Displaying posts published in

October 2017

EDUCATION Comments turned off

First, They Came for the Biologists The postmodernist left on campus is intolerant not only of opposing views, but of science itself. By Heather Heying

By on October 3rd, 2017

“Science has sometimes been used to rationalize both atrocity and inaction in its face. But conflating science with its abuse has become a favorite trope of extremists on the left. It’s a cheap rhetorical trick, and not, dare I say, very logical.Science creates space for the free exchange of ideas, for discovery, for progress. What has postmodernism done for you lately?”

Ms. Heying is a former biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

Who would have guessed that when America cleaved, the left would get the National Football League and the right would get uncontested custody of science?

The revolution on college campuses, which seeks to eradicate individuals and ideas that are considered unsavory, constitutes a hostile takeover by fringe elements on the extreme left. Last spring at the Evergreen State College, where I was a professor for 15 years, the revolution was televised—proudly and intentionally—by the radicals. Opinions not fitting with the currently accepted dogma—that all white people are racist, that questioning policy changes aimed at achieving “equity” is itself an act of white supremacy—would not be tolerated, and those who disagreed were shouted down, hunted, assaulted, even battered. Similar eruptions have happened all over the country.

What may not be obvious from outside academia is that this revolution is an attack on Enlightenment values: reason, inquiry and dissent. Extremists on the left are going after science. Why? Because science seeks truth, and truth isn’t always convenient.

The left has long pointed to deniers of climate change and evolution to demonstrate that over here, science is a core value. But increasingly, that’s patently not true.

The battle on our campuses—and ever more, in K-12 schools, in cubicles and in meetings, and on the streets—is being framed as a battle for equity, but that’s a false front. True, there are real grievances. Gaps between populations exist, for historical and modern reasons that are neither honorable nor acceptable, and they must be addressed. But what is going on at institutions across the country is—yes—a culture war between science and postmodernism. The extreme left has embraced a facile fiction.

Postmodernism, and specifically its offspring, critical race theory, have abandoned rigor and replaced it with “lived experience” as the primary source of knowledge. Little credence is given to the idea of objective reality. Science has long understood that observation can never be perfectly objective, but it also provides the ultimate tool kit with which to distinguish signal from noise—and from bias. Scientists generate complete lists of alternative hypotheses, with testable predictions, and we try to falsify our own cherished ideas.

Science is imperfect: It is slow and methodical, and it makes errors. But it does work. We have microchips, airplanes and streetlights to show for it.

In a meeting with administrators at Evergreen last May, protesters called, on camera, for college president George Bridges to target STEM faculty in particular for “antibias” training, on the theory that scientists are particularly prone to racism. That’s obvious to them because scientists persist in using terms like “genetic” and “phenotype” when discussing humans. Mr. Bridges offers: “[What] we are working towards is, bring ’em in, train ’em, and if they don’t get it, sanction them.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘An Act of Pure Evil’ Amid the Las Vegas horror, don’t forget Steve Scalise’s recovery.

By on October 3rd, 2017

As of now, little is known about what caused Stephen Paddock to murder some 58 innocent people in Las Vegas Sunday evening. It sits before us as what President Trump described in a statement as “an act of pure evil.”

More information may emerge in coming days, such as how Paddock could have smuggled so much weaponry into the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. But currently there is nothing to link this killer to the kinds of causes or illnesses associated with other recent mass murderers. There is no evident connection to Islamic terrorists or any extremist group, no suggestion of disturbed behavior, no criminal record, no fights with neighbors or co-workers. The only oddly noteworthy fact is that his father was once on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

We always search for reasons when this happens, but no pretext or explanation is sufficient to explain why a person commits mass murders such as this one. Not Omar Mateen’s slaughter of 49 people at an Orlando nightclub last year or Anders Breivik’s slaughter of 77 people in Norway in 2011.

