http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/299114/compulsory-blindness-andrew-c-mccarthy
A few years back, I wrote a book called “Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.” It was about being on the “front lines,” so to speak, of the battle against Muslim terrorism. I put “front lines” in quotes because, though the terrorists saw themselves as fighting a doctrinally ordained war of armed combat, we were treating them as mere criminals — such that our idea of a battlefield was the federal courthouse, and our idea of a commander was, well . . . me.
Misapprehending the dimension of the challenge — that it was war, not crime — was only one part of the story. The real willful blindness was government’s failure to examine the nature of the challenge. This, of course, involves the question of why things happen. To duck that question was reckless. A failure to understand the terrorists’ rationale made it impossible to grasp how pervasive the security problem was, how likely it was that additional mass-murder plots were in the offing, what kinds of targets were vulnerable, and what should be done to try to prevent attacks.
Still, things were better 20 years ago. If the book were to be written about today’s counterterrorism approach, I’d have to call it Compulsory Blindness: A Surrender to Violent Extremism.
See, however wayward our approach in the Nineties may have been, it was still possible to tell the truth, to fashion an accurate depiction of the phenomenon. To be sure, in the Clinton years, there was plenty of feel-good “Religion of Peace” drivel coming out of the White House, the State Department, and Main Justice. But back then, willful blindness was the familiar, tacit kind of conscious avoidance: Officials who should have known better passively avoided learning basic, uncomfortable facts. For the most part, though, they did not affirmatively obstruct those who were more industrious.
What is Left??
by Prof. Steven Plaut
http://zioncon.blogspot.com/
It is impossible to understand politics in the world today without
grasping the fundamental fact that there exist two different Lefts. I
propose that the two be referred to by everyone as the Stupid Left and
the Satanic Left. The two are very different, although they work
together. People who are part of the first are simply stupid people.
People who are part of the second may in fact be quite shrewd, but are
evil and nefarious. There is no third type of leftist.
Over time, the Stupid Left has been losing its numbers, as many Stupid
Leftists either become smarter or morph into Satanic Leftists, and so
desist from being mere Stupid Leftists. So a process of selection is
occurring whereby the strength of the Satanic Left within the overall
Left grows. The “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations and their kin in
Europe are attended by and contained both kinds of Leftists, although
they are increasingly organized by Satanic Leftists. Almost all the
BDS (boycott and divest from Israel) guttersnipes are Satanic
Leftists.
Anita Moncrief Takes on Eric Holder on Race, ACORN and Voter Fraud
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/05/03/anita-moncrief-takes-on-eric-holder-on-race-acorn-and-voter-fraud/
(Legal Editor Note: Not long ago, the Left had a monopoly on rallies and protests. Republicans and conservatives, more enamored with scholars instead of brawlers, shunned displays of political muscle in the streets. That’s all changed. A few months ago, Attorney General Eric Holder went to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, to announce an aggressive attack on state election integrity measures like Voter ID. This election-year strategy is designed to stoke the leftist base but risks alienating everyone else. To greet Holder that day were hundreds of citizens at a rally sponsored by True the Vote.
I will never forget the disoriented look on Holder’s face as he emerged from the black SUV to the large crowd of people who came out to confront him. “Signs? Bullhorns? Multitudes? And they aren’t here to support me?” — that was the look.
ACORN whistleblower Anita Moncrief delivered a powerful speech that day, and PJ Media has finally been able to obtain it and publish it.)
Thank you. It’s an honor to be here today and I’m glad to see that there’s so many of you with your video cameras, because after the mainstream media gets hold of this, it will be “an all-white crowd showed up to protest Eric Holder.” So I’m glad we’ll have a little bit of somebody to combat that.
I speak from the heart and I speak plain, so if I offend some of you I’m sorry. But it’s an honor to be here today, especially to be at the LBJ Library, the father of the Great Society, the father of the social programs and the welfare state, and then the dissolution of the black family and our communities.
When LBJ signed in the Voting Rights Act in 1965, he said: “We’ll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 40 years.” And that needs to be said. People need to understand that. That’s the legacy that Holder brings here with him tonight by holding his speech here. It’s not just about coming here to talk about voting rights. It’s to talk about how they’ve taken race and turned it in to something that is unrecognizable.
I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the heart of the civil rights movement. I could have walked to the 16th Street Baptist Church that was bombed during the civil rights era. And I have to tell you, the racism that I experienced, the evilness that came at me, it wasn’t from Birmingham, Alabama. It was from when I moved to the liberal north, and I got to see how things really were, and part of that was working with ACORN.
And that’s why I’m here today, to let you know what you guys are up against. This is not just something that has come out recently. This is something that started in the ’90s when Bill Clinton was in office. Not many people realize this, but ACORN helped get Bill Clinton elected, and the National Voter Registration Act was Clinton’s gift to ACORN.
