NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tavis Smiley’s Slaves Racial privilege, guilt and oppression. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 24th, 2016

PBS personality Tavis Smiley stopped by Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a private “Hidden Ivy” with a modest $45K tuition and was asked about whether slavery might make a comeback.

“Mr. Smiley, do you believe that given the crisis state of our democracy, we black folk could ever find ourselves enslaved again?” a student at this elite institution asked the millionaire.

Smiley assured readers of Time Magazine, the flagship product of a multi-billion dollar corporation headquartered near the World Trade Center, that slavery could very well make a comeback.

Why? What possible reason did Tavis Smiley have for anticipating the return of not merely Jim Crow, but cotton plantations and chains? Because the Senate has yet to act on Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. The South will rise again… because a judicial nominee’s confirmation was delayed. It’s the sort of thing Senate Democrats used to think was good clean fun.

One of the victims of their judicial delaying tactics was Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a sharecropper’s daughter, who was blocked for years. Judge Garland, unlike Judge Brown, is white. Why does blocking him from tilting the Supreme Court further to the left represent the return of slavery?

Merrick Garland, a man whom Tavis Smiley, like the rest of the left, couldn’t have been bothered to sneeze at a few years ago, is now suddenly the litmus test for the return of slavery. It’s not about Garland. It’s about Obama. And, more specifically, it’s about the insecurity and guilt of the Smileys.

The curious characteristic of this current wave of angry activism is the privileged nature of the activists.

Consider Colin Kaepernick with his $114 million salary standing up to oppression, the $150 million social justice activism of Black Lives Matter, Yale students shrieking themselves silly over Halloween costumes and a dialogue between a millionaire PBS host and a student at a prestigious college over whether slavery might be coming back. These people are not oppressed by grinding poverty, deprivation of civil rights or any other plausible metrics of discrimination. They are oppressed by their privilege.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The State Department’s Disproportionate Animus Toward Israel The hypocrisy of Mark Toner’s condemnation of Israel’s plan to resettle Amona evacuees. Joseph Puder

Posted By on October 24th, 2016

U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner issued, on October 5, 2016 a statement that “strongly condemned” Israel’s plan to resettle the Amona evacuees whose settlement is to be demolished by an order of Israel’s Supreme Court. Toner stated that “proceeding with this new settlement, which could include 300 units, would further damage the prospects of a two-state solution.” The same term “strongly condemn” was used by the State Department when the Assad regime in Syria used chemical weapons against civilians. Equating the murder of innocent civilians by a brutal dictator with 300 new housing units to resettle Israeli civilians in Shiloh, whose homes are due to be demolished in December, is disproportionate to say the least.

Toner’s boss, Secretary of State John Kerry in London with British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, issued the following statement (October 16, 2016), “Suffice it to say that all of us are more than concerned and deeply, deeply disturbed by and outraged by what is happening in Aleppo, which is in the year 2016, in the beginning of the 21st century, a horrendous step back in time to a kind of barbarianism, a use of force that is of insult to all of the values that the United Nations and most countries believe should guide our actions.” Secretary Kerry expressed “concern” and was “deeply disturbed” by events in Aleppo, but did not “strongly condemn” the killing of thousands of Syrian civilians in Aleppo. The U.S. State Department has disproportionality displayed animus in its attitude toward Israel, and it smacks of a deep bias on top of a long history of anti-Semitism at Foggy Bottom.

In response to a reporter’s question as to why President Obama or Secretary of State Kerry did not use the term “strongly condemn” that the State Department spokesman used, Toner replied: “Well, there have been times in the past when it has come – these kinds of words have come from either Secretary Kerry or President Obama, and the message is always the same, which is we view settlements as counterproductive and counter to Israel’s interests. We’re going to keep up with that message and we’re going to keep conveying it to the Israeli Government when they take these kinds of actions. I think this one was, as we noted in the statement, particularly exceptional in the fact that it came mere days after we had concluded this memorandum of understanding, and also in the wake of one of Israel’s leading statesmen, Shimon Peres’s death.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Hillary vs. The Education of American Children What Clinton’s proposed amnesty for illegal aliens would really do. Michael Cutler

Posted By on October 24th, 2016

Two recurrent claims made by Hillary Clinton are that she will stand with Americans families against powerful interests and corporations and that she will increase spending on educating children to help them succeed.

