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Iran’s New Palestinian Terror Group: Al-Sabireen by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on October 28th, 2015

The Iranians are also believed to have supplied their new terrorist group in the Gaza Strip with Grad and Fajr missiles that are capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

The leader of Al-Sabireen, Hisham Salem, is a former commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. His activities and rhetoric have worried many in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who fear that his group is beginning to attract many of their followers.

Salem has been accused by many Palestinians of helping Iran spread Shia Islam inside the Gaza Strip, where all Muslims belong to the rival Sunni denomination.

This, of course, is bad news for [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas, who is now watching as many of his former loyalists have become on Iran’s payroll and are sharing its radical ideology.

Many Palestinians and Arabs in the region are already voicing concern. The last thing Abbas, Egypt’s President Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah need is another Iranian terror group such as Hezbollah in the Middle East.

It now remains to be seen whether the Obama Administration and other Western powers will wake up and realize that the Iranians are continuing to fool them, not only regarding Tehran’s nuclear program, but also concerning its territorial ambitions in the Middle East.

Unless the U.S. and Western powers realize that Iran remains a major threat to world peace, Al-Sabireen and other terrorist groups will one day manage to establish a UN-recognized Palestinian state that would pose an existential threat to Israel and destabilize the entire Middle East.

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HuffPo: The Word ‘Too’ Is Sexist and Hurts Women Adverbs: They’re hurting people. By Katherine Timpf

Posted By on October 28th, 2015

According to a piece in the Huffington Post, the word “too” is sexist and hurts women by constantly making them feel like they’re not good enough.

In a piece titled “The 3-Letter Word That Cuts Women Down,” University of Vermont freshman Cameron Schaeffer explains that she had an “epiphany” about the word after talking with a friend about how she should cut her hair.

“Our conversation ended with, ‘Well you don’t want it to be too short or too long,’” Schaeffer writes.

“There is no proper way for a woman to cut her hair, let alone do anything right in this world . . . Everything is too this or too that,” she continues.

Now, when she says “everything,” of course what she really means is “everything as it applies to women.” After all, the very real damage inflicted by this word is yet another tragedy that only affects us:

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Why Is Donald Trump Defending Burqas? By Jillian Kay Melchior

Posted By on October 28th, 2015

In yet another demonstration of his unsuitability for office, Donald Trump extolled the wearing of burqas and niqabs at length at his rally in New Hampshire earlier this week.

The comments, delivered in Trump’s typical yuk-it-up tone, are so ridiculous that they’re worth printing in their entirety:

We want it where the women over there don’t have to wear the you-know-what. [Trump gestures across his face with his hand, an apparent reference to burqas and niqabs.] And then I said, “Oh, well that makes sense, that’s nice.” Then I saw women interviewed. They said, “We want to wear it. We’ve worn them for a thousand years. Why would anyone tell us not to?” They want to! What the hell are we getting involved for? In fact, it’s easier. You don’t have to put on makeup. Look how beautiful everyone looks. Wouldn’t it be easier? Bwah. Right? Wouldn’t that be easy? I tell ya, if I was a woman, I don’t want to . . . bwah, “I’m ready, darling, let’s go.” It’s true!

Trump’s apology for the burqa (which covers a woman’s entire body, leaving only a small area of mesh to see through) and niqab (which veils a woman’s entire face except for her eyes) is worrisome not only because of its implicit misogyny; for a man who aspires to lead the world’s most powerful nation, it reveals incredible ignorance about the Muslim world.

For starters, it’s worth noting that the burqa and niqab are embraced by only a tiny minority in the Muslim world, according to a recent survey from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, which conducted polling in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey.

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Why Family Structure Is So Important By Jonah Goldberg —

Posted By on October 28th, 2015

It’s been a good month for champions of the traditional family, but don’t expect the family wars to be ending any time soon.

In recent weeks, a barrage of new evidence has come to light demonstrating what was once common sense. “Family structure matters” (in the words of my American Enterprise Institute colleague Brad Wilcox, who is also the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia).

Princeton University and the left-of-center Brookings Institution released a study that reported “most scholars now agree that children raised by two biological parents in a stable marriage do better than children in other family forms across a wide range of outcomes.” Why this is so is still hotly contested.

Another study, co-authored by Wilcox, found that states with more married parents do better on a broad range of economic indicators, including upward mobility for poor children and lower rates of child poverty. On most economic indicators, the Washington Post summarized, “the share of parents who are married in a state is a better predictor of that state’s economic health than the racial composition and educational attainment of the state’s residents.”

Boys in particular do much better when raised in a more traditional family environment, according to a new report from MIT. This is further corroboration of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous 1965 warning: “From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows a large number of men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future — that community asks for and gets chaos.”