Destiny of a nation lies in Arizona immigration case
Times247
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Exclusive
Destiny of a nation lies in Arizona immigration case
President Obama is essentially denying Arizona — and the other states — the right to prevent illegal aliens from crossing its borders. He is siding with foreign lawbreakers and criminals against his own state governments. It is treason posing as multicultural compassion. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1ttbPIY00
Clooney fundraiser expected to rake in record $12m
Hollywood Reporter
Thursday, May 3, 2012
News
Clooney fundraiser expected to rake in record $12m
President Barack Obama’s dinner with George Clooney has officially sold out and campaign sources are telling The Hollywood Reporter that the event is expected to raise up to $12 million for the president’s re-election, making it the biggest presidential fundraiser in U.S. history. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1ttbVPdln
White House under fire over handling of Chen
The Washington Times
Thursday, May 3, 2012
News
The Obama administration Thursday found itself on the defensive over its handling of a blind Chinese dissident at the center of a diplomatic firestorm between Washington and Beijing, as confusion over the fate of Chen Guangcheng only deepened in both capitals. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1ttbfHCoX
srael launches new submarine with nuke potential
Israel National News
Thursday, May 3, 2012
News
The IDF on Thursday launched the fourth Dolphin-class submarine — the INS Tanin [Crocodile] — to enter the service of Israel’s Navy. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1ttboqOnj
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/04/ten-reasons-to-impeach-eric-holder/ Americans have come to view Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr., as a symbol of the radicalism and dishonesty of the Obama administration. No wonder. As J. Christian Adams, who once worked for Holder at the Department of Justice, writes in Ten Reasons to Impeach Eric Holder, the Attorney General’s policies have endangered the security […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/contempt-resolution-drafted-on-attorney-general-eric-h-holder?f=must_reads
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/3/contempt-resolution-drafted-on-holder/print/
Issa condemns Fast and Furious
The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee gave panel members a draft of a contempt of Congress resolution against Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., citing the “refusal” of the nation’s top prosecutor to cooperate in an investigation of the botched Fast and Furious gunrunning operation.
The 64-page draft resolution and an accompanying 17-page staff briefing paper explain what Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and committee chairman, called the “reckless conduct” of the Fast and Furious investigation and the “hardships” faced by the family of a U.S. Border Patrol agent killed with a weapon purchased in the probe.
The two documents also detail retaliation against agents who blew the whistle on the operation and the “carnage in Mexico” that Fast and Furious helped fuel.
“This briefing paper and draft contempt report explains the case to both members of the committee and the American people for holding Attorney General Holder in contempt of Congress,” Mr. Issa said. “Operation Fast and Furious’ outrageous tactics, the Justice Department’s refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation and efforts to smear and retaliate against whistleblowers have tainted the institutional integrity of the Justice Department.”
Fast and Furious was an attempt by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to allow “straw buyers” in Arizona to “walk” weapons into Mexico with a goal of tracking them to drug cartel leaders. But ATF lost track of hundreds of the weapons, nearly 600 of which have never been recovered.
Investigations by Mr. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, found that ATF had allowed more than 2,000 weapons – including AK-47 assault rifles – to be “walked” to Mexican drug smugglers.
Two Romanian-made AK-47s purchased during the probe were found at the site of the December 2010 fatal shooting of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry, 40, who was killed just north of the Arizona border town of Nogales.
A Justice Department official on Thursday, as the agency has for the past several months, denied being uncooperative in the congressional probe, noting that Mr. Holder has testified seven times before various committees. The official said the department has handed over hundreds of pages of Fast and Furious documents and that any unreleased information was withheld to avoid politicizing or jeopardizing an ongoing investigation by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
Mr. Grassley noted Thursday that the Justice Department and Mr. Holder initially denied that gunwalking occurred, but they have since withdrawn the denials and admitted that ATF whistleblowers were right to complain about the tactic.
He said that despite the constitutional responsibility of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch, the Justice Department “stonewalled every step” of the Fast and Furious investigation. He said the department provided 80,000 pages of documents to its inspector general’s office in connection with Fast and Furious, but only 6,000 pages of documents to Congress.
“The attorney general and the Justice Department are thumbing their nose at the constitutional authority provided to the legislative branch to conduct oversight,” Mr. Grassley said, adding that Mr. Holder is facing a “real test of leadership.”
“He can force the department to come clean, or he can force a high-stakes political conflict between the legislative and executive branches,” he said.
Mr. Issa’s committee held three hearings on Fast and Furious, conducted 24 transcribed interviews, sent the Justice Department more than 50 letters requesting information, and issued two subpoenas on the department for documents. But the chairman said the department continues to withhold documents he described as “critical” to understanding the decision-making and responsibility in Fast and Furious.
