Tabitha Korol: Villainy at Vassar

Vassar College, a private, coeducational college in Poughkeepsie, NY, has gone from prestigious to pernicious, by reason of its support for the Islamic invasion of the West (America and Europe) and its biased programs against Israel and Jews. Complicit are eight of the college’s 54 academic departments (including “Jewish” studies) that invite radical speakers, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and others who advocate the BDS movement (boycott, divestment, sanctions), against Israeli products and American companies that conduct business with Israel.

Jashir Puar, Rutger’s infamous professor of women’s and gender study, who is herself conflicted with, among other things, her own gender identity, was a recent guest speaker. She vigorously demonizes Israel, the only Middle Eastern country that would permit her, a homosexual, to live. Without a shred of evidence, she employed the vicious, centuries-old blood libel and accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of harvesting Palestinian organs, adding that Israelis are poisoning Palestinians with elements, such as Uranium, to stunt their growth. Curiously, she did not mention a Michigan State University report in 2014 about two dozen Syrians who ate the hearts of their victims and died of Kuru, a neuro-degenerative disorder associated with cannibalism. Two others were hospitalized for treatment in Germany.

Puar is one of several who present preposterous indictments against Israel to academia’s captive audiences – the unwitting students who listen raptly and the spineless faculty who remain mute during these hate-mongering sessions. Puar, who has been declared a “crackpot” by the NY Daily News, is a dangerous crackpot, who now disallows recordings of her lectures.

Psychologically at odds with her gender and consumed by hatred, Puar favors tyrannical Islam, whose police patrol the streets to enforce Sharia on all and would likely condemn her to 500 – 1,000 lashes and imprisonment, or execution. (The highest number of lashes recorded by Amnesty International was 40,000 for murder.) However, the rich and powerful are explicitly permitted to practice pedophilia, citing supportive versus from the Qur’an and the examples of Muhammed.

If Palestinian growth is indeed stunted, as the professor contends without substantiation, blame may rest with theQur’an, which declares that Allah made marriage with first cousins acceptable and lawful because Mohammed seduced his first cousin and children as young as 9, and endorses other sexual activities with infants.

Further, consanguineous marriages – those between blood relatives – are an integral feature in Islam, accounting for more than half of all marriages in some nations and leading to a higher incidence of offspring with genetic disorders. Perhaps Islam produces these impaired children to be sacrificed to war and suicide, with a double purpose of culling out the defective results of inbreeding and assuaging the revulsion that accompanies incest and rape.

In 2014, Vassar’s Hillel Union, part of 100-year-old network of Jewish students, professionals and leaders dedicated to enriching the Jewish campus experience, chose to re-define itself as “Open Hillel.” This is nothing less than abandoning their rules that protect Israel and Jewish students, and revealing their willingness to host anti-Semitic speakers (including Students for Justice in Palestine – SJP) who advocate to boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) against Israel.

On February 17, 2016, after several years of discriminatory events and adverse publicity, one outspoken alumnus, CAMERA fellow Jason Storch, succeeded in bringing Palestinian Human Rights Activist Bassem Eid to speak in condemnation of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the BDS campaign, and to reveal some truths about Israel. Nevertheless, the Vassar Student Association, motivated by the SJP and forty faculty members, enacted their BDS Resolution 30-x.

Obama’s Svengali By: Srdja Trifkovic

In an interview with FOX News aired on Sunday, April 10, President Barack Obama said that failing to prepare for the aftermath of the ousting of Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi was the worst mistake of his presidency. He added that intervening in Libya nevertheless had been “the right thing to do.”

The second part of Obama’s statement is incomprehensible. The intervention was a debacle. No less than Iraq, Libya would have been better off without the U.S. doing “the right thing.” The country has descended into Hobbesian mayhem. It is today a paradigmatic “failed state” ruled by competing militias. Today’s Libya is a safe haven for thousands of battle-hardened jihadists. According to General David Rodriguez, head of U.S. Africa Command, the current number of ISIS fighters in Libya is “around 4 to 6,000,” twice the group’s size estimated last year. The North African redoubt of the Islamic State—strongest by far outside Iraq and Syria—has prompted some of Obama’s advisors to press for a second American military intervention in Libya. The country is the greatest threat to the region’s stability—notably in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, in Nigeria (Boko Haram) and Mali—and it is the main point of departure for hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim migrants flooding into Europe.

