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Check your ‘cognitive privilege,’ all you smart people! Thomas Lifson

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

Progressives, crazed with identifying new forms of oppression attached to the currently fashionable catchword “privilege,” have finally embraced the stupid as a victim class. Hey, let’s celebrate stupidity! Just ponder for a moment all the potential grand marshals for the inevitable Stupidity Day Parade in New York City, once the stupid are organized into a grievance-powered pressure group.

And where else, but at a university, a temple of higher learning?

In this case, one funded by taxpayers. The following is from a genuine column in the student newspaper of the University of Iowa. A student suddenly has discovered that being smart is just like being white: an unfair privilege. Dan Williams writes: http://daily-iowan.com/2017/07/25/williams-what-is-privilege-and-what-do-we-do-with-it/

Any of us could have been born the unluckiest person on the planet, which, by definition, picks out precisely one person. But we all have the privilege of not being that person. We are all privileged by comparison.There are many kinds of privilege besides white privilege: cognitive privilege, for example. We now know that intelligence is not something we have significant control over but is something we are born with. We are living in a society in which success is increasingly linked to one’s intelligence. This is not to say that intelligence is the only factor that is important. All that is implied is that below a certain threshold of intelligence, there are fewer and fewer opportunities. These opportunities are being shifted upward to jobs that require heavier cognitive lifting or else are being replaced by robots. Thus, the accident of having been born smart enough to be able to be successful is a great benefit that you did absolutely nothing to earn. Consequently, you have nothing to be proud of for being smart.

Once we have admitted the reality of privilege itself and identified some species of privilege, we are better able to talk about the temperature-rising topic of racial privilege.

I am not certain if Williams is an actual sophomore, but he certainly is sophomoric. He understands nothing about intelligence, though he pretends he does. (In fairness, I was once an undergraduate college student intoxicated with the new ideas I was learning. And it was my privilege to learn from scholars immersed in classical thought not progressive propagandists.)

Intelligence is not merely an inherited characteristic that exists independent of effort, practice, and practical application. In fact, genuine intelligence is a skill, best analogized to athletics, the other thing that the University of Iowa is famous for. Skills of any sort demand practice, effort, critical self-evaluation, coaching, and many other requirements.

Athletes can be born with excellent physical endowments, but unless they practice and try hard, they will end up as duffers. Pete Rose became a baseball legend, known as “Charlie Hustle” because he proved the point that sheer willpower is a major factor in athletic excellence. True enough, I will never be an NBA star owing to my meager physical endowments. But I would have been a much less awkward and pathetic amateur if I had at least tried.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany: Muslim Biker Gang Vows to “Protect” Fellow Muslims Police warn of spiraling vigilantism, parallel Islamic legal system by Soeren Kern

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

Muslim vigilantes enforcing Islamic justice have become increasingly common in Germany. The government’s inability or unwillingness to stop them has led to the rise of anti-Muslim counter-vigilantes. Germany’s BfV intelligence agency, in its latest annual report, warned that an escalating action-reaction cycle could result in open warfare on German streets.

The self-appointed “Sharia Police” urged both Muslim and non-Muslim passersby to attend mosques and to refrain from alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, gambling, music, pornography and prostitution. In November 2016, the Wuppertal District Court ruled that the Islamists did not break German law and were simply exercising their right to free speech. The ruling, which effectively legitimized Sharia law in Germany, was one of a growing number of instances in which German courts are — wittingly or unwittingly — promoting the establishment of a parallel Islamic legal system in the country.

“Even if we still refuse to believe it: Parts of Germany are ruled by Islamic law! Polygamy, child marriages, Sharia judges — for far too long the German rule of law has not been enforced. Many politicians dreamed of multiculturalism…. This is not a question of folklore or foreign customs and traditions. It is a question of law and order. If the rule of law fails to establish its authority and demand respect for itself, then it can immediately declare its bankruptcy.” — Franz Solms-Laubach, parliamentary correspondent, Bild.

