Facebook: This doesn't violate our community standards
Yes, Facebook really decided that this didn't violate their 'community standards.'
“Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may
violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important
part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed
the Page you reported for containing graphic violence and found it
doesn't violate our Community Standards.”
The following are reasons why a page would be removed:
Facebook removes hate speech, which includes content that directly attacks people based on their:
Race, Ethnicity, National origin, Religious affiliation, Sexual orientation, Sex, gender, or gender identity, or Serious disabilities or diseases.
Organizations and people dedicated to promoting hatred against these
protected groups are not allowed a presence on Facebook. As with all of
our standards, we rely on our community to report this content to us.
I wonder what would happen if we posted a 'Death to Islamic Terrorists' page.
You can find a petition against the 'Death to Israel' page here.
Ankara (Turkey) Mayor calls Marie Harf a dumb blonde
This is what happens, dear West, when your mind is so multi-culti open that your brains fall out. This is the result of years of coddling Islam. Now, Islam is biting you back. The Mayor of Ankara, Turkey, who answers to Barack Hussein Obama's Best Friend Forever Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says that State Department spokescritter Marie Harf is a dumb blonde (Hat Tip: Joshua I).
The mayor of Turkey’s capital has challenged a U.S. State Department
spokesperson by referring to a pro-government media report that slammed
her as “stupid blonde.”
“Come on blonde, answer now,” Ankara
Mayor Melih Gökçek said in a tweet early April 29. The tweet also
included an image from the recent riots in Baltimore, as well as the
photo of Marie Harf and a caption that reads: “Where are you stupid
blonde, who accused Turkish police of using disproportionate force?”
Gökçek
was referring to a report on Ensonhaber.com, a staunchly pro-government
online news website. “U.S. police displayed a harsh attitude against
the activists in Baltimore. But U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie
Harf, who had been repeatedly criticizing Turkey during the Gezi
incidents, is now silent,” it said.
Many national and
international organizations had criticized Turkish police officers for
using disproportionate force during the massive Gezi Park protests in
2013.
I can't say I disagree with his assessment of Harf. Still, any of Obama's predecessors (with the exception of Jimmy Carter) would have called in the Turkish ambassador over this.
Why is this religion different than all the other religions?
I'm sure you've all noticed that the media treat Muslims differently than anyone else. Daniel Greenfield points out that as soon as there's a Muslim terror attack (is there any other kind?), the media immediately trots out 'fear of an anti-Muslim backlash' stories.
The massacre at Charlie Hebdo was quickly followed by a massacre at a
kosher supermarket and somewhere in between them the Islamic State in
Nigeria had wiped out the populations of sixteen villages.
With so many Muslim attacks crowded together, the media had no choice
but to take a deep breath and dive in with its “Muslim backlash”
stories.
The Voice of America ran its “Muslims fear backlash” piece while the
bodies were still warm. The Los Angeles Times rushed out its “Muslims
fear backlash” story before the Kosher supermarket massacre. It quoted
the Muslim spokesman for the National Observatory Against Islamophobia
asserting that it is Muslims who suffer after such attacks. Muslims
however weren’t the ones who suffered. The four dead Jews at a Kosher
supermarket did the suffering at the hands of a Muslim gunman.
While Muslim murderers were still prowling France for victims, the
media was making the story about the perpetrators, not the victims.
...
Is it really a backlash that Muslims fear or a moral reckoning?
In the rush to make bigots like Walid the victims, instead of the
actual men and women being murdered in the name of his violent ideology,
the hard questions about the connection between the historical Islamic
anti-Semitism bandied about by Dawud Walid and the modern massacres of
Jews go unasked.
...
The root cause of Islamic violence is Islam. Everything else, from poverty to YouTube videos, is subsidiary at best.
The cries of “Islamophobia” and the claims of a backlash silence the
victims of Muslim terror and encourage social blindness to the next
Muslim attack against Jews, Christians, Atheists, Hindus, Buddhists and
countless others.
The Muslim backlash story is a great media tradition that dates back
to at least September 11. While the streets of downtown Manhattan were
still streaked with the ashes of the dead, the media began running
stories about Muslims who were changing their clothes and putting up
American flags out of fear that the maddened patriotic rabble would
shortly begin massacring Muslims.
The mass anti-Muslim riots after September 11 never materialized;
just as they never materialized after the Sydney Siege in Australia or
the latest Muslim massacres in France.
