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April 2017

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Geert Wilders and the Suicide of Europe by Guy Millière

By on April 11th, 2017

None of Wilders’s speeches incites violence against anyone; the violence that surrounds him is directed only at him.

The only person talking about these problems is Geert Wilders. Dutch political leaders and most journalists seemingly prefer to claim that Geert Wilders is the problem; that if he were not there, these problems would not exist.

What adherents of this view, that the West is guilty, “forget” is that Islam long oppressed the West: Muslim armies conquered Persia, the Christian Byzantine Empire, all of North Africa and the Middle East, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Serbia and the Balkans, virtually all of Eastern Europe, Greece and southern Spain. The Muslim armies were a constant threat until the marauding Ottoman troops were finally turned away at the Gates of Vienna in 1683.

Even if the Dutch politcian Geert Wilders had won and if the Party for Freedom (PVV) he established eleven years ago had become the first party in the country, he would not have been able to become the head of the government. The heads of all the other political parties said they would reject any alliance with him ; they maintain this position to this day.

For years, the Dutch mainstream media have spread hatred and defamation against Wilders for trying to warn the Dutch people – and Europe – about what their future will be if they continue their current immigration policies; in exchange, last December, a panel of three judges found him guilty of “inciting discrimination”. Newspapers and politicians all over Europe unceasingly describe him as a dangerous man and a rightist firebrand. Sometimes they call him a “fascist”.

What did Geert Wilders ever do to deserve that? None of his remarks ever incriminated any person or group because of their race or ethnicity. To charge him, the Dutch justice system had excessively and abusively to interpret words he used during a rally in which he asked if the Dutch wanted “fewer Moroccans.” None of Wilders’s speeches incites violence against anyone; the violence that surrounds him is directed only at him. He defends human rights and democratic principles and he is a resolute enemy of all forms of anti-Semitism.

His only « crime » is to denounce the danger represented by the Islamization of the Netherlands and the rest of Europe and to claim that Islam represents a mortal threat to freedom. Unfortunately, he has good empirical reasons to say that. Also unfortunately, the Netherlands is a country where criticism of Islam is particularly dangerous: Theo van Gogh made an “Islamically incorrect” film in 2004 and was savagely murdered by an Islamist who said he would kill again if he could. Two years earlier, Pim Fortuyn, who had hoped to stand for election, defined Islam as a “hostile religion” ; he was killed by a leftist Islamophile animal-rights activist. Geert Wilders is alive only because he is under around-the-clock police protection graciously provided by the Dutch government.

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Turkey’s Barks and Bites by Burak Bekdil

By on April 11th, 2017

This is the first time that Erdogan is openly challenging a concerted European stand.

Turkey’s foreign policy and the rhetoric that presumably went to support it, has, during the past several years, aimed less at achieving foreign policy goals and more at consolidating voters’ support for the Ankara government.

Self-aggrandizing behavior has predominantly shaped policy and functioned to please the Turks’ passion for a return to their glorious Ottoman past.

Assertive and confrontational diplomatic language and playing the tough guy of the neighborhood may have helped garner popular support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), but after years of “loud barking and no biting”, Turkey has effectively become the victim of its own narrative.

In 2010, Turkey froze diplomatic relations with Israel and promised “internationally to isolate the Jewish state”, and never to restore ties unless, along with two other conditions, Jerusalem removed its naval blockade of Gaza to prevent weapons from being brought in that would be used to attack Israel. Turkey’s prime minister at the time, Ahmet Davutoglu, said Israel would “kneel down to us”.

In 2016, after rounds of diplomatic contacts, Turkey and Israel agreed to normalize their relations. The blockade of Gaza, to prevent shipments of weaponry to be used by Gazans in terror attacks remains in effect.

