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September 2017

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Cornel West: Trump Disrespects The American Flag When He Scapegoats Black And Brown People Posted By Tim Hains

By on September 27th, 2017

Via Dose Of Dissonance: Philosophy professor at Harvard, Dr. Cornel West, debates Trump supporter Paris Dennard on Tuesday’s edition of CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360’ about the president’s feud with NFL and what role race plays in the culture war.

CORNEL WEST: I think the president needs to get off the symbolic crack-pipe. And have a sense of reality. The reason why these courageous young people are standing up is because they have a love for black people, a love of justice, and they are concerned about a racist criminal justice system.

And it is a beautiful thing to see this kind of moral and spiritual awakening taking place among the athletes, so they represent not just athletic excellence, but they are now aspiring to spiritual and moral excellence. Excellence is about unarmed truth, unapologetic love, you step down in order to let the world know you have a love for these people who are not being treated right. You have a love for these people who are being treated unfairly.

You know, I am a Christian, so every flag is under the cross for me. The cross signifies unarmed truth, unapologetic love.

Patriotism is fine, but when it scapegoats, Mexicans, Arabs, Jews, gays, lesbians, trans, etc. When it scapegoats black people and brown people, there is a critique to be brought to bear in the name of truth and in the name of love.

It’s clear President Trump has a disrespect for the American people, he has a disrespect for the flag, when he scapegoats American people, and when he lies to the American people.

Mendacity is a form of violation, in patriotism. It is a form of violation in the face of truth, and in the face of love.

So the question becomes: How wonderful to see the white brothers and sisters, all the different colors standing up out of a love for black people who are being victimized too often by a racist criminal justice system.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

I Used to Sit for the National Anthem Too But here’s the question: Is the ‘police brutality’ that NFL players are protesting based in reality? Jason Riley

By on September 27th, 2017

As a youngster, I didn’t salute the flag or stand for the national anthem. It ran against my religious teachings.

Each year, my mother would take me to the principal’s office on the first day of school and explain that we were Jehovah’s Witnesses, which meant that I would remain silent while my classmates recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. When my father, who was divorced from my mother and not a member of the church, took me to sporting events, he stood for the national anthem while I sat. He never said anything to me about it. He respected my mother’s desire to raise her children in the faith of her choice.

Growing up, I was taught that the flag was an idol and that saluting it was a form of idolatry, which was forbidden. Indeed, all forms of patriotism were discouraged. No joining the military. No running for office. No voting or taking sides in political debates. Even membership in civic groups, such as the Boy Scouts, was frowned upon. Over the decades, Witnesses endured fierce opposition for holding such beliefs. They were tried for sedition. Their homes were vandalized and their businesses were boycotted. In the 1930s and ’40s, church members were physically attacked by angry mobs of people who prided themselves on their loyalty and patriotism. The Witnesses turned to courts for protection and were mostly successful in obtaining it, whether the issue was door-to-door proselytizing, conscientious objection to the draft, or mandatory flag salutes.

The reason the principal had to accede to my mother’s wishes is because the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), that forcing children to salute the flag violated the Constitution. The court held that saluting the flag is a form of utterance and that the right to not speak is as equally protected under the First Amendment as the right to free speech. “The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure but because the flag involved is our own,” wrote Justice Robert Jackson for the 6-3 majority. “Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.” The decision was handed down on Flag Day.

To my mother’s chagrin, the religion didn’t stick and I left the church voluntarily in my teens. I still remember attending a college basketball game with my father and standing for the national anthem for the first time. He did a little double take as I rose beside him. Then he put his arm around me and pulled me closer to him. I’ve been a political commentator for more than 20 years now. I vote. I take sides. A large framed reproduction of Jasper Johns’s “Flag” hangs above the fireplace in my living room. But when I see, as we all did on Sunday, professional athletes catching flak from the president on down for taking a knee during the national anthem, it takes me back to my childhood. I can’t help but feel for them.

