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December 2018

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Women’s Rights Activist: Linda Sarsour Is ‘Empowering’ Radical Islamic ‘Torture, Terror, Rape’ By Tyler O’Neil

By on December 8th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/womens-rights-activist-linda-sarsour-is-empowering-radical-islamic-torture-terror-rape/

Women’s March co-founder Linda Sarsour is “empowering” the radical Islam that oppresses women across the world, inspiring sex slavery, child marriage, and female genital mutilation, a best-selling author and women’s rights activist told PJ Media on Friday.

“Linda Sarsour is promoting Sharia law and misleading Americans,” Rabia Kazan, a best-selling author and president of the Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition, told PJ Media on Friday. “She never mentions child marriage, genital mutilation, or honor killings.”

“She’s empowering their side, not us,” Kazan said. “She’s encouraging these barbaric people. She’s encouraging them and contributing to them, to women being sold and girls being raped everyday.”

The Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition will endorse President Donald Trump for 2020 on Tuesday.

Kazan described the dire state of women in the Middle East. “Women and children are suffering under Sharia law and in the Middle East. Our girls are being sold into sexual slavery every single day,” she added. “Four-year-old babies are being sold to ISIS. Little girls aged seven to fourteen are being sold as child brides. This is pedophilia and rape by marriage.”

Under the influence of people warning about “Islamophobia,” the “whole world is thinking they are volunteers,” and Linda Sarsour is leading this effort.

“How many of us have to die?” she asked. “How many of us have to be raped before you take an action? Silence is killing us and President Trump is speaking.”

“Women like Linda Sarsour are misleading Americans to think that all women in the Middle East are happy to wear headscarves and to be slaves,” Kazan said. “She’s the one who is helping the people who are doing this to us.”

“She is encouraging those barbaric people in their torture, terror, rape,” the women’s rights advocate argued. “She’s helping them. She’s not defending our rights at all.”

“Shame on her. All the child brides and all honor killing victims, genital mutilation victims shame Linda Sarsour,” the Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition president declared. “She has done nothing for us.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Free Speech Rebirth at Berkeley Prohibitive security fees will not reinforce the heckler’s veto.

By on December 8th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-free-speech-rebirth-at-berkeley-1544226807

The University of California at Berkeley reached a settlement Monday with campus conservative groups who had sued over its speaker policy. This agreement helps conclude an ugly chapter in the university’s history and goes a long way toward restoring its free-speech reputation.

After much-publicized controversies involving protests and controversial speakers, the College Republicans and Young America’s Foundation sued Berkeley in April 2017. They claimed the university was relying on an “unwritten and unpublished policy” that gave administrators broad discretion to “restrict the time, place, and manner of any campus event involving ‘high-profile speakers,’” including on the basis of the speaker’s viewpoint. Their main concern was that administrators would impose security restrictions or fees so extreme that they would reinforce the heckler’s veto.

We’ve seen no hard proof that a secret policy existed. But it’s fairly obvious why these conservatives feared Berkeley wouldn’t have the guts to protect their rights. The chancellor’s office installed a $9,000 emergency exit for staffers to escape disruptive demonstrators. And the university hit rock bottom in February 2017, when it cancelled a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos after masked agitators threw Molotov cocktails and caused $100,000 of damage.

Carol Christ became chancellor in July 2017, and unlike predecessor Nicholas Dirks she has refused to reward protestors’ threats and antics. Last fall she spent $600,000 on security to ensure Ben Shapiro could speak unimpeded. Berkeley has since hosted Heather Mac Donald, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, Rick Santorum, Dennis Prager and other conservatives— at no cost to the student groups who invited them.

In Monday’s settlement, Berkeley reaffirms that it won’t consider a speaker’s viewpoint in deciding on the time, date, place or security for an event. Students can host speakers for free in classrooms or student government-run facilities. And if student organizations choose to use auditoriums or bigger campus venues, security costs will be determined based on criteria listed in a newly published fee schedule.

The settlement sets the expectation that Berkeley will treat speakers and students equitably and transparently. Even better, it sends a message that protestors can’t use the threat of mayhem to price Berkeley’s conservatives out of exercising their First Amendment rights.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Macron’s Warning to America’s Ascendant Left The French president thought he could steamroll the rural minority on fuel taxes. Riots ensued. By Joseph C. Sternberg

By on December 8th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macrons-warning-to-americas-ascendant-left-1544139254

The most common explanation for France’s gilets jaunes protests against fuel-tax hikes is that they arise from too little democracy. Lower-income and rural citizens feel left behind by President Emmanuel Macron’s aggressive economic reform agenda, which ignores their interests and benefits an urban elite. The opposite is true. The protests are happening because France has too much democracy. What it’s lacking is politics.