The draft resolution specifically charges that Mr. Holder has not properly complied with a subpoena issued Oct. 12 requesting documents in 22 categories.
“For over a year, the department has issued false denials, given answers intended to misdirect investigators, sought to intimidate witnesses, unlawfully withheld subpoenaed documents, and waited to be confronted with indisputable evidence before acknowledging uncomfortable facts,” the resolution says.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/anders-behring-breivik-the-counter-jihad-movement-and-the-msm?f=puball
The trial of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is, in the words of a perceptive Norwegian reporter-blogger, a “media circus.” The killer is being allowed to spout his extremist views on a wide variety of subjects, and although he murdered 77 people with no apparent provocation, he is being permitted by the court to plead self-defense.
And amazingly, the trial began with the presiding judge and the prosecutors advancing to the defendant’s box and shaking Breivik’s hand-a mass murderer who admits his crimes and expresses no remorse!
Plainly, there is something wrong with such a “non-adversarial” criminal trial, and with the politeness-obsessed, conflict-averse Norwegian society that has created such a criminal justice system.
Other aspects of the trial are equally non-adversarial. While in an American courtroom the defendant’s lawyer would argue that his client is not guilty by reason of insanity-the only plausible defense for a murderer who freely admits his guilt and expresses pride in his crimes-Breivik’s lawyer is allowing his client to argue that he is sane. In his remarks to the court and the press, he freely admits that he finds it distasteful to represent his client, and he doesn’t make any serious effort to defend or even excuse him. “I feel I have lost my soul as a result of this case,” he told reporters.
On the other hand, while the defense attorney shows little interest in defending, the prosecution seems equally uninterested in prosecuting. It has not argued that the defendant is sane-which it must do in order to obtain a conviction-and is instead leaning toward the view that Breivik is insane. In other words, the prosecutors are on the whole more helpful to the defendant than his own lawyer!
But whether he is convicted or found “not guilty by reason of insanity,” Breivik will live a comfortable life under some form of detention, with numerous rights and privileges that in Norway’s ultra-humane correctional system are granted to all criminals. On the other hand, he will be detained indefinitely in either case-until and unless he can persuade his “guardians” that he is no longer a threat to society. In Norway ‘s permissive, soft-hearted and soft-headed society, he might just succeed in doing that some day.
Why then, hold a trial at all? In an American courtroom, a defendant pleading self-defense after killing 77 unarmed, unresisting people would be required to produce evidence that he actually was under attack and needed to use deadly force to protect his life. Any other “evidence” offered by the defendant would be disallowed by the judge as irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial. Instead, the Norwegian court is allowing Breivik to mount a “political” defense that his atrocities were necessary to protect his society from multiculturalism, socialism and an Islamic takeover. This makes for a prolonged, extremely painful trial for the relatives of the victims, who must sit there listening to a remorseless killer boast of the dreadful things he did to their deceased loved ones, and attempting to justify, even glorify, his crimes. Since none of this “testimony” has any real bearing on the question of Breivik’s guilt or innocence, allowing it in court serves only Breivik’s twisted purposes-and perhaps those of others who seek to exploit his atrocities, and the horror they have inspired, to advance their own political agendas.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/your-mild-mannered-speech-therapist-cass-sunstein
Cass Sunstein, director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, will not like this column. He may be offended by it. Feel insulted. Cry “not fair!” He may recommend that I be taxed, or financially penalized somehow for expressing unapproved speech, or even incarcerated for having said such awful things about him. He endorses these ideas. Works assiduously for them. Has written extensively on how unbridled free speech imperils society and social stability, and so ought to be checked and even licensed.
So, sue me.
Well, he hasn’t yet. In September 2009 I penned, “Cass Sunstein: ‘Czar’ in Wolf’s Clothing,” in which I excoriated him for sanctioning censorship and the manipulation of “public opinion” on the occasion of regiment of government arts-grantees being turned loose on the public by the National Endowment for the Arts. (I have written numerous articles on the perils facing the First Amendment and freedom of speech, including “‘High Noon’ for the First Amendment” in September 2009, which indict Sunstein, as well, including several articles for the Journal of Information Ethics and The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science.)
Sunstein has published thirty-seven books to date, and a mountain of articles and papers. A man who has written so much may have a faulty memory and have difficulty remembering what he’s written. On April 30th, for example, during a lecture at New York University Law School, an attendee asked him if he still endorsed an idea he proposed in a paper he wrote in 2008 while still fully employed at the University of Chicago Law School, “Conspiracy Theoeris” (before joining the faculty of Harvard Law School; Working Papers Nos. 08-3, 199, and 387).
