EDUCATION Comments turned off

Betsy DeVos vs. the Mindless Mob at Harvard Suffering the predictable campus outrage against the existence of conservatives, she gave her best speech to date. By Frederick M. Hess & Grant Addison

Posted By on October 2nd, 2017

Shouts. Interruptions. Orchestrated chanting. The predictable convulsions of the contemporary university when a conservative comes to town. This time it was U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, speaking to students, faculty, and others gathered at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government last Thursday night. She joined former FBI director James Comey and current attorney general Jeff Sessions as the third cabinet-level official in the span of a week whose visit to a college campus was met with protests, caterwauling, and the now-rote charges of “white supremacism.”

Against this increasingly threadbare backdrop, DeVos delivered what is probably her best speech to date. It was a constructive, serious address from someone whose remarks have not always met that standard. DeVos spoke thoughtfully — at times, even eloquently — about how school choice empowers families, creates room for a healthful diversity, and is wholly consistent with the historic aims of public education.

DeVos rejected the false dichotomy that insists that the case for school choice rests on jeremiads against traditional public schools. She observed: “Education is not a binary choice. Being for equal access and opportunity — being for choice — is not being against anything.” She emphasized the stakes that can be obscured by abstraction: “It’s important for all of us to remember that we’re not just talking about abstract theory or some wild social experiment here. This is about putting people — putting parents and students — above policies and politics.”

She spoke measuredly about American educational performance: “We’re in the middle of the pack, at best, compared to other nations.” She argued that neither students nor the cause of public education are well served by squabbling over the particulars of anachronistic delivery systems. by broadening our vision of public education:

We can rethink school. And, I posit, we do that by embracing the future of education as one that fully integrates “choice” into every decision we make. Not choice translated as vouchers, or charter schools, or private schools, or any other specified delivery mechanism. No. Choice translated as giving every parent in this great land more control, more of a say in their child’s future. More choices. The future of choice lies in trusting and empowering parents — all parents, not just those who have the power, prestige, or financial wherewithal to make choices.

And she adeptly used her Harvard setting to challenge narrow, doctrinaire notions of what constitutes “public” education. As she put it:

The definition of public education should be to educate the public. That’s why we should fight less about the word that comes before “school.” I suspect all of you here at Harvard, a private school, will take your education and contribute to the public good. When you chose to attend Harvard, did anyone suggest you were against public universities? No, you and your family sat down and figured out which education environment would be the best fit for you. . . . Instead of dividing the public when it comes to education, the focus should be on the ends, not the means.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel Takes On the Shia Crescent How Obama enabled the rise of Iran in Syria and why Israel is taking action. Joseph Klein

Posted By on October 2nd, 2017

Despite Israel’s repeated warnings, Barack Obama’s reckless appeasement of the Iranian regime has enabled its rise as a hegemonic threat in the Middle East region as well as a threat to international peace and security. In 2009, Obama turned his back on millions of dissidents in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities, who were peacefully protesting the rigged election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. In 2011, Obama precipitously removed the remaining U.S. combat troops from Iraq, giving rise to ISIS’s re-emergence in Iraq from its bases in Syria. The radical Shiite Iranian regime purported to come to the “rescue” of both countries from the Sunni terrorists, turning Iraq into a virtual vassal state of the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the process. Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran legitimized Iran’s path to eventually becoming a nuclear-armed state, while immediately filling its coffers with billions of dollars to fund its aggression.

Meanwhile, Syria has become ground zero for Iran’s execution of its regional ambitions, which is to establish its Shiite Crescent connecting with its allies, including Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. This plan has included the establishment of a land route that Iranian-backed militias secured in June, beginning on Iran’s border with Iraq and running across Iraq and Syria all the way to Syria’s Mediterranean coast. This road makes Iran’s job easier in supplying arms by land, as well as by air and sea, to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and to equip Iran’s own forces fighting inside of Syria in support of Assad. This helps explain why Iran has placed so much importance on helping the Syrian regime establish control over the Deir ez-Zor area in eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border.

“Everything depends now on the Americans’ willingness to stop this,” said an Iraqi Kurdish official who was quoted in a New Yorker article. However, U.S.-led coalition forces apparently have done next to nothing to stop this major advance in Iran’s Shiite Crescent expansion. “Obama ran down our options in Syria so thoroughly, by the time this administration took over,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The Iranian influence is spreading because they are so heavily involved in regime activities,” Tabler added. “It’s a new monster.”

