MEDIA Comments turned off

Facebook “Intellectually Terrorizes” a Human Rights Activist Or, an urgent complaint to Facebook management. February 20, 2018 Magdi Khalil

Posted By on February 20th, 2018

Editor’s note: Magdi Khalil, an Egyptian-born human right’s activist and Copt now living in America, explains how he escaped Egyptian-style terror only to suffer from a sort of Facebook Terrorism. In the Arab world, Khalil is a well-known political analyst and prolific writer who frequently appears on Al Jazeera, where he debates dictatorial and radical Islamist opponents.

My name is Magdi Khalil, I am an American citizen and a resident of Virginia. My Facebook page can be found here.

I currently work as an analyst researcher at an American institution. For over 20 years, I have been a well-known commentator on Middle Eastern affairs and the executive editor of international pages for a Cairo-based newspaper. I also made more than a thousand TV appearances as a political commentator on various programs broadcast on Middle Eastern TV channels. I have published more than 2,000 articles and research, and authored a number of books. While most of my published work is in Arabic, I have also published many articles in English.

I am also a human rights advocate, and have been involved in founding several human rights centers, including Coptic Solidarity in Washington, and the Middle East Freedom Forum. I currently serve as a member of the advisory board of MEMRI, the board of directors of Coptic Solidarity, as well as being the director of the Middle East Freedom Forum.

Given my strong advocacy for human rights and the rights of religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East, and my outspoken stance and writings against Islamic terrorism, I naturally attracted the ire and hostility of Egyptian and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies, as well as extremist Islamic groups. My activities, including my Facebook page, became a favorite target for those agencies and groups, which have at their disposal electronic “militias” working to flood Facebook Administration and other social media with a deluge of false complaints against their perceived opponents.

Unfortunately, I have had to deal with this issue repeatedly. Furthermore, I suspect that there may be some staff members in Facebook Administration, particularly in Middle East-based offices, who support these entities and target their opponents.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Fatal Bureau of Investigation FBI bureaucratic failures and willful blindness rack up a horrifying body count. Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on February 20th, 2018

After Nikolas Cruz gunned down 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, FBI special agent Robert Lasky, head of the bureau’s Miami division, said he “truly regrets” the pain caused by the FBI’s failure to act on a tip about the shooter.

The FBI said it had no way to trace the tip, then FBI boss Christopher Wray said the message was never passed on to the FBI’s Miami field office, as official protocol required. Relatives of the victims might have noted the passive verb construction. In typical style, Wray failed to name the person who never passed on the tip, and offered no explanation why that person might have done so.

Wray did say “we deeply regret the additional pain this causes all those affected by this horrific tragedy.” In response to that admission Florida governor Rick Scott called for Wray to resign. Across the country Americans could make a case that Wray and many others in the FBI deserved much sterner measures.

In 2013 Omar Mateen lost his job as security guard at Florida’s St. Lucie County courthouse. Mateen had made “inflammatory comments about women, Jews and the mass shooting at Ft. Hood.” The FBI twice questioned Mateen after he touted ties to terrorists, but FBI special agent Ronald Hopper told reporters “we were unable to verify the substance of his comments and the investigation was closed.” On June 12, 2016, Mateen gunned down 49 people and wounded 58 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Mateen was born in the United States of Afghan parents but the Tsarnaev brothers, Termalan and Dzokhar, Muslims from the Caucuses region, entered the United States on tourist visas then claimed asylum. Russian intelligence warned the FBI the Tsarnaev brothers were dangerous but the FBI’s investigation found no links to terrorism. On April 15, 2013, the brothers planted bombs at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and wounded at least 264.

In 2008, the FBI had picked off emails between U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan and Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a terrorist with ties to the 9/11 hijackers. In these emails, Hasan was asking for religious sanction to kill American soldiers. The FBI failed to interview Hasan or even make a phone call to his superiors, and no government agency took any steps to stop him. On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood Texas, Hasan gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including private Francheska Velez, 21, who was pregnant, and wounded more than 30 others.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Understanding the California Mind By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on February 20th, 2018

Nancy Pelosi gave a marathon speech on illegal immigration the other day. But how would she know much about the realities of open borders, given her palatial retreat in Northern California and multi-millionaire lifestyle that allows wealthy progressives like herself to be exempt from the consequences of her own hectoring? In the end, the House minority leader was reduced to some adolescent racialist patter about her grandson wishing to look more like his Mexican-American friend.