Even more alarming is the possibility that the main architect of the Libyan disaster will be the next occupant of the White House. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last January that he thought then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “influence was pivotal in persuading the President to broaden the goal in Libya beyond just saving the people in Benghazi” from the alleged threat presented by Qaddafi’s army, and “essentially focusing more on regime change. The President told me that it was one of the closest decisions he’d ever made, sort of 51-49, and I’m not sure that he would’ve made that decision if Secretary Clinton hadn’t supported it.” Gates later recalled asking, “Can I finish the two wars I’m already in before you guys go looking for a third one?” Colonel Qaddafi, he said, “was not a threat to us anywhere. He was a threat to his own people, and that was about it.”

Scientific American: Climate Refugees of Syria Jan Mel Poller

This is not about whether climate change is real or not. This is about people believing a leader so much that they will believe and say things that are totally absurd. We should all be careful not to fall into the same trap.Scientific American is the oldest periodical published in the United States. It was first published in 1845, 171 years ago. I have been reading Scientific American since I started college as a physics major back in January, 1957. I enjoy reading a wide range of articles on medicine, cosmology, physics, archeology, paleontology and whatever else they publish.

In the last few years they have added Politically Correct articles and that bothers me.

The March, 2016 issue features the article “Climate Refugees of Syria” under the category “Sustainability”. The title:

The Ominous Story of Syria’s Climate Refugees

Farmers who have escaped the battle-torn nation explain how drought and government abuse have driven social violence

This article is written in the fine tradition of Rolling Stone’s college rape story. It is the story of Kemal Ali. In true pseudo-documentary tradition, that is not his real name so you can’t possibly check out the story.

Kemal Ali was a well driller. Because of a drought, exasperated by Climate Change, the water table fell so far that he could no longer drill to it and lost his income. There is mention of corruption that made well drilling impossibly expensive. He decided to go through Turkey to Greece and Europe. No mention is made about how he would make a living in Europe.

The article says the drought lasted from 2006 to 2010. It ended 6 years ago. On the way, the bus he was in was attacked. He was wounded and lost the use of his legs so now he languishes in a camp on the Greek isle of Lesbos.So we have a nice, personalized drama.Did Syrians flee Syria during the 2006-2010 drought? Nope.

If you asked Syrians why they fled their homes, do you think any one of them would say “Climate change, of course. Our average temperature is 1o warmer now”? Is it more likely they would say, “I feared Assad’s barrel bombs and poison gas and I feared Da’esh (ISIS) cutting off my head after raping my wife”?

The Syrians fled Syria for Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. All share the same climate and the same drought. They don’t share Da’esh.

California has a drought. Californians are fleeing California for other states. Why? Not for the drought. It is because it has become a high-tax state with a “progressive” government. California is working now to end their water problems. They are working with Israeli companies to solve their water shortage the same way Israel solved its water shortage problems.

The obvious answer to Syria’s water problem is to make peace with Israel and use Israeli technology to end the water problems as they have done in Israel.

I am left with the impression that the article is to provide support for the Progressive Agenda. I do not understand how this was in a scientific magazine and not a political one. The only thing it really says about climate is that there was a drought and climate change made it worse.

Dear attorneys general, conspiring against free speech is a crime: Glenn Reynolds by Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Federal law makes it a felony “for two or more persons to agree together to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the Unites States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).”

I wonder if U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, or California Attorney General Kamala Harris, or New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have read this federal statute. Because what they’re doing looks like a concerted scheme to restrict the First Amendment free speech rights of people they don’t agree with. They should look up 18 U.S.C. Sec. 241, I am sure they each have it somewhere in their offices.

Here’s what’s happened so far. First, Schneiderman and reportedly Harris sought to investigate Exxon in part for making donations to groups and funding research by individuals who think “climate change” is either a hoax, or not a problem to the extent that people like Harris and Schneiderman say it is.

This investigation, which smacks of Wisconsin’s discredited Putin-style legal assault on conservative groups and their contributors, was denounced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Hans Bader as unconstitutional. Bader wrote:

Should government officials be able to cut off donations to groups because they employ people disparaged as “climate change deniers?” … Only a single-issue zealot with ideological blinders and a contempt for the First Amendment would think so. …

Subpoenaed Into Silence on Global Warming By Megan McArdle

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is getting subpoenaed by the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands to cough up its communications regarding climate change. The scope of the subpoena is quite broad, covering the period from 1997 to 2007, and includes, according to CEI, “a decade’s worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI’s work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information.”

