RUTHFULLY YOURS

Conservative social commentator and Breitbart technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos is waging an epic battle against the insidious attack on free speech that is occurring across college campuses throughout the United States. The latest spectacle occurred at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), that bastion of a particular brand of progressive fascism characteristic of the new Left. This past week, UCLA’s College Republicans invited Yiannopoulos to give a talk on campus, one of many stops on Yiannopoulos’ “Dangerous Faggot Tour,” which has taken direct aim at university totalitarianism. Yiannopoulos, who is gay, is no stranger to controversy, espousing views that some regard as anti-feminist. This has made him a target of the radical Left, and particularly, of radical feminists who view him as one of their chief antagonists.

When students and the guest speaker arrived at the Broad Art Building where the Yiannopoulos event was to be held, they were greeted by protestors holding pro-feminist signs who physically blocked the entranceway. Campus police were dispatched and ushered guests in through alternative backdoor entrances, but the feminists caught wind of it and attempted to block these entrances as well, causing fights to break out. Once inside, Yiannopoulos’s address was interrupted by radicals who were ultimately removed by police. The event was further marred by anonymous bomb threats forcing police to evacuate the building.

One of the anti-Yiannopoulos protestors, who affixed black duct tape over her mouth, held a sign that read, “When you use your ‘First Amendment Right’ to spread hate and exclusion, you are silencing people and communities, not promoting ‘freedom of speech.’” That sentiment is typical of the mindset of the radical Left who believe that the concept of freedom of speech extends only to speech vetted for use in “safe spaces.” The radical Left has adopted techniques employed by assorted despots and autocrats to silence speech that they disapprove of.

The above incident is not unique and is occurring with alarming frequency. What is even more disconcerting is that on some occasions, student protestors and faculty members are working in tandem to disrupt scheduled events. Perhaps most troubling is that police who are dispatched to the area are often instructed to do nothing resulting in the event’s complete shutdown, thus making the university complicit in the suppression of free speech.

The Obama administration is rapidly accelerating its admission and resettlement of Syrian refugees. The administration is well on its way to meeting its target of taking 10,000 Syrians into the country by the end of the current fiscal year on September 30th. In the first five months of 2016, 2,099 Syrian refugees have been admitted, compared with 2,192 for the whole of 2015, according to a report by CNS News. However, only a very tiny percentage are Christians, a beleaguered minority who are facing genocide in their home country. The Obama administration is immorally discriminating against Christian Syrian refugees.

“Out of the 2,099 Syrian refugees admitted so far this year, six (0.28 percent) are Christians,” CNS reported. Ten (0.3 percent) are Yazidis. Over 99 percent are Muslims. And the trend line is worsening as the year progresses. Last month, only two Christians (0.19 percent) were admitted compared to 1,035 Muslims.

Christians are estimated to have made up approximately ten percent of the total Syrian population at the outset of the conflict in Syria, according to the CIA Factbook. As Christians have come under attack by both the regime and jihadist groups, including ISIS, the Christian population in Syria has declined.

Patrick Sookhdeo, the founder and international director of the charity group the Barnabas Fund, which has worked to rescue Syrian Christians, said: “In Aleppo, to give you one illustration, there used to be 400,000 Christians four years ago. Today there may be between 45,000 and 65,000.”

Yet, according to data compiled by the U.S. State Department Refugee Processing Center, only 47 Syrian Christians have been admitted to the United States in all that time – slightly over 1 percent of the total number of Syrian refugees admitted. The current rate of Christian admissions is running far below even that miniscule level.

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

PARIS—World powers gathered in Paris on Friday to kick off a French initiative to push the Israelis and Palestinians to restart peace talks, after a monthslong surge of violence that has left Western officials fearing the two sides are heading toward another full-scale conflict.

Amid severely strained relations between the two sides, the French have set a modest goal for the diplomats from 26 nations, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who are attending the meeting: an agreement to hold a peace conference near the end of the year, with the Israelis and Palestinians present.

French officials are hoping diplomats can approve steps to prepare for the conference but acknowledge that any substantive peace negotiations are far off.

“We can’t substitute ourselves for the concerned parties,” French President François Hollande said at the start of the meeting. “We can only give guarantees that the peace will be solid, durable and internationally controlled.”

Some 30 Israeli civilians and soldiers have been killed in more than 300 Palestinian attacks since September. Palestinian officials say more than 200 Palestinians, mostly alleged attackers, have been killed by Israeli security forces during the same period.

The violence has subsided in the past two months, with Palestinians carrying out fewer than a dozen attacks or attempted attacks since April, compared with almost daily assaults until then. Tensions still linger, however.

Given the bleak mood, officials question whether either side can be persuaded to return to the negotiating table.

“We know the path is difficult,” a French official said.

