RUTHFULLY YOURS

The campus wars aren’t really about race. Race and the rest of the identity politics roster are the engine for transforming an academic environment into an activist environment.

The average campus already skews left, but it maintains the pretense of serving an educational purpose. The demands put forward on various campuses begin with racial privileges, but do not end there. These demands call for politicizing every department, the mandatory political indoctrination of all students and faculty, and the submission of non-political academic departments to activist political ones.

The campus wars are a declaration that activist non-academic departments that offer identity politics analysis while contributing nothing and which often owe their existence to campus clashes from a previous generation, should dominate all areas of life and thought at every university.

Imagine if physics majors rioted and demanded that every single area of study on campus had to incorporate theoretical physics and hire physics majors. That is exactly what is happening with identity politics studies. It’s a naked power grab that has the potential to redefine academia as we know it.

While black students are the public face of the campaign, behind them are embedded faculty radicals like Melissa Click whose abuses recently led to her firing from the University of Missouri. Click’s body of work, gender, race and sexuality analyses of popular culture, is fairly typical of the activist faculty behind the power grab. Media studies is often confused with journalism, but the two have little in common. Media studies has become a guide to politicizing culture by viewing it through the intersectional lens.

Something amazing has happened in California. First, a brief background: Crime rates across the state, after a long period of steady decline, had reached fifty-year lows in 2014. Then, that November, a 60 percent majority of California voters—presumably incapable of accepting such good news without a measure of collective guilt—decided that it would be a really enlightened idea to pass Proposition 47, a ballot initiative bearing the cheery name “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.” The purpose of this measure was to downgrade many types of drug possession and property crimes from felonies (punishable by more than a year in prison) to misdemeanors (which often entail no prison time at all). For the benefit of squeamish skeptics, the self-assured proponents of Prop 47 condescended to explain that these reduced penalties would not only alleviate prison overcrowding, but would also make California’s streets safer by placing drug offenders into warm-and-fuzzy treatment and counseling programs, rather than into disagreeable prison cells. If you think this sounds like a familiar old tune, you’re quite correct. It was #1 on the left-wing hit parade throughout the 1960s, when it became the theme song of skyrocketing crime rates across the United States. And now the Golden Oldie is back, in the Golden State.

The tangible results of Prop 47 were both immediate and breathtaking. Within a year, there were some 14,000 fewer inmates in California’s state prisons and local jails, just as the Proposition’s backers had promised.

But the other half of their promise—improved public safety—somehow failed to materialize. In 2015:

Violent crime increased (above 2014 levels) in every one of California’s 10 largest cities, while property crime increased in 9 of the 10.
Of 66 California cities whose crime trends were analyzed in depth, 49 saw their violent crime rates increase—usually by at least 10 percent.
Forty-eight of those same 66 California cities saw their property crime rates rise—and in half of those cases, the increase was 10 percent or greater. A typical case was San Francisco, where theft of merchandise from automobiles increased by 47 percent, auto theft rose by 17 percent, and robberies were up 23 percent.
The property crime rates for California cities as a whole increased, on average, by 116.9 offenses per 100,000 residents. By contrast, in states that hadn’t passed Prop 47 or anything like it, the corresponding rates decreased by 29.6 offenses per 100,000 residents.

President Obama is boxed in a state of paralysis—more so than typical lame-duck presidents.

His hard-left politics have insidiously eroded the Democratic Party, which has lost both houses of Congress and the vast majority of the state legislatures, state elected offices, and governorships. Obama has redefined the black vote, as a necessary, no-margin-of-error 95% bloc majority to offset his similar creation of an increasingly monolithic 65% bloc white vote. We are no longer individual voters, but, in Chicago-politics style, merely faceless “Latinos,” “Asians,” “African-Americans,” “gays,” “women,” and now “whites.”