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MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Westerners: Guilty of Reading the News by Douglas Murray

By on September 27th, 2017

If the public are asked whether Arabs should be profiled for security reasons, why should it be surprising if a very slight majority of the public think they should be? A large number of terrorist incidents have occurred in the Arab and Western world in recent years.

If, at some point, large numbers of, say, Czechs, Poles and Hungarians had started to export terrorism across the planet, a majority of the public in a country such as Britain might be relied on to call for increased security checks on people of Eastern European origin. In the meantime, the public would appear to be guilty of nothing other than reading the news.

Few newspaper commentaries bothered to wonder whether the people who had decapitated a soldier on the streets of London might not be responsible for the negative sentiments that followed. For Arab News, any such explanation would be an impossibility.

In August, the polling company YouGov conducted an opinion survey among 2,000 members of the British public. The poll, carried out in partnership with Arab News, the Saudi paper owned by a member of the Saudi royal family, was published September 25.

As might be expected from such a publication, the questions asked of the British public, and the answers received, suited a particular line of argument: the survey evidently sought to find evidence of “Islamophobic” attitudes. It duly found that 41% of the British public polled said that Arab immigrants and refugees had not added anything to society and 55% agreed in principle with the profiling of Arabs for security reasons. The Arab News/YouGov poll also found that 72% of the British public think that “Islamophobia” is getting worse in the UK.

Alongside this report came the surprising finding that a similar number of British people (7 in 10) believe that “the rise in Islamophobic comments by politicians and others are fuelling hate crime.”

All of this presents a fascinating as well as slightly confused picture. Why should the same percentage of the public believe that “Islamophobia” is getting worse but that politicians in Britain are fuelling it? Let alone that politicians are fuelling an alleged rise in “hate crime” — the upsurge in which is constantly promised yet mercifully never occurs? It is clearly the aim of Arab News — as with many other media companies from the same region — to present Britain as a bigoted and unenlightened place — a country filled with primitive and medieval views of “the other”. As opposed to, say, an enlightened and welcoming family fiefdom like that of Saudi Arabia, where attitudes towards foreigners and incomers are renowned the world over for their tolerance and good humour.

If it was possible to have genuinely free and fair polling in Saudi Arabia, carried out by a foreign newspaper and without any government interference, then doubtless the world would learn only of the amount that outsiders had brought into the country, and the extent to which security checks on any people coming to the country from outside Saudi should be entirely absent.

The idea, of course, is ridiculous. What is more ridiculous still is the idea — consistent from a range of opinion polls over recent years — that the British people, like those across Europe and America, are in the grip of some profoundly irrational mania. If the public are asked whether Arabs should be profiled for security reasons, why should it be surprising if a very slight majority of the public think they should be? A large number of terrorist incidents have occurred in the Arab and Western world in recent years, and despite the considerable diversity of the perpetrators of Islamist attacks across the globe, a larger number of terrorists in recent years have emerged from the Arab world than, say, Eastern Europe. If, at some point, large numbers of Czechs, Poles and Hungarians had started to export terrorism across the planet, a majority of the public in a country such as Britain might be relied on to call for increased security checks on people of Eastern European origin. In the meantime, the public would appear to be guilty of nothing other reading the news. The central conceit of a poll such as this, however, is, of course, to present the whole issue of terrorism as a misunderstanding by the general public.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Self-Described “Progressive, Mainstream” Muslim Groups in America Are Homophobic and Racist by Samantha Mandeles

By on September 27th, 2017

According to Muslim feminist bloggers, who write regularly for the site muslimgirl.com, MAS, ICNA, and ISNA are blatantly racist.

If Sarsour and her fellow Islamists in the United States are to be believed, they work to “make America better…” “…out of love” for fellow Americans. Yet, their behavior tells another story — one of closeted bigotry and deceit — all for the purpose of legitimizing their own false claims to the leadership of mainstream Muslims.

