Displaying posts published in

January 2019

The Black Panthers Were Murderous Thugs Who Don’t Deserve Public Accolades Violent activists who sowed seeds of division, hindered racial harmony, and tortured real people are not worth exalting on college campuses. By Ariana Welsh

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/21/black-panthers-murderous-thugs-dont-deserve-public-accolades/

When I walked into the library of my university mid-semester and spotted a massive Black Panther Party tribute exhibit, it felt like a line had been crossed.

When my generation thinks of the 1960s, we think of milkshakes and poodle skirts. The civil rights movement, the war on crime, and World War II are reserved for pages in a textbook. The only thing that was truly passed down from my elders in that time period to me was a feeling of fear at two names: the Klu Klux Klan and the Black Panthers. They were radical organizations made up of thugs who sowed violence and inspired terror. Both managed to survive at least two generations.

Apparently, the Black Panthers’ reputation has been rehabilitated. The exhibit took up an entire room in the front entrance of the university library, and had a pristine, museum-grade quality rarely seen in the type of place that makes you pay for your own printer paper. It was made up of black and white photos of elders whose only significant action was to smile harmlessly at the camera.

Hosted, rather ironically, by the school’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies, the photos, according to the front board, “reveal the humanity of the groups’ members rather than their invented personae.” Black Panther members “are real people, with real stories, who are your next door neighbors. They don’t fit the profile of rabid, anti-white, cop-hating terrorists…”

Ericka Huggins is one of the smiling old ladies in the exhibit. She helped torture young Alex Rackley with other Black Panther members, boiling the water they used to pour over his chest and commanding him to be quiet when he pleaded for mercy. Now she’s a lecturing professor. Rackley is dead. After falsely admitting he was an informant in hopes of stopping the hours of torture, Black Panthers killed him and dumped his body in a river.

No, Forever War In Syria Won’t Protect The United States If the U.S. experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria should have told our foreign policy elites anything, it is that Washington can’t resolve distant political problems.By Daniel DePetris

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/21/no-forever-war-syria-wont-protect-united-states/

Army Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan R. Farmer, 37, of Boynton Beach, Florida. Navy Chief Petty Officer Shannon M. Kent, 35, of Pine Plains, New York. Defense Intelligence Agency civilian Scott A. Wirtz, 42, of St. Louis, Missouri. Interpreter Ghadir Taher, 27, from East Point, Georgia.

The bodies of the four Americans from four separate parts of the country—victims of a January 16 Islamic State suicide bombing near a popular restaurant in the Syrian city of Manbij—made their final return home to Dover Air Force Base on January 19. It was a vivid and graphic reminder to the American people that U.S. forces remain very much in harm’s way.

To the politicians back home, the deaths of four Americans in a Syrian town few in the United States could find on a map is a sign of ISIS’s sudden resurgence. The American people have been led to believe that President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria is emboldening the enemy. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the interventionist who has never seen a world problem that couldn’t be solved through military force, even suggested that Trump’s decision may have laid the groundwork for the bombing in Manbij. Sen. Jack Reed said the attack is proof the administration needs to “reevaluate” a troop departure.

Then there was Brett McGurk, who viewed Trump’s order as so detrimental to the counterterrorism effort that he resigned his position as U.S. envoy to the counter-ISIS coalition in protest. In a Washington Post editorial McGurk warned that the entire mission was now at risk of being jeopardized. “The president’s decision to leave Syria,” McGurk wrote, “was made without deliberation, consultation with allies or Congress, assessment of risk, or appreciation of facts.”

Trump’s Border Wall Deal Rebuffed by Dems Nothing is good enough for leftists who treasure an insecure border. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272623/trumps-border-wall-deal-rebuffed-dems-matthew-vadum

President Donald J. Trump extended an olive branch to Democrats on the weekend, conceding much of their immigration policy agenda in a bold longshot bid to move forward with building a southern border wall and ending the nearly month-long partial government shutdown but left-wing lawmakers rejected his overture even before he addressed the nation on TV on Saturday.

Trump’s address came after a particularly frosty week in Washington.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) informed the president he would be unable to deliver a State of the Union Address in Congress because the money wasn’t there to provide security. Trump countered by canceling a decadent junket Pelosi and other fat cat lawmakers had been planning overseas. At the eleventh-hour, while lawmakers and their guests were en route to a military airport to fly away, the president deprived them of the use of U.S. military aircraft.

Anticipating Democrat criticism, Trump said on TV, “walls are not immoral,” adding that a wall “will save many lives and stop drugs from pouring into our country.”

“This is not a concrete structure from sea to sea,” he said. “These are steel barriers in high-priority locations.”

Kamala Harris Will Kick Off 2020 Run on ‘American Values’ With Speech in … Silicon Valley By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/trending/kamala-harris-announces-2020-run-on-american-values-with-speech-in-silicon-valley/

On Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) announced her candidacy for the 2020 presidential election with a 1-minute video extolling “American values” and inviting supporters to join her … in Oakland — a rising liberal tech hub increasingly associated with Silicon Valley.