We all live daily lives that involve some degree of disputes, conflicts and animosities. Most remain inside civilizing constraints. Some recesses of the individual human brain, however, can harbor impulses that are simply malign and sometimes produce senseless murder.

Americans have spent more time recently than they would ever care to trying to absorb moments of terrifying, overwhelming destruction. People in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean islands will spend years rebuilding lives and communities torn apart by several hurricanes. It can sometimes seem too much.

Think, though, of the failed attempt at mass murder in June by a lone gunman who sprayed bullets into a Congressional baseball game in suburban Virginia. Last Thursday, Rep. Steve Scalise, severely wounded by the gunman, returned to the House of Representatives and delivered an eloquent tribute to the acts of valor that day by police officers and colleagues.

Amid the carnage of Las Vegas and the hurricanes’ destruction, a great many similar acts of selfless courage occurred to save the wounded or to minimize the loss of life. President Trump called it “the ties of community and the comfort of our common humanity.” Against the evil of a Stephen Paddock, that undefeatable reality is worth remembering.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Russian Election Influence Jan Mel Poller

By on October 3rd, 2017

There are many claims floating around that Russia colluded with Trump/the Trump campaign during the 2016 Presidential election resulting in the victory of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. While there are general claims about collusion, there are no claims of specific actions. This, of course, ties in with Hillary’s book, “What Happened”.

You can’t claim collusion without pointing to actual acts. That the Mueller investigation teamhas not leaked claims of actual acts throws doubt on his whole enterprise.Here is what I think happened.

What Russia didn’t make happen:

Russia didn’t make Hillary refuse to protect the Consulate in Benghazi.

Russia didn’t make Hillary lie to the people about a video causing the Benghazi attack while she told her daughter it was terrorism.

Russia didn’t make Hillary have an unsecured server in her house and in the bathroom of an apartment in Colorado.

Russia didn’t make people send Huma Abedin emails at home to Anthony Weiner’s personal computer. Weiner had no security clearance and his computer was unsecured.

Russia didn’t make Hillary have her lawyers permanently delete 30,000 emails from her private server.

Russia didn’t make Hillary and Bill create the Clinton Foundation.

Russia didn’t make the Clinton’s take huge “speaking” fees from Wall Street while publicly damning Wall Street.

Russia didn’t make Hillary, her aids, and the press push for Trump to win the Republican primary in the belief that he would be easy to beat.

Russia didn’t make Hillary’s pollsters weight the result to show Hillary as unbeatable.

Russia didn’t make Hillary believe those polls.

Russia didn’t make Hillary believe that she had Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin locked-up and that she didn’t have to go there.

Russia did not make Hillary go to West Virginia and announce that she would shut down the coal industry, which affected Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio and Colorado.

Russia didn’t make Donna Brazil give Hillary debate questions in advance if the debate.

Russia didn’t make Hillary proclaim that half the voters were “deplorables”.

Russia didn’t make Hillary issue invitations to her speeches, as she did to me in Virginia, where you had to pay $35 to hear her campaign talk.

Russia didn’t make the Clintons make speeches for large amounts of money to people who wanted favors from the government.

Russia didn’t make the DNC cause violence at Trump events.

What Russia may have done:

Russia may have hacked Hillary’s and others’ unsecured servers and released the information to Wikileaks.

What Russia did do:

Russia bought 20% of America’s uranium mines. $145 million of the proceeds wound up in the coffers of the Clinton Foundation.

Russia is reported to have employed Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, and paid him about $35 million.

Conclusion:

Someone, and it may have been Russia, leaked information from John Podesta’s server to the public through Wikileaks. The information was damming to the Democrats. The release of this information doomed Hillary’s campaign. Her supporters said, in effect, if you didn’t know what she did, you would have voted for her and she would have won.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Tale of Two Revolutions Srdja Trifkovic

By on October 3rd, 2017

A hundred years ago, in the early hours of November 7, 1917, the Bolsheviks grabbed power in Petrograd. Within weeks they took advantage of Russia’s collapsing political and social structure to impose control over the country’s heartland. The result of the coup was a tragedy of world-historical proportions. A vibrant, flourishing culture (see “Remembering the Old Russia,” Breaking Glass, September) was destroyed amid a bloodbath 100 times worse than la Terreur.