In an interview published on ISNA’s website, Muzzammil Siddiqi called homosexuality a “moral corruption,” and explicitly stated that he supports laws in countries that execute homosexuals. ISNA’s annual convention included Yasir Qadhi, dean of academic affairs at AlMaghrib Institute, who has been recorded teaching students that killing homosexuals is part of Islam.

“Islam is a religion of peace, but you can’t have peace without justice,” said self-styled “civil rights activist” Linda Sarsour at the Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America (MAS-ICNA) convention in December 2016. Sarsour, who describes herself as a “Palestinian-American feminist,” is but one example of a radical Muslim in the West who has carefully cultivated an image of herself as righteously preoccupied with liberal values and social justice — and Islamist organizations, such as MAS, ICNA and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), have tried to do the same.

A highlight reel from the MAS-ICNA convention features author Yasmin Mogahed declaring, “We have to care about the pain and struggles of others,” as well as a prominent imam, Omar Suleiman, asking, “What have we done for the marginalized in this country?”

In a promotional video released in 2016, the organization’s president, Azhar Azeez, boasts of “bringing a very positive impact to our communities across the nation.”

According to Muslim feminist bloggers, however, who write regularly for the site muslimgirl.com, MAS, ICNA, and ISNA are blatantly racist. One such observer, in a piece titled “Mainstream Islamic Conferences Have a Longstanding History of Normalizing Anti-Blackness,” writes:

“When I look at mosques that perpetuate patriarchal violence, I see it as powerless men trying to feel in control. Conferences are no different. Often times, it’s non-Black Muslims (mostly Arab and Desi) who organize these tone-deaf conferences, and use them as tools of oppression to silence the voices and contributions of those who are more marginalized (mostly Black Muslims).”

She continued:

“Remember last year when ICNA asked participants in a speed dating event what skin color was preferred for their potential partner? The fact that they didn’t understand why that was problematic the first time is enough of an indicator.”

Another blogger on the site recounts attending the April 2017 ICNA convention in Baltimore — “one of the most historically black cities in our nation” — and discovering that not even a panel on “America’s Original Sins: Racism and Social Inequality” included a black, Latino, or female speaker.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Should Buck the Consensus on the Kurds The administration shouldn’t be bullied into betraying them. By Jonathan S. Tobin

By on September 27th, 2017

We all know President Donald Trump isn’t a fan of the foreign-policy establishment, either in Washington or at the United Nations. To the contrary, he delights in confounding the experts and defying the international consensus on a variety of issues. Yet on one key matter, Trump seems to be adhering to the conventional wisdom. When it comes to independence for Kurdistan, Trump has been listening to the so-called wise men both inside and outside the government and has been clear that his administration opposes the referendum held there yesterday.

But in this case he should buck the consensus. He ought to signal that the United States will not go along with efforts to suppress the Kurds’ bid for freedom. Doing so would be not only the right thing to do for America’s sole reliable ally in the fight against ISIS, but also good strategy. Giving the Kurds a leg up toward their goal would provide Trump with something he has been looking for: leverage against Iran.

Trump put the world on notice last week, in his speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, that he was not prepared to follow the lead of America’s European allies on Iran. He made a strong case that the nuclear deal his predecessor struck with Tehran had been ineffective in achieving its goal of ending the threat of an Iranian weapon. Just as important, he pointed out that the pact had both enriched and emboldened Iran.

There is good reason to believe that the Iranians are already pushing the envelope on compliance with the agreement, which legitimized their nuclear program — and whose provisions will start to sunset within a decade, essentially allowing Iran to build a weapon with international approval. The deal also has encouraged Iran’s leaders to believe that the country’s illegal missile tests, continued status as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism (a designation that Obama’s State Department reaffirmed after the deal went into effect), and successful military adventure in Syria will go unchallenged by the West. With the help of the Russians, the Iranians have enabled the barbarous Assad regime to prevail in Syria’s civil war. That has given them what is, in effect, a land bridge to the Mediterranean stretching from an Iraq run by their Shiite allies to Lebanon, where their Hezbollah auxiliaries dominate.