“Truth, justice, decency, equality, freedom, democracy. These aren’t just words, they’re the values we as Americans cherish, and they’re all on the line now,” Harris began. “The future of our country depends on you and millions of others lifting our voices to fight for our American values. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States.”

Yet despite her references to “American values,” Harris also invited her supporters to join her for a speech in Oakland on Sunday, January 27.

While Harris was born in Oakland, the city still seems an odd choice for a first speech. Oakland is very large and very diverse, but it has extremely rich pockets and is a growing center for technology companies. It is increasingly associated with Silicon Valley.

Oakland is the birthplace of the Mai Tai and has the third highest concentration of lesbians. Silicon Valley in particular is known for sexual deviance and sexual harassment, not to mention the constant stigmatization of conservative views as “hateful” — something Kamala Harris in particular is quite familiar with.

Kamala Harris may have been born in Oakland, but that does not mean Americans want Oakland values. CONTINUE AT SITE

Should the FBI Run the Country? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/20/should-the

Since the media would doubtless answer that loaded question, “It depends on the president,” let us imagine the following scenario.

Return to 2008, when candidate Barack Obama had served only about three years in the U.S. Senate, his sum total of foreign policy experience. And he was running against the overseas old-hand, decorated veteran, and national icon John McCain—a bipartisan favorite in Washington, D.C.

During the campaign, unfounded rumors had swirled about the rookie Obama that he might ease sanctions on Iran, distance the United States from Israel, and alienate the moderate Arab regimes, such as the Gulf monarchies and Egypt.

Stories also abounded that the Los Angeles Times had suppressed the release of a supposedly explosive “Khalidi tape,” in which Obama purportedly thanked the radical Rashid Khalidi for schooling him on the Middle East and correcting his earlier biases and blind spots, while praising the Palestinian activist for his support for armed resistance against Israel.

Even more gossip circulated that photos existed of a smiling Barack Obama with Louis Farrakhan, the Black Muslim extremist and radical pro-Gaddafi patron, who in the past had praised Adolf Hitler and reminded the Jews again about the finality of being sent to the ovens. (A photo of a smiling Obama and Farrakhan did emerge, but mysteriously only after President Obama left office).

Imagine that all these tales in 2008 might have supposedly “worried” Bush lame-duck and pro-McCain U.S. intelligence officials, who informally met to discuss possible ways of gleaning more information about this still mostly unknown but scary Obama candidacy.

Prime minister of Muslim-majority nation Mali to visit Israel in coming weeks

https://worldisraelnews.com/prime-minister-of-muslim-majority-nation-mali-to-visit-israel-in-coming-weeks/

Israel is reportedly preparing for an official visit from the head of state of yet another Muslim-majority African nation in the near future.

By World Israel News Staff

According to Israel’s Channel 13, the Jewish state is preparing to welcome Mali’s Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga in the coming weeks.

The historic visit represents another step in Israeli premiere Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy of improving ties with nations in Africa, including those with Muslim majorities, such as Mali.

According to the report, Maiga’s visit will occur before Israeli elections at the beginning of April.

In 1973, Mali cut ties with Israel in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War during an era in which a number of African nations selected Arab allies over the Jewish state.

The announcement regarding the Malian leader’s visit follows a 2018 meeting between Netanyahu and Maiga in Liberia, after which Netanyahu’s office announced the beginning of a new era of “warming” relations between the two nations.

Mali joins other African countries that recently reestablished ties with Israel following decades of severed relations, including Chad, a nation from which Netanyahu just returned. Netanyahu traveled to Chad to officially relaunch ties after 47 years last week.

In response to the development, Islamic terrorists claiming to be affiliated with al-Qaeda killed 10 United Nations peacekeepers in Chad, and injured another 25, blaming the attack on the government’s decision to renew ties with Israel.

Nathan Phillips Lied. The Media Bought It. By Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/nathan-phillips-lied-the-media-bought-it/

There was far more than met the eye to the Covington Catholic story, but that didn’t stop the popular press from vilifying its students.

If you’re in a public place and someone starts heckling you, are you entitled to heckle back? How about if someone does something much worse than heckling you in a public place? What if that person in fact takes a drum up to you and starts banging it in your face? Are you entitled to heckle back? How about smirking? Are you allowed to smirk?

I think you are, even if you’re wearing a MAGA hat. Even if you’re an entitled brat. Even if you’re an entitled Catholic brat.

We’ll stipulate that the Catholic boys from a high school in Kentucky were a little obnoxious when an indigenous man named Nathan Phillips banged a drum at them in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Friday. But Phillips was being a lot more obnoxious. To put it another way, if you were minding your own business in a public place and someone came right up to you and put a drum up to your face and made a huge racket inches from your nose, would you be happy about it?

The kids from Covington Catholic High School in Covington, Ky., were ambassadors for causes much bigger than themselves: Catholicism and the right to life. As such, they should have comported themselves better than to jeer and do a tomahawk chop in front of Phillips. Ideally, the kids would have ignored him and walked away. Until about ten minutes ago, it was broadly agreed in our culture that kids are allowed to do some dumb things because they’re kids. Should these kids’ lives be ruined because some of them responded to obnoxious provocation by being a bit rude themselves? I’d say their reaction was if anything more restrained than you would expect from teenagers. I’d advise them to do better next time. I certainly wouldn’t consider expulsion.