German Muslims have established a self-styled biker gang — modelled on the Hells Angels — aimed at protecting fellow Muslims from the “ever-growing hatred of Islam,” according to Die Welt.

The emergence of the group, which aspires to open chapters in cities and towns across Germany, has alarmed German authorities, who have warned against the growing threat of vigilantism in the country.

Muslim vigilantes enforcing Islamic justice have become increasingly common in Germany. The government’s inability or unwillingness to stop them has led to the rise of anti-Muslim counter-vigilantes. Germany’s BfV intelligence agency, in its latest annual report, warned that an escalating action-reaction cycle could result in open warfare on German streets.

The gang, which calls itself “Germanys Muslims” (the possessive apostrophe is not used in German), is based in Mönchengladbach and now has offshoots in Münster and Stuttgart. It was founded by Marcel Kunst, a German convert to Islam who also uses the name Mahmud Salam.

The gang’s uniform consists of a black leather jacket with a logo depicting a one-fingered salute, the “Finger of Tawheed,” which represents belief in the oneness of Allah. The logo also includes the number 1438, which represents the current year in the Muslim calendar, as well as the number 713, which stands for GM (Germanys Muslims), the seventh and thirteenth letters of the alphabet.

Police say they do not know how many people belong to the gang, which was established in May. The group’s Facebook page, which has more than a thousand followers, describes itself as a “citizens’ initiative” which advocates for the “peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims in Germany.” A mission statement dated June 15 reads:

“Our organization has been founded for only one purpose: To protect and support our brothers and sisters from the ever-growing hatred of Islam!!! To all non-Muslims who read this post, pay attention. The following could change your perception of us!!! We respect every religion and, as dictated by the Quran, do not force our faith on anyone!!! We do not sympathize with the Islamic State and are against compulsion in faith and in marriage!!! ISLAM DOES NOT RECOGNIZE HONOR KILLINGS AS IS OFTEN SUPPOSED!!! The raised finger in our logo is not from the so-called Islamic State. In our faith it symbolizes that there is only one God!!! We have summarized 40 commandments from the Quran for you….IMPORTANT. Whoever gets into a fight on the road or elsewhere (except for self-defense) will be expelled from our group without further discussion!!!”

Although “Germanys Muslims” claims to disavow violence, police say that several of its senior members are known to be Salafists, whose aim is to replace liberal democracy in Germany with Sharia law. One of its members, for instance, was detained as a security precaution during the Tour de France, which passed through Mönchengladbach on July 2.

German police describe the group’s founder, Kunst, as an “Islamist who moves in Salafist circles.” In a video that is no longer available, Kunst called on the group’s members to protect mosques and Muslim women.

In a July 27 interview with Die Welt, Isabella Hannen, spokeswoman for the Mönchengladbach Police Department, revealed that police met with Kunst on July 5 and warned him that “vigilantism will not be tolerated.” They also stressed that the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force (Gewaltmonopol) is the exclusive domain of the state. On July 28, “Germanys Muslims” issued a statement saying that the group respects the authority of the state. “So far, we have no evidence that they are a danger, but we are keeping our eyes on them,” Hannen said.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

What Kind of Iran Did the U.S. Just Certify? by Reza Shafiee

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

For past 38 years, Iran’s Islamist regime has demonstrated that it is neither able nor willing to reform.

The time for the U.S. jettisoning its toxic “nuclear deal”, and for regime change in Iran, is now.

The Trump Administration reluctantly certified to Congress on July 17 that Iran had continued to meet the “required conditions” for the 2015 “nuclear deal”, signed by six world powers. Despite the certification, US officials were quick to remind Iranian regime that it is not out of the woods yet. Senior administration officials made it clear that President Trump intends to impose new sanctions on Iran for ongoing “malign activities” in non-nuclear areas such as ballistic missile development and support for terrorism.

The Trump administration made good on its promise just a day later, by imposing new sanctions on five individuals and 14 entities related to violations of what “primary” sanctions.