Trump has struggled in vain to balance his desire to finish the campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq with his recognition of the danger that a triumphant Iran poses to the West and to Sunni Arab states eager to cooperate with the U.S. This question has exposed a terrible contradiction in his foreign policy: His desire to restrain Iran has collided with his hopes for better relations with Russia, which acts as Tehran’s ally in Syria.

Unfortunately, his urge to finish off ISIS has blinded him to the rights of the group that has done more than any other in the region to carry on that fight: the Kurds. While the Assad-Iran-Russia coalition in Syria has paid lip service to the war on ISIS, it has largely ignored the Islamic State in practice, concentrating instead on eliminating Assad’s other domestic foes. The Kurdish Peshmerga, the military force raised by Iraqi Kurdistan, has been the only reliable land force in the campaign against ISIS. Without the Kurds, U.S. efforts to rout ISIS would have continued to fail. And yet the same Western governments that have cheered the Kurds’ efforts are unprepared to countenance their desire for a state of their own.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Life With Nanny Norway What it’s really like to live in a social-democratic “paradise.” Bruce Bawer

By on September 27th, 2017

For thirteen years in a row, Business Insider – citing its standard of living, health-care system, and high life expectancy – has put Norway at the top of its annual list of “best countries to live in.” The high life expectancy is an objective fact; the other items are a matter of debate. Norwegian health care? It works admirably, unless you require an operation or treatment that the government considers too expensive or for which there’s a waiting list. Standard of living? Incomes are high, but so are taxes.

But I’m not here to argue with Business Insider’s rankings. I’m here to point out an aspect of Norwegian life that never figures on any of these “best country” lists, whether put out by Business Insider or the United Nations or whomever. I’m talking about statism – the degree to which the state is a palpable part of everyday life.

Briefly put, Norway is pretty much statism central. I’m more accustomed to it now, but when I was first living here I was acutely aware every single day of the presence of the government in my life. I’m not talking about some abstract, theoretical phenomenon. It’s a real, palpable feeling. A feeling of being a bit less of an individual and a bit more part of a collective. An awareness that your eleven-digit “person number” (which includes your birth date) comes up a lot more often than your social-security number ever did back in the U.S. A sense of being covered by an umbrella, but also surrounded by a wall.

For the last four years, to be sure, Norway has had a supposedly non-socialist coalition government, led by the Conservative Party, with Labor heading up the socialist opposition. In the September 11 elections, the governing coalition was returned to power. But the non-socialist label is deceptive: whichever party or parties happen to be running the country at any given time, the public sector is overwhelmingly dominated by Labor and other leftist parties. While in power, the so-called conservatives may pass legislation signaling a bit more support for business interests or the military, but they never do anything that significantly reverses Norwegian statism.

Now, to live under a statist system is, as it were, to live in someone else’s house, and thus to live by their rules. Nanny Norway doesn’t think it’s good for you to drink. So she doesn’t allow anyone other than herself to sell liquor, and makes buying it as costly and troublesome as possible. In my town of 12,000 people, there’s one state-owned liquor outlet. Hours are limited. The tax on (for example) a bottle of vodka is 300%. Beer is more than twice as expensive as anywhere else on earth.