In 2012, Davutoglu claimed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s days in power were numbered, “not by years but by weeks or months”. In 2016, Davutoglu had to step down as prime minister, but Erdogan’s and his worst regional nemesis, Assad, is in power to this day, enjoying increased Russian and Iranian backing. In 2012, Erdogan said that “we will soon go to Damascus to pray at the Umayyad mosque” — a political symbol of Assad’s downfall and his replacement by pro-Turkey Sunni groups. That prayer remains to be performed.

In November 2015, shortly after Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 military jet and cited violation of its airspace, Erdogan warned Russia “not to play with fire.” As for the Russian demands for an apology, Erdogan said it was Turkey that deserved an apology because its airspace had been violated, and that Turkey would not apologize to Russia.

In June 2016, just half a year after Russia imposed a slew of economic sanctions on Turkey, Erdogan apologized to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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Frank Pledge My Agenda: Destroy Australia see note please

By on April 11th, 2017

This brilliant rant from “down under” is so applicable to what is happening here in the U.S……rsk
As an Australian politician I know what is best for you little people, be it blackouts, green tape and red tape, or schools that teach what to think, not how to think. I’ve been working hard to make all that and worse the norm and now, sooner than I ever dared hope, victory is at hand.
I am an Australian politician. It does not matter to which party I belong because I am a ‘nowhere man’, like all the other members of my bipartisan swarm. We do not need to communicate with each other because we know what needs to be done. We are globalists, open-border internationalists, eager totalitarians, politically correct scolds and activists, propagandists posing as journalists and educators who pointedly do not educate. We are those who believe in doing the right thing for the planet, rather than selfishly for Australia, and we do very niceely out of it, too, because a superior sort of person always deserves the reward of other people’s money in large amounts.

We instinctively know that destroying the old Australia is something we need to do as our contribution to saving the planet from the human vermin destroying it. Fortunately, we also know there is no organised political front that can oppose us. Collectivism always beats the individual, as we can spontaneously organise the gang numbers to crush individual dissent – and, of course, we have the support of the media, the ABC, the AHRC and thuggish trolls of all shades. Yes, we recognise Australians will suffer and that the nation will be impoverished, but we accept that as collateral damage. We know the survival of the planet is at stake. Sacrificing you is necessary.

It has been a long battle, but we have almost won the war to de-industrialise, to undermine the society that built this country. We have an agenda and we have taken it too far for anyone to stop it, so embrace the new nation we have re-shaped for you, whether you like it or not. As a globalist ‘Australian’ I am proud of what we have done, so let me do a little boasting. Hear me out and you will understand not only the internationalist future we have planned but also that further resistance is futile.

In 1992, Maurice Strong openly announced our plans when he called for the destruction of capitalism and announced that it was our duty to bring about its collapse. We heard his call and set about assembling the means to achieve this aim. We knew that it had to be done secretly, but in plain sight, so we infiltrated the UN, the universities, the NGOs, mainstream communications and the right-of-centre political parties. The weapons we created were the demonization of energy (hydrocarbon fuels), nuclear power, hydro (by amusingly claiming they stopped the rivers from ‘running free’) and the promotion of alternative, expensive fake power sources in the form of some seriously outrageous ideas that we marketed as ‘clean energy’.

With overwhelming support from many sources we frightened governments into complying with our agenda. Those who didn’t, we targeted for marginalisation and destruction with our lies and distortions. Even I am surprised how easy it was to convince people to part with their money to build unreliable wind farms, solar powered shadow grids (that are so useless their output is reduced by up to 80% by just a layer of dust – and we build them in dusty deserts!).

Of course, producing electricity was not their purpose — the ‘clean green’ palaver obscures the way we go about extracting subsidies, which is the main game. To test the limits of insanity we suggest non-starters like ‘hot rocks’ and tidal energy as “renewable” sources of electricity. We knew they would not work (any first year engineering student could have told you that), but these scams achieved their real aim of burning money and reducing the wealth available to provide roads, hospitals and schools, all the while making electricity expensive and unreliable. Manufacturing and smelting operations could not tolerate this situation so they began to close. Our objective of de-industrialisation was now an inevitable, soon-to-be reality.