“The United States remains deeply concerned about Iran’s malign activities across the Middle East which undermine regional stability, security and prosperity,” said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert in a statement, adding that “Iran’s support for US-designated terrorist groups, militias and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as domestic human rights concerns,” remain unresolved in the eyes of US officials.

The mullahs in Tehran try hard to shift world’s focus from their unneighborly activities in all other areas, such as sponsoring terrorist groups in the region, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, and, with the help of North Koreans, manufacturing indigenous missiles that are gradually improving in accuracy and range, and last but not least, oppressing Iran’s population.

A range of US officials have made it clear to the regime in Tehran that, no matter how hard it tries to whitewash its image, such behavior is unacceptable.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis said in an interview that Iran is not trustworthy and by “far the biggest threat to peace and stability in the region,” and he gave credit again to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for effectively using economic sanctions, and “forcing the Iranian regime to the negotiating table.”

Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of the U.S. Central Command also emphasized again that the Iranian regime remains the main source of instability in the region. “The Iranian regime,” he said, “remains the most destabilizing influence in the CentCom region.”

Such sharp comments on Iran’s role in the region and beyond are not limited to that of Mattis or Votel. US officials are now openly calling for “regime change.” President Trump named the Iranian regime among the “rogue regimes like North Korea… and Syria and the governments that finance and support them.”

After Iran’s fake-democratic elections on May 19, in which the slate of possible candidates was cherry-picked by the regime, and the declared reelection of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, US policy on Iran requires a major overhaul. The Obama Administration’s ostensible vain hope was that after the nuclear deal was struck with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the summer of 2015, the mullah’s regime would suddenly transform and turn into a responsible first-class world player. Two years into the deal with the Iranian regime, as foretold, the world is not a better place.

Old habits die hard, particularly with the rulers in Tehran. Hostage-taking of foreign nationals, and especially US citizens, has been a habit of this regime since day one. On July 17, an announcement appeared that Xiyue Wang, 37, a Princeton University student pursuing a Ph.D. in Eurasian history, had been arrested in Iran and sentenced to 10 years in prison on dubious charges of espionage. He is accused of spying for the US and the UK.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mr. McCain Goes to Washington He chose to operate like the standard-issue politicians he likes to rail against. By John Fund

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

In 2008, presidential candidate John McCain bravely proposed a health-care reform that Fortune magazine said was a giant step toward “laissez faire liberty” in health care. He wanted to empower consumers to find the best health care and even end the tax break for employer-sponsored plans.

In 2015, McCain joined all but one other GOP senator in voting to repeal Obamacare. The next year he ran an ad in his primary campaign against a Tea Party Republican claiming he was “leading the fight to stop Obamacare.” That ad helped him win 51 percent of the primary vote.

Just this year, McCain introduced a bill to “fully” repeal Obamacare and replace it with a “free-market approach that strengthens the quality and accessibility of care.”

Then, last Friday, McCain faced a choice on the Senate floor. He could vote with all but two of his GOP colleagues for “a skinny repeal” bill and get to a conference committee, where negotiators from the House and Senate could devise a bill that might pass both chambers. Or he could effectively leave Obamacare in place, dooming any realistic effort at curbing it given the uniform Democratic opposition to any real reform.

McCain sided with the status quo, killing the “skinny repeal.” Journalists rushed to gush over his vote, cast only a few days after a surgery to remove a dangerous brain tumor. The New Yorker’s take was typical: “Throughout his political life, John McCain has for many reasons enjoyed bipartisan respect and even reverence: his independence of mind (usually), his candor (usually), his decency, his love of country.”

McCain’s stated reason for killing reform was that the bill in front of him “fell short of our promise to repeal and replace Obamacare with meaningful reform.” True enough, but this is a perfect example of letting the perfect be the enemy of the better.

Obamacare is a disaster that, left untouched, will be saved only by a massive taxpayer bailout of insurance companies. Premiums on Obamacare exchanges have gone up by double digits annually ever since their formation in 2013. Out-of-pocket expenses — including copays and deductibles — rose 40 percent, to $2,649 per person on average, between 2011 and 2014. Hundreds of counties across the country are likely to have no health insurers offering plans on their local exchanges next year.