Obama issues a new initiative—and the nation snoozes. He wastes the day on the golf links—and the nation snoozes. He smear his critics, invites a rapper to the White House whose latest album cover has a dead white judge lying in front of the White House—and the nation snoozes. He cozies up to America’s enemies and snubs our friends—and the nation snoozes. For the nth time, he blusters about closing down Guantanamo—and the nation snoozes. He opens the border even wider to welcome in more illegal aliens and future constituents—and the nation snoozes. Lame duckestry means not even being able to wake up your opponents.

There is so far no Obama legacy, except the creation of Donald Trump, a $20 trillion debt and zero interest rates—and the gift of flat energy prices that came despite not because of Obama’s efforts. Almost every major bureaucracy is awash in scandal or charges of incompetence. The common theme of the disasters at the GSA, EPA, ICE, IRS, NASA, Secret Service, and VA is ideological subversion and ingrained hostility to meritocracy. Would anyone be surprised that another government official pled the 5th, created fake email personas, resigned at 5 PM on a Friday afternoon, declared a foremost mission Muslim outreach, or withheld subpoenaed documents?

The public argument between Apple and the FBI over cracking the encryption on an iPhone used by the San Bernardino Muslim terrorists is one of those ongoing civil liberties debates that negotiate the terms on which we are asked to sacrifice our civil liberties for the sake of Muslim immigration.

We have already made a thousand accommodations and we will make a thousand more. There will be more databases, naked scanners, eavesdropping, vans that can see through walls, backdoors to every server, registrations, warrantless searches, interceptions and regulations. There will be heavily armed police on the streets. And then curfews and soldiers. These things exist in Europe. They’ll come here.

Some libertarians will argue that we should have none of this and no restrictions on immigration. That we should just shrug off each terror attack and move on with our lives.

Eventually though there will be a terror attack that we can’t shrug off and that can’t be minimized by using the cheap statistical trick of comparing Terror Attack X to the number of people who die every year from cancer. Or there will just be an endless parade of daily attacks, bombings, stabbings or shootings, as in Israel, which create a constant climate of terror that will preclude any hollow rhetoric about the number of people falling off ladders each year or getting struck by lightning. Some hawks will cheer every terror fighting measure short of closing the door on the root cause of the problem. They would rather see every American wiretapped, strip searched and monitored every hour of the day then just stop the flow of Muslim terrorists into this country.

The encryption methods of an iPhone, like the question of how many ounces there are in your tiny bottle of mouthwash, would not be much of an issue, if Muslim migration did not make it one.

Terrorists adapt to the terrain. They use the native population as protective coloration. They can find a way to transform a shoe, a tube of toothpaste or instant messaging on a game console into a terror tool. Just as the left can ‘politicize’ everything, Muslim terrorists can ‘terrorize’ everything. When everything is a potential terrorist tool, then there can be no such thing as privacy or civil rights.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/02/28/deborah-weiss-on-freedom-of-speech-under-attack-in-america-on-the-glazov-gang/

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

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

Don’t miss it!

– Joe Connor co-author of The New Founders, testified at Eric Holder’s AG confirmation hearing, appeared in Citizens United’s Hillary: The Movie, and writes on wewinamerica.com. He works in New York’s financial-services industry.

The Guantanamo Bay detention camps have been attacked by many, including our own president, as contrary to American values, as not “who we are” and “recruitment tools for ISIS.”

Those of us who have been there have observed the terrorists in court at Camp Justice. We have witnessed the great lengths to which our judiciary goes to provide due process to the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the red-bearded, evil, boastful mastermind of the 9/l1 attacks that murdered 2,976 individuals and shattered countless lives. Gitmo is a symbol of American goodness and greatness.

Please, Mr. President: I am honored to be part of a small group of 9/11 family members chosen to observe the pretrial proceedings. Objections to this facility and these proceedings, in my opinion, are unfounded. Gitmo represents the very best of America.

Eight of us arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, on the morning of Saturday, February 13, hopeful but apprehensive about our trip to Guantanamo to face the murderers of our family members. Aside from the deaths of our loved ones, we all brought something in common: the pursuit of justice.

After a most rewarding week, we parted perfectly unified, with the utmost respect for the prosecutors, for our fantastic military, for American justice, and for one another. We took home with us hope, a steelier resolve for justice than ever, spiritual connections, and a renewed sense of pride in America.