We falsely linked reliable energy to global cooling, then seamlessly changed our story to make it the weapon against global warming. When the global climate became neither much hotter nor much cooler, we adroitly switched the bogeyman’s label to ‘climate change’. Our propaganda machine is now so polished and effective we could suggest that black is white and then, when everyone was in agreement, we could prove our point by changing white to black again. That’s how confident we are. With the media, academics and my fellow politicians in fearful agreement, we cannot not lose. And if we encounter a serious opponent — a particularly witty cartoonist, say — we can use the courts or Australian Human Rights Commission to persecute any dissenters. And believe me, did we ever do that!

We squared the circle by ensuring energy rationing became a possibility, something that seemed an impossibility in the vibrant, realist ‘can do’ society Australia once was. Why was rationing an objective, you ask? Because when commodities are in short supply the people will appeal to us, the political elite, to save them. All we need are one or two more turns of the screw to break the will of those who still believe in Australian sovereignty. And that day is close, believe me, very close indeed..

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U.S. Options in Syria Don’t Include Ground Troops By David P. Goldman

By on April 11th, 2017

Writing in the Washington Post, neo-conservatives Reuel Gerecht and Ray Takeyh wrongheadedly propose to send U.S. ground troops to fight Iran and its proxies in Iran and Syria:

It is way past time for Washington to stoke the volcano under Tehran and to challenge the regime on the limes of its Shiite empire. This will be costly and will entail the use of more American troops in both Syria and Iraq. But if we don’t do this, we will not see an end to the sectarian warfare that nurtures jihadists. We will be counting down the clock on the nuclear accord, waiting for advanced centrifuges to come on line. As with the Soviet Union vs. Ronald Reagan, to confront American resolution, the mullahs will have to pour money into their foreign ventures or suffer humiliating retreat.

They’re nuts. The last thing the US should do is commit ground forces.

It isn’t Iran that we would be fighting: It’s an international mercenary army that already includes thousands of fighters recruited from the three million Hazara Afghans now seeking refuge in Iran, from the persecuted Pakistani Shi’ites who comprise a fifth of that country’s huge population, and elsewhere. As I reported recently in Asia Times:

The IRGC’s foreign legions include volunteers from Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Shi’ites are an oppressed minority often subject to violent repression by the Sunni majority. IRGC-controlled forces include the Fatemiyoun Militia recruited mainly from Shi’ite Hazara refugees from Afghanistan, with reported manpower of perhaps 12,000 to 14,000 fighters, of whom 3,000 to 4,000 are now in Syria. Iranians also command the Zeinabiyoun militia composed of Pakistani Shi’ites, with perhaps 1,500 fighters in Syria.

The manpower pool from which these fighters are drawn is virtually bottomless. The war has already displaced half of Syria’s 22 million people, and Iran plans to replace Sunnis with Shi’ite immigrants in order to change the demographic balance. The Sunni side of the conflict has become globalized with fighters from the Russian Caucasus, China’s Xinjiang Province, as well as Southeast Asia.

The U.S. State Department last year estimated that 40,000 foreign fighters from 100 countries were in Syria; Russia cited a figure of 30,000. Whatever the number is today, it would not be difficult to add a zero to it.

Russia and China, as I explained in the cited Asia Times essay, blame the U.S. for opening the Pandora’s Box of Sunni radicalism by destroying the Iraqi State and supporting majority (that is, Shi’ite) rule in Iraq. Sadly, they are broadly correct to believe so. Thanks to the advice of Gerecht and his co-thinkers at the Weekly Standard and Commentary, the Bush administration pushed Iraq’s and Syria’s Sunnis into the hands of non-state actors like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

A seventh of Russia’s population is Muslim, and 90% of them are Sunnis. China has a restive Muslim population among the Uyghurs in its far West, and all of them are Sunnis. Moscow and Beijing therefore support Shi’ite terrorists as a counterweight to Sunni jihadists. A Eurasian Muslim civil war is unfolding as a result. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum thinks America should let Sunnis and Shi’ites exhaust each other. If it were just Syria, that would make sense, but the Syrian conflict is the nodal point for a much larger and more dangerous conflagration. If the 300 million Muslims of Southeast Asia were to become involved, the consequences would be horrific.