My first reaction to this news was “Um, wut?” CEI has long denied humans’ role in global warming, and I have fairly substantial disagreements with CEI on the issue. However, when last I checked, it was not a criminal matter to disagree with me. It’s a pity, I grant you, but there it is; the law’s the law.

(I pause to note, in the interests of full disclosure, that before we met, my husband briefly worked for CEI as a junior employee. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.)

Speaking of the law, why on earth is CEI getting subpoenaed? The attorney general, Claude Earl Walker, explains: “We are committed to ensuring a fair and transparent market where consumers can make informed choices about what they buy and from whom. If ExxonMobil has tried to cloud their judgment, we are determined to hold the company accountable.”

That wasn’t much of an explanation. It doesn’t mention any law that ExxonMobil may have broken. It is also borderline delusional, if Walker believes that ExxonMobil’s statements or non-statements about climate change during the period 1997 to 2007 appreciably affected consumer propensity to stop at a Mobil station, rather than tootling down the road to Shell or Chevron, or giving up their car in favor of walking to work.

LGBT Toileting: It’s No Longer the Ladies’ Room and the Men’s Room : Janet Levy

PayPal and Apple are incensed that the State of North Carolina restricts public toilet usage to those possessing the actual anatomy corresponding to respective restroom designations. With an estimated .3% of the population classified as “transgender,” according to UCLA LGBT demographer, Gary Gates, you would think that PayPal and Apple would be shooting themselves in the foot by putting political correctness before the protection of women and children from sexual predators. However, in solidarity with the LGBT movement, Facebook and Google, among other businesses and the usual “civil rights” groups, have closed ranks to declare the North Carolina law “out of line with their core values.” Have we really come to the point where mandating male usage of the ladies’ room is a core value?

PayPal CEO, Daniel Schulman, earning his social justice warrior stripes, withdrew plans to open a North Carolina facility that would have brought 400 new jobs to the Charlotte area after learning that the state legislature enacted a law – the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act or HB2 – prohibiting people from using restrooms of the opposite sex. (Yes, that’s “sex,” not “gender.”) PayPal contends that the law “perpetuates discrimination” and “violates the values and principles” of their mission and culture. And you thought PayPal was just in the business of operating an online payment system!

Ironically, in 2011, PayPal had no qualms about opening a global operations center in Malaysia, where homosexual activity is illegal and punished with harsh prison sentences and whippings. Not to be outdone on the hypocrisy score, openly gay Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has taken North Carolina to task for being “anti-gay” but somehow manages to have the moral wherewithal to operate stores in Saudi Arabia, where homosexuals are routinely executed in public.

Contrary to the standard Millennial educational fare of the “diversity of opinion-deprived” campus as well as the twilight zone of Common Core in which “Heather has two mommies” and “Melea has two Dads,” there is a difference (viva la difference!) between “sex” and “gender.”

Rachel Ehrenfeld: Obligated to Iran

Since February 2013, Iran has received billions of dollars in sanctions relief as incentives to attend negotiations with the United States and others in Geneva. However, from March 2012, until January 2016, when the U.S. lifted the sanctions, Iranian banks were not connected to the Belgium-based SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system.
“Nobody could pay the Iranians via normal lines, not even in euros,” a European oil trader was quoted saying. Then how did the regime access the payments and the billions of dollars it was given?
Following Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s complaint that Iran’s banks are still under sanctions (due to its sponsorship of international terrorism), the Obama administration decided to circumvent U.S. anti-money laundering laws to help Iran’s economy.
Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has pointed out that the Obama administration’s plan, allowing Iran “access to U.S. dollars through offshore clearinghouses,” undermines U.S. and international anti-money laundering laws.” His Washington Post article last week argued the “U.S. must not aid and abet Iranian money laundering.”
But under the Obama administration, Americans have been witnessing, and many have accustomed to the president’s disregard to laws governing his own country.

MY SAY: A “YUGE” RESEMBLANCE TO “YUGO”

I think comparing Trump’s antics and his cooing fans to Nazis or Stalin are wrong. Those mass killers are in a different and more vile league. He is more akin to Latin American tin pot dictators- those who were populists, promised great reforms, challenged the status quo, and corrupt governments, got elected by large margins and went on to ruin their nations’ hopes for change. I think of men like Venezuela’s late and unlamented Hugo Chavez.

In 1998, in a nation with a tanking economy in spite of one of the world’s great oil reserves, and a public distrust of government’s theft and repressions, Chavez began an unlikely quest for the presidency. His populist appeal resonated with a public distrustful of “inside politics” and corruption. By December 5, 1998 he won 56 percent of the votes.