Perhaps most intriguing — and dismaying — a new study by Nicholas Zill of the Institute of Family Studies found that adopted children have a harder time at school than kids raised by their biological parents. What makes this so dismaying is that adoptive parents tend to be better off financially and are just as willing as traditional parents, if not more so, to put in the time and effort of raising kids.

Zill’s finding highlights the problem with traditional family triumphalism. Adoption is a wonderful thing, and just because there are challenges that come with adoption, no one would ever argue that the problems adopted kids face make the alternatives to adoption better. Kids left in orphanages or trapped in abusive homes do even worse.

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An Awful Enthusiasm Toward the separation of celebrity and state By Kevin D. Williamson —

Posted By on October 28th, 2015

Unless you’re a pretty hardcore architecture nerd, you’ve probably never heard of Hermann Eggert. He was a turn-of-the-century German architect who designed the 1913 town hall in Hanover and, perhaps most important, Frankfurt’s wondrously efficient Hauptbahnhof, the busiest train station in Germany. It handles some 450,000 passengers a day, not too far behind Paris’s Gare du Nord, Europe’s busiest train station.

The Europeans love their trains, but as station managers, they face nothing like the Japanese challenge: Shinjuku Station in Tokyo sees some 3.6 million souls pass through its doors on an average day — more than the entire sum of daily passengers on the London Underground. Shinjuku Station, even more so than Frankfurt’s Hauptbahnhof, conforms to the famous, frequently cited, and even more frequently ignored advice given by Metro de Madrid boss Manuel Melis Maynar on the subject of building efficient transit systems: “Design should be focused on the needs of the users, rather than on architectural beauty or exotic materials, and never on the name of the architect.”

Never? Well . . .

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MARK SILVERBERG: FOSTERING A CULTURE OF DEATH HAS ITS PRICE

Posted By on October 28th, 2015

Contrary to the wishes of the U.S. State Department, the U.S. House of Representatives has just frozen $370 million in financial aid to the Palestinian Authority in response to mounting criticism concerning Palestinian anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement that has led to the rash of lethal attacks that have left over a dozen Israeli civilians dead over the past several weeks. This money was intended to develop Palestinian infrastructure and foster economic growth, but instead, it is being used by the Palestinian Authority to incite the murder of Jews and to sow destruction within Israel.

Elliott Abrams, a former deputy national security advisor under President George W. Bush who is now with the Council on Foreign Relations, went further and has suggested that additional penalties should be imposed including the closing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington, sanctioning PA officials and others with visa bans, and earmarking U.S. aid for specific programs untainted by corruption so long as Palestinian leaders continue to incite their people to murder Israelis.

Hopefully, the U.S. government will no longer be swayed by the fallacious arguments that Palestinian terrorism is motivated by “political and social desperation”, “frustration and alienation”, “Israeli settlement activity”, “failure to agree on borders”, and “the inevitable consequence of neglect” – phrases that are often used by administration officials and members of the mainstream media to excuse and/or justify Palestinian terrorist actions. Truth is, Palestinian violence is not induced by any of the above, but it is in fact driven by hope – the hope of annulling Jewish national sovereignty and dismantling the Jewish nation-state.

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EDGAR DAVIDSON’S SPOOF ON ACADEMIC ISRAEL BASHERS FROM DECEMBER 2013 ****

Posted By on October 28th, 2015

University unions in shock move to boycott themselves
In a shock move America’s largest union of university professors – the Council of Research and Academic Professionals (CRAP) which along with the American Studies Society (ASS), had recently voted in favour of an academic boycott of Israel, has voted to extend the boycott to America and hence will be boycotting itself.

Over 80% of the Union’s members took part in the vote, with a massive 13 voting in favour and only 11 voting against. This came after an impassioned plea by CRAP member Professor Angela Ayers-Davis who said:

Since we are boycotting Israel as a racist, colonial, warmongering, apartheid state, it is only fair that we do the same to America. After all, America is illegally occupying an entire continent belonging to the indigenous Native Indian population and more recently Puerta Rico and Hawaii as well as the Mexican land of Texas and California. America is also fighting a racist, illegal, colonial war against Islam in many countries. And of course America has a system of apartheid against its black citizens.

The CRAP President, Professor Ivor Loudmouth, eloquently laid out the obligations for professors and the consequences of the boycott:

Since we must boycott all academics in America, we must cease all communication between ourselves and our students. We are therefore arranging for the permanent shut-down of all American universities until the occupation, apartheid and all foreign wars end. Moreover, since the boycott obviously applies to all cultural and social interactions this also means that any professors who are married to each other must get divorced immediately. Since we are also encouraging non-academics to observe the boycott those professors who have non-academic partners should also ask their partners – and indeed all other family members – to cease speaking with them. For the sake of optimal family cohesion we recommend that professors remove themselves entirely from the family home and live in isolation. Professors will still be able to carry out their own unfunded independent research. However, whereas in the past they have been able to publish their work in journals run by themselves or their friends, they will now only be able to submit their articles to themselves and they must be rejected on the grounds of the boycott. CRAP will provide a template for self-rejection letters.