In the preceding quarter-century Russia had undergone rapid modernization. On the eve of the Great War she was the world’s fourth-largest economy, her annual growth rate comparable to that of China after Deng’s reforms. Her railway network exceeded 50,000 miles, and her gold reserves were second only to Britain’s. Her wheat harvest had doubled in the two decades preceding 1913. That year Russia had the lowest direct taxes in Europe, four times lower than those of France and Germany, one eighth of the British rate. Real incomes had increased sixfold between 1893 and 1913. Workers’ rights, public health, and literacy were improving accordingly. Of some 150,000 new book titles published worldwide in 1914, over one fifth of them were published in Russia—as many as in Britain, France, and the United States combined. Paul Valéry called the late empire one of the wonders of the world, which, despite its modernity and unlike Western Europe, still retained a Christian outlook.

The leaders of Wilhelmine Germany feared that Russia’s growth would turn her into Europe’s hegemon. As Fritz Fischer established in his 1961 Germany’s Aims in the First World War, the Kaiserreich military and political elite engineered the crisis after Sarajevo to wage a “preventive” war and thus preempt Russia’s rapid economic, demographic, and military rise. The same people actively helped Lenin et al. on their sealed train journey from Zurich to Petrograd three years later, thus sealing Europe’s destiny (as well as their own).

The revolution that ended monarchy in March 1917, leading to its Bolshevik sequel eight months later, did not come because the material condition of Russian peasants and workers was unbearable, or because the war was going badly. The weakness of Nicholas II, the role of his unstable wife, the influence of Rasputin—all were on balance peripheral. The revolution came primarily because Russia’s political and intellectual elite had lost its faith, focus, and nerve.

The most significant trait of the Bolshevik terror during the civil war and in the ensuing decades was the promotion of a quasi religious forma mentis based on anti-Christian zeal, and the parallel insistence on the creation of a New Man divorced from his ancestors, his naturally evolving communities, and his culture. As Trotsky wrote in 1924,

Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is the Las Vegas Mass-Murderer a Terrorist? The answer appears to be ‘yes’ under Nevada law, and ‘maybe’ under federal law. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on October 3rd, 2017

In Las Vegas, more than 50 people are dead, and perhaps hundreds of others have been injured, in the deadliest mass-shooting attack in American history. Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old Nevadan believed to be the lone gunman, fired upon attendees of the Route 91 Harvest music festival from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort across the street. He killed himself before police reached him.

As we begin to process what has happened, it is important to remember — as we have learned from too many of these incidents — that initial reports are often wrong. We must wait for investigators and responsible journalists to do their work before we can have a clear picture of what happened.

On that score, news reports this morning are already referring to this atrocity as a “terrorist attack.” And that was even before the Islamic State jihadist organization claimed responsibility for the attack, a claim that has just beenreported by the Washington Examiner. ISIS offered no proof of its assertions that Paddock was a recent convert to Islam and had carried out the massacre on the terror network’s behalf. Again, we cannot assess it until the investigation unfolds.

Clearly, Paddock did terrorize a community, particularly an event attended by 22,000 people, at least hundreds of whom he put in mortal peril.

Does that make him a terrorist? Let’s put the unverified ISIS claims aside. If Paddock was a lone gunman acting independently and not under the influence of any organization or ideology, the answer to the question may depend on which law we apply — the federal penal code or Nevada’s criminal law.

We’ve recently had occasion to consider federal terrorism law in connection with a discussion over whether the violent “Antifa” movement should be legally designated as a terrorist organization. Under the U.S. penal code (section 2331(5) of Title 18), a violent act meets the definition of “domestic terrorism” if the actor was seeking:

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.