...
It is that sense of self-pitying Muslim victimization that leads easily
to Muslim violence. Violence is often sanctioned by victimhood. That
Muslims believe themselves to be the victims is nothing new. The Nazis
also believed that they were the victims. So did the Muslim killer in a
Kosher supermarket who claimed that ISIS, with its mass rapes and
genocidal campaign, was the victim of French intervention.
Why does the media treat Islam differently? Dennis Prager says it's political correctness.
Why did the Muslim terrorists go to a Jewish grocery? This is not a
riddle. We all know. But some in the media pretended they didn’t. During
the attack, a reporter for Sky News, one of the largest
English-language news services in the world, said on Fox News: “Whether
it was targeted specifically for its religious connotations it is
difficult to know.”
Is there one reader of this column who thought it “difficult to know” whether the Muslim terrorists targeted a Jewish grocery? Why would someone presumably intelligent say something so obviously stupid? In order to protect Islam.
Just
as so many in the media and government did after Major Nidal Hasan’s
murder of 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. They found it difficult to
ascertain if religion was a factor in his murders, despite his yelling
“Allahu akbar” while shooting, despite his listing himself as a “Soldier
of Allah” on his Facebook page, and despite many other affirmations of
Islamism.
A New York Times writer blamed it on Major
Hasan’s “snapping” (in an article titled “When Soldiers Snap”). Chris
Matthews said “it’s unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting.”
NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten explained that Hasan, though never in
combat, may have suffered from “pre-traumatic stress disorder.”
And the U.S. Department of Defense classified the Fort Hood shootings
as acts of “workplace violence,” not terror, let alone Islamic terror.
Perhaps
the most egregious example of a society’s elites treating Islam
differently from all other religions took place in the U.K. Between 1997
and 2013, at least 1,400 girls, as young as eleven years old, in the
small English city of Rotherham (population 275,000), were repeatedly
gang-raped and treated as sex slaves. The U.K. government acknowledged
that these atrocities were allowed to go on due to the fact the
perpetrators were British Pakistanis and the girls were white. No one
was allowed to say that at the time. The author of a 2002 report
identifying Pakistanis as the perpetrators and organizers of the
Rotherham gang rapes and sex slavery was sent to diversity training.
Finally, why won’t the New York Times print even one Charlie Hebdo
cartoon? Twelve people were slaughtered over those cartoons; are the
caricatures not newsworthy? Of course they are. But they satirize Islam,
and that is not allowed.
Here’s the ultimate irony. These PC professors and news media who treat
Islam so much better than any other religion are literally Islamophobic.
They really fear Islam.
But what is it they fear about Islam? Is it just the violence? No. It's the fact that Islam proves over and over again that learning to empathize with the 'other' doesn't make them change their behavior. That means that the conflict between Islam and non-Islamic society cannot be resolved. The PC media elites (and the Left) cannot admit that there is any problem in society that they cannot resolve.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR (in a broadcast on the day of the massacre, perhaps
even shortly after it took place, given that CNN considered it “Breaking
News”): On this day, these activists found their targets, and their
targets were journalists. This was a clear attack on the freedom of
expression, on the press, and on satire.
This is exactly how the Obama administration wants Americans to think about terrorism. Notice two words missing: Islamic terrorists.
Why Europe won't learn the lesson of Charlie Hebdo
Melanie Phillips (writing before Friday's attack on the Kosher supermarket in Paris) explains why last week's Charlie Hebdo attack will not awaken the West.
The fact is that Islamic terrorism and intimidation against the West
have been going on for decades, matched by displays of Western weakness
which merely encourage an enemy it refuses properly to identify.
Over
and over again, the West denies that these attacks have anything to do
with Islam. First it blamed poverty and exclusion among Muslims. Then
it blamed grievances around the world – Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir,
Palestine.
Then it blamed isolated madmen whose Muslim identity was irrelevant.
In
France before Christmas, attacks in which cars were used as battering
rams against crowds amid shouts of “Allahu akbar” were said by French
authorities to be unconnected with each other.
Yet Muslim
violence in France has clearly been out of control for years. Just look
at the repeated Islamic pogroms against French Jews, which have driven
thousands of them to emigrate. Yet none of those attacks provoked the
kind of outrage that followed this week’s atrocity. Is free speech more
important than the lives of French Jews? But the West refuses to join
up the dots. The Charlie Hebdo attackers shouted “Allahu akbar” and “We
are avenging the Prophet Muhammad.”