Far from being a modern-day “profile in courage,” McCain’s vote against advancing Obamacare reform represents a complete reversal of the position he won his Senate election with last year. John Merline of Investor’s Business Daily notes that “In the private sector, promising one thing and delivering the other could be referred to as ‘deceptive trade practice.’ For some members of Congress, it’s just another day at the office.”

Like every American, I wish John McCain the best in his battle against a brain tumor. But in what may prove to be one of the most important votes he has cast in his 35 years in Congress, he chose to operate like the standard-issue politicians he likes to rail against.

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Promoting Endless Race Hatred, in the Name of “Justice” Inside the agenda of the Equal Justice Initiative. John Perazzo

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

It’s quite likely that you’ve never heard of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) and its radical agenda, but this Alabama-based organization has had its eye fixed upon you and your country for a very long time. For nearly 30 years, it has been working relentlessly to advance the notion that because the United States is so thoroughly awash in racist inhumanity, its culture merits no respect — and no defense — whatsoever. And EJI can’t be dismissed as some sort of fringe lunatic group that’s barely scraping by on a shoestring budget; its coffers are flush with cash. In 2015-16, one of the largest and wealthiest corporations on earth, Google.com, announced that it was proudly giving EJI a cool $2 million in donations. Half of that sum was earmarked to fund the creation of “civil rights landmarks” such as a large national memorial honoring the 3,445 black Americans who lost their lives at the end of lynchers’ ropes from 1882-1964, plus additional memorial markers that would be situated at the various sites where those lynchings took place.

You might wonder why EJI deems it necessary to now dredge up the memory of a horrific practice that last occurred in this country 53 years ago. One would think that an organization that truly cared about the well-being of black people, might be more concerned by the fact that in any given year nowadays, the number of black-on-black homicides that occur nationwide far exceeds the number of white-on-black lynchings that have taken place in all the years since the Civil War, combined.

Obviously, then, EJI’s motivation has nothing whatsoever to do with promoting the safety of modern-day blacks. The group’s chief objective, rather, is to incessantly scold and shame Americans for their racist heritage, and to thereby make them lose all faith in the very legitimacy of their society — thus setting the stage for its ultimate collapse. In essence, EJI faithfully follows the counsel of the late pro-communist guru of “community organizing,” Saul Alinsky, who urged his fellow radicals to seize every possible opportunity to “rub raw the resentments of the people,” and to “fan the[ir] latent hostilities to the point of overt expression.” In that spirit, EJI is devoted to fomenting perpetual discontent and racial grievance in the hearts of black Americans — under the righteous-sounding banner of “social justice.” That’s because black discontent and grievance are good for business, when your business is to tear a nation apart along racial lines.

It is highly noteworthy that while EJI depicts lynching as an exclusively white-on-black phenomenon, there were in fact 1,297 whites lynched in the United States during that same 1882-1964 period. Obviously, this doesn’t in any way diminish the horror or the evil of the lynchings that were carried out against black people. Nor does it negate the fact that lynchings frequently had a racial component that targeted blacks, as evidenced by the fact that blacks comprised nearly three-fourths of all lynching victims. But as David Horowitz has pointed out, a majority of black lynchings were not incidents where groups of whites randomly chased down black people and strung them up for fun. Most black lynchings — like most white lynchings — were a form of extrajudicial “frontier justice” where angry mobs of vigilantes essentially anointed themselves as prosecutors, juries, and executioners. The mobs dispensed with due process and took it upon themselves to kill people — white or black — whom they believed were guilty of some transgression. Sometimes the transgressions were serious, like rape, homicide, or robbery. And sometimes, blacks were killed merely for violating social norms, like showing “disrespect” for a white person.

