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November 2015

When Students Cheer Jihad Tracking the pro-terror campaign on American campuses. David Horowitz

Reprinted from the Washington Times.

Calling things by their right names is a prerequisite for seeing them as they really are. Last spring I spoke at more than half a dozen universities, including Ohio State and Stony Brook, where I was confronted by mobs of students cheering Hamas, a terrorist organization whose declared goal is the extermination of the Jews. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. On virtually every major university campus in America organizations exist whose leadership is dedicated to spreading the propaganda lies of Hamas designed to weaken and delegitimize the Israeli state, and promoting Hamas campaigns like Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) whose goal is its destruction.

The two leading organizations in this terrorist proxy campaign are the Muslim Students Association (MSA), which poses as a cultural group but is really a recruiting tool for its founding group, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which was also created by a Brotherhood operative and takes an even more aggressive pro-terrorist role on campus defending Hamas rocket attacks on Israel and advancing its propaganda wars.

HERBERT LONDON: THE UN AT WORK

The General Assembly at the United Nations met today. What emerged from the meeting is thunderous silence, a silence that echoes through the conscience of sensible people.

Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian parliament call for days of rage against Israeli citizens. Several Israeli’s including children and elderly women, have been killed many more injured. This is a new version of Intifada, violence to provoke. For Palestinian officials, the moment they seek is Israeli retaliation. At the point, the United Nations will be awakened. Israel will be censored. The wave of violence initiated by Palestinians will be a footnote to the deliberations. In the U.N. Jewish blood doesn’t count.

It is now clear, based on Dutch Safety Board investigation that Malaysian Flight 17 in 2014 was destroyed by a Russian made warhead installed in BUK surface to air missile system. The 283 passengers and 12 crew members lost oxygen in the freezing fuselage before the aircraft slammed to the ground.

Taking Responsibility — What That Meant for Corporal Hershel ‘Woody’ Williams on Iwo Jima By Claudia Rosett

“He was one man, in one moment, changing the course of an action during one of the toughest battles of the war.”
Remember that quaint old notion called “responsibility”? It’s hit a patch of rough times. As problems and costs and scandals pile up in the shadow of the expanding American nanny state, as horrors mount in a world bereft of American strategic vision and leadership, it happens far too often that the buck stops nowhere. Instead, as far as our political elite are inclined to offer anything even resembling accountability, what we hear far too often these days is a phrase that has been hijacked as the ultimate non-apology: “I take responsibility.”

How many times in recent years have you heard that phrase on the news, uttered from some pinnacle of power – “I take responsibility” — and wondered what on earth it really means? What are the consequences of taking this ever more amorphous thing called responsibility?

Not that this vacuity of word and deed is confined to American politics. If anything, Washington has increasingly imbibed techniques perfected years ago by the likes of the United Nations, an outfit devoted to seeking control over everything in its path while taking genuine responsibility for almost nothing.

New Islamic State Document Shows U.S. Still In the Crosshairs by John Rossomando

A 64-page terrorist operations manual recently released by an Islamic State supporter on Twitter underscores concerns that the U.S. homeland remains firmly in the group’s crosshairs. FBI Director James Comey told U.S. intelligence officials last month that the Bureau has approximately 900 ongoing Islamic State-related inquiries, most of which involve homegrown suspects.

The manual, “Safety and Security guidelines for Lone Wolf Mujahideen,” provides detailed instructions on successfully carrying out terror attacks.

“I think the manual format gives them sort of a how-to process and therefore it’s another indication of the danger we face in dealing with these self-motivated jihadists,” said former FBI Associate Deputy Director Oliver “Buck” Revell. “I think it shows a great deal of critical analysis at the heart of the movement and that they are certainly knowledgeable, and they are not ignorant of our methodologies and even our technical capabilities, and we would be wise not to underestimate their capabilities.”

Tony Thomas Who’s Killing Our Climate Scientists?

Well nobody, actually, unless you count a smattering of sometimes rude emails as representing credible threats to warmists’ lives and safety. As with climate change itself, our purportedly un-settled scientists refuse to share their evidence of bloodthirsty sceptics on the warpath
Why is the Australian Academy of Science going off the deep end claiming “reprehensible vilification” of warmist scientists? It’s now saying they’re being so threatened and harassed that their ability to do science is in jeopardy. Academy President Andrew Holmes, addressing a greenhouse conference in Hobart on October 27, claimed

The costs to individuals can be high. It is therefore critical that as scientists and experts we stand together. The ability of scientists to conduct their work, free of fear or hindrance, is vital to the future wellbeing of our community, and the Academy will continue to advocate for academic freedom…

“As the International Council for Science proclaims, the free and responsible practice of science is fundamental to scientific advancement and human and environmental well-being.