Furthermore, Iran has funded and armed its terrorist proxy Hezbollah, which has sent its militia from its home base of Lebanon to fight alongside Assad’s forces. And Iran has used Syria as a transit point for shipment of sophisticated rockets to Hezbollah in Lebanon for future use against Israeli population centers. Despite the fact that Hezbollah has American blood on its hands, the U.S.-led coalition has chosen not to do anything about Hezbollah’s presence in Syria, bought and paid for by Iran.

While Israel chose not to take sides in Syria’s civil war with military intervention of its own, it has bombed weapons storage facilities and convoys inside Syria for its own protection. Just recently, on September 7th, Israeli jets struck a Syrian weapons facility near Masyaf, which was reported to have been used for the production of chemical weapons and the storage of missiles. Israel will also do what is necessary to repel Iranian-backed forces if they edge too close to areas near the Golan Heights, shrinking the buffer between Israel and Iranian controlled territories.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Big Middle East Lie by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on October 2nd, 2017

Jamal wanted to murder Jews because he believed this was a noble deed that would earn him the status of shaheed (martyr) and hero among his family, friends and society. In Palestinian culture in particular, and Arab culture in general, murderers of Jews are glorified on a daily basis.

The Trump administration and Jason Greenblatt seem to have bought the lie that “It’s about money, stupid.”

No. The conflict is about Israel’s existence in the Middle East. It’s about the abiding interest in the Arab and Islamic world to destroy Israel and murder Jews.

Nimer Mahmoud Jamal, the 37-year-old Palestinian terrorist who on September 25 murdered three Israelis at the entrance to Har Adar near Jerusalem, had a permit from the Israeli authorities to work in Israel.

His family and friends say he also had a good life and was considered lucky to have been employed by Jews because he received a higher salary and was protected by Israeli labor laws. The night before Jamal set out in his murderous mission, he spent a few hours at the fitness gym in his village, located only a few miles away from Har Adar.

So, Jamal, the murderer of the three Israelis (two of the victims were Arab Israelis), was not poor. He was not unemployed. In fact, according his friends, Jamal earned much more than what a senior police officer or school teacher working for the Palestinian Authority or Hamas brings home every month.

What was it, then, that drove Jamal to his murderous scheme, gunning down three young men who were supposed to be facilitating his entry into Israel? Was it because he could not provide for his children? No. Was it because his landlord was pressuring him about the rent? No: Jamal lived in a nice place of his own, complete with furniture, appliances and bedrooms that any family in the West would be proud to own.

Left: Nimer Mahmoud Jamal. Right: Har Adar. (Images source: Social media, Josh Evnin/Wikimedia Commons)

Jamal wanted to murder Jews because he believed this was a noble deed that would earn him the status of shaheed (martyr) and hero among his family, friends and society. In Palestinian culture in particular, and Arab culture in general, murderers of Jews are glorified on a daily basis.

They are touted as the lucky ones who are now in the company of Prophet Mohammed and the angels in Paradise. Male terrorists are also busy with the 72 virgins they were awarded as a prize for murdering Jews. The murderers — as Muslim clerics and leaders hammer into the heads of Palestinians — are also given access to rivers of honey and fine drinks once they set foot in their imaginary Paradise.

Jamal’s friends and family are now convinced that he has been rewarded by Allah and Prophet Mohammed in Paradise for murdering three Israelis. They do not care about his children, whom he left behind, and certainly not about the families of the three Israelis he murdered.

In his village and on social media, Jamal is being hailed as a hero and martyr. Not a single Palestinian has come out against the cowardly terror attack by a man who took advantage of a permit from the Israeli authorities to commit a terror attack.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Islam and Feminism by Maryam Assaf

Posted By on October 2nd, 2017

By claiming that Islam is “feminist,” these self-appointed advocates seem to be trying to convince others that Islam is keeping up with modernity, human rights, and democratic values. This, sadly is a lie, and one that unfortunately seems told to facilitate the assimilation of Islam into Western countries and to improve its image.

Furthermore, both men and women from their earliest age are indoctrinated by a male-dominated society to think that staying subjugated is part of a woman’s fulfillment of her duty toward both her husband and her religion.

Many women like the idea of being supported by a husband and not having to find an outside job. Nowadays, a large number of young women do not even finish their studies, but instead stay home to wait for their “prince charming” to get married. That they would apparently prefer to be their husband’s “slave” and “concubine” to working to support themselves is probably often the main reason they reject Western values such as feminism and gender equality.

Lately, western Muslim “feminists” such as Linda Sarsour or Yasmin Abdel-Magied claim that Islam is a “feminist religion” that respects women’s rights. “Islam to me,” says Abdel-Magied, a Sudanese-Australian author, “is the most feminist religion”.