These populist promises may resonate with many Americans. However, as my mom used to say, “Actions speak louder than words.

Hillary Clinton’s grandiose plans to provide unknown numbers of illegal aliens with lawful status would make her other promises impossible to keep.

During the last debate she stated that she would do whatever she needs to do so that workers will have good jobs with rising incomes.

However, for Hillary and the administration, American workers literally don’t count.

Today tens of millions of working-age Americans have left the labor force and are not counted by the Labor Department when it provides unemployment statistics. In point of fact each month the United States admits more foreign workers than the number of new jobs that are created.

Legalizing millions of new foreign workers would serve to flood the labor pool with many more authorized workers providing unfair competition for beleaguered American workers, especially within the low income sector. Under the principle of “Supply & Demand” flooding a market with a commodity drives down the value of that commodity. Labor is not unlike any other commodity such as petroleum, steel or aluminum.

It is a bit ironic that during the third and final debate Hillary Clinton attacked Trump, alleging that he had used steel and aluminum that had been “dumped” in the United States by China. Dumping is an economic crime when it involves dumping a large quantity of a commodity into the marketplace in order to artificially reduce the value of that commodity. This is precisely what the open-border policies of the administration that Clinton promises to not only continue but expand, where the commodity of foreign labor is concerned.

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Saint Louis University: Islamic Stronghold The campus’s mistreatment of Col. Allen West for daring to say “radical Islam” is only the tip of the iceberg. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on October 24th, 2016

Founded two centuries ago, Saint Louis University began as a Roman Catholic institution, but given its antics in recent years, one could be forgiven for believing that it might be better classified as an Islamic university. The most recent example of this transformation took place last month when more than a hundred students, egged on by campus administration, walked out of a speech by black former congressman Allen West because he dared to use the phrase “radical Islam.”

“Radical Islam” is the same expression that Muslim sympathizer President Barack Hussein Obama refuses to say. Obama, who claims to be a Christian, famously waxes poetic on the Muslim call to prayer, describing it as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” With his head firmly planted in the sand, the president is also reluctant to label Muslim terrorist attacks as such, preferring to use the fuzzy abstraction “violent extremism.”

At Saint Louis University the campus administration tried to dictate the contents of the national security-themed speech in late September sponsored by Young America’s Foundation (YAF), but West, an outspoken conservative who represented a Florida district in the U.S. House from 2011 to 2013 as a Republican, refused to buckle under pressure. An SLU administrator told conservative and Republican students promoting the event that advertisements for it could not contain the words “radical Islam.”

SLU president Fred Pestello called West a “provocateur” and said in an email to students that he stood in “solidarity” with them.

Student Claire Cunningham whined to the Riverfront Times about her hurt feelings.

“Our administrator made a request for him to tailor his speech to our community, and in response he made a lot of hateful comments about our students,” she said.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

No Justice in the Netherlands by Judith Bergman

Posted By on October 24th, 2016

It is deeply troubling that the court already before the criminal trial has even begun, so obviously compromises its own impartiality and objectivity. Are other European courts also quietly submitting to jihadist values of curtailing free speech and “inconvenient” political views?

If you are a politician and concerned about the future welfare of your country, you should be able to discuss the pertinent issues of the day, including problems with immigrants and other population groups.

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights states that: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers…”

In its case law, the Court has stated that Article 10 “…protects not only the information or ideas that are regarded as inoffensive but also those that offend, shock or disturb; such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broad-mindedness without which there is no democratic society. Opinions expressed in strong or exaggerated language are also protected”.

Wilders did not incite to violence or prosecution (or humiliation), nor did he jeopardize national security or public safety.

Clearly, in the Netherlands, justice is no longer blind and the courts no longer independent and impartial state institutions.

A court in The Hague decided on October 14 that the charges of hate speech against Dutch politician Geert Wilders, for statements he made in March 2014 at a political rally, are admissible in a court of law. It thereby rejected the Wilders’ appeal to throw out the charges as inadmissible in a court of law on the grounds that these are political issues and that a trial would in fact amount to a political process. The criminal trial against Wilders will begin on Monday, October 31.