Many (perhaps most) mass killings will meet this test. Plainly, shooting at a crowd is an act of intimidation. But as the word “coerce” (also in that first clause) implies, the federal terrorism statute speaks to intimidation or coercion of a civilian population toward some identifiable objective. This kind of intimidation is easy to make out when the aggressor is a jihadist, whether associated with an outfit such as ISIS or merely “inspired by” sharia-supremacist ideology (which seeks the imposition of sharia law and to force changes in American policy). Establishing such intimidation is also straightforward when a group with a radical political agenda, such as Antifa, is involved. It is more difficult, though, when we are dealing with a lone gunman.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Case for Kurdish Independence by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on October 3rd, 2017

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tried to extort Israel to withdraw its support, and threatened to end the process of normalization unless it does so. It is worth noting that Turkey strongly supports statehood for the Palestinians but not for their own Kurdish population. Hypocrisy abounds in the international community, but that should surprise no one.
Iraqi Kurds were a key partner for the U.S. coalition that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime and has staved off further sectarian tensions in that country. One thing is clear: if the United States continues to neglect its “friends” and allies in the region — those on the front line in the fight against ISIS — the damage to its credibility will only increase.
Nor are there any limits to the hypocrisy of those university students and faculty who demonstrate so loudly for Palestinian statehood, but ignore or oppose the Kurds. When is the last time you read about a demonstration in favor of the Kurds on a university campus? The answer is never.
No one who supports statehood for the Palestinians can morally oppose Kurdish independence. But they do, because it is double-standard hypocrisy, and not morality, that frames the debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

More than 90% of Iraq’s Kurdish population have now voted for independence from Iraq. While the referendum is not binding, it reflects the will of a minority group that has a long history of persecution and statelessness.

The independence referendum is an important step toward remedying a historic injustice inflicted on the Kurdish population in the aftermath of the First World War. Yet, while millions took to the streets to celebrate, it is clear that the challenges of moving forward toward establishing an independent Kurdistan are only just beginning. Already, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, has said: “we will impose the rule of Iraq in all of the areas of the KRG, with the strength of the constitution.” Meanwhile, other Iraqi lawmakers have called for the prosecution of Kurdish representatives who organized the referendum — singling out Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Masoud Barzani, specifically.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

The 80th Anniversary of the Two-State Solution In 1937, an official British report first proposed the partition of Mandate Palestine. The story behind it helps to explain why the Arab-Jewish conflict remains unresolved. Rick Richman

By on October 2nd, 2017

In this epochal year of Zionist anniversaries—the 120th of the First Zionist Conference in Basle, the 100th of the Balfour Declaration, the 70th of the 1947 UN Partition Resolution, the 50th of the Six-Day War—there is yet another to be marked: the 80th anniversary of the 1937 British Peel Commission Report, which first proposed a “two-state solution” for Palestine.

The story of the Peel report is largely unknown today, but it is worth retelling for two reasons:

First, it is a historic saga featuring six extraordinary figures, five of whom testified before the commission: on the Zionist side, David Ben-Gurion, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann, the leaders respectively of the left, right, and center of the Zionist movement; on the Arab side, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem; and on the British side, Winston Churchill, who gave crucial testimonyin camera. Louis D. Brandeis, the leading American Zionist, also played a significant role.

Second, and perhaps even more important today, the story helps to explain why, a century after the Balfour Declaration, the Arab-Jewish conflict remains unresolved.

The history and prehistory of the Balfour Declaration has been notably covered in anniversary pieces in Mosaic by Martin Kramer,Nicholas Rostow, Allan Arkush, Colin Shindler, and Douglas J. Feith. In November 1917, as Britain fought the Ottoman Turks in the Middle East during World War I, the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, formally declared British support for “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration, as it came to be known, was issued after extensive consideration by the British cabinet and consultation with Britain’s allies, including the United States, whose president, Woodrow Wilson, approved it in October 1917. In 1922, the League of Nations incorporated it into the Mandate for Palestine that the League entrusted to Britain, and the Declaration thereby became an established part of international law.