Gerecht and Tayekh want the U.S. to back the anti-regime forces whom Obama left twisting in the wind during the 2009 demonstrations against Iran’s rigged elections. That is the right thing to do. The Trump administration should create a special task force for regime change in Iran and recruit PJ Media’s Michael Ledeen to run it. Iran is vulnerable to subversion. With 40% youth unemployment and extreme levels of social pathology (the rate of venereal disease infection is twenty times that of the U.S.), Iranians are miserable under the theocratic regime.

But I don’t know if that will work: Iran gets all its money from oil, and the mullahs have the oil, the money, and all the guns. If we can’t overthrow the Iranian regime, we will have two choices.

The first is to bomb Iran — destroy nuclear facilities and Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps bases. That risks war with Russia and China. It is an option, but a dangerous one, and not anyone’s first choice. We could have done this before Iran became a Russian-Chinese ally.

The second is to cut a deal with Russia and China: We muzzle the Sunni jihadists whom we (or our allies like Saudi Arabia) supported, and Russia and China cut Iran off at the knees. I sketched out such a deal in August 2016. It won’t happen easily, or any time soon, because Russia and China are not sufficiently afraid of us to want to come to the table. Russia would demand other concessions (e.g., recognition of its acquisition of territory by force in Ukraine). As the use of poison gas despite past Russian assurances makes clear, one can’t trust the Russians unless, of course, they really are scared of us. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Nicaragua’s ‘Little Dictator’ sells his country down the river again By Monica Showalter

By on April 11th, 2017

Remember Daniel Ortega? The communist thug dictator of Nicaragua who disgusted the great Ronald Reagan with his mirrored sunglasses and his Fifth Avenue shopping sprees, and then later got into the news with child molestation charges brought on by his stepdaughter? He’s also famous for his many fraudulent “re-elections” and dismantling his country’s democracy.

Now that Hugo Chávez is gone, he’s back on the radar again, arm in arm with a new sugar daddy he’s sold his hapless country out to: Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

In an alarming story, the Washington Post reports that the Russians have set up a base camp full of Russian-speaking Russians of indeterminate purpose, in some compound at the base of a volcano, which is supposedly a GPS satellite-tracking station. U.S. officials think it might be more of an electronic surveillance station aimed at the U.S. and note that it’s aimed right at the U.S. Embassy in Managua. They say they aren’t alarmed for now, but it could have a dual-purpose spying function. Besides that, a gleaming new Russian edifice devoted to “counter-narcotics” operations has gone up, baffling many as to what interest Russia could have in the issue. Does Putin really want to keep meth out of the hands of the U.S. Rust Belt’s unemployed?

In exchange for these rather impressive concessions, the Nicaraguans get shipments of blocky, Soviet-style buses to ride around in on public transport – hot, sweaty, and always breaking down.

That sounds like the sort of deal Ortega would do.

It goes to show that Latin America’s leftist dictators’ club really is still entrenched and ruthless, and now that the oil money from Caracas has dried up, its members now put their countries up for sale to America’s opponents. Nicaragua has gotten such a good deal that El Salvador, now led by a group of aging communist guerrillas from Ortega’s 1980s heyday, want a Russian deal of their own. It’s not enough for them to ship one tenth of their population to Los Angeles and elsewhere in the U.S. as illegal immigrants in order to feed off their remittances while Americans pay for their housing, health care, jail costs, education, and welfare. No, a sellout to the Russians needs to be added to the mix to get gringo good. Because let’s face it: communist systems are unsustainable, and they can exist nowadays only if there’s a sugar daddy willing to pay. Putin knows this well and has kept his country rather uncommunist back home, the better to sell the romance to these boobs.

