serve on a jury and to seek and hold public office, and it makes each of them eligible to ask a court to restore their right to own and carry firearms.

The sweeping order has no precedent in Virginia history, and last week Virginia’s Republican House Speaker William J. Howell and Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. and four other state voters filed a challenge to its constitutionality. Their petition asks the Virginia Supreme Court to invalidate the governor’s order before votes are cast in November, lest the validity of the general election be cast into doubt. Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the state’s high court issued an order on June 1 calling a special session of the court to hear argument in the case on July 19.

The executive order defies the text of the Virginia Constitution. Article II flatly prohibits all felons from voting, but it grants the governor a narrow power to restore voting rights to deserving felons on an individual, case-by-case basis. Nothing in the constitution gives the governor power to restore political rights en masse to virtually all felons, no matter how heinous or numerous their crimes.

Gov. McAuliffe, a Democrat, has acknowledged that for 240 years none of the state’s 71 other governors exercised wholesale clemency power. In 2010 another Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, expressly declined to issue a blanket restoration order like Gov. McAuliffe’s, concluding that such an order would “rewrite” the law rather than follow it. Three years later, a bipartisan committee convened and headed by Virginia’s then-attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, advised Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell that a blanket order restoring voting rights would be unconstitutional.

Clinton’s Lawyer, Under Oath Hillary’s aide is so evasive that she can’t even clearly vouch for her own honesty. Kimberley Strassel

The news out of last week’s Cheryl Mills deposition was that the Clinton confidante didn’t say much about Hillary’s email server. Which only goes to show that Mrs. Clinton has a serious problem—and she knows it.

This is, after all, Cheryl Mills. For more than 20 years, she has served as the Clintons’ very own Winston Wolf ( Harvey Keitel in “Pulp Fiction”)—their fixer, their problem-solver. From impeachment right up through Benghazi and the server, Ms. Mills is the one constant in the behind-the-scenes obstruction. The less she talks, the more alarm bells ought to ring.
This was the measure to watch when Ms. Mills arrived last Friday to sit for an interview with attorneys for Judicial Watch, which has sued the State Department over missing federal records.

In early May the oversight group convinced a federal judge to order discovery into the creation and operation of Mrs. Clinton’s private server. Judicial Watch was granted permission to depose seven central figures, including Ms. Mills, who served as Hillary’s aide at the State Department and later as her private lawyer.

Mrs. Clinton claims she set up the home-brew server in an innocent act aimed at convenience, so it was notable that Ms. Mills marched into her deposition accompanied by no fewer than seven lawyers—three representing Ms. Mills herself, and two each from the Justice and State departments. Two of the government lawyers made clear that they were not only representing their departments but also guarding Ms. Mills in her capacity as a former federal employee. This is President Obama’s assist for Mrs. Clinton.

The lawyers earned their pay. The entire 270-page transcript of the deposition, which Judicial Watch released Tuesday, has an almost eye-glazing repetition about it.

A persistent Judicial Watch attorney attempts to ask Ms. Mills a straightforward question. Before she even finishes, Ms. Mills’s army of attorneys falls all over itself to object, to insist that the query is outside the “scope” of the inquiry or too vague, and to instruct the witness not to answer.

France Convenes International Meeting on Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process Goal is to settle on steps to prepare for a peace conference near the end of this year, French officials say.By Matthew Dalton and Felicia Schwartz

PARIS—World powers gathered in Paris on Friday to kick off a French initiative to push the Israelis and Palestinians to restart peace talks, after a monthslong surge of violence that has left Western officials fearing the two sides are heading toward another full-scale conflict.

Amid severely strained relations between the two sides, the French have set a modest goal for the diplomats from 26 nations, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who are attending the meeting: an agreement to hold a peace conference near the end of the year, with the Israelis and Palestinians present.

French officials are hoping diplomats can approve steps to prepare for the conference but acknowledge that any substantive peace negotiations are far off.

“We can’t substitute ourselves for the concerned parties,” French President François Hollande said at the start of the meeting. “We can only give guarantees that the peace will be solid, durable and internationally controlled.”

Some 30 Israeli civilians and soldiers have been killed in more than 300 Palestinian attacks since September. Palestinian officials say more than 200 Palestinians, mostly alleged attackers, have been killed by Israeli security forces during the same period.

The violence has subsided in the past two months, with Palestinians carrying out fewer than a dozen attacks or attempted attacks since April, compared with almost daily assaults until then. Tensions still linger, however.