The Palestinian Arabs rejected both the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate, even after Britain in 1923 severed the larger portion of Palestine, east of the Jordan River, and recognized Emir Abdullah of Transjordan as its new ruler. In 1929, Arabs rioted in Jerusalem, massacred Jews in Hebron and Safed, and attacked Jews elsewhere in the land. In 1936, in a substantial escalation, the Arabs called a general economic strike, sabotaged trains, roads, and telephone lines, engaged in widespread violence against Jews, destroyed their trees and crops, and conducted guerrilla attacks against the British Mandate authorities.

In May 1936, the British announced their intention to establish a commission to “ascertain the underlying causes of the disturbances” and make recommendations for the future. Arab violence continued through October, delaying the arrival in Jerusalem of the commission, led by Lord Peel, until November. While it was on its way, the Arabs declared they would boycott its proceedings.

Recognizing that the future of their national home was at stake, the Jews presented to the commission a major defense of the Zionist cause: a 288-page printed memorandum, together with five appendices, covering the history of Palestine, the legal basis of the Mandate, and the extensive Jewish accomplishments in Palestine in the two decades since the Balfour Declaration. The memorandum emphasized the urgency of the hour—the Nazis had been in power for three years and had stripped German Jews of their civil rights. The memorandum stressed that Jews were “not concerned merely with the assertion of abstract rights” but also with “the pressure of dire practical necessity”:

The conditions now prevailing in Germany are too well known to require lengthy description. . . . But it is not only in Germany that the Jews are living under [such] conditions. . . . About five million Jews . . . are concentrated in certain parts of eastern and southeastern Europe . . . for whom the visible future holds no hope. The avenues of escape are closing. . . . What saves them from despair is the thought [of the Jewish national home].

Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, and Jabotinsky testified before the commission between November 1936 and February 1937. Taken together, their presentations constituted the most forceful and eloquent defense of Zionism since Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress 40 years earlier. Weizmann’s two-hour presentation was perhaps the finest in his long career as head of the Zionist Organization. The “six million people . . . pent up in places where they are not wanted,” he said, faced a world “divided into places where they cannot live and places into which they cannot enter.” The Jews sought but “one place in the world . . . where we could live and express ourselves in accordance with our character, and make our contribution to civilization in our own way.”

Ben-Gurion’s testimony was, if anything, even more forceful. The rights of the Jews in Palestine, he reminded the commission, were derived not from the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration but from the history chronicled in the Bible:

[T]he Bible is our Mandate, the Bible which was written by us, in our own language, in Hebrew, in this very country. . . . Our right is as old as the Jewish people. It was only the recognition of that right which was expressed in the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate. . . . [We are] re-establishing a thing which we had, which we held, and which was our own during the whole history of the Jewish people.

Jabotinsky’s turn came at the commission’s last public hearing, held in London on February 11, 1937. The London newspapers reported that “hundreds of Jews queued up outside the House of Lords” to hear his testimony, and “more people [were] turned away than could be admitted.” Notables in the audience included William Ormsby-Gore (the new secretary of state for the colonies) and Lady Blanche Dugdale (Lord Balfour’s niece). Jabotinsky, the foremost orator among the Zionists, spoke of the urgent imperative of rescue:

We have got to save millions, many millions. I do not know whether it is a question of re-housing one-third of the Jewish race, half of the Jewish race, or a quarter of the Jewish race . . . but it is a question of millions. . . . It is quite understandable that the Arabs of Palestine would prefer Palestine to be the Arab State No. 4, No. 5, or No. 6—that I quite understand—but when the Arab claim is confronted with our Jewish demand to be saved, it is like the claims of appetite versus the claims of starvation.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Functions of Anti-Semitism Ruth R. Wisse