The nations represented at the conference include Egypt, China, Russia, Germany, the U.K. and Saudi Arabia. The meeting was originally scheduled for May 30 but pushed back to June 3 so Mr. Kerry could attend. CONTINUE AT SITE

My friend Rich, the Chicago scribe, sends out a batch of informative e-mails on a variety of issues. This week he focused on education. The funniest is first in this list:

Santa Monica college students have a wedding ceremony as they marry the ocean. Who served as best wave? How will community property be divided in the event of a divorce? Naturally, faculty members are organizing this.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/05/26/insane-santa-monica-college-students-married-the-oceanand-got-intimate-with-it-n2169501?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

The leftist pollution of the American mind does not begin in college, but earlier. California is about to adopt a new history curriculum for grades K-12. As the largest state, new textbooks designed for California will be adopted elsewhere, and the curriculum itself, in textbooks or not will also be transported outside the state.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/california-poised-to-adopt-ultra-leftist-k-12-history-curriculum.php

It is almost impossible to overstate the sickness that is now prevalent at American universities, especially elite schools , the ones for which parents and kids will do near anything in order to gain admission.
Yale : Students demand the right to determine what material they will learn in individual courses- no more colonialist dead white male poets
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/06/01/decolonize-yale-students-circulate-petition-opposing-white-male-major-english-poets-requirement/?utm_source=hadaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Free speech is risky at Yale: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/

Dartmouth: The gutless president whiffs, and there are no penalties for black students who invaded the library one night, disrupting those who were studying for finals,shouted racist epithets at them, taunted them, and physically threatened others. Now imagine the reverse, where white students shrieking white lives matter invades a library full of black students on a saturday night. This is of course an absurd thing to imagine, but try it out. Had the same events gone down with the races switched ,how many of the white students, all easily identifiable from the videos taken, would still be in school?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/dartmouth-and-double-standards.php

Oberlin- the school where social justice warriors come to graze:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/oberlin-is-an-insane-asylum/
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/the-new-activism-of-liberal-arts-colleges

Beaten down by decades of moral-equivalency abuse, Israelis treated the case of the gorilla killed at the Cincinnati Zoo this week as they do any debate surrounding the legitimacy of ‎firing a weapon.‎

With an IDF soldier on trial for shooting a subdued Palestinian terrorist to death — and a brouhaha that ‎attracted international attention while causing domestic angst — the issue of whether an ape suffered ‎a wrongful death pales in comparison.‎

This is not to say that the Hebrew-speaking media did not consider the case of Harambe the gorilla ‎worthy of coverage. On the contrary, the item captivated Israeli news outlets as much as it did others.‎

But what was absent in the discussion in the studios of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was the vitriol ‎against the zookeepers in Ohio, who had been faced with a painful choice that had to be made in ‎unfortunate circumstances. When a 3-year-old boy fell into the enclosure of a 420-pound ape — ‎and was swung and dragged every which way, into and around water — the life of one was suddenly ‎thrust into the balance against that of the other.‎

What made the event particularly tragic for all concerned was that the gorilla did not appear to be ‎attacking the toddler with purposeful aggression; in fact, he seemed confused about what to do, and ‎had he been female, the whole episode might have turned out differently. But his immense strength, ‎grip and erratic movements could have killed the child, even inadvertently. Anyone watching the video ‎of the events can see this clearly. Indeed, the little boy is unlikely to have survived even minutes ‎more in the clutches of the 17-year-old silverback.‎

Furthermore, according to the zoo, shooting the gorilla with a sedative dart would first ‎have agitated him and would have taken time to take effect, and therefore was not an option. So the only ‎recourse was to rescue the boy at the expense of the ape. ‎

Animal-rights activists and many other Americans responded to this life-saving gesture as though it ‎was an act of first-degree slaughter. Indeed, “murder” was the word bandied about on social media — ‎aimed both at the zoo and at the child’s mother, who was accused of being at fault for not preventing ‎her son from climbing the fence of the enclosure and falling in. The harsh criticism culminated in a ‎Change.org petition titled “Justice for Harambe,” which has garnered hundreds of thousands of ‎signatures. ‎

TO CONTRIBUTE GO HERE: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/contribute.php

On Tuesday, the European Union (EU) announced a new online speech code to be enforced by four major tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube.

On Wednesday, Facebook deleted the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone’s Swedish expert.

It’s no coincidence.

Ingrid had posted our latest video to her Facebook feed — called “Sweden’s Migrant Rape Epidemic.” As you can see, Ingrid calmly lays out the facts and statistics, all of which are meticulously researched.

It’s a video version of this research paper that Gatestone published last year. The video has gone viral — racking up more than 80,000 views in its first two days.

But the EU is quite candid: it is applying a political lens to their censorship, and it now has teams of political informants — with the Orwellian title of “trusted reporters” — to report any cases of “xenophobia” or “hate speech” to Facebook for immediate deletion.

It’s political censorship. It’s outrageous. And it’s contrary to our western values of free speech, political freedom and the separation of mosque and state. But in another way, it’s a tremendous compliment — the world’s censors think that Gatestone Institute’s work is important enough and persuasive enough that it needs to be silenced.

Well, not if we have anything to say about it. We raised such a ruckus about this attack that the Swedish media started reporting on Facebook’s heavy-handed censorship. It backfired, and Facebook went into damage-control mode. They put Ingrid’s account back up — without any explanation or apology. Ironically, their censorship only gave Ingrid’s video more attention.