Those are the American values that I was raised with but that have been lost on this president.

This is a president who has authorized hundreds of deadly drone strikes resulting in thousands of deaths. Unlike the rights afforded at Gitmo, none of those killed was provided any due process nor were they allowed a seat before a just Military Commission.

This is a president whose trusted attorney general for six years, Eric Holder, engineered the politically driven 1999 Clinton clemencies for the convicted terrorists of the FALN. This Puerto Rican terror group murdered my father, Frank Connor, in the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing (which was among over 115 bombings and five murders they perpetrated). Is releasing unrepentant terrorists now “who we are”?

This president pushes the normalization of relations with terror-supporting Cuba (even planning a state visit) without demanding the return of convicted fugitive FALN bomb-maker William Morales or BLA cop killer Joanne Chesimard, who have received safe harbor for decades in Cuba.

So whose values does this president represent and whose values does he condemn?

After eight years of alienating allies, abrogating leadership, eschewing hard decisions and spuriously explaining away Islamic outrages, all that remains to be done is a final spectacle to capture the spirit of his administration: a Rose Garden reception and apology for Gitmo’s liberated inmates
A simple way for President Obama to belatedly fulfill his confident 2008 election promise to close Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) would be to invite all current inmates to join the First Couple at the White House. That would be an act of reconciliation and forgiveness at its most spectacular, the crowning moment of a ground-breaking presidency. His eight years have seen rapprochements with US-hating Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, so why not Gitmo inmates?

Just picture the scene: In a ceremony televised from the Rose Garden, Obama could personally apologise to each detainee and present his honoured guests with large, appropriate sums by way of compensation. That would be small consolation for their abductions at gunpoint, prolonged incarceration, and extended time away from loved ones and their important work, which is the destruction of Western society in the name of radical Islam.

What is clear is that a significant body of inmates released from Gitmo is likely to return rapidly to the cause of terrorism. But not to worry! As Secretary of State John Kerry explains in the video below, there is nothing about the release of homicidal religious fanatics which needs concern reasonable people — the sort who believe Obama to have been a competent president, at any rate.

Gitmo was a vexed solution created by frustrated people in response to a terrible problem created by evil people. But, to the extent that it took likely leaders of global terrorism out of action, it has undoubtedly saved lives. Its existence may even have encouraged ordinary citizens in countries threatened daily by terrorism to go about their lives with just a little less fear.

The Obama interregnum is drawing to a close and eight years of follies, shrunken influence and impotence with it. So, will it be Hillary Clinton who mires the Oval Office in more of the impotent same, plus legal woes and scandals? Or is it the candidate who has torn up the campaign rule book?
The 2016 presidential election will determine how the United States responds to the most decisive challenges for more than a century to its wealth, strength, and security. But none of the presidential aspirants have yet to outline a coherent strategic policy. With one exception, Hillary Clinton, all the candidates oppose the actions and policies of the incumbent president but all have accepted the overt and covert agendas of that same discredited president. These include supporting the wrong side in Syria, the demonization of Russia and insufficient attention to China’s irredentism.

The Democratic nominating process is about the top-down imposition of its preferred candidate, and thus the superdelegates who are expected to deliver the pre-determined outcome of Hillary Clinton. If Mrs Clinton falls by the wayside, due to her escalating legal problems or, perhaps, a convenient health issue, then a similar establishment figure will be injected into the process. In its nomination procedure, the Republican Party has produced a couple of candidates who have promised that it won’t be business-as-usual but who have yet to articulate a long term vision, beyond generalities.

Why so much foreboding? Food is at the lowest price in human history, energy is now also cheap, poverty around the world is at the lowest level ever, and technological and medical advances continue apace. Those things are well and good, but two conflicts are going to crash the civilizational party. The first is the war of Islam on the rest of the planet, an offensive that is well underway. An early report on it is the “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001”, 28 pages of which remain classified. No doubt the content of those 28 pages is embarrassing, so much so unsophisticated readers might get angry should they be exposed to their revelations.