Mr. Macron’s political movement was born of the notion that France needed to become more democratic. As a young technocrat-in-training and junior government minister, he became convinced that special interests within the traditional parties obstructed national progress.

As Economist correspondent Sophie Pedder notes in her illuminating biography of the president, the premise is that as a numerical matter there are enough actual or potential winners from economic reform and globalization that a leader could cull those voters from the old parties and unite them under a new banner. It would then be possible to steamroll minority opposition.

Which is precisely what Mr. Macron did. It helped that his rise came in an era when French politics was becoming steadily more democratic overall.

A 2000 constitutional amendment shortened the presidential term to five years from seven—explicitly to align the presidential and legislative election calendars. This amplifies a president’s mandate (already bolstered by a runoff voting system meant to exaggerate electoral support for the eventual winner) by reducing the risk that he might have to “cohabit” with a National Assembly controlled by the opposing party. Mainstream parties have adopted the U.S. style of intraparty primary campaigning, allowing party members to pick who leads them into general elections. CONTINUE AT SITE

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Too Soon for Democrats To Dump Elizabeth Warren? If lack of authenticity is the problem, 2020 primary voters may wish to consider their alternatives. By James Freeman

By on December 8th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/too-soon-for-democrats-to-dump-elizabeth-warren-1544231838

President Donald Trump has famously ridiculed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s claims of Native American heritage. Perhaps more damaging to the Massachusetts leftist as she considers running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, many natural allies aren’t buying her story either. But before Democrats reject her as a potential leader of their party, they ought to consider the alternatives. She is not the first and won’t be the last politician to make phony autobiographical claims.

In October the senator pretended to be vindicated by a DNA test which suggested a distant Native American ancestor but also left open the possibility that she has less Native American heritage than the average white person in the U.S. By the Warren standard, there are few people who couldn’t claim some connection to a historically oppressed group, which could render such questions meaningless. This column has therefore been doubtful that Ms. Warren can persuade Democratic primary voters to affirm the end of identity politics by selecting her as their presidential candidate.

For now, the political damage to a potential Warren candidacy appears to be significant. Astead Herndon writes in the New York Times:

… nearly two months after Ms. Warren released the test results and drew hostile reactions from prominent tribal leaders, the lingering cloud over her likely presidential campaign has only darkened. Conservatives have continued to ridicule her. More worrisome to supporters of Ms. Warren’s presidential ambitions, she has yet to allay criticism from grass-roots progressive groups, liberal political operatives and other potential 2020 allies who complain that she put too much emphasis on the controversial field of racial science — and, in doing so, played into Mr. Trump’s hands…

Three people close to senior members of Ms. Warren’s team, who were granted anonymity to speak freely on the issue, said they were “shocked” and “rattled” by the senator’s decision to take the DNA test, which they described as an unequivocal misstep that could have lasting consequences, even on 2020 staffing. One former adviser, who also asked not to be named, called it a “strategic failure” that was “depressing and unforgettable.”

Former Warren advisers aren’t the only ones who are not forgetting, according to the Times report:

Twila Barnes, a Cherokee genealogist who has thoroughly tracked Ms. Warren’s claims of native ancestry since it became national news in 2012, said her “jaw was on the floor” when she saw Ms. Warren’s decision to take the DNA test, and the slick video that accompanied the announcement of the results.

Ms. Barnes said Ms. Warren had an opportunity to teach the broader public about how genetic testing has historically been used as a weapon against Native communities, but instead she “helped perpetuate a very dangerous idea.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EDWARD CLINE: NO PLATFORM FOR DISSENTERS

By on December 8th, 2018

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2018/12/no-platform-for-dissenters.html

“Angela Merkle has not only fouled up Germany, but has stated that nations with borders must do away with them to allow the free invasion of their countries by “migrants.” Their sovereignty must be declared “obsolete.” And be seen as “patriotic.”

No internet platform for anyone or any organization that dissents from the mainstream verdict on anything. The Global Compact and the tech giants will naturally agree on that point.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple said,

“And as we showed this year, we won’t give a platform to violent conspiracy theorists on the App Store. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. We only have one message for those who seek to push hate, division, and violence: You have no place on our platforms. You have no home here.” [Applause. Brackets mine]

The Clarion Project reported:

On December 3rd, 2018, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that tech needs to take a moral stand against hate speech, in a move that sounded very much like a nouveau form of fundamentalism. Speaking to individuals and groups believed to push hate, division and violence, Cook said, “You have no place on our platforms. You have no home here.”

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