I was thinking of the San Francisco Democrat’s speech last week, during a brief drive into our local town, in a region that is ground zero of California’s illegal immigration experience.

Illegal immigrants are neither collective saints nor sinners, but simply individuals who arrive from one of the poorest regions in the Americas, without legality or much in the way of English, or high school education.

They encounter an American host that has lost confidence in its once formidable powers of assimilation and integration as well as its ability to mint Americans from diverse races, religions, and ethnicities. Instead, American culture has adopted an arrogant sense that it can ensure near instant parity as redemption for supposed past –isms and –ologies. That may explain the immigrant’s romance for Mexico to which he fights any return, and the ambiguity about America in which he fights to stay.

We dare not mention illegal immigration in California as a factor in the state’s implosion. But privately, residents assume it has something to do with the 20 percent of the state’s population that lives below the poverty level. Illegal immigration plays a role in the fact that one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients lives in California and that one of four state residents was not born in the United States—or that one-half of all immigrant households receives some sort of government assistance, and that one in four homeless people lives in California.

Note a final statistic. A record of nearly $30 billion a year is forecast to be sent this year as remittances home to Mexico. If the sum is assumed to be wired largely by the reported 11 million illegal aliens, then illegal immigrants are sending per capita around $2,700 home per year. Again, in per capita terms, a household of five would average about $1,100 sent home per month to Mexico—a generosity impossible without the subsidies of the American taxpayer. (Some might wonder whether the U.S. could tax that sum to build the wall or at least declare that proof of remittances disqualifies one for public support.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Impeachment or Bust What if ‘Resist!’ makes it harder for Democrats to take back the House?By William McGurn

Posted By on February 20th, 2018

Democrats have a single goal when it comes to Donald Trump : impeachment. Their strategy is likewise clear: Resist! What no one seems to ask is whether resistance is really the best path to the House majority Democrats would need to pass articles of impeachment.

Democrats do have a few things going for them this year. On average, the party that holds the White House loses 30 seats or so in midterm elections—and the GOP has only a 24-seat majority. Moreover, 35 House Republicans are leaving their seats, more than twice the number of Democrats who are.

That’s not all. The intense dislike for Mr. Trump energizes the Democratic base the way Barack Obama energized the Republican one. Many swing districts will be in suburban areas where the vote margin may be decided by college-educated women, one of Mr. Trump’s weakest demographics.

But the idea that Mr. Trump’s unpopularity makes a blue wave inevitable overlooks some Republican advantages. Mr. Trump’s popularity is beginning to move upward with the growing economy, which points to a key weakness in the Resist! strategy:

Because the tax reform passed without a single Democratic vote, good news about the economy is bad news for Democratic candidates. It further means the Democratic message is rooted in enabling Washington dysfunction, because they cannot run as people willing to reach across the aisle to get things done.

It’s too early to know how last week’s failure to pass an immigration bill will play out politically. But if Mr. Trump goes around the country saying he offered to compromise but Democrats refused because they’d rather have a political issue, that could hurt them too. Especially because he will remind voters this is the same party willing to shut down the government for people here illegally.

There’s also the problem of candidates. Among this year’s crop of Democratic hopefuls are some military veterans. But it’s not a uniform message. A progressive Democrat backed by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is targeting seven-term Rep. Dan Lipinski in Chicago, a pro-life Democrat who voted against ObamaCare. If the goal is a Democratic majority, purity campaigns are a distraction. When Rahm Emanuel was engineering the party’s retaking of the House in 2006, his strategy was to settle on a candidate who would be competitive in the district (even if not as liberal as the party would like) and then reduce the primary bloodshed. CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

For Europe, Trump Is a Blessing in Disguise His policies promote energy independence and balance between France and Germany. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on February 20th, 2018

The Trump administration is turning out to be a blessing in disguise for the European Union. While many of the president’s rhetorical statements offend European sensibilities, and while dramatic acts like the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord prompt talk of a “crisis” in trans-Atlantic relations, the actual consequences of the administration’s policies are shoring up Europe’s foundations in surprising ways.