According to EJI, the practice of lynching “reinforced a narrative of racial difference and a legacy of racial inequality” that remains “readily apparent in our criminal-justice system today.” This legacy, we are told, is reflected in the “mass incarceration” that “has had devastating consequences for people of color” — e.g., “African Americans [today] make up about 13 percent of the nation’s population, but constitute 28 percent of all arrests, 40 percent of those incarcerated in jails and prisons, and 42 percent of the population on death row.” As far as EJI is concerned, these statistics are evidence of the “implicit biases” that “have been shown to affect policing … and all aspects of the criminal-justice system” — and cannot be attributed to the demonstrably higher rates of criminality in the black community. In short, we are asked to believe that everything stems, ultimately, from the fact that “the United States has done very little to acknowledge [its] legacy of genocide, slavery, lynching, and racial segregation.”

The Equal Justice Initiative is the archetypal subversive organization of the American Left. It rejects the very notion of colorblind justice as nothing more than a means of perpetuating a racist status quo that favors whites over blacks. And the alternative brand of “justice” that EJI proposes, is concerned only with offering up rationales for interracial hatred that never goes away. In short, EJI’s agenda is to promote, in the name of “justice,” racial strife that tears America apart.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Assassination Fantasies At a Times Square rally, an open call for Trump’s murder is ignored by elected officials. Seth Barron

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

Following President Trump’s declaration on Twitter Wednesday that transgender people would not be permitted to serve in the armed forces, protesters converged on Times Square. Assembling in front of the Armed Services Recruiting Station, several hundred people cheered as local elected officials and LGBT activists denounced both the decision and President Trump generally.

Most of the crowd held small printed signs reading, “Resist”; others waved the familiar “NO!” signs from the Revolutionary Communist Party-backed Refuse Fascism movement. A few handmade signs stood out in the relatively compact crowd, in particular one that read, in black against a red background,

Lincoln
Garfield
McKinley
Kennedy
Trump

The first four names on this list, of course, are the presidents murdered in office, in chronological order; the last embodies the seeming wish of many on the American Left that someone put him on it for real. As seen in the picture accompanying this article, Trump’s name is embellished with horns and a tail, and flames indicate that the president is roasting in hell: the protester left little room for interpretation.

The sign was held aloft for the duration of the event, in full view of the crowd, the media, the NYPD, and at least a dozen elected officials, but garnered no comment or acknowledgement. Perhaps historical literacy is so low that the sign’s meaning eluded most people, but it’s more likely that the pitch of outrage is keyed so high in leftist political rhetoric that the message on the sign was basically unremarkable—uncontroversial, even.

Consider what now passes as respectable dissenting opinion. New York City comptroller Scott Stringer issued a press release this week announcing that “Republicans just made the U.S. Senate a death panel,” because they voted to permit debate on changing Obamacare, which is in a state of critical failure. The evening before the president’s announcement, Melissa Mark-Viverito, speaker of the city council, tweeted, in response to nothing in particular, “Just sickened by this maniacal, self-absorbed, narcissistic, sadist, misogynistic, so-called President. Your days are numbered, FOOL.” Given Mark-Viverito’s open support and affection for convicted political terrorists like Oscar Lopez Rivera and Isabel Rosado Morales, it is hard to read “your days are numbered” as only figurative.

Public advocate Tish James spoke at the rally, and, in view of the sign calling for his death, led chants in favor of resistance to Trump. James first ascended to office in 2003, after her predecessor, Council Member James E. Davis, was shot to death by a rival at City Hall. One would have hoped that James would thus be attuned to ugly, violent political discourse, but she chose to ignore its presence.

Council Member Corey Johnson, speaking at Wednesday’s protest, said that Trump’s announcement “is not just an attack on trans service members; this is an attack on the entire United State military by this president.”Another city legislator, Jumaane Williams, tweeted a picture of the rally, including the sign calling for Trump’s assassination, with the inscrutable comment, “At 42nd street rally against @realDonaldTrump #transmilitaryban. You cannot hate nearly. #istandforhumandignity”—presumably meaning that there is no limit to the amount of hate that one should feel toward the president.