By claiming that Islam is “feminist,” these self-appointed advocates seem to be trying to convince others that Islam is keeping up with modernity, human rights, and democratic values. This, sadly is a lie, and one that unfortunately seems told to facilitate the assimilation of Islam into Western countries and to improve its image.

The religion of Islam is supported by Sharia, a set of religious laws that organize the lives of all Muslims. Sharia — originally, in Arabic, “The Path,” but in modern times meaning Allah’s laws and recommendations — is based on the Quran and the hadiths, which are sayings and deeds of the prophet Muhammad, regarded by many Muslims as the perfect man.

Under Sharia, however, Muslim women enjoy fewer rights than men. In inheritance for instance, “The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females”(Quran 4:11). This law is applied even in countries such as Tunisia or Algeria, in which the legal system is not based on Sharia. As a result, Muslim women habitually inherit far less money than men, an injustice that virtually forces them, economically, to stay submissive to men. It is also a situation that has built into it the reason this law is never repealed by any parliament.

Another “tradition” perpetuated by Sharia is polygamy: allowing Muslim men to have up to four wives:

“And if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphan-girls, then marry (other) women of your choice, two or three, or four…” Quran (4:3).

Countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Morocco, under the pretext of “practicing Sharia,” have thereby legalized — and thereby even further cemented — the submission of women.

In addition, both men and women from their earliest age, are indoctrinated by a male-dominated society to think that staying subjugated is part of a woman’s fulfillment of her duty toward both her husband and her religion.

Women in Islam are often regarded as men’s possessions — here to satisfy and please them whenever their men wish:

“Your wives are a place of sowing of seed for you, so come to your place of cultivation however you wish and put forth [righteousness] for yourselves.” (Quran 2:223).

The concept of women as objects of desire has often led to complicated outcomes:

“Beautified for people is the love of that which they desire — of women and sons, heaped-up sums of gold and silver, fine branded horses, and cattle and tilled land. That is the enjoyment of worldly life, but Allah has with Him the best return.” (Quran 3:14).

From it, “Jihad al-Nikah”, sexual Jihad, has arisen. “Nikah”, in Arabic, actually has multiple meanings, which include temporary marriage as well as offering oneself as a “comfort” to Muslim fighters on the battlefield. Young women recruited by ISIS for “Jihad al-Nikah” are basically “sex toys,” concubines, pleasuring terrorists for a few hours.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Man yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’ kills 2 at French train station before being shot dead By Mark Moore and Max Jaeger

Posted By on October 2nd, 2017

A man wielding a butcher knife and shouting “God is great” in Arabic stabbed two ​young ​women to death — slitting one’s throat — outside a French train station before being shot dead by soldiers Sunday morning.

​The Paris prosecutor’s office launched a terrorism investigation into the killings in Marseilles. Hours later ISIS claimed the attacker was its “soldier.”

The unidentified terrorist struck ​his victims — who were just 17 and 20 — ​at the Gare Saint-Charles train station​, cutting one’s throat and stabbing the other in the chest and stomach.​

​He crept up behind his unsuspecting first victim, a witness named Dominique said, according to The Telegraph.

“She couldn’t have seen a thing,” she said.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the man seemed to be fleeing after killing his first victim but turned around and attacked the second woman while again shouting “Allahu Akbar (God is great).

He then rushed towards Operation Sentinelle soldiers responding to the scene and they gunned him down. The soldiers have been stationed around key sites in France am
id an ongoing state of emergency called to combat increasing terror attacks.

“We have until now managed to avoid such dramatic incidents,” said Marseilles Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin. “I think it was a terrorist attack and the individual who was killed seems to have had several identities.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Las Vegas Shooting Leaves at Least 20 Dead, More Than 100 Wounded Authorities shut down part of Las Vegas Strip after incident at music festival By Alejandro Lazo

Posted By on October 2nd, 2017

At least 20 people are dead and more than 100 wounded after a shooting late Sunday at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip.

Police said they were first alerted to reports an incident at 10:08 p.m. and then established there was a shooter on the 31st floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino who was targeting the nearby Route 91 Harvest Festival.

Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said officers responded and shot dead the suspect. He said the suspect was a local resident but declined to identify him. Police are also trying to locate a female companion who was traveling with the suspect.

Local television news reports showed crowds of people in Las Vegas ducking for cover as the sound of rapid gunshots rang out, while dozens of patrol vehicles descended on the Strip.

Concertgoers reported seeing muzzle flashes from the upper floors of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino across Las Vegas Boulevard from the country music festival and the sound of what they described as automatic gunfire.

Witnesses said they saw multiple victims as they fled the gunfire raining down on the concert venue.

Some later huddled in the basement of the nearby Tropicana hotel-casino.