A year ago, fears that an allegedly pro-Russia Trump administration would ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and throw Europe to the wolves had delicate Europeans trembling. These days those fears seem quaint. But few in Europe have yet grasped how anti-Russian and pro-European the Trump foreign policy is at its core.

This is partly because European reflexes, especially German ones, are so often nonstrategic. Fine words and noble resolutions are mistaken for hard facts, and the wrapping paper matters more than the gift.

When many Europeans—and more than a few Americans—hear the word “fracking,” for example, they don’t think of the spear tip of an American energy offensive that limits Russia’s geopolitical ambitions while creating the conditions for renewed European prosperity. And when they hear about American plans to rearm and modernize its nuclear arsenal, they instinctively think about the dangers of American militarism—overlooking Moscow’s hostile military buildup that endangers the European countries closest to Russia.

Energy is the place to begin. The vast American oil and gas resources being unlocked by unconventional (and rapidly improving) techniques like fracking are more than a domestic economic bonanza. They are a key instrument of American foreign policy. These resources will not only deprive Middle Eastern countries of the financial capacity too many have used to underwrite radicalism and terrorism; they force Russia, whose economy is greatly dependent on oil exports, to count the cost of every bullet fired in Ukraine and every mercenary deployed to Syria

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Romney’s Russia Vindication He was right about the Kremlin in 2012, not that Democrats admit it.

Posted By on February 20th, 2018

Mitt Romney announced Friday that he’s running for the U.S. Senate from Utah, and the timing on the same day as the Justice Department indictments of Russians for meddling in the U.S. presidential election was apt. Mr. Romney was right about the Russian threat in 2012, and Democrats who are now echoing him when it serves their political purposes against Donald Trump owe the former GOP presidential nominee an apology.

Start with Barack Obama, who derided Mr. Romney’s claim that Russia was a major U.S. geopolitical foe in the third presidential debate in 2012. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” Mr. Obama said, to applause from the Democratic media establishment. In its endorsement of Mr. Obama, the Washington Post criticized Mr. Romney for “calling Russia America’s greatest foe” as an example of his lack of judgment.

Readers may recall that Mr. Romney made his comments about Russia after Mr. Obama was caught unaware talking on an open microphone with then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in March 2012:

“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important to give me space,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Medvedev, the Vladimir Putin stand-in.

“Yeah, I understand,” Mr. Medvedev said.

Mr. Obama then said, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”

Mr. Medvedev: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Yale University teaches students ‘counternarratives around whiteness’ Ben Decatur

Posted By on February 20th, 2018

Course looks at ‘whiteness’ as ‘culturally constructed and economically incorporated entity’

Yale University is offering a course this semester which aims to help students understand and counteract “whiteness,” exploring such topics as “white imagination,” “white property” and “white speech.

”http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/42121/

According to the syllabus for “Constructions of Whiteness” obtained by The College Fix, the English course is an “interdisciplinary approach to examining our understanding of whiteness.”

The class, which is apparently being offered for the first time this semester, discusses “whiteness as a culturally constructed and economically incorporated entity, which touches upon and assigns value to nearly every aspect of American life and culture.”

The goal of the class is to “create a lab for the construction of counternarratives around whiteness in any creative form: play, poem, memoir, etc.,” states the syllabus.

Taught by Professor Claudia Rankine, the class is divided into eight topics: Constructions of Whiteness, White Property, White Masculinity, White Femininity, White Speech, White Prosperity, White Spaces and White Imagination, according to the syllabus.

Students in the course are asked to read books such as Michael Kimmel’s “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era,” Richard Dyer’s “White: Essays on Race and Culture,” and Richard Delgado’s and Jean Stefanic’s “Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror.”

Other required readings include Hazel Carby’s “White Woman, Listen!,” Juliana Spahr’s “My White Feminism” and Professor Rankine’s own work, “The White Card.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Warmists foiled again: Answer to what’s causing frog populations to decline is just plain embarrassing By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on February 20th, 2018

You know the drill because we’ve seen the same story so many times. Reports come in that scientists have discovered declining populations of a species of some sort somewhere.

Scientists study.

For quite some time, they come up with no good answer. Concern grows.

For maximum publicity and popular hand-wringing, it helps to be cuddly, cute, exotic, beautiful, or funny critters. But even if they are repulsive, sooner or later, global warming is blamed.

Conclusion: We’re doomed! Because science.