When asked about the hateful message of the protester’s poster

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What Happens When an Imam Calls for Killing Jews How the Left covered up Muslim anti-Semitism in California. July 31, 2017 Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

On Friday July 21st, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered a sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis calling for the extermination of the Jews. He quoted an infamous Islamic Hadith which claims that Judgement Day won’t come around until the Muslims hunt down and exterminate the Jews.

“Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews,” he prayed. “Annihilate them down to the very last one,” he added.

Next Friday, after the video went viral, the Imam appeared at a press conference to apologize to the filthy Jews. “I said things that were hurtful to Jews.”

The whole thing was sanctified by Rabbi Seth Castleman, a former Buddhist monk married to the Rev. Elizabeth Griswold, the pastor of Parkside Community Church. Castleman leads Buddhist meditation sessions at his current house of worship. When bacon was dumped on the Islamic Center, Castleman appeared and declared that, “Attacks such as this one are a strike against all of us.”

“Look, the Old and New Testaments have horrible things in them,” Castleman had opined in response to the imam’s anti-Semitic rant. “You can always find horrible things.”

The Islamic Center of Davis had tried to claim that the Imam’s rant had been taken out of context. “If the sermon was misconstrued, we sincerely apologize to anyone offended,” it offered.

“It’s unfair when I have spoken about nonviolence, and here is some two minutes. My record is very clear, I have always been against violence,” Imam Shahin told the Washington Post.

At the press conference, he conceded that his words might have encouraged violent acts. The farce finally came to an end with a halting apology delivered from a written statement in broken English.

Then he committed to fighting for “social justice” and against “hate speech and violence”.

Imam Shahin’s apology was preceded by an address from a senior minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church who denounced “the language that we hear coming from the highest office in our country.”

When an Imam spews hate at Jews, the left will go right back to attacking President Trump.

The diverse clergy and community leaders at the event were more than happy to give Shahin a pass. And Shahin blamed the whole thing on his “emotions”. It went without saying that a Christian leader calling for Muslim genocide would not have been allowed to use his overwrought “feelings” as an excuse.

While the media had rushed to cover the Islamic Center of Davis’ bacon scandal, the same outlets had far less interest in the Center’s anti-Semitism problem. At first the story could only be found in Jewish and conservative outlets. When the media was finally forced to cover the viral video, it made excuses.

MEMRI, the monitoring organization that found, translated and uploaded the video, was smeared. Since Shahin’s remarks had been translated, challenging the translation was the easiest way to shoot the messenger. The Islamic Center accused MEMRI of having mistranslated “destroy” as “annihilate”.

And it attacked MEMRI for not having featured the ”countless lectures and sermons he has given regarding treating all people, especially non-Muslims, with kindness.”

Why indeed didn’t MEMRI highlight all the lectures in which he didn’t call for genocide?

The Muslim Public Affairs Council put out a statement complaining that, “Groups like MEMRI exacerbate political divisions on the Middle East conflict rather than aim to reconcile differences.” And who better to bring us together than MPAC whose boss had accused Israel of being behind the 9/11 attacks.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Root Cause of the Disasters in the Middle East The culprit is Obama and his policies of appeasement, betrayal and retreat. David Horowitz

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

During the eight years of the Obama administration, half a million Christians, Yazidis and Muslims were slaughtered in the Middle East by ISIS and other Islamic jihadists, in a genocidal campaign waged in the name of Islam and its God. Twenty million others were driven into exile by these same jihadist forces. Libya and Yemen became terrorist states. America – once the dominant foreign power and anti-jihadist presence in the region – was replaced by Russia, an ally of the monster regimes in Syria and Iran, and their terrorist proxies. Under the patronage of the Obama administration, Iran – the largest and most dangerous terrorist state, with the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands – emerged from its isolation as a pariah state to re-enter the community of nations and become the region’s dominant power, arming and directing its terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Yemen.

These disasters are a direct consequence of the policies of appeasement and retreat of the Obama administration. Beyond that, they are a predictable result of the Democratic Party’s long-standing resistance to the so-called war on terror, and its sabotage of George Bush’s efforts to enforce 17 UN Security Council resolutions in Iraq, aimed at maintaining international order and peace in the Middle East.