Given the bleak mood, officials question whether either side can be persuaded to return to the negotiating table.

“We know the path is difficult,” a French official said.

The nations represented at the conference include Egypt, China, Russia, Germany, the U.K. and Saudi Arabia. The meeting was originally scheduled for May 30 but pushed back to June 3 so Mr. Kerry could attend. CONTINUE AT SITE

EDUCATION? FROM RICHARD BAEHR

My friend Rich, the Chicago scribe, sends out a batch of informative e-mails on a variety of issues. This week he focused on education. The funniest is first in this list:

Santa Monica college students have a wedding ceremony as they marry the ocean. Who served as best wave? How will community property be divided in the event of a divorce? Naturally, faculty members are organizing this.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/05/26/insane-santa-monica-college-students-married-the-oceanand-got-intimate-with-it-n2169501?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

The leftist pollution of the American mind does not begin in college, but earlier. California is about to adopt a new history curriculum for grades K-12. As the largest state, new textbooks designed for California will be adopted elsewhere, and the curriculum itself, in textbooks or not will also be transported outside the state.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/california-poised-to-adopt-ultra-leftist-k-12-history-curriculum.php

It is almost impossible to overstate the sickness that is now prevalent at American universities, especially elite schools , the ones for which parents and kids will do near anything in order to gain admission.
Yale : Students demand the right to determine what material they will learn in individual courses- no more colonialist dead white male poets
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/06/01/decolonize-yale-students-circulate-petition-opposing-white-male-major-english-poets-requirement/?utm_source=hadaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Free speech is risky at Yale: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/

Dartmouth: The gutless president whiffs, and there are no penalties for black students who invaded the library one night, disrupting those who were studying for finals,shouted racist epithets at them, taunted them, and physically threatened others. Now imagine the reverse, where white students shrieking white lives matter invades a library full of black students on a saturday night. This is of course an absurd thing to imagine, but try it out. Had the same events gone down with the races switched ,how many of the white students, all easily identifiable from the videos taken, would still be in school?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/dartmouth-and-double-standards.php

Oberlin- the school where social justice warriors come to graze:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/oberlin-is-an-insane-asylum/
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/the-new-activism-of-liberal-arts-colleges

RUTHIE BLUM; WHY ISRAEL MUST NOT APE AMERICA

Beaten down by decades of moral-equivalency abuse, Israelis treated the case of the gorilla killed at the Cincinnati Zoo this week as they do any debate surrounding the legitimacy of ‎firing a weapon.‎

With an IDF soldier on trial for shooting a subdued Palestinian terrorist to death — and a brouhaha that ‎attracted international attention while causing domestic angst — the issue of whether an ape suffered ‎a wrongful death pales in comparison.‎

This is not to say that the Hebrew-speaking media did not consider the case of Harambe the gorilla ‎worthy of coverage. On the contrary, the item captivated Israeli news outlets as much as it did others.‎

But what was absent in the discussion in the studios of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was the vitriol ‎against the zookeepers in Ohio, who had been faced with a painful choice that had to be made in ‎unfortunate circumstances. When a 3-year-old boy fell into the enclosure of a 420-pound ape — ‎and was swung and dragged every which way, into and around water — the life of one was suddenly ‎thrust into the balance against that of the other.‎

What made the event particularly tragic for all concerned was that the gorilla did not appear to be ‎attacking the toddler with purposeful aggression; in fact, he seemed confused about what to do, and ‎had he been female, the whole episode might have turned out differently. But his immense strength, ‎grip and erratic movements could have killed the child, even inadvertently. Anyone watching the video ‎of the events can see this clearly. Indeed, the little boy is unlikely to have survived even minutes ‎more in the clutches of the 17-year-old silverback.‎

Furthermore, according to the zoo, shooting the gorilla with a sedative dart would first ‎have agitated him and would have taken time to take effect, and therefore was not an option. So the only ‎recourse was to rescue the boy at the expense of the ape. ‎

Animal-rights activists and many other Americans responded to this life-saving gesture as though it ‎was an act of first-degree slaughter. Indeed, “murder” was the word bandied about on social media — ‎aimed both at the zoo and at the child’s mother, who was accused of being at fault for not preventing ‎her son from climbing the fence of the enclosure and falling in. The harsh criticism culminated in a ‎Change.org petition titled “Justice for Harambe,” which has garnered hundreds of thousands of ‎signatures. ‎

ANOTHER OUTRAGE: THE EU INCLUDING FACEBOOK AND YOU TUBE CENSOR INGRID CARLQVIST, GATESTONE’S SWEDISH EXPERT

TO CONTRIBUTE GO HERE: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/contribute.php

On Tuesday, the European Union (EU) announced a new online speech code to be enforced by four major tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube.