By on October 2nd, 2017

This summer, Nazi symbols and the slogan “Jews will not replace us” at a rally of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, generated a rare clarifying moment in an otherwise politically scrambled time. Since the United States led the Allies to victory in the Second World War and the Nuremburg Trials condemned the perpetrators of genocide, Nazism has been the most powerful symbol of evil in our culture and Jews its most identifiable victims. Though it may be said in some sense that “both sides” at Charlottesville — the demonstrators and counter-demonstrators — bore some responsibility for the event, President Trump’s failure to single out the Nazi element in his condemnation of the two was perceived by many Americans as a moral offense against his country, let alone against its Jewish citizens. Those who enlist Nazism for the advancement of their political goals deserve harsh, unequivocal censure. The president ought to have led, not followed, in singling them out.

Yet the very clarity of judgment on Nazism threatens to obscure graver threats to our constitutional democracy. Jews in particular are harmed by the exclusive identification of anti-Semitism with Nazism, which is so far the only form of anti-Jewish politics that has gone down to defeat. Just as tuberculosis is no longer our chief medical hazard, so Nazism is no longer the main threat to the Jews and what they represent. The tale of evil enshrined in the Holocaust Memorial Museum has been overtaken by more sinister political forms of grievance and blame.

Before Charlottesville, some politicians, professors, and community leaders had begun to address the escalation of anti-Jewish politics in America. But those initiatives could use a sharper focus on the real character of anti-Semitism. On December 1, 2016, for instance, the United States Senate passed the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act,” or AAA, framed as an extension of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act was originally designed to combat discrimination against African Americans. It sought to cover all its bases in protecting them through its triple targeting of discrimination on the basis of “race, color, or national origin.” Title VI focuses particularly on institutions that receive federal funds, and includes protections against discrimination on college campuses. But over several decades, the prime targets of hostile discrimination on American campuses from Brooklyn College to the University of California, Irvine, ceased to be traditional racial minorities and became instead the most habitual of scapegoats — the Jews — though they are themselves a diverse group of many colors and national origins.

Well before the passage of the AAA, interpretation of the original Civil Rights Act had already been stretched by the Departments of Justice and Education to prohibit “discrimination against Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and members of other religious groups when the discrimination is based on the group’s actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.” The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) duly investigated hundreds of claims of harassment, threats, and intimidation against Jewish students on college campuses under this interpretation. Yet despite the broadly extended definition and the documented causes for concern, the OCR failed to identify any violations against Jews because anti-Semitism did not comfortably fit the original legislative framework of the Civil Rights Act. The AAA was therefore passed in an attempt to further empower the OCR to protect Jewish students.

But there has always been a problem with the logic of this well-intentioned exercise. Anti-Semitism cannot be subsumed into the framework of the Civil Rights Act because anti-Semitism is not discrimination. It may exhibit the key features of prejudice, bias, and bigotry — and therefore result in discrimination. But it is different in kind. Anti-Semitism is a modern political phenomenon — an ideology that anchors or forms part of a political movement and serves a political purpose. It arose alongside other ideologies like liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, anarchism, and (somewhat later) fascism, opposing some of them and merging with others. Anti-Semitism was the most protean of these ideologies and was therefore valuable in forging coalitions even among otherwise competing groups. To take anti-Semitism seriously, let alone to subdue it, requires first recognizing its political nature.

An ideology may be defined as a system of beliefs or ideals, a shaping concept in politics, held by an individual or a group. As a political ideology, anti-Semitism enjoys the protection of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which prohibits laws abridging “the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” This provision affords champions of an ideology like communism the right to free speech and assembly even though they aim at the destruction of our liberal democracy, so one can hardly deny the same protection to champions of anti-Semitism ostensibly targeting only the Jews.