Some officers took cover behind their vehicles while others carrying assault rifles ran into the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.

Authorities shut down part of the Las Vegas Strip and Interstate 15.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why the Shadow of the 2015 Migration Crisis Still Hangs Over Europe French President Macron’s speech and success of anti-immigration party in German elections show security is priority for EUBy Simon Nixon

Posted By on October 2nd, 2017

In the eyes of some, Emmanuel Macron flunked it.

When the French president last week delivered a marathon speech outlining his vision of the European Union, many economists hoped this would include a radical plan for deeper eurozone fiscal integration.

Indeed, the expectation was that this would form the core of his speech. Yet Mr. Macron didn’t say anything about pooling eurozone debts and had little to say on the creation of a common eurozone budget. Instead, the most eye-catching parts of his speech concerned security and defense, where he proposed a far-reaching agenda to secure the EU’s external borders, stabilize its neighborhood and establish a European Defence Force to be funded by a new tax on financial transactions.

But Mr. Macon’s choice of priorities shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It isn’t just that the chances of the EU reaching an agreement on fiscal integration look remote given opposition from several Northern European countries, not just Germany.

The reality is that there is no urgent need for the eurozone to pursue fiscal integration, particularly now that it is in a cyclical recovery. Sure, the eurozone remains vulnerable to shocks. But there is little the eurozone could do that would improve its ability to cope with a crisis in the Italian bond markets—widely perceived to be the biggest threat to eurozone stability—nor the risk that the crisis in Spain over Sunday’s attempted referendum on Catalonian independence spirals into a wider threat to financial stability. For now, the key to strengthening the eurozone lies in policies that will raise potential growth through better functioning markets, which is where Mr. Macron focused his economic agenda.

Europe’s security challenges, on the other hand, really do pose a clear and present risk to the EU’s survival.

Senior officials say that the closest the EU came to collapse was at the height of the migration crisis in 2015. The arrival of more than one million asylum seekers led to a collapse in public trust in the EU. The flow has since been slowed, with arrivals in Italy and Greece in recent months having diminished to a trickle. But the legacy of 2015 continues to cast a shadow over European politics, as shown by strong support for the anti-immigration Alternative fur Deutschland party in last week’s German elections. EU officials estimate around 200,000 people will attempt to enter the EU illegally this year, in line with the long-term average over the previous two decades, but even this may no longer be politically sustainable. To win back public trust, the EU needs to show it is in full control of its borders. CONTINUE AT SITE

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Las Vegas authorities on alert over new ISIS propaganda video By Andrew Craft From May 2017

Posted By on October 2nd, 2017

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/05/25/las-vegas-authorities-on-alert-over-new-isis-propaganda-video.html

An ISIS propaganda video posted on social media last week featured a brief clip of Las Vegas’ famed strip, prompting Sin City law enforcement authorities to perceive a credible threat.
The 44-minute video showed 2015 footage of the strip, along with images from other cities, including New York and Washington, D.C. The video, narrated in English, calls on ISIS supporters living in the U.S. to carry out attacks using knives and vehicles.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

SYDNEY WILLIAMS: THE MONTH THAT WAS SEPTEMBER 2017

Posted By on October 2nd, 2017

Hurricanes in the Caribbean and the U.S., earthquakes in Mexico and forest fires out west dominated the news. The New York Times, in reporting on the devastation and sounding like an Old Testament prophet, noted, people could be excused for believing that an angry God (perhaps Al Gore?) had let loose His wrath for destroying what He had created – God, that is, not Al Gore. Hyperbole sells news, so perhaps the folks at the Times could be excused for trying to make an extra buck out of other people’s misery.

Torrents were not limited to Mexico, the Caribbean and the Texas/Florida coasts. At the United Nations, President Trump gave a Reagan-like speech, as he did in Poland. He praised the work of the UN, and cited the principles on which it was founded: “pillars of peace, sovereignty, security and prosperity.” He spoke of its cooperation: “Strong sovereign nations let diverse countries with different values, different cultures and different dreams not just coexist, but work side by side, on the basis of mutual respect.” He reminded those listening that Americans “have paid the ultimate price to defend our freedom and the freedom of many nations represented in this great hall.” He emphasized he was an American leader, not a world leader.

He warned that if the UN is to be an effective partner reform is necessary to confront those who would dismantle the world we know: “Too often the focus of this organization has not been on results, but on bureaucracy and process. In some cases, states that seek to subvert this institution’s noble ends have hijacked the very systems that are supposed to advance them.” He reminded his audience that “some governments with egregious human rights records sit on the Human Rights Council.”