The U.S. left, of course, is silent. Leftists north of the Mexican border are still saying President Trump is in bed with the Russians. They’ve forgotten about their little buddy Ortega.

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Time for John McCain to retire By J. Marsolo (Amen) see note please

By on April 11th, 2017

And he can take Lindsay Graham the undistinguished Republican Senator from South Carolina with him…..rsk

John McCain served our country in Vietnam and was subject to horrific torture as a POW.

Since then, his career as a Republican senator has been undistinguished, to be charitable. He calls himself a “maverick,” primarily because he opposes his own Republican Party. For example, he voted against the 2001 Bush tax cuts, probably because Bush beat him in the 2000 primaries.

His major legislation, McCain-Feingold, intended to restrict political contributions by corporations and others, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The Dems complain about this in every election because they do not want businesses to contribute to Republicans.

Lately, McCain seems more unhinged than usual.

First, on Sunday, April 9, he blamed the Trump administration “partially” for the chemical attack on civilians by Assad in Syria because the administration sent “mixed” signals to Assad. This is preposterous.

Second, on Sunday, April 2, he criticized House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, alleging that Nunes could not conduct an impartial investigation because he viewed and discussed intelligence reports that confirm that Trump was surveilled by the Obama administration. McCain told Martha Raddatz on ABC:

This is obviously a schism between Republican and Democrats, let alone that bizarre fashion with which all of this happened. If we’re really going to get to the bottom of these things, it’s got to be done in a bipartisan fashion. And as far as I could tell, Congressman Nunes killed that.

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Swamp Diving: The EPA’s Secret Human Experiment Regime By John Dunn and Steve Milloy

By on April 11th, 2017

The authors have written numerous essays since 2010 for American Thinker on California’s Environmental Protection Agency (Cal EPA)’s and the U.S. EPA’s scientific misconduct related to air pollution human effects science, and more recently on the discovery that the U.S. EPA was sponsoring and paying for illegal and unethical experiments exposing human subjects, even children, to small particle air pollution at high levels. Small particles originate from natural and man-made sources, such as dust, smoke, and engine and industrial emissions. The U.S. EPA claims that small particles are toxic and lethal and cause cancer.

The EPA position on small particle air pollution

The issue of small particle air pollution human effects was discussed in a House of Representatives hearing in September 2011 by the U.S. EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson. In a colloquy with Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Ms. Jackson stated, “Particulate matter causes premature death. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.”

Markey asked, “How would you compare [the benefits of reducing airborne PM2.5] to the fight against cancer?”

Ms. Jackson replied, “Yeah, I was briefed not long ago. If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels, it would have the same impact as finding a cure for cancer in our country.”

Markey: “Can you say that sentence one more time?”

Jackson: “Yes sir. If – um – we could reduce particulate matter to levels that are healthy, we could have identical impacts to finding a cure for cancer.” (Author note: Cancer kills a half-million Americans a year – 25 percent of all deaths in the U.S. annually).

The claim stated above by Ms. Jackson is the basis for the EPA’s war on coal, fossil fuels, and internal combustion engines. All other criteria air pollutants are minimal concerns for the EPA. Surely small particles are a very toxic and lethal thing, as bad as cancer. Right?

EPA is discovered doing human experiments

The same month as Ms. Jackson’s testimony, Milloy discovered a report in Environmental Health Perspectives, a journal published online and in hard copy by the National Institutes of Health, that reported an experiment on a 57-year-old lady subjected to small particle air pollution much higher than the EPA says is safe, in a chamber at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine EPA laboratory for human research. A stunned Milloy showed the journal report to Dunn. So little had come of the decade of human experiments before that Milloy and Dunn had not known of the EPA human exposure experiments project that was at least illegal and unethical, possibly a crime against humanity. Humans are not guinea pigs.