While campaigning in The Hague in March 2014, Wilders argued the need for fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. At an election meeting in The Hague, he asked those present a number of questions, one of which was “Do you want more or fewer Moroccans?” After the crowd responded “fewer” Wilders said, “We’re going to organize that.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EXCLUSIVE : Top Egyptian General Killed in Joint Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas Assassination Plot By Patrick Poole

Posted By on October 24th, 2016

CAIRO, EGYPT–The killing outside his home in Cairo yesterday of a top general responsible for anti-terrorism operations in the restive Sinai province was part of an assassination plot involving Muslim Brotherhood splinter groups and top terror operatives from Hamas in Gaza, Egyptian security sources told PJ Media last night.

The murdered general was responsible for shutting down the smuggling tunnels between Hamas-controlled Gaza and Egypt, and it is believed that the joint operation was intended to relieve some pressure from the Egyptian army’s operation that had placed a stranglehold on one of Hamas’ main sources of income and slowed the movement of weapons and fighters from Gaza into Sinai waging battle against the Egyptian government, including the Islamic State’s group in Sinai.

A statement published after the assassination also invoked the death of a senior Muslim Brotherhood operative killed in a shootout with police earlier this month.

The New York Times reports:

Gunmen suspected of being Islamist militants killed a senior Egyptian Army officer on Saturday in a brazen daylight shooting outside the man’s home in a Cairo suburb.

The state media identified the officer as Brig. Gen. Adel Ragai, commander of the army’s Ninth Armored Division.

General Ragai, according to multiple pro-state papers, had previously been deployed to Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula, where the military is fighting Islamic State militants.

The military did not issue a statement.

“I heard the gunshots and saw him die before my eyes,” Sumaya Zein el-Abedeen, the general’s wife, told the state media. She said neighbors had told her that they saw three gunmen with assault rifles in a vehicle outside the couple’s home. The men fired on General Ragai and his driver. Both men were taken to a hospital, where they were declared dead.

A group called Liwa al-Thawra, the Revolution Brigade, claimed responsibility on Twitter for the attack. The group’s account was then suspended.

General Ragai was also responsible for an armored division in Sinai:

The head of an armored division in #Sinai was tragically murdered today in Cairo outside of his home. Liwa Al Thawra claimed the murder.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Outrage as Feds Say California Vets Must Repay Enlistment Bonuses By Rick Moran

Posted By on October 24th, 2016

A federal audit has discovered that up to 10,000 California National Guard enlistees received improper bonuses at the time of their recruitment and now the government wants the vets to pay the bonsues back.

The bonuses were meant to spur recruitment a decade ago when Guard enlistments were lagging. But the money was only supposed to go to recruits who signed up for “high demand” positions. Thousands received the bonuses anyway.

CBS Los Angeles:

“The way to fix it if the law needs to be changed,” says McVey, “that’s what elected officials are for. They should fix the problem not lay it off on what in fact are turning into the victims.”

The money was given to the soldiers upfront, similar to an athlete getting a signing bonus.

According to the LA Time, the bonus money was supposed to be limited to soldiers who were taken on high-demand assignments.

A federal investigation uncovered thousands of bonuses and studentloan payments that were given to California Guard soldiers who didn’t qualify under the high-demand assignment criteria.

Fajardo also spoke to retired US Army Chief Warrant Officer Warren Finch who also served in the Guard.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why the Pentagon Is Hounding CA Veterans for Money By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on October 24th, 2016

A decade ago, the California National Guard offered thousands of soldiers large bonuses to reenlist and go to war. After investigations discovered fraud and mismanagement involving those payments, the Pentagon is demanding the money back, making veterans pay for the government’s mistakes.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers — many of whom served in multiple combat tours — have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses (of $15,000 or more), the Los Angeles Times reported. Worse, if the veterans refuse, the Pentagon uses interest charges, wage garnishments, and tax liens to recoup the money.

“I feel totally betrayed,” Susan Haley, a 26-year veteran and former Army master sergeant who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, told the Los Angeles Times.

Haley comes from a family of heroes: her husband also served, and her eldest son lost a leg in Afghanistan while serving as a medic. Haley said she sends the Pentagon $650 every month, a quarter of her family’s income, just to pay the $20,500 in bonuses which was given to her improperly, in exchange for her six-year reenlistment. Haley said she fears her family may have to sell their house to repay the bonuses.