Phillips, on the other hand, is an adult, and he repeatedly lied about what happened to the Washington Post, which was utterly taken in by him and reported everything he said uncritically.

From the BuzzFeed Psychodrama to the Covington Video Melodrama By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/from-the-buzzfeed-psychodrama-to-the-covington-video-melodrama/

In the current polarized climate concerning the shutdown, Trump, the media, etc., it would be wise for everyone to take a deep breath and wait at least 24 hours before snap editorializing, in response to the latest sensational morality tale flashing across electronic media.

In the present climate, one video (or even three or four videos from different angles and elevations) is not necessarily worth a thousand words.

Similarly, co-authored sensational scoops might not be so sensational if the old anonymous “sources say” modus operandi has no verifiable supporting documentary evidence as alleged — and if, at the outset, the co-authors cannot substantiate their story, and especially if they also cannot substantiate it later when challenged by the special counsel. (NB: In both the Michael Cohen and Covington stories, BuzzFeed ran with stories that were not substantiated but that did reflect its own predictable agendas).

I doubt we will know exactly what happened at the Washington, D.C., march until more eye-witnesses, videos, interviews, etc. are all collated (other than the fact that different groups were shouting different things, sometimes at each other). But the result will probably be a lot more complicated than the initial narrative of “white spoiled MAGA Catholic youth approached, surrounded, and taunted noble Native American elder,” a narrative that has induced an epidemic of virtue-signaling.

Trump’s freewheeling past should not lend automatic credibility to the latest media charge against him (which, a nanosecond after hitting the media, was followed by demands for his impeachment).

So, too, that a co-author of the BuzzFeed piece, Jason Leopold, had been a confessed felon, had been fired or repudiated by various news venues for alleged unprofessional conduct, and had been an admitted prevaricator did not ipso facto mean that his latest “scoop” had to be immediately written off as false. Just a few hours of gestation would make that clear enough.

Termites, Bigots and GOATs: Rationalizing Complicity with Anti-Semitism by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13593/womens-march-antisemitism

Consider the front page story in the New York Times Sunday Review, which singled out the Palestinian issue as “one of the great moral challenges of our time” — ignoring Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Tibet, Cyprus and many far greater moral challenges, which are largely ignored by the hard left.

Recall that Hitler was not elected by anti-Semites or because of his anti-Semitism. He was elected as the result of his economic and other policies by people who gave him a pass for his anti-Semitism because they approved of his other policies.

People who support Louis Farrakhan because of the alleged good he does for the Black community and despite his overt anti-Semitism are complicit in bigotry, and those who march under the banner of such bigots are only one degree removed from such complicity.

Those women and men who marched in the Women’s March under the leadership of Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory colluded with anti-Semitism. These two leaders of the Women’s March worship the most influential anti-Semite in the United States today, Louis Farrakhan. They claim to disagree with his crass anti-Jewish (and anti-gay and anti-feminist) preaching — although there is reason to doubt this, as it relates to Jews — but they admire him for his impact on elements of the Black community. They must understand that this impact includes influencing hundreds of thousands of Blacks to consider Jews to be “termites” and destroyers of the world. But they do not care. They regard him as great — Mallory has called him “the GOAT” (“Greatest of All Time”).

Marching with these supporters of an anti-Semite is the equivalent of marching under the banner of David Duke, who inspires white supremacists with the same sort of bigotry with which Farrakhan preaches Black supremacy. Hitler inspired pride in Aryans, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Stalin spread the wealth. But would the women who marched with Farrakhan’s admirers have marched with these bigots?

Turkey’s Unjust Justice System: Armenian MP Under Attack by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13569/unjust-turkey

Armenian member of parliament Garo Paylan has good reason to fear for his safety. In January 2007, the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was shot and killed outside his newspaper’s office in Istanbul. Dink, known for his outspokenness on the Armenian genocide, was prosecuted under Article 301, and received numerous death threats. It has been 12 years since Dink’s murder, and the case has yet to be solved.

Prosecutors are stepping up their efforts to have Paylan’s parliamentary immunity removed, so that he can be tried for “insulting Turkey.” This is a travesty of justice perpetrated by the very system charged with upholding justice.

On January 13, US President Donald Trump warned Turkey of possible economic sanctions if it attacks Kurds in Syria following the American withdrawal of troops from the war-torn country. Washington would do well to apply similar pressure to Ankara, a member of NATO, to cease violating the human rights — and endangering the lives — of other ethnic minorities and critics, such as Paylan.

Turkish prosecutors have filed a motion to strip an Armenian lawmaker of his parliamentary immunity over his outspoken criticism of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Invoking Article 301 of the Turkish penal code — which states that “insulting the Republic of Turkey, the Turkish nation or Turkish government institutions” is punishable by a prison sentence — the prosecutor’s office of Diyarbakir began proceedings against Garo Paylan, who was elected in 2015 to Turkey’s Grand National Assembly as a member of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).