Facebook and the EU have backed down — for today. But they’re deadly serious about stopping ideas they don’t like. They’ll be back.

As you know, just last week we started releasing high-quality original videos, hosted by our Gatestone experts. Our first four videos have already been watched by more than 150,000 people!

It’s a great way to make our research come alive — and as Ingrid’s viral video shows, to get our ideas noticed.

So I want Gatestone’s talented experts to make more videos — a lot more! We need to win the battle of ideas. Can you help?

Each video costs us approximately $500 to produce. But as Facebook’s attack on us shows, they’re worth every penny.

Will you help us do that?

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Deborah Weiss Moment with Deborah Weiss, a Human Rights lawyer who is an expert on the subject of free speech and terrorism related issues. She is the author of The Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Jihad on Free Speech. Visit her website at vigilancenow.org.

Deborah discussed Ballet Jihad, unveiling a Muslim convert’s agenda to restrict the world of ballet in the name of “tolerance.”

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Deborah discuss Freedom of Speech: Under Attack in America, unveiling how the U.S. is submitting to Islamic blasphemy codes and the high price it will pay for doing so.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/06/02/the-deborah-weiss-moment-ballet-jihad/

Students at Plano Senior High School in Texas will not be allowed to wear National Honor Society stoles at their graduation because, apparently, that might make kids who were not in NHS feel left out.

In order to earn membership in the National Honors Society, students must not only maintain a high GPA, but also perform regular community service each semester. (Clearly, two accomplishments too controversial to deserve recognition.)

Now, according to local news source WFAA, students with a 3.6 GPA or higher will be allowed to wear stoles signifying that they earned a high GPA. But one NHS member, Garrett Frederick, said that that’s kind of missing the point.

“I’m not just an honor student — I’m an NHS student,” said Frederick, a graduating senior who has been a member of NHS since his sophomore year. “I worked hard.”

“I put in the hours,” he continued, referring to the 20 hours of community service he did to maintain his membership.

Frederick’s mom, KellyAnn, told WFAA that she contacted the school on behalf of her son and was told that graduates would not be wearing regalia associated with any club or organization — and that an NHS sponsor told her that school administrators wanted, as WFAA put it, “everyone to feel included in graduation and not single students out.”

But here’s the thing: Some students should be singled out, because they did accomplish more than other students.

Now, of course, the school did state that it would not allow regalia associated with any club or organization. Why should NHS be any different? Well first of all, if it were up to me, I’d say that stoles and cords should be allowed for all kinds of different involvement and achievements.

What about risks from anti-energy policies imposed in the name of stopping climate change?

President Obama continues to use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify a massive regulatory onslaught that will “fundamentally transform” America’s energy, economic, business, industrial, social, legal and constitutional systems before he leaves office.

The more science batters alarmist claims, the more people realize that plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide makes life on Earth possible, the more China, India and other developing countries burn oil, gas and coal and increase their CO2 emissions to lift billions out of poverty, malnutrition, disease and brutally short lives – the more the administration issues draconian climate edicts.

Almost every department, agency and bureaucrat that didn’t eagerly volunteer has been dragooned to aid the campaign: from the EPA and Agriculture, Interior, Defense and State Departments, to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. The Securities and Exchange Commission is the latest agency to re-up.

Pressure from climate and environmental activist groups “persuaded” the SEC to release its initial “interpretive guidance” on climate change in January 2010. It purported to help companies decide when they must disclose how their business might be affected by actual physical climate change, by direct impacts from laws, regulations or international agreements, or indirectly by effects on business trends.

It turns out that Mars, with no help from CO2 or the Koch Brothers, has experienced massive climate change. The findings, based on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter radar data, help make the point that significant drivers of climate change have nothing to do with mankind’s puny influence. Scott K. Johnson reports at ArsTechnica:

Layers in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets record ice age histories on Earth, and the ice caps of Mars’ would tell us a great deal—except we can’t really go drill cores from the darn things. (snip) Working with images around the edges of the Martian ice caps, researchers have been able to catch glimpses of such layering. But without understanding how those glimpses connect together, the information they can reveal is limited.

A team of scientists led by Isaac Smith and Nathaniel Putzig of the Planetary Research Institute used radar data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to stitch together an X-ray-like look at the layering within the polar ice.

Most of the action was found at the northern pole, where the ice is up to 2km thick. The researchers were able to pick out layers of accumulation as well as several major breaks marking periods of disappearing ice. Since the last break about 370,000 years ago, ice has been moving back to the poles—meaning Mars is currently in an “interglacial” period.

The layer of new accumulation at the northern pole was as much as 320 meters thick. That number is much higher than early images had hinted at, but it is close to predictions made using models. This layer is thinner and a bit more complicated at the southern pole, equaling about eight percent of the volume of the northern layer. In total, there is about 87,000 cubic kilometers of newly accumulated ice—enough to cover the surface of Mars with about 60cm of it.