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September 2016

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Colorado College Accused of ‘Body Shaming’ for Being Committed to Healthy Living By Katherine Timpf

By on September 18th, 2016

A student at Colorado College wrote a piece claiming that the school’s commitment to a healthy lifestyle is actually a bad thing — because it’s body-shaming people, particularly men.

“Several aspects of the CC community such as numerous healthy eating habits, gym programs, and outdoor activities, foster a culture of body shaming even for male students,” Jade Pearl Frost, a senior who is a double major in feminist and gender studies and English, writes in a piece for the Feminist Wire.

“While I am not suggesting that these aspects are detrimental in and of themselves, I argue that the College values these things in ways that are overwhelming and exclusionary,” she adds.

First of all, she’s correct that “healthy eating habits, gym programs, and outdoor activities” are most certainly not “detrimental.” They are, in fact, this thing called “good.” It’s good that her school cafeteria has “an abundance of” healthy food options and “a renovated fitness center.” What would she rather have, a cafeteria that serves only bologna and cheese sandwiches on white bread and a dirty garbage gym with a bunch of broken machines, just so overweight kids wouldn’t feel bad about themselves?

Her attitude in this piece is one that has become all-too common — one that focuses on victimization rather than empowerment. The right attitude would be to say that it’s great that those students who are out of shape have so many campus resources to help them change that if they wanted to.

By the way, the fact that they are, indeed, campus resources — that is, available to all students — makes her claim that they are “exclusionary” completely illogical. After all, “available to all students” is the opposite of “exclusionary,” and it shouldn’t be surprising that nowhere in her piece does she provide a single, concrete example of how they are “exclusionary” other than to say that to say that there’s “an unspoken rule” in the gym “that the cardio section is for the feminine and the weight room is for the masculine.”

First of all, I’d argue that her observation that more women use the cardio section and more men use weight room is probably due to the fact that women just generally are more interested in cardio, and men just generally are more interested in weight-training. In any case, calling it “exclusionary” when, as she herself admits, “the fitness center is open to all genders and everyone a part of the CC community” is factually incorrect. What is the school supposed to do? Force female students to get buff as hell when they don’t want to? Force dudes to get drop their weights and hop on a stationary bike?

In her discussion of fitness-masculinity issues, she also laments the fact that “if the male student doesn’t participate in outdoor activities such as Winterfest and BreakOut Trips, then they are seen as not having body management.” Personally, I’d say that if your biggest problem is that your school is offering too many ski trips, then you are probably doing just fine.

Other than ski trips, another program that Frost sees as problematic is the “Tigers Don’t Waste” program, which discourages students from wasting food.

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University Warns Students Against Thoughtcrime Expressing genuine surprise can be an aggressive act of marginalization. By Josh Gelernter

By on September 18th, 2016

American universities have crossed a new threshold in the progressive war on independent thought: Clark University has told its students that “showing surprise” can now constitute an act of aggression against another student.

Last week, the New York Times ran a piece titled “Campuses Cautiously Train Freshmen against Subtle Insults.” It opens by recounting a question-and-answer session with Clark’s microaggressions czar, chief diversity officer Sheree Marlowe. A student — who begins by saying she’s “really scared to ask this” — asks Miss Marlowe if, when she’s in her car, or with a group of white friends, its “okay” to sing along with music that uses the “N word.”

Miss Marlowe’s answer, says the New York Times, is an “unequivocal ‘no.’”

Also verboten: asking Asians students whom “you don’t know” for help with math homework; asking a black student if he plays basketball; asking a student whose race you’re unsure of about his race. This is all pretty standard stuff on the modern campus. But Clark has entered new territory by expanding the category of forbidden aggressions to include thought crimes: “Showing surprise when a ‘feminine’ woman says she is a lesbian” is, according to Clark, an aggressive act.

There’s a famous scene in Quentin Tarantino’s magnum opus Pulp Fiction in which two characters are getting to know each other:

“Actually, there’s something I’ve wanted to ask you about, but you seem like a nice person, and I didn’t want to offend you,” says Vincent Vega to his boss’s new wife, Mia.

“Oh,” says Mia, “this doesn’t sound like mindless, boring, getting-to-know-you chit-chat. This sounds like you actually have something to say.”

“Only if you promise not to get offended,” says Vega.

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EXPLOSION IN NEW YORK

By on September 18th, 2016

New York (CNN)An explosion ripped through the Chelsea neighborhood in New York City Saturday night injuring dozens and a second device with wiring was found blocks away, authorities say.
Police officers and federal agents were scouring the streets with flashlights, robots and dogs to ensure there were no other devices in the area.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters early indications are that the explosion at 23rd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan that injured 29 “was an intentional act.” Investigators believe the blast was caused by an explosive device in or near a dumpster, a law enforcement source told CNN.
Police have video from businesses on the street where the explosion occurred, which could yield key details about the hours before the attack. Investigators are looking at surveillance video appearing to show a person near where the explosion at the 23rd street location occurred, according to a local and federal law enforcement official. Investigators are trying to determine if that individual is connected to the explosion.
De Blasio says “there is no evidence at this point of a terror connection” and there is no “credible and specific threat” to New York City. Police have increased security across the five boroughs as
Ambulances arriving at some local hospitals were being checked by armed guards.
24 people were taken to the hospital after the explosion, but “none of those injured are likely to die,” the mayor says.
De Blasio says they also believe there is no specific connection to an earlier incident in New Jersey, where an explosion went off in a garbage can on the route of a Marine Corps charity run.
A second device blocks away New York explosion leaves dozens injured in Chelsea – CNN.com
A device at a second location in Chelsea appears to be a pressure cooker, according to multiple local and federal law enforcement officials.
As first responders converged on the explosion site and began blocking off streets in the Chelsea neighborhood, attention soon turned to a second device.
Blocks away from the first explosion, what appears to be a pressure cooker with dark colored wiring coming out of the top center of the device was found, according to multiple local and federal law enforcement officials.
The device is connected by silver duct tape to a small dark colored device attached to the outside of the pressure cooker, according to multiple local and federal law enforcement officials.
None of the officials would say at this point what was inside the pressure cooker.
CNN has viewed an image of the device verifying the description.
Some residents in the area say they were told to stay away from windows when police were searching the area.
Police combed the second location with flashlights, looking under cars, looking in trash cans and looking in doorways, CNN’s Richard Quest reports.