Apply this model to the following account drawn from West Hunter:

Starting in late 80s, herpetologists began noticing that various kinds of frogs were declining and/or disappearing. There was & is a geographical pattern: Wiki says “Declines have been particularly intense in the western United States, Central America, South America, eastern Australia and Fiji. …

For a few years the herpetologists were concerned yet happy. Concerned, because many frog populations were crashing and some were going extinct. Happy, because confused puppies in Washington were giving them money, something that hardly ever happens to frogmen. …

Possibly frogs were being killed by an increase in UV radiation (from CFCs). Of course you could always put out a [f‑‑‑‑‑‑] ultraviolet photometer and measure the UV anywhere and anytime you wanted, but that would be the easy way out. Why do that when you could be paying graduate students to play with frogs?

Here I must add this popularization of the issue coming from the animal popularizers at National Geographic:

Global warming may cause widespread amphibian extinctions by triggering lethal epidemics, a new study reports.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

There Is Only One Sure Way to Stop School Shootings By Patricia McCarthy

Posted By on February 20th, 2018

“Israel learned the hard way. A terrorist school shooting forty years ago took the lives of over a hundred elementary school children. Since then, any school in Israel with a hundred students or more has armed guards and staff with concealed weapons. Why do we in America value our air travelers, our congresspeople, celebrities, the employees and contents of all public buildings, museums, etc. more than we treasure our schoolchildren? Given the world we now inhabit, it seems that our schools would and should have the best security available today. Those of us with little Ring doorbell cameras on our front porches have more security than most of our schools. ”

Not only is it hard to imagine the anger and grief the families of those killed by Nikolas Cruz are in at their Florida high school; it is impossible. We can sympathize and empathize, ache for their loss and be grateful that our own children were not there, and then feel guilty for being relieved that our children are safe.

An event like this one focuses all parents and grandparents like laser beams on their own young people. That such a thing has happened yet again in our country is unacceptable, and yet it happened…again. Despite years of flashing neon lights that this boy was not only mentally ill, but potentially dangerous, he apparently had no formal record of mental illness. Even though he had been told he could not enter his school with a backpack and was later expelled, even though the police had visited his home thirty-nine times between 2011 and 2018, he was able to buy that AR-15 at age 18! Even though we have laws meant to prevent persons who are mentally ill from acquiring guns, this kid passed a background check! This is yet another catastrophic failure of a whole panoply of law enforcement agencies, social services, and school authorities.

Adding insult to injury, the FBI barely bothered to check out the YouTuber who reported Cruz’s comment about becoming a “professional school shooter,” and the bureau completely ignored a second, specific warning in January about his intentions to kill people. Both tips to the FBI included his full name. As Jeanine Pirro reported on her program, Judge Jeanine, there are only thirteen Nikolas Cruzes in the U.S.! The FBI did not even bother to do a database search, and now seventeen people are dead.

Given the bare facts above, it is hardly surprising that the American people want to blame someone for the colossal failure of law enforcement. Mistakes were made, to put it mildly. But now many of the young survivors, their parents, and the usual suspects on the left are blaming Trump. Why? Because he supports the NRA? Because he did not immediately speak out about gun control?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hungarian PM: European Leaders Have ‘Opened the Way to the Decline of Christian Culture’ By Michael van der Galien

Posted By on February 20th, 2018

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, during his 20th annual state of the nation speech on Sunday, said that “Christianity is Europe’s last hope.” He added that European leaders have “opened the way to to the decline of Christian culture and the advance of Islam.”

Orban also stated that Hungary will continue to oppose efforts by the European Union and (to a lesser degree) the United Nations to encourage mass migration from the Middle East and Africa.

That’s all controversial enough in today’s climate, but Orban wasn’t done yet. He also described Europe as being steadily conquered by migrants. “Born Germans,” he said, “are being forced back from most large German cities, as migrants always occupy cities first.”

He concluded that, because of the failed policies of Brussels, Berlin, and Paris, “Islam” will “knock on Central Europe’s door” from two directions: from the south and from the west.

Although very popular in his own country, other European politicians — and especially the official (but unelected) leaders of the EU — detest, distrust, and even fear Orban. The reason is obvious: Orban has no patience whatsoever for globalism, multiculturalism, and political correctness. CONTINUE AT SITE