In the question and answer portion of the lecture, We Are Change founder Luke Rudkowski confronted Sunstein concerning his avocation of a “provocateur” style program to silence what have become the government’s most vociferous and influential critics.
With tongue firmly in cheek, Rudkowski introduced himself as “Bill de Berg from Brooklyn college,” before directly asking Sunstein to explain his comments.
“I know you wrote many articles, but I think the most telling one about you is the 2008 one called ‘Conspiracy Theories,’where you openly advocated government agents infiltrating activist groups for 9/11 truth, and also to stifle dissent online,” Rudkowski stated.
“Why do you think the government should go after family members and responders who have questions about 9/11?” he asked Sunstein.
“I’ve written hundreds of articles and I remember some and not others,” Sunstein replied, denying that he has a firm recollection of the paper.
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/15741/Pentagon-Goes-Full-Stupid-Defense-Sec-Leon-Panetta-Manmade-Climate-change-has-a-dramatic-impact-on-national-security Pentagon Goes Full Stupid: Defense Sec. Leon Panetta: [Man-made] ‘Climate change has a dramatic impact on national security’ Panetta told the Environmental Defense Fund: ‘Rising sea levels, severe droughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief’ Climate Depot Responds […]
The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco, trans. Richard Dixon (HoughtonMifflinHarcourt, 2011).
THIS COLUMN IS PUBLISHED IN THE CHICAGO JEWISH STAR AND HAS NO URL. PROFESSOR ALEXANDER’S NEW BOOK “THE STATE OF THE JEWS- A CRITICAL APPRAISAL” WILL BE PUBLISHED BY TRANSACTION BOOKS LATER THIS MONTH.
PLEASE ALSO READ: THE MEANING OF CRITICISM BY EDWARD ALEXANDER IN OUTPOST http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/edward-alexander-the-meaning-of-criticism.html
The center of this novel is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a catastrophically influential forged account of the minutes of a meeting (which never took place) in Prague’s ancient cemetery of “learned Elders of Zion” organizing Jewish bankers and trade unionists, rabbis and atheists, capitalists and communists, to conspire in perfect harmony to eradicate Christianity, steal the wealth of gentiles, and take over the world . Concocted by order of the Paris branch of the Czarist secret police between 1899 and 1902 to disseminate the “secret protocols” of the World Zionist Congress that had been held in Basel in 1897, it was published in 1905 and, after the mass slaughter of World War I and the Russian Revolution, became the deadliest document in the history of antisemitism. “When this book becomes the common heritage of all people,” wrote Hitler in Mein Kampf, “the Jewish peril can then be considered as stamped out.”
The Protocols are gross and clumsy forgery, ending with the Jews’ declaration: “Ours is an ambition that knows no limits, a voracious greed, a desire for ruthless revenge, an intense hatred.” This monument to stupidity’s influence in world affairs was exposed as forgery in 1921, yet became a perennial bestseller in Europe and then the Arab world. Henry Ford printed excerpts in his Dearborn newspaper and distributed 500,000 copies free of charge. Originally a favorite of right-wing politicians eager to blame Jews for secularism, democracy, communism, psychoanalysis, and pornography, Protocols ideology, outside of Islam, is now an obsession of “progressives,” including Jewish ones. Writers in Tikkun, for example, warn of “conspirators” who run our government on behalf of “Jewish interests,” and they invoke “the industrial sized grain of truth in the Protocols.” Noam Chomsky alleges that the only reason antisemitism is now an “issue” is that “privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control.” Thomas Friedman charges that any congressional support for Benjamin Netanyahu is “bought and paid for by the Israeli lobby.”
But unless you begin reading Prague Cemetery at p. 439, where a four-page appendix entitled “Useless Learned Explanations” clues you in to the book’s organization and plot, you may not discover the centrality of this poisonous document until Chapter Twelve, “A Night in Prague,” starting at p. 191. Eco’s appendix provides the crucial information that “the only fictitious character in this story is the protagonist, Simone Simonini,” a retired army officer whose grandfather had the dubious distinction of inserting the Jews into earlier (French) works of conspiracy-mongering that blamed shadowy schemers—Jesuits and Freemasons in particular– for undermining legitimate governments. Grandpa Simonini also provided the protagonist with his guiding principle in life: odi ergo sum (I hate therefore I am.) All other important characters, Eco tells us, “actually existed, and said and did what they are described as saying and doing in this novel.” Among them are Alfred Dreyfus and Dr.Froide, who, intrigued by the split personality Simonini shares with a priest named Abbe Della Piccola, persuades him to write his life story. Eco has not invented the characters and their doings—what novelist could be so wildly imaginative as to invent the incredible phantasmagoria of “real” European Jew-hatred?—but imagined their inner lives, as they imagined Prague’s cemetery, ”the sinister moonlit center of the universal conspiracy.”