Yet Obama, Cameron, and
Hollande condemned the attack as merely “terrorism,” carefully omitting
to say what kind of terrorism this was.
This follows their
absurd statements that the Islamic State terrorist group has “nothing
to do with Islam” and that “no religion” condones that kind of
barbarism.
Really? What links Islamic State, al-Qaida, Hamas,
and Boko Haram? It’s a religion beginning with the letter I and ending
with M.
A very senior British civil servant once told me that
Islamist terrorism couldn’t be about Islam, because that would
“demonize” all Muslims. This absurd non-sequitur was like saying the
Inquisition had nothing to do with Catholicism, in order not to
demonize Catholics.
For sure, many Muslims are not only opposed
to Islamist terrorism but are its principal victims. But to pretend
that it is not rooted in a legitimate interpretation of the religion,
backed up by the historical evidence of centuries of aggressive and
violent Islamic conquest, is ridiculous.
If the West cannot even bring itself to acknowledge what it is up against, then it will surely be defeated by it.
Canada's PUBLIC broadcaster: 'Out of respect for Muslims, we won't show Mohamed'
@kufr666@PonyFortyTwo It is a central tenet of Islam that Muhammad not be depicted. Out of respect for viewers/readers, we don't show it.
— John Bowman (@johnbowman) January 9, 2015
John Bowman is a broadcaster for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) - the Canadian national (government financed) broadcaster.
Sorry, but other than racism, obscenity and violence (all of which are currently depicted on most public television in the West), I see no place for this type of political correctness. If our public broadcasters are going along with every demand, and they demand that we not depict the truth about them, how will people ever learn the truth? If you're offended, shut the television off.
New study by IDF reserve colonel says women don't belong in combat
A new book by an IDF reserve colonel that studied women's role in combat units says that the women shouldn't be there.
"The study found that a particularly high percentage of women who
served in combat roles suffered physical harm during their service and
will suffer for the rest of their lives from ruptured discs, stress
fractures in the pelvis, uterine prolapse and more,” Sagi told Maariv/NRG.
While men also suffer injuries during their military service, he
said, studies prove that the female rate of injury is much higher and
that the seriousness of the average injury is greater, with entire
platoons sometimes unable to function because of the physical state of
the female soldiers. The injuries referred to are incurred in training
and routine deployment – not actual combat.
"The idea that there is no difference between men and women in the
army is a ridiculous one that has been disproved in all of the world's
militaries,” Sagi insisted. “One cannot defeat evolution. In days in
which a meaningful reduction of the defense budget is required – there
is no doubt that the matter of placing women in combat roles requires
reassessment.”
"People will read the book and discover that they have been misled in
everything pertaining to women's service in the military,” he
predicted. “The integration of women in the army has not succeeded, but
everyone keeps shouting at us, that we must open before women the
remaining units that have not yet been opened to them. I do not know
what will help understand that this is a serious mistake.”
...
The book describes ludicrous measures by which women's lesser
suitabilty for combat roles is masked. These include lowering the bar of
requirements for women wishing to enter combat units, placing benches
next to walls that trainees jump over (only for the women to use),
running laps in circles (instead of straight-line runs from point A to
point B) to make it less obvious that the women are lagging behind the
men, and more.
The IDF told Maariv/NRG that Sagi's claims are “completely
baseless” and that women's integration into combat units has been a
success. “Female combat soldiers are dealt with in a supervised manner,
which takes into account their medical, physiological and social needs,”
the army said.
Waiting to see if the same people come out of the woodwork as did the last time I raised this issue.
Two combat soldiers expelled from IDF unit for refusing to expel Jews
Two combat soldiers from the Nachal Brigade have been expelled from their IDF unit for posting on Facebook that they would refuse to expel Jews from their homes.No, they didn't actually refuse to expel Jews - they only posted on Facebook that they would refuse.
Two IDF combat soldiers were dismissed on Thursday night from their
roles in the Nahal Brigade's Regiment 50, after they put photographs on
Facebook of themselves with signs vowing to refuse orders to expel Jews
from their homes.