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ALBION’S GALLERY OF ROGUES

Posted By on October 28th, 2015

“We will not work with Israel’s universities” say 340 UK academics.

· In an unprecedented statement university teachers say they will not do business with Israel’s university institutions and system.
· Professors and lecturers, Fellows of the Royal Society and Fellows of the British Academy say they will not visit Israel’s universities.
· Academics from across 72 different institutions have made the Commitment, more expected to follow as campaign grows.
· Full page advertisement in The Guardian newspaper announces launch of the Commitment.
· Israeli universities “deeply complicit” with Israeli violations of international law.

A commitment signed by 343 academics across UK’s higher education system says they will not accept invitations for academic visits to Israel. They will not act as referees in activities related to Israel academic institutions, or cooperate in any other way with Israeli universities

This Academic Commitment is a response to the appeal for such action by Palestinian academics and civil society due to the deep complicity of Israeli academic institutions in Israeli violations of international law. Signatories have pledged to continue their commitment until Israel complies with international law, and respects Palestinian human rights.

The need for solidarity with the Palestinian people, as expressed in the Academic Commitment, is made more urgent today by the current escalation of violent conflict in Israel/Palestine. The fatalities are overwhelmingly of Palestinians engaging in street protests provoked by Israel’s 48-year and ever tightening occupation.

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In Britain, A Scholarly Roll of Shame :343 UK scholars have declared support for an academic boycott of Israel, taking out a full page ad in that rag of iniquity The Guardian today.

Posted By on October 28th, 2015

Here’s the roll of shame:

No need to rush to Specsavers or search for a magnifying glass: read more on this here

Declares Joy Wolfe, the redoubtable chairperson of StandWithUs UK:

‘ StandWithUs UK strongly condemns the call from British academics to boycott Israel. This move does nothing to help the Palestiians and potentially damages the long standing mutually beneficial links that are so important to both the UK and Israel. We welcome the strong statement from British Ambassador David Quarrey condemning the boycott call and reaffirming the UK’s anti boycott commitment. Ambassador Quarrey reiterated the importance of the significant and fruitful relationship shared by Israel and the United Kingdom.

“The British Government firmly opposes calls to boycott Israel. We are deeply committed to promoting the UK’s academic and scientific ties with Israel, as part the flourishing partnership between the two countries,” he said in a statement.

“The reality is one of rapidly strengthening trade and tech links between Britain and Israel. As David Cameron has said, the UK Government will never allow those who want to boycott Israel to shut down 60 years worth of vibrant exchange and partnership that does so much to make both our countries stronger,” he added.

Israeli academics should look closely at the names of those signing the boycott letter and ensure they do not further the double standards of the boycotters wishing to continue personal links’.

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Mama Merkel and the Immigration Invasion of Germany By Rael Jean Isaac

Posted By on October 28th, 2015

On Oct. 20, months after the “immigration invasion” of Europe began — whose long-term impact goes far beyond temporary obsessions like email servers and Benghazi — one of the Wall Street Journal’s chief pundits finally addressed the subject. Bret Stephens wrote an op-ed, “In Defense of Christendom.” The reason for the long silence is not hard to guess. The Wall Street Journal has long been wedded to the notion of open borders. Never mind that Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman admonished the paper almost twenty years ago “It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” The Journal has remained deaf to Friedman’s irrefutable argument that in a redistributionist state, unlimited immigration, with its unlimited demands on the public purse, at minimum will destroy limited government.

So how should the socially conservative editorial page react to open borders in action? In theory this was fine. Yet there was something deeply troubling about millions of Muslims invading Europe’s richest welfare states, with no end in sight. As the King of Siam would say, it was a puzzlement.

Stephens finally ended the embarrassing silence. He ignored the economic impact and focused on what is in truth the most important danger to which this migration contributes: the destruction of European civilization. Stephens treats the immigrant invasion as what he calls “a stiff breeze” in a civilization that has already lost its moral compass. No longer believing in the sources from which their comfortable beliefs in human rights, peace, progress, spring — Judaism, Christianity, the Enlightenment, capitalism, etc. — they have lost the capacity for what Pope Benedict called “self-love.” Stephens is by no means the first to make this point. Nobel Prize for Literature winner Imre Kertesz more than a decade ago identified “suicidal liberalism” as Europe’s dominant set of values, leaving it “wide open to Islam.”