As president he stacked his government with cronies, he abolished term limits, bypassed all existing restraints on presidential powers. He embarked on systematic appropriation of industry, communications, electric, and construction materials such as steel and cement. He nationalized all oil reserves and expropriated farms and woodland. He shut down opposition media and enacted laws making criticism or parody of his government a felony.

He also said outrageous things:

At the UN in March 2007 Chávez compared President Bush to the devil…in his own lofty words: “The devil came here yesterday. Right here … it smells of sulphur still today. It was almost mild compared to his insult on September 2006 when he told the American President : “You are a donkey, Mr. Danger.” On Septembr 12th 2006, he announced that it was very likely that the United States was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Nonetheless, he got a pass from the media and his deluded fans.

In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted eleventh in the list of “Heroes of our time” and in 2006 he was Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year.”

Trump is not a criminal like Chavez, but he is an unprincipled megalomaniac, whose insatiable lust for power will make him a ruinous president with catastrophic and irreversible consequences.

Steve Chapman the writer and columnist for the Chicago Tribune warned in a column “History Repeating as Farce” in 2007:
“A phony revolution may nonetheless be a durable one. If the Venezuelans who go to the polls give Chávez what he wants, they are likely to discover a paradox: They can bring about dictatorship through democracy, but not the reverse.

Now there’s a sobering thought forTrump’s deluded supporters…..rsk

Iran’s Missiles and the Obama Doctrine by Clifford Smith

The United States is facing a humiliation of the first order resulting from almost comically provocative Iranian test launches of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles earlier this month and the lack of any real response from Washington, save for largely symbolic sanctions. For the Obama Administration, a recent interview suggests it sees this humiliation and loss of credibility not as a serious problem, but as a successful application of the “Obama Doctrine.”

Iran’s missile launches violated the spirit of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which lifted international sanctions on Iran when it agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regulating its nuclear program. This suggests that the Ayatollahs in Iran have no intention of getting “right with the world” as Obama once suggested, and intend to continue their revolutionary goals. Lest anyone fail to grasp that point, the missiles were inscribed with the words “Israel must be wiped off the Earth,” in Hebrew.

Iran’s ayatollahs have no intention of getting ‘right with the world,’ as Obama once suggested.

Yet the Russians are blocking any attempt to invoke 2231 to sanction Iran on the grounds that its language does not explicitly forbid this behavior. They’re right. Paragraph 3 of Annex A of 2231 states, “Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology” for a period of up to eight years after the JCPOA goes into effect. Resolution 1929, a previous Iran sanctions resolution, did explicitly forbid it, stating, “Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.”

Free Speech on Trial: What Message Is Being Sent? by George Igler

This miscarriage of justice being orchestrated against Geert Wilders is merely one aspect of the many prosecutions being carried out under laws less about prevention and punishment of actual crimes, and more about criminalizing dissent against the demographic transformation of Europe.

After terror outrages in the name of Islam, its apologists perform defensive operations that try to render Islamic doctrine immune from scrutiny.

The eagerness with which social media giants, such as Facebook and Twitter, have imposed a policy of enforced silence — in concert with Europe’s leaders — is a further irony that will not be lost on future historians.

If the criminal justice systems of European nations continue to pursue charges against whoever questions or criticizes Islam, what hope is there then for the silent members of the Muslim community who might wish to speak out?

The spread of jihad is irreparably undermining Europe’s post-War reputation as a continent of security and peace.

In addition, free speech seems increasingly regarded by mainstream politicians as dangerous and archaic. Diversity of opinion often appears seen as an obstacle to multiculturalism, the objective of which, ironically, is diversity.

These dual trends are set to come to a head in the Netherlands next year, in elections set to follow the conclusion of the trial of Dutch MP Geert Wilders this November. Wilders is the leader the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, or PVV), which currently tops the country’s polls. He faces imprisonment on a charge of hate speech, for saying that the Netherlands could use “fewer Moroccans.”

As Wilders outlined in his opening statement to the court on March 18, the politically-motivated bias against him of one of the judges is a matter of public record. Moreover, despite ample demonstration by Wilders’s defense of the forgery of a group of the criminal complaints that initiated his prosecution, his trial nevertheless continues.

This miscarriage of justice being orchestrated against Wilders is merely one aspect of the many prosecutions being carried out under laws less about prevention and punishment of actual crimes, and more about criminalizing dissent against the demographic transformation of Europe.