The identities of the soldiers were revealed through an investigation ordered by Col. Yehuda Fuchs, commander of the Nahal Brigade, who decided to react harshly to the new protest
in which soldiers from various units photographed themselves with
similar signs opposing the expulsion of Jews, posting the pictures on
Facebook.
Soldiers taking part in the protest came from a variety of units aside from the Nahal infantry unit, including Givati, the Border Police and Air Force, reported the Hebrew-language site 0404 News.
The protest follows the eviction and demolition of homes in
the town of Ma'ale Rehavam, in Judea's Gush Etzion region, on
Wednesday. The town, along with the two Samaria communities of Givat Assaf and Ramat Gilad, was slated for dismantling by next Sunday by the Supreme Court. Residents in Givat Assaf agreed to dismantle their own homes to avoid a similar expulsion as occurred in Ma'ale Rehavam.
The IDF Spokesperson unit said of Thursday's protest that "the use of
social networks in this case as a tool for protest is unacceptable, and
harms the core values of the IDF as an army functioning in a democratic
country."
"In expulsion missions taking place at these times throughout Judea
and Samaria, IDF soldiers man 'rings' that secure the perimeter [around
the place of demolition]; until now there aren't known cases of refusing
or opposing conducting the mission," the statement concluded.
Soldiers have been arrested and rabbis indicted in the past for "inciting" IDF soldiers not to expel Jews from their homes.
Sorry, but that's a completely inappropriate mission for a fighting force. It's time to get rid of the political correctness in the IDF.
Andrew Klavan, explains why conservative opinion is so unwelcome in
Washington DC, Hollywood and the mainstream media: Because the debate is
over, the science is settled, and the time for talking is past.
Let's go to the videotape.
The debate over the Middle East will be over too if Obama gets his way. Fortunately, the 'Palestinians' are too tone deaf to get their act together to take advantage of it.
I guess the punishment depends upon whom you insult. I can't think of any other consistency in these punishments. Lots of punishment for insulting blacks, little or none for insulting Jews.
The two Knicks (Charlie Ward and Allan Houston) made their comments in a team locker room, while Donald Sterling made his in a private conversation with his girlfriend that she apparently recorded. Nicolas Anelka made his obscene gesture on the soccer pitch in front of thousands of people.
Don't tell me a major league sports owner has to set an example of sterling (pun unintentional and hello George Steinbrenner) character - I'll bet a lot more kids recognize Houston and Ward than recognize Sterling. And for cripes sake - Houston and Ward play in the same league that just banned Sterling.
But it's Sterling who was severely punished - a lifetime ban for a stupid remark during a private argument with his girlfriend. I see no explanation other than the fact that he insulted blacks, while Ward, Houston and Anelka all insulted Jews.
We're not worth much in the eyes of the PC police, are we?
What Ayaan Hirsi Ali would have said if Brandeis hadn't given in to the thought police
It's a pity that Brandeis University didn't live up to its seal of truth this week. As I reported earlier, they decided to withdraw an honorary degree from Ayaan Hirsi Ali due to her criticism of Islam. The Wall Street Journal has published the speech that Ms. Hirsi Ali planned to give. It's quite powerful (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
You deserve better memories than 9/11 and
the Boston Marathon bombing. And you are not the only ones. In Syria, at
least 120,000 people have been killed, not simply in battle, but in
wholesale massacres, in a civil war that is increasingly waged across a
sectarian divide.
Violence is escalating in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Libya,
in Egypt. And far more than was the case when you were born, organized
violence in the world today is disproportionately concentrated in the
Muslim world.
Another striking feature
of the countries I have just named, and of the Middle East generally, is
that violence against women is also increasing. In Saudi Arabia, there
has been a noticeable rise in the practice of female genital mutilation.
In Egypt, 99% of women report being sexually harassed and up to 80
sexual assaults occur in a single day.
Especially
troubling is the way the status of women as second-class citizens is
being cemented in legislation. In Iraq, a law is being proposed that
lowers to 9 the legal age at which a girl can be forced into marriage.
That same law would give a husband the right to deny his wife permission
to leave the house.
Sadly, the list
could go on. I hope I speak for many when I say that this is not the
world that my generation meant to bequeath yours. When you were born,
the West was jubilant, having defeated Soviet communism. An
international coalition had forced Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The next mission for American armed forces would
be famine relief in my homeland of Somalia. There was no Department of
Homeland Security, and few Americans talked about terrorism.