The AAA was no sooner passed than protests against abridgment of the right to free speech arose, including from administrators of colleges that had seen some of the worst harassment of Jewish students. They asked, in effect, whether Jews must be protected at the expense of the First Amendment. They deserve an answer. But such an answer would require looking into just what anti-Semitism is.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

The #CyberAvengers Playbook; The Non-Technical, No Nonsense Guide For Directors, Officers, and General Counsels (2017 Edition)

By on October 2nd, 2017

The #CyberAvengers are:
Paul Ferrillo
Chuck Brooks
Kenneth Holley
George Platsis
George Thomas
Shawn Tuma
Christophe Veltsos

Cybersecurity, as many organizations practice it today, is broken. Everybody is feeling the pressure as competitors and partners alike dread a breach. Leadership can’t be left in the dark due to technobabble, a lack of resources, or excuses as to why cyber risk cannot be measured.

FireEye is proud to support the new eBook, The #CyberAvengers Playbook: Doing the Little Things (and Some of the Big Things) Well (2017 Edition). This short guide is designed to give you actionable items that could help any organization improve its cybersecurity posture.

Download the eBook and pick up the following tips from the #CyberAvengers:

Oversight duties: Learn to view risk from an enterprise perspective in an era where accountability and fallout costs are surely going to grow.
Cyber risk: Why it matters and how to wisely spend your limited resources.
Communication gaps: Cybersecurity is not an IT-only issue, so do not be afraid to speak your mind. We show you which questions to ask.
Response and continuity: Even the best-tested plans can go out the window during a time of crisis. Learn to minimize the fallout.
What’s happening in 2017 and what to expect in 2018: From the ransomware scare to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into effect, business is becoming more expensive. We try to help you save wherever you can.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel and Embattled Kurdistan Victor Sharpe

By on October 2nd, 2017

In the past I have written several published articles, both regarding the ancient ties between the Kurds and the Jews, as well as the more recent examples of Israeli support for the Kurdish people in their fight against Arab aggression.

The present and immediate moral crisis that surrounds the Kurdish resistance against ISIS in the city of Kobane cries out for Israeli and Jewish assistance to perhaps the only true friend Israel has in the Middle East apart from many in the Druze community.

Let me quote from what has just appeared in Britain’s Daily Mail. It is an account of what horrors Kurdish fighters discovered after liberating parts of Kobane from the ISIS Islamo-Nazis:

“I have seen tens, maybe hundreds, of bodies with their heads cut off. Others with just their hands or legs missing. I have seen faces with their eyes or tongues cut out – I can never forget it for as long as I live,” Amin Fajar, a 38-year-old father of four, told the Daily Mail about the incredible scene in Kobane. “They put the heads on display to scare us all.”

Another resident, 13-year-old Dillyar, watched as his cousin Mohammed, 20, was captured and beheaded by the black-clad jihadis as the pair tried to flee the battle-scarred town.

“They pushed him to the ground and sawed his head off, shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ (Allah is Greater) the boy said. “I see it in my dreams every night and every morning I wake up and remember everything.”

Farmer Ahmed Bakki said his cousin, a father of seven, stayed behind when his terrified family fled.

“We phoned my cousin and [ISIS] answered his phone. They said, ‘We’ve got his head, and we’re taking it,” Mr Bakki said, adding that the most brutal ISIS barbarians were European Muslims.

“They are Chechen, they are English, they are from all over Europe. We know because we can hear their accent,” he told the paper after escaping to a refugee camp in Turkey.”

Let me also quote the words of Jerome Roos, writer, filmmaker and PhD Researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, who wrote the following on October 4, 2014 in TeleSUR English.

“As Kurdish forces put up a heroic fight to save the democratic stronghold of Kobane, the US-led coalition seems content to let ISIS commit a massacre.”

Compare how many U.S. aerial sorties Clinton employed against the Serbs in 1999, which averaged 138 daily strikes, compared to the pathetic and estimated five or six sorties against ISIS. As of this weekend, these air attacks have increased and seem, at last, to be making a difference..

Here we have a towering moral crisis affecting what is left of the free world. Will the approximately 12,000 Kurds left in Kobane be allowed to fall under the living horror that is the Islamic State?

Continue reading →