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Snowden Is a Traitor and a Fraud, Period A bipartisan House Intelligence Committee report drives a stake through his disgraceful pardon bid. By Fred Fleitz

By on September 18th, 2016

At a time of extreme partisanship in our country and in the midst of what may be the most contentious presidential election in U.S. history, a congressional committee did something extraordinary: It issued a bipartisan and unanimous report on an extremely divisive issue. This issue is whether former National Security Agency technician Edward Snowden, who stole 1.5 million classified documents and leaked thousands to the news media, is a true whistleblower or a traitor.

The report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (where I worked for five years) found what many of us have long argued: Snowden is not a whistleblower; he is a disgruntled former intelligence employee who did enormous damage to U.S. national security. Click here to read the unclassified summary of this report.

The House Intelligence Committee report could not be better timed, having come out the day before the opening of Oliver Stone’s hagiographic film Snowden and a new campaign by liberal groups and the news media to persuade President Obama to pardon Snowden for the contribution he supposedly made to the cause of protecting civil liberties.

The five findings in the committee report’s unclassified summary are stunning.

Snowden Caused Tremendous Damage to National Security.

The vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests — they instead pertain to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America’s adversaries. Although many experts had already concluded this, the report added that the U.S. government has spent at least hundreds of millions of dollars and will eventually spend billions to counter the damage done by the Snowden leaks.

The most well-known Snowden disclosure concerned the NSA metadata program, which collects phone records but not the contents of phone calls. Although this program has long been overseen by the congressional intelligence committees and helped halt several terrorist attacks against the United States, Snowden’s leaks about it led to a hysterical and uninformed reaction by the press and some members of Congress that led Congress and President Obama to implement major restrictions, which have made this program much more difficult for intelligence officers to use to identify and track terrorist suspects.

Snowden’s defenders claim that since the metadata program violated the Constitution and the privacy rights of Americans, Snowden was justified in leaking information to the press about it and therefore should receive a presidential pardon. Putting aside that Snowden didn’t bother trying to raise his supposed concern about this program through legal channels, the facts are that the vast majority of court decisions on this program upheld it as legal, Congress and the Justice Department have monitored it, and only very minor abuses were discovered. To read more on this issue, see my May 2015 NRO article “NSA Data Collection: Necessary or Unconstitutional.”

While the unclassified report summary does not give specifics of how Snowden’s leaks benefited U.S. enemies and terrorists (that is probably detailed in the classified version available to all House members), U.S. intelligence officials have publicly stated that Snowden’s leaks have allowed ISIS and al-Qaeda to evade detection by Western intelligence services. Former CIA director James Woolsey has called for Snowden to receive the death penalty because his leaks of NSA monitoring techniques helped the ISIS-inspired terrorists who committed the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks conceal their electronic communications.

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Obama’s Cash-for-Jihad Program Let’s give Iran, a certified state sponsor of terrorism, billions in cash. What could go wrong? By Andrew C. McCarthy —

By on September 18th, 2016

The Obama State Department is convinced that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his regime’s cronies are financing terrorism. How come? Well, because they conduct business in cash.

In fact, in its most recent annual report on state sponsors of terrorism, State frets “that 60 percent of all business transactions [in Syria] are conducted in cash and that nearly 80 percent of all Syrians do not use formal banking services.” This has created a “vast black market,” the components of which are exploited by “some members of the Syrian government and the business elite . . . in terrorism finance schemes.”

Interesting thing about that: There are only three countries on the list of state sponsors of terrorism — Syria, Sudan, and Iran. That last one is worth highlighting. Iran, after all, is not just the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism; it is also the world’s leading state sponsor of . . . Syria — providing it with lots of that cash the State Department is so concerned about.

Oh, I nearly forgot: Iran also happens to be the jihadist regime that President Obama just gave $1.7 billion to . . . in cash.

Or should I say, at least $1.7 billion.

It is hard to decide what is the most appalling thing about Obama’s $1.7 billion payoff to the mullahs: the ransom for the release of American hostages, which has predictably induced Tehran to take more hostages; the pallets of untraceable currency loaded on multiple planes of the national airline regularly used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to arm Assad and facilitate terror; the withdrawals from a shadowy Treasury Department fund structured in a manner designed to conceal that money was being transferred to Iran. The transaction is so shocking, one can easily forget that it is just the latest in a long series of payoffs.

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