On Wednesday, Facebook deleted the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone’s Swedish expert.

It’s no coincidence.

Ingrid had posted our latest video to her Facebook feed — called “Sweden’s Migrant Rape Epidemic.” As you can see, Ingrid calmly lays out the facts and statistics, all of which are meticulously researched.

It’s a video version of this research paper that Gatestone published last year. The video has gone viral — racking up more than 80,000 views in its first two days.

But the EU is quite candid: it is applying a political lens to their censorship, and it now has teams of political informants — with the Orwellian title of “trusted reporters” — to report any cases of “xenophobia” or “hate speech” to Facebook for immediate deletion.

It’s political censorship. It’s outrageous. And it’s contrary to our western values of free speech, political freedom and the separation of mosque and state. But in another way, it’s a tremendous compliment — the world’s censors think that Gatestone Institute’s work is important enough and persuasive enough that it needs to be silenced.

Well, not if we have anything to say about it. We raised such a ruckus about this attack that the Swedish media started reporting on Facebook’s heavy-handed censorship. It backfired, and Facebook went into damage-control mode. They put Ingrid’s account back up — without any explanation or apology. Ironically, their censorship only gave Ingrid’s video more attention.

Facebook and the EU have backed down — for today. But they’re deadly serious about stopping ideas they don’t like. They’ll be back.

As you know, just last week we started releasing high-quality original videos, hosted by our Gatestone experts. Our first four videos have already been watched by more than 150,000 people!

It’s a great way to make our research come alive — and as Ingrid’s viral video shows, to get our ideas noticed.

So I want Gatestone’s talented experts to make more videos — a lot more! We need to win the battle of ideas. Can you help?

Each video costs us approximately $500 to produce. But as Facebook’s attack on us shows, they’re worth every penny.

Will you help us do that?

THE GLAZOV GANG THE DEBORAH WEISS MOMENT: BALLET JIHAD

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Deborah Weiss Moment with Deborah Weiss, a Human Rights lawyer who is an expert on the subject of free speech and terrorism related issues. She is the author of The Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Jihad on Free Speech. Visit her website at vigilancenow.org.

Deborah discussed Ballet Jihad, unveiling a Muslim convert’s agenda to restrict the world of ballet in the name of “tolerance.”

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Deborah discuss Freedom of Speech: Under Attack in America, unveiling how the U.S. is submitting to Islamic blasphemy codes and the high price it will pay for doing so.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/06/02/the-deborah-weiss-moment-ballet-jihad/

JACK ENGELHARD: TRUMP MEETS THE SENSITIVE PRESS

There will be blood between Trump and the news media as long as Trump stays in the picture.

One of the Democrats in the audience asked Trump if that’s how it’s going to be — a bumpy ride throughout the campaign and into the White House?

“Yes,” Trump responded sharply. “That’s how it’s going to be.”

Gasps all around. Poor devils, they are not used to a contender who speaks from the heart and without a teleprompter.

So fasten your seat belts, Mr. and Mrs. America, there will be blood between Trump and the news media as long as Trump stays in the picture – and there is no chance of a peace process between the two sides while 82 percent of the news media self identify themselves as card-carrying Liberal Democrats.

Poor devils, they are not used to a contender who speaks from the heart and without a teleprompter.
“The press should be ashamed of themselves,” Trump told a roomful of reporters who’d come to ask, “Where’s the money?”

Over the past few months, even up to Tuesday’s tempestuous rock and roll and now historic Q and A, they’d been chasing Trump to produce the money he’d promised to deliver to various Veterans’ charities. So he called this meeting to explain, and explain he did.

He provided the names of the beneficiaries and the amount of cash that he’d handed over, which amounted to nearly six million dollars. About Hillary and the millions she’s been hoarding through foreign donations, nobody asks, and she has the nerve to demand that Trump open all hisbooks pronto.

For Trump, it wasn’t about that – it was about The Washington Post andThe New York Times and reporters far and wide chasing him down about EVERYTHING.

He’d taken enough. So he took this opportunity to call them “unfair” and “sleazy,” one and all.

Who me? they murmured. For Uber Conservative Bill Kristol, who’s gone loco against Trump, Trump had this choice reference – “Loser.”