Two
decades ago, not even the bleakest pessimist would have anticipated all
that has gone wrong in the part of world where I grew up. After so many
victories for feminism in the West, no one would have predicted that
women's basic human rights would actually be reduced in so many
countries as the 20th century gave way to the 21st.
Today, however, I am going to predict a
better future, because I believe that the pendulum has swung almost as
far as it possibly can in the wrong direction.
When
I see millions of women in Afghanistan defying threats from the Taliban
and lining up to vote; when I see women in Saudi Arabia defying an
absurd ban on female driving; and when I see Tunisian women celebrating
the conviction of a group of policemen for a heinous gang rape, I feel
more optimistic than I did a few years ago. The misnamed Arab Spring has
been a revolution full of disappointments. But I believe it has created
an opportunity for traditional forms of authority—including patriarchal
authority—to be challenged, and even for the religious justifications
for the oppression of women to be questioned.
Yet for that opportunity to be fulfilled, we in the West must provide
the right kind of encouragement. Just as the city of Boston was once the
cradle of a new ideal of liberty, we need to return to our roots by
becoming once again a beacon of free thought and civility for the 21st
century. When there is injustice, we need to speak out, not simply with
condemnation, but with concrete actions.
It's a pity that Brandeis betrayed its seal and gave in to the thought police.
Mr. Justice Brandeis must be rolling over in his grave again. The thought police at Brandeis have decided that women's rights and anti-Islam activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not worthy of an honorary degree she was scheduled to receive at the school's commencement exercises next month.
April 8, 2014
Following
a discussion today between President Frederick Lawrence and Ayaan Hirsi
Ali, Ms. Hirsi Ali’s name has been withdrawn as an honorary degree
recipient at this year's commencement. She is a compelling public figure
and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work
to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the
world. That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that
are inconsistent with Brandeis University's core values. For all
concerned, we regret that we were not aware of these statements earlier.
Commencement is about celebrating and honoring our extraordinary
students and their accomplishments, and we are committed to providing an
atmosphere that allows our community's focus to be squarely on our
students. In the spirit of free expression that has defined Brandeis
University throughout its history, Ms. Hirsi Ali is welcome to join us
on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue about these important
issues.
Ali, a member of the Dutch Parliament from
2003 to 2006, has been quoted as making comments critical of Islam. That
includes a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine in which she said of the
religion, “Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful.
It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested
in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle
ground in wars.”
Brandeis, outside Boston in Waltham, Mass., said it was not aware of Ali’s statements earlier.
...
Ali was raised in a strict Muslim family, but
after surviving a civil war, genital mutilation, beatings and an
arranged marriage, she renounced the faith in her 30s. She declined to
comment this week to The Associated Press.
More than 85 of about 350 faculty members at
Brandeis signed a letter asking for Ali to be booted off the list of
honorary degree recipients. And an online petition created Monday by
students at the school of 5,800 had gathered thousands of signatures
from inside and outside the university as of Tuesday afternoon.
“This is a real slap in the face to Muslim
students,” said senior Sarah Fahmy, a member of the Muslim Student
Association who created the petition said before the university withdrew
the honor.
“But it’s not just the Muslim community that
is upset but students and faculty of all religious beliefs,” she said.
“A university that prides itself on social justice and equality should
not hold up someone who is an outright Islamophobic.”
Thomas Doherty, chairman of American studies,
refused to sign the faculty letter. He said it would have been great for
the university to honor “such a courageous fighter for human freedom
and women’s rights, who has put her life at risk for those values.”
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy group,
said, “It is unconscionable that such a prestigious university would
honor someone with such openly hateful views.”
The organization sent a letter to university President Frederick Lawrence on Tuesday requesting that it drop plans to honor Ali.
The website DoSomething.org first let the battle cry sound, asking Apple to take a closer look at its 800 emojis.
“The only two resembling people of colour are a guy who looks vaguely
Asian and another in a turban. There’s a white boy, girl, man, woman,
elderly man, elderly woman, blonde boy, blonde girl and, we’re pretty
sure, Princess Peach,” the petitioners wrote. “But when it comes to
faces outside of yellow smileys, there’s a staggering lack of minority
representation.
Apple’s head of communications, Katie Cotton, responded to the
criticism by stating that the software company was working to “update
the standard”. She did not say when such emojis would be introduced. The
last time the offering was updated was in