At least one official declaration of war came years later. On January 15, 2016, the authoritative and influential cleric Sheikh Abu Taqi al-Din al-Dari delivered the Friday Sermon inJerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque. In short, the sheikh said that the Muslim world must adopt the traditional teachings in the Koran on the perpetual war between the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. In the way the Muslim world is structured, this is a declaration of war on the West. There have been many similar declarations before and this one won’t be the last, but it is the most influential to date.

The West is aware that there is a problem but has refused to face up to the fact it is engaged in an existential clash of civilisations. To do so would require an adjustment of its belief system – that all cultures are equally good and that there is nothing inherently wrong with any group of people or culture. Just at the moment the pain of the permanent state of emergency in France, for example, is preferable to the effort involved in seeing the world as it really is. Not that France and neighbouring Germany are blameless. Through the EU they made their own attempts at imposing their beliefs on the rest of the World, with Kulturkampf via EU edicts such as penalties on carbon dioxide emissions far beyond their borders. The EU’s attempt at world domination on the cheap requires a stable world to have a chance of working. The world is no longer stable, so while we will not be spared the edicts of Brussels they will be transcribe in the ink of impotence.

The solution to the problem of Islam is simple: don’t have anything to do with it. This solution had its first run after the 9/11 attacks when the Bush Administration restricted the number of visas issued to Saudi nationals. One of the current presidential aspirants has called for barring all Muslims from entering the United States. If put into effect, this policy would significantly reduce the number of terrorist attacks on the US at no cost in to itself. In fact this policy is necessary to shield the US from the fallout that can be anticipated from the ultimate collapse of the Muslim world.

www.OpenTheBooks.com
In December, we released our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – The Department of Self-Promotion, $4.4 Billion Spent by Federal Agencies on Public Relations (FY2007 – FY2014), click here.

Our report debuted on the front page of two Washington D.C. daily newspapers: TheHill and The Washington Times:

The Hill: Feds Shelling Out Billions to Public Relations Firms, click here
by Megan Wilson | December 8, 2015
The Washington Times: Feds Spend Billions on Self, click here
by Kellan Howell | December 8, 2015
Read my December column at Forbes: Meet the 2nd Largest PR Firm in the World – The United States Government, click here.
Last week, the COX Media national news bureau showcased our report which played on the evening news at ABC-Atlanta (WSB- Channel 2).

Investigative reporter Justin Gray asked 10 federal agencies for an interview and NONE would answer questions on camera!

Now, U.S. Senator Mike Enzi wants answers. Enzi has requested a comprehensive report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

We want answers, too.

For example: Why are some of the world’s largest advertising firms billing taxpayers for their interns – up to $88 per hour? And billing their executives for up to $1.1 million per year?

Why is the average salary for a federal public affairs officer over $100,000 per year, 70% higher than the private sector?

Why does the IRS allow their survey firms to charge taxpayers $70 per hour for each of their $9 per hour telemarketers?

JOIN THE TRANSPARENCY REVOLUTION. IT’S YOUR MONEY!

One of Justice Antonin Scalia’s last official acts may be among the most important of his distinguished career. Last week, he joined with four other justices to halt implementation of President Obama’s new carbon regulation for so long as it is under legal review — an unprecedented move to stay an unprecedented federal overreach into states’ energy decisions.

Titled by the administration the “Clean Power Plan,” the regulation would be one of the costliest ever, dramatically increasing electricity prices across the nation — all while producing essentially zero climate benefits, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s own models.

Thanks to Justice Scalia and the four other justices who voted with him, Americans won the first battle against this reckless plan. But the fight is far from over. Even though the Supreme Court is not expected to issue a final ruling until at least 2017, the EPA is essentially flouting the stay order and encouraging states to continue developing their plans.

State officials — governors, legislators, regulatory agencies, public-utilities commissions, and utilities themselves — should reject the EPA’s offers of assistance. In fact, they should be issuing stop-work orders to prevent the regulation’s implementation until the courts have completed a full review.