President Trump called out North Korea for what they are, a country that impoverishes its people and risks catastrophe in the Pacific region. Bully’s intimidate, he asserted, and must be confronted. He did add a sentence, the last part of which became headline news in much of the media: “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” Most press accounts left off the final two sentences of the paragraph: “The United States is ready, willing and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. That’s what the United Nations is all about. That’s what the United Nations is for. Let’s see how they do.” Mr. Trump spoke frankly of the Maduro regime in Venezuela, using two of the best sentences in the speech: “The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, whenever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure.”

As do many in politics, Mr. Trump has multiple personalities, like Joanne Woodward as Eve in, “Three Faces of Eve,” or the two faces of Janus. He reminds one of Dr. Doolittle’s Pushmi-Pullyu. We do not know which way he is headed. The weekend after his speech to the UN, he became embroiled in an argument with NFL players, who prefer to kneel rather than stand during the National Anthem. Mr. Trump is right about the disrespect they show, but who cares what those morons do? Don’t we have bigger issues, like economic growth; addressing the inequities embedded in the miss-named Affordable Care Act; fixing Dodd-Frank, which has allowed “too-big-to-fail” banks to proliferate, or doing something about our unsustainable debt? Should not tax reform take priority, or the geopolitical concerns in the Middle East and Southeast Asia? Why take on the NFL? My father warned me: never argue with an idiot, for a passerby would be unable to distinguish between the two. The consequence for Mr. Trump was that a great speech disappeared into a miasma of kneeling, self-righteous, juvenile football players.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

#8 The Humanitarian Hoax of Sanctuary Cities: Killing America With Kindness by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on October 2nd, 2017

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States for eight years by persuading America to accept his crippling politically correct sanctuary city policies as altruistic when in fact they were designed to destabilize and destroy civil society. His legacy, the Leftist Democratic Party and its “resistance” movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy American democracy and replace it with socialism.

The term “sanctuary city” originated in the 1980’s when San Francisco passed a city ordinance forbidding city police or city magistrates from assisting federal immigration officers in enforcing immigration policies that denied asylum to refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador. The mission of the sanctuary city was to protect innocent refugees from deportation – although these immigrants were in the U.S. illegally they had not committed any other crimes.

Today sanctuary cities are actually sanctuary jurisdictions because they include cities counties and states. Over 300 sanctuary jurisdictions exist in America today actively hindering federal authorities from seizing illegal criminal aliens, rapists, murderers, terrorists, and drug dealers for deportation. https://cis.org/Map-Sanctuary-Cities-Counties-and-States?gclid=CjwKCAjw3rfOBRBJEiwAam-GsD2uPe-uPrWOlMdFDq0LYvwCvixywYOVsMkcW8duyH1bcVH9vGqFEhoCJiEQAvD_BwE

The shocking murder of 21 year old Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015 publicized the danger of sanctuary jurisdictions. The shooter, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico with seven felony convictions had been deported five times and intentionally sought shelter in San Francisco. Yet officials in “sanctuary city” San Francisco refused to turn him over to federal authorities for deportation and instead released him into society enabling him to kill Kate Steinle.

The three young Muslim migrant boys who savagely raped and urinated in the mouth of an innocent five year old girl in Twin Falls, Idaho last year were protected as well. No jail, no deportation, in fact these monsters were shielded by the mainstream media and local city officials who tried to cover up the case and pretend that Twin Falls was a model for multiculturalism. Wendy Olson, Obama-appointed U.S. attorney for Idaho stunned the country by threatening to prosecute Idahoans who spoke out about the heinous crime in ways SHE considered “false or inflammatory.” Judge Thomas Borresen issued an equally stunning gag order that denied the right of anyone in the courtroom to speak about the sentencing even AFTER the case ended.

Twin Falls is one of two Muslim refugee relocation centers in Idaho. Rather than identifying themselves as a “sanctuary city” Twin Falls has chosen the equally disingenuous name of “welcoming city” and declared themselves to be a “neighborly community.” REALLY? Protecting rapists and censoring free speech is definitely not neighborly for the victims!

The word sanctuary implies safety from a threat – it does not mean shelter for immigrant criminal felons, rapists, murderers and terrorists who threaten the safety of law abiding citizens. Why would any law abiding citizen endorse the protection of these criminals whether they are illegal aliens or legal citizens? The answer lies in the active participation by the mainstream media in the humanitarian hoax of sanctuary cities. The media has deliberately romanticized sanctuary cities as humanitarian havens for the oppressed instead of honestly reporting them as despicable safety zones for criminal aliens. The colluding media has duped the trusting American public and exploited their compassion and good will.