In fact, the primary cause of the disasters in the Middle East is the Democratic Party’s sabotage of the War in Iraq. Democrats first voted to authorize the armed overthrow of Iraq’s terror regime but within three months of its inception reversed their position 180 degrees and declared the war “immoral, illegal & unnecessary.” The reason for the Democrats’ reversal on the war had nothing to do with the war itself or the so-called absence of weapons of mass destruction, but was rather a political response to the fact that an anti-war Democrat, Howard Dean, was running away with their presidential nomination. It was this that caused John Kerry and his party to forget that the war was about Saddam’s defiance of 17 UN Security Council resolutions, and refusal to allow the UN inspectors to carry out their efforts to ascertain whether he had destroyed his nuclear and chemical arsenals.

Beginning in June 2003, Democrats began claiming – falsely – that Bush had lied to secure their support for the war. “Bush lied, people died,” became the left’s slogan to cripple the war effort. Bush couldn’t have lied because Democrats had access to every bit of intelligence information on Iraq that he did. But this false narrative began what became a five-year campaign to demonize America’s commander-in-chief and undermine his efforts to subdue the terrorists and pacify the region.

The Democrats’ anti-war crusade climaxed with the election of Barack Obama, a leftwing activist and vocal opponent of the war, and of the majority of Senate Democrats who voted for it. At the time of Obama’s election, America and its allies had won the war and subdued the terrorists by turning the Sunnis in Anbar province against them. But the new commander-in-chief refused to use American forces to secure the peace, and instead set out to withdraw all American military personnel from Iraq. This was a fatal step that created a power vacuum, which was quickly filled by Iran and ISIS.

Obama’s generals had advised him to maintain a post-war force of 20,000 troops in country along with the military base America had built in Baghdad. But Obama had made military withdrawal the centerpiece of his foreign policy and ignored his national security team’s advice. Had he not done so, American forces would have been able to effectively destroy ISIS at its birth, saving more than 500,000 lives and avoiding the creation of nearly 20 million refugees in Syria and Iraq.

Instead of protecting Iraq and the region from the Islamic terrorists, Obama surrendered the peace, turning Iraq over to Iran and the terrorists, and betraying every American and Iraqi who had given their lives to keep them out. The message of the Obama White House – to be repeated through all eight years of his tenure – was that America was the disturber of the peace, and not “radical Islamic terrorism” – words he refused to utter. Instead he even removed the phrase “war on terror” from all official statements and replaced it with “overseas contingency operations.”

Second among the causes of the Middle East’s human tragedy was Obama’s support for the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad whom his secretaries of state, Clinton and Kerry both endorsed as a democratic reformer on the very eve of his savage war against his own people. This was followed by Obama’s refusal to enforce the red line he drew to prevent Assad from using chemical weapons on the Syrian population. When Assad did use them, Obama averted his eyes and papered over his culpability by arranging a phony deal with Russia to remove Assad’s chemical arsenal. Six years later, Assad was again using chemical weapons on Syrian civilians, the exposing Obama’s ruse.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

K-12 Educators Taught How to Combat ‘Whiteness’ in Schools By Rick Moran

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

You have to feel for Social Justice Warriors. No matter how hard they try, they just can’t get away from white people.

They’re everywhere! Why, you even find them in the supermarket, at the movie theater, and — worst of all — in schools. Where our children go to be educated. Where our kids should be sheltered from the depredations and poisonous proclivities that all white people possess.

It makes one weep to think about all this white privilege on display for our children and other delicate flowers to be offended by.

Thankfully, Columbia University wants to do something about it. The Ivy League college — one of America’s most celebrated universities — held a conference for K-12 educators that featured workshops on ho to combat the evil of white privilege in our schools.

The Campus Fix:

The “Reimagining Education Summer Institute” conference, organized by Columbia University’s Teachers College, was held in mid-July and concentrated on “opportunities and challenges of creating and sustaining racially, ethnically and socio-economically integrated schools,” according to its website.