The Nuremberg Code; the Helsinki Accords; the Belmont Report; and U.S. common law, statutes, and regulations, to include state laws and the Federal Code “Common Rule” and EPA rule 1000.17, all prohibit human experimentation that might cause harm to the subjects. Human risk can be considered only for the researchers themselves in circumstances where the research is essential and vital. The civil or criminal offense of human experimentation that risks harm to the subjects would be either exposure to harm or the fear of harm by infliction of mental distress if subjects found out that the public position of the EPA is that small particles are toxic and lethal and cause cancer. Which lie to believe? That is the twist – you can’t make these things up.

In 2011 and 2012, Milloy and Dunn wrote letters to the EPA, the NIH journal editor who published the article, the EPA inspector general, and the federal Office for Scientific Integrity. They wrote to all the physicians in Congress, all the deans of the ten domestic medical schools doing human experiments, and state medical boards in North Carolina and Michigan, all attempting to stop the human experiments.

The authors have written about the EPA project of research that exposed human beings of all ages, even children, to that same small particle air pollution to see if they could cause some harm. EPA sponsorship of these studies at ten domestic and six foreign medical schools was admitted under oath by an EPA official, Wayne Cascio, M.D., and it is unethical and illegal. Senior EPA research scientist Robert Devlin, Ph.D. admitted in a sworn affidavit that the EPA epidemiology was unreliable, the reason for human experiments.

EPA hires the National Academy of Science

The EPA, in response to a congressional inquiry and negative inspector general report, engaged and paid the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) contract subdivision, the National Research Council (NRC), to provide a whitewash investigation. The NAS National Research Council Investigative Committee was convened in secret without notice and without contacting Milloy and Dunn, the complaining parties, or the congressional committee that had demanded an inspector general report that had gone badly for the EPA.

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Nikki Haley’s Role at U.N. in the Spotlight U.S. ambassador steps in to offer insight into U.S. strategy on Syria, Iran and Russia By Farnaz Fassihi

By on April 11th, 2017

UNITED NATIONS—Three months into her job as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley has emerged as a leader in articulating President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

That role has drawn a particular spotlight in the past week. As the international community looked to Washington for a Syria strategy in the aftermath of a new chemical attack that killed scores of civilians, it was Ms. Haley who stepped in to offer insight.

On Wednesday she told the Security Council that the U.S. would be willing to act against Syria unilaterally. On Friday she warned the Council that the U.S. could take further action if necessary. On Sunday she said in a CNN interview that conversations had begun on possible actions against Iran and Russia, such as sanctions, if they don’t abandon their support of President Bashar al-Assad.

“I don’t think anything is off the table right now. You will continue to see the U.S. act when we need to act,” said Ms. Haley in the CNN interview.

Ms. Haley, the 45-year-old former governor of South Carolina who came to her job with no previous foreign policy experience, has surprised diplomats and U.N. officials since she arrived here in late January. On her first day, she pledged to take down names and overhaul the U.N. and has called herself the “new sheriff in town.”

But so far she has assumed the unlikely position of becoming a leading foreign policy face of the new administration, rather than just its attack dog at the U.N.

Diplomats and U.N. officials said that in the confusion and chaos coming from the White House over its foreign policy, they look to Ms. Haley for clarity on a wide range of policies from Syria to Iran, Israel and Russia.

Last week she announced at a press conference that the U.S. had told Israel to freeze all settlement activities to allow for negotiations, the clearest signal of Trump administration’s willingness include pressure on Israel in its foreign policy tool kit.

On Iran, Ms. Haley hasn’t given any indication that the U.S. might pull out of the nuclear deal with the country, as Mr. Trump pledged during his campaign. But she has fiercely criticized Iran’s support for U.S.-designated terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas and meddling in Syria. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Price of Obama’s Mendacity The consequences of his administration’s lies about Syria are becoming clear. Bret Stephens

By on April 11th, 2017

Last week’s cruise-missile strike against a Syrian air base in response to Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons has reopened debate about the wisdom of Barack Obama’s decision to forgo a similar strike, under similar circumstances, in 2013.