“They’ll get their money, but I want those years back,” she declared.

“It’s egregious that veterans who sacrificed their lives for this country are being asked to retroactively pay the price for sloppy government miscalculations,” Mark Lucas, executive director at Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) and a 13-year veteran of the Iowa Army National Guard, told PJ Media. “The California Guard is showing no remorse as it yanks the rug out from under the very heroes it once asked to serve.”

Lucas said that he was not surprised at the bureaucratic mix-up, but that does not make it any better. “This is par for the course from a bureaucratic Pentagon that wastes billions of dollars each year on failed projects and mismanaged funds,” he said. “American veterans and taxpayers alike deserve better from the agency entrusted with over half of our national federal budget each year.”

The enlistment bonuses came at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the Pentagon aimed to bulk up forces. Investigations from that time period determined that a lack of oversight allowed widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet their enlistment goals. In other words, the government told officials they needed to hire a certain number of soldiers, and they fudged the numbers in order to bribe more veterans to reenlist.

During that time, the Pentagon started offering the most generous incentives in history to retain soldiers. It also began paying the money up front, like signing bonuses in the private sector.

In 2010, a federal investigation found that thousands of bonuses and student loan payments were given to California Guard soldiers who did not qualify for them, or whose applications had paperwork errors, according to the Times.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The UN Commissars of Climate Change By Claudia Rosett

Posted By on October 24th, 2016

It is one of the stock hypocrisies of United Nations climate careerists, that while deploring carbon-emitting travel by everyone else, they have turned the UN into a prodigious generator of long, lavish and frequent “climate-change” conferences, held in enticing or exotic locales worldwide — in places such as Bali, Rio, Cancun and Paris.

From around the globe, participants board airliners (many of their tickets subsidized by your tax dollars) and carbon-emit their way to the next jamboree. From these grand climate shindigs, UN officials emerge to promise that if we’ll just trust them to allocate a couple of things of ever-expanding scope — for instance, the wealth of the developed world and the energy flows of the planet — they will aim over the next century or so to fine-tune the temperature of the earth to within a few decimal points of where it was on Al Gore’s 60th birthday…or something like that.

It’s the kind of performance that needs a skeptical eye, and full access by an independent press. It should be cause for great alarm when the conference authorities start walling out any reporters they suspect might dissent from UN climate doctrine.

Which is exactly what’s going on. Next month, from Nov. 7-18, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is planning a huge conference in Marrakesh, Morocco. The UNFCCC has approved press passes for some 3,000 journalists who wish to cover this event.

But it seems that dissenters from UN dogma need not apply. The UNFCCC has refused accreditation to a Canadian media outlet, The Rebel Media, home to The Ezra Levant Show (full disclosure: I have been an occasional guest on this show, discussing topics including the UN).

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Explosive coolant being put into cars to fight global warming By Ed Straker

Posted By on October 24th, 2016

A new kind of explosive coolant called HFO-1234yf is being put into cars to fight global warming.

HFO-1234yf is already becoming standard in many new cars sold in the European Union and the United States by all the major automakers, in large part because its developers, Honeywell and Chemours, have automakers over a barrel. Their refrigerant is one of the few options that automakers have to comply with new regulations and the Kigali agreement.

It has its detractors. The new refrigerant is at least 10 times as costly as the one it replaces.

Daimler began raising red flags in 2012. A video the company made public was stark. It showed a Mercedes-Benz hatchback catching fire under the hood after 1234yf refrigerant leaked during a company simulation.

Daimler eventually relented and went along with the rest of the industry, installing 1234yf in many of its new cars.

“None of the people in the car industry I know want to use it,” said Axel Friedrich, the former head of the transportation and noise division at the Umweltbundesamt, the German equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency. He added that he opposed having another “product in the front of the car which is flammable.”

While cars, obviously, contain other flammable materials, he was specifically worried that at high temperatures 1234yf emitted hydrogen fluoride, which is dangerous if inhaled or touched.

The new coolant is superior to the HFC it is replacing in its impact on global warming.

Man made global warming is a myth, a fantasy; there has never even been a workable theory to even prove it (the current theory, that man-made carbon dioxide causes global warming, doesn’t work because most CO2 is produced naturally in the environment, not by industrial output). And yet our lives are risked, again and again, to protect us against this fantasy.