The event, in its second year, drew 300 participants that mostly consisted of K-12 teachers and principals, the institute’s director Amy Wells said in a phone interview with The College Fix. The four-day conference included plenary sessions, dozens of workshops and dialogue sessions.

One presentation, called “Whiteness in schools,” provided “a history of Whiteness, and will invite participants into a discussion of how Whiteness and White culture shapes what happens in schools,” according to a description.

One workshop discussed “3 ways to face white privilege in the classroom.” Presented by Teachers College postdoctoral fellow Jamila Lyiscott, a summary of the workshop states it included “activities and critical dialogue around White privilege to connect personal responsibility to pedagogical possibilities for the classroom.”

And a workshop on “Teaching for Social Justice” sought to challenge colonialist and racist pedagogies.

“We will challenge Eurocentric pedagogical approaches that not only under-prepare students for the realities of our increasingly multiethnic, multilingual, globalized society, but are also rooted in colonial and racist ideologies that stifle the voices, identities, and realities of students of color,” a description states.

There was also a “Deconstructing Racial Microaggressions” workshop in which attendees pledged to address racial insults at their schools.

Institute director Wells, a professor of sociology and education at the Teachers College, said the conference came about out of her belief that the “missing piece” regarding issues of integration in education is what goes on inside the classroom.

“It’s always about getting kids into the building and I just think … we’re always missing the educators who actually do the work and who actually interact with the kids on daily basis and help them understand race in terms of how they’re relating to other students,” she said. CONTINUE AT SITE

BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hillary Clinton wants to tell you ‘What Happened’ in her new book which won’t actually tell you what happened By Stephen L. Miller

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

The title of Hillary Clinton’s memoir on her failed 2016 campaign for the White House has at long last finally been revealed, ending the suspense for left-wing policy wonks. Hillary has officially gone from “What difference does it make” to “What Happened.”

“What Happened” will chronicle what Hillary was “thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history,” according to the synopsis released by the publisher.

The publisher goes on to breathlessly describe the tell-all: “Now free from running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference and an opponent who broke all the rules.”

That’s right. Hillary Clinton wants to convince you she believes in rules. Sources who claim to have spoken to her people about the book say it’s a “bombshell” and say she blames her historic election loss on former FBI Director James Comey and, of course, the Russians. Will Hillary tell us the Russians parked a supersonic stealth submarine in Lake Michigan and cloaked the entire state of Wisconsin for over 100 days, preventing her from visiting the state once?

“What Happened” is Hillary’s hubris, accompanied by a bubbling distrust among the public over the enshrined Hollywood-media complex. She underestimated an opponent she herself wanted to face off against and was a terrible candidate. That cost her a place in history.

Hillary definitely won’t tell you what really happened. Valid concerns were raised about her health after she collapsed at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, an event that she at first attempted to shield from the media. It only became a full-blown scandal when a private citizen with a video camera caught the whole thing and broadcast it on Twitter.

Hillary also won’t tell you that her campaign strategy was, in many ways, just plain dumb.

And she won’t tell you that Donald Trump simply outworked her by campaigning at a ratio of almost 2 to 1 in battleground states, as reported by NBC News shortly after the election.

“Over the final 100 days of the election, Trump made a total of 133 visits to Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin,” NBC reported. “Over the same time period, Hillary Clinton visited the first five of those states a total of 87 times. She never traveled to Wisconsin during the 102 days between the convention and the election.”

What Hillary Clinton also won’t tell you is that Donald Trump was carried to the White House by 218 counties across the Rust Belt of the United States that had previously voted for Barack Obama’s message of hope and change.

After eight years, many Obama voters were left without hope. Nothing had changed for the better. Voters were now strapped with a financial catastrophe in ObamaCare and some fell victim to a ravaging epidemic of opioid addiction. Hillary Clinton was more interested in appearing with millionaire celebrities, while telling coal miners she was going to put them out of work.