But the real issue isn’t about wisdom. It’s about honesty.

On Sept. 10, 2013, President Obama delivered a televised address in which he warned of the dangers of not acting against Assad’s use of sarin gas, which had killed some 1,400 civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta the previous month.

“If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons,” Mr. Obama said. “As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas, and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical weapons on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and use them to attack civilians.”

It was a high-minded case for action that the president immediately disavowed for the least high-minded reason: It was politically unpopular. The administration punted a vote to an unwilling Congress. It punted a fix to the all-too-willing Russians. And it spent the rest of its time in office crowing about its success.

In July 2014 Secretary of State John Kerry claimed “we got 100% of the chemical weapons out.” In May 2015 Mr. Obama boasted that “Assad gave up his chemical weapons. That’s not speculation on our part. That, in fact, has been confirmed by the organization internationally that is charged with eliminating chemical weapons.” This January, then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice said “we were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.”

Today we know all this was untrue. Or, rather, now all of us know it. Anyone paying even slight attention has known it for years.

In June 2014 U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power noted “discrepancies and omissions related to the Syrian government’s declaration of its chemical weapons program.” But that hint of unease didn’t prevent her from celebrating the removal “of the final 8% of chemical weapons materials in Syria’s declaration” of its overall stockpile. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Get Up, Stand Up All who cherish free expression, especially on campuses, must combat the growing zeal for censorship. Heather Mac Donald

By on April 11th, 2017

Where are the faculty? American college students are increasingly resorting to brute force, and sometimes criminal violence, to shut down ideas they don’t like. Yet when such travesties occur, the faculty are, with few exceptions, missing in action, though they have themselves been given the extraordinary privilege of tenure to protect their own liberty of thought and speech. It is time for them to take their heads out of the sand.

I was the target of such silencing tactics two days in a row last week, the more serious incident at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, and a less virulent one at UCLA.

The Rose Institute for State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna had invited me to meet with students and to give a talk about my book, The War on Cops, on April 6. Several calls went out on Facebook to “shut down” this “notorious white supremacist fascist Heather Mac Donald.” A Facebook post from “we, students of color at the Claremont Colleges” announced grandiosely that “as a community, we CANNOT and WILL NOT allow fascism to have a platform. We stand against all forms of oppression and we refuse to have Mac Donald speak.” A Facebook event titled “Shut Down Anti-Black Fascist Heather Mac Donald” and hosted by “Shut Down Anti-Black Fascists” encouraged students to protest the event because Mac Donald “condemns [the] Black Lives Matter movement,” “supports racist police officers,” and “supports increasing fascist ‘law and order.’” (My supposed fascism consists in trying to give voice to the thousands of law-abiding minority residents of high-crime areas who support the police and are desperate for more law-enforcement protection.)

The event organizers notified me a day before the speech that a protest was planned and that they were considering changing the venue from CMC’s Athenaeum to one with fewer glass windows and easier egress. When I arrived on campus, I was shuttled to what was in effect a safe house: a guest suite for campus visitors, with blinds drawn. I could hear the growing crowds chanting and drumming, but I could not see the auditorium that the protesters were surrounding. One female voice rose above the chants with particularly shrill hysteria. From the balcony, I saw a petite blonde female walk by, her face covered by a Palestinian head scarf and carrying an amplifier on her back for her bullhorn. A lookout was stationed about 40 yards away and students were seated on the stairway under my balcony, plotting strategy.

Since I never saw the events outside the Athenaeum, which remained the chosen venue, an excellent report from the student newspaper, the Student Life, provides details of the scene:

The protesters, most of whom wore all black, congregated outside Honnold/Mudd Library at 4 p.m. to stage the action.

“We are here to shut down the fucking fascist,” announced an organizer to a crowd of around 100 students. The protesters subsequently marched to the Ath around 4:30 while chanting. An organizer shouted “How do you spell racist?” into a megaphone; the marchers responded “C-M-C.”

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