Nanny Norway thinks it’s best for you to eat at home, so going out to dinner is also a pricey proposition. Lunch? Almost nobody goes out to lunch. Years ago, in a New York Times article about Norway’s high prices, I made casual reference to the matpakke, the modest packed lunch – usually a sandwich or two wrapped in wax paper or aluminum foil – that Norwegians of all socioeconomic levels take to work. After VG, Norway’s largest daily, ran an article about my article, I received hundreds of emails and text messages – including death threats – savaging me for insulting a beloved national tradition.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Brandeis University: Backing Hamas on Campus SJP defended student who called for an American intifada. Sara Dogan

By on September 27th, 2017

As revealed in recent congressional testimony, Students for Justice in Palestine is a campus front for Hamas terrorists. SJP’s propaganda activities are orchestrated and funded by a Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine, whose chairman is Hatem Bazian and whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. The report and posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop University Support for Terrorists. Images of the posters that appeared at Brandeis and other campuses may be viewed at www.stopuniversitysupportforterrorists.org.

Brandeis University

Brandeis University was named for the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court, Louis D. Brandeis, and is one of only a few prominent American universities to be founded primarily by Jews. In spite of these strong ties to the American Jewish community, Brandeis has stood apart in recent years for its hostility to Israel and its strong support of Israel’s terrorist enemies. In the past year, swastikas have appeared in multiple locations on campus and the campus SJP chapter has held an event supporting Hamas’s policy of refusing to normalize relations with Israel or its allies. Brandeis rescinded an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of radical Islam and advocate of Muslim women’s rights, while granting one to notoriously anti-Semitic playwright Tony Kushner. Brandeis also hosted a secret listserve where prominent professors exchanged emails attacking Israel—even comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany— and supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that is supported and funded by Hamas. When a Brandeis student used her personal twitter account to call for an Intifada, she was vigorously defended by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Two additional Brandeis students sought to restore relations between the university and Al Quds University in Palestine, which is a recruiting ground for the terror group Hamas.

Supporting Evidence:

In November 2016, a swastika was found on the door of the men’s restroom in the campus library at Brandeis.

On November 3, 2016, Brandeis SJP held an event titled “Apartheid is Not ‘Green’: Greenwashing and Palestine.” The purpose of the event was to demonize Israel and to claim that the Jewish state uses its record of positive environmental activism to hide its alleged “apartheid” and mistreatment of the Palestinians. The event description stated: “Israel inaccurately portrays itself as environmentally conscious in order to justify and distract from its violence against Palestine.” Of course all the violence in the Middle East conflict is the result of a 70-year unprovoked aggression by the Arab states and terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas against the Jewish state.

On March 8, 2016, Brandeis SJP held an event called “Presentation & Discussion on Pinkwashing.” The term “pinkwashing” is used by Israel’s enemies to claim that the Jewish state uses its overwhelmingly positive record on gay rights to hide its mistreatment of the Palestinians.

In May 2015, Former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, known for his extreme anti-Israel views, gave the Commencement address at Brandeis. In an op-ed recently co-written for Politico.com, Pickering repeated Hamas tropes such as “Israel’s half-century-long occupation” and stated that “the marginal improvement in Israel’s security provided by these expansive Israeli demands can hardly justify the permanent subjugation and disenfranchisement of a people to which Israel refuses to grant citizenship in the Jewish state.”

On April 23, 2015, Professor Noam Chomsky, known for his extreme anti-Israel views, spoke at Brandeis. During his speech, he described Israel’s actions towards Palestine as “vicious, brutal and criminal” and claimed that Israel “is alone in denying” its “illegal occupation of territories.”

During March 21-27, 2015, Brandeis SJP held Israel Apartheid Week on campus. Israel Apartheid Week is a weeklong series of anti-Israel events designed to demonize and destroy Israel. Events included a talk on “Facing the Ongoing Nakba.” (Nakba, an Arabic term meaning “catastrophe,” is used by Hamas and its supporters to describe the creation of Israel). The “Nakba” event included a display of the false Hamas maps which purport to show the infiltration and colonization by Jews of Arab “Palestine.” The Week also included a talk by Professor Sa’ed Atshan, an anti-Israel activist who currently serves as a professor in “Peace and Conflict Studies” at Swarthmore College, who has called Gaza an “open-aired prison” and has referred to Israeli military strategy as “scorched-Earth policy.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

ELECTIONS ARE COMING- Two Fighters Come Together in Alabama A tough fights ends in the emergence of a GOP fighter. Daniel Greenfield

By on September 27th, 2017

Early this century, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued to remove the Ten Commandments from an Alabama courthouse. The case ended with Judge Roy Moore, the democratically elected Alabama Chief Justice, being removed from the bench for refusing to take down the Ten Commandments.