I thought at first he was chastising the academics at University of Western Australia over their successful witchhunt against non-sceptic Bjorn Lomborg, or that he was chastising academics at University of Melbourne for wanting punitive fines to drive sceptics out of the media. Or maybe rebuking US academic peers who wanted sceptic corporations to be prosecuted under the Racketeering and Corrupting Influences Act (that exercise backfired spectacularly). But I erred, Holmes’ victimology includes only orthodox climate scientists as its purported casualties.

Timothy Cootes: Islamist Intolerance and Its Useful Idiots

When it comes to choosing sides, the hard left’s anti-Western mindset inevitably trumps respect for the values it otherwise professes to endorse: gender equality, gay rights and opposition to theocratic absolutism, to name but a few. Shame, however, remains an alien concept
Judged even by its own inane standards, Guardian Australia has published a splendidly stupid essay by Irfan Yusuf, in which he likens radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir to Andrew Bolt and modern conservatism. This comparison is apt, apparently, because of a common sense of yearning: Hizb ut-Tahrir longs for the return of the Caliphate, and Bolt for the return of Abbott.

No doubt Yusuf and the Guardian heartily congratulated themselves for their daring, but I think the essay is interesting for reasons that Yusuf certainly didn’t intend. He writes

Perhaps another reason groups like HT have some traction is because, for all their silly rhetoric, they are actually doing something.

Doing what, exactly? He has warm words for the group’s efforts to educate everybody on counterterrorism, surveillance and radicalisation. He admonishes what he evidently regards as lazy Muslim moderates and concludes

You don’t have to believe in Hizb ut-Tahrir’s caliphate to appreciate their effort.

There you have it. The intellectual clumsiness is staggering. You watch transfixed as some mild criticism of Hizb ut-Tahrir wobbles into an endorsement. I mention, only in passing, that Hizb ut-Tahrir has also made an effort to justify the actions of jihadists going to fight in Syria, as well as the murder of Australian troops and the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. None of this invalidates Hizb ut-Tahrir’s credibility. For all his loose talk about the group’s undeserved media attention, the worst Yusuf can offer is modest applause.

The left’s all-too-telling attempt to silence Netanyahu

A gaggle of hard lefties and fellow travelers is out to stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking Tuesday to the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank with close White House ties.

Netanyahu is in DC mending fences after he fought hard against President Obama’s Iran nuke deal, hence the CAP event.

But various hard-left activists, liberal church types and Arab groups don’t think anyone should be allowed to hear what Bibi has to say. Backed by thousands of online signatures, they complain the CAP event grants legitimacy to Netanyahu’s “ever more expansionist policies of occupation.”

This, when he’s not even giving a speech, just joining a dialogue with Neera Tanden, CAP’s CEO and a veteran of both Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns. And he’s taking audience questions, where critics can press him hard.

US Senators: ‘EU Plans to Label Israeli Products Mere Figleaf for Boycott’ Bipartisan Senate Effort to Stop EU’s plan to assist its residents in, effectively, boycotting Israeli products. By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Sometime in the near future the EU is expected to publish guidelines on consumer labeling of all Israeli products produced over the so-called “Green Line,” the armistice line created when the war against the nascent Jewish State ended.

The EU considers all Jewish cities and towns over the pre-1967 lines to be illegal. As such, anything produced, grown or packaged in either eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria or the Golan Heights will be labeled so that consumers can more easily boycott those products.

The guidelines will be published by the office of Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief. No vote is required for this measure to be taken.

There is pushback to that labeling plan coming not only from Israel, but also from many members of the U.S. Senate.

Obama Immigration Initiative Takes Another Hit Court upholds injunction blocking administration’s plan to protect millions from deportation By Miguel Bustillo And Tamara Audi

A federal appeals court Monday upheld a lower court’s ruling blocking the Obama administration’s plans to defer deportations for more than four million undocumented immigrants.

The 2-1 decision by a three-judge panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds an injunction by a Texas federal judge that has blocked President Barack Obama’s 2014 immigration initiative, after leaders from 26 states challenged its legality.

The appeals-court ruling was widely anticipated, after a three-judge panel of the same court rejected the Obama administration arguments to quickly lift the injunction in May. But it paves the way for a potential appeal of the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court—and all but ensures that the immigration initiative will remained mired in a legal dispute through most, if not all, of Mr. Obama’s term in office.

Why would Bill Kristol want to make a Hillary victory inevitable? By Mike Ford

Last week in an article titled “Ben Carson Reconsidered,” destined for the November 16 print edition of The Weekly Standard, “conservative” pundit William Kristol shows just how willing he is to risk a Hillary Clinton presidency and all its concomitant damage. He’s willing to risk such simply to prevent an outsider from ascending to that office. In a two (internet)-page article, Dr. Kristol excoriates Donald Trump while damning Dr. Ben Carson with faint praise. Here is his final statement:

So while Carson probably won’t and likely shouldn’t be the nominee, the Republican party is better for his candidacy. And if the unthinkable happens and Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, we may take off a few days next year to gather ballot access signatures for the 2016 independent ticket of Carson-Webb, or Webb-Carson.