“Justice was served today,” the president of the leftist hate group cheered. “A public official who defied the law was removed from office.”

But the Southern Poverty Law Center couldn’t keep Roy Moore down no matter how hard it tried.

Last September, the SPLC was still fighting to remove Moore from the bench after his return. Now it will have to fight to remove him from the Senate because Roy Moore does not give up.

Roy Moore didn’t give up when a Federal judge and the Alabama Supreme Court ordered him to take down the Ten Commandments. He didn’t give up when he was removed from the bench. He didn’t give up in the face of a ruling by the United States Supreme Court and another suspension. He didn’t give up when he was massively outspent in every election. Including this one. Because he doesn’t give up.

There’s something to be said for a man who fights for what he believes in. And who won’t give up.

Agree or disagree with Roy Moore, no one can deny that he’s a fighter who overcomes long odds. He won his first election as a longshot candidate despite being outspent ten to one. He won his second election after being outspent six to one. He won the GOP Senate runoff last night after, once again, being outspent six to one. Including five to one on television advertising. And he won it by a landslide.

And by fighting for it, Judge Roy Moore earned his shot at the Senate.

It’s no secret that Republicans have lost winnable Senate seats when candidates with impeccable convictions, but poor electability, went to the front of the line. There’s nothing wrong with making electability a priority. A candidate who can’t win is just opening the door for a Democrat.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Violence-Promoting Antifa Academic Condemned by Police Union, Dartmouth President By Debra Heine

By on September 27th, 2017

Another university academic has come under fire from the police for expressing support for the far-left, anti-cop anarchist group antifa.

Dartmouth College lecturer Mark Bray is described in his bio as a “historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe.” He was also a spokesman for the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.

The Alliance for Global Justice, a progressive charity that is funded by George Soros, was/is a sponsor of both OWS and Refuse Fascism, the left-wing, antifa-linked group that helped organize the violent shutdown of the Milo Yiannopoulos event at the University of California, Berkeley last February.

Bray wrote a book on OWS that was published in 2013.

Bray recently signed a copy of his antifa book for his cop-hating “comrade” professor Michael Isaacson, who shared a photo of the inscription on Twitter.

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” wrote Bray.

In the wake of the largely media-driven “white supremacy” hysteria, Bray has become somewhat of a media personality, with dozens of national news outlets turning to him for information about antifa. According to the Washington Post, all of the media attention is making administration officials at Dartmouth a bit nervous. “Dartmouth officials are unsettled,” according to the report. “Bray has made no secret about his belief that violence is, in some circumstances, justified. In turn, the university has sought to distance itself from him.”

In a recent appearance on CSPAN, Bray defended antifa’s violence against fellow Americans by calling it “preemptive self-defense.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Lampoon Times By Thomas Lifson

By on September 27th, 2017

When did the New York Times get taken over by the National Lampoon? It happened so slowly I didn’t even notice.

As has been widely noticed, the Times has been running a series of articles related to the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, and it is obvious that the Times is still sad that the whole show came to an ignominious end in the early 1990s. (After all, there was one wall that the Times actually liked—at least their Pulitzer prize winning “reporter” Walter Duranty.) The series has produced gems such as this:

Hubba, hubba, comrade.

Monday the Times outdid itself:

Memo to the Times: I suspect the “big dreams” of Chinese women was an end to Communist tyranny, which wasn’t just a “flaw,” but its essence.

Imagine a headline that started, “For all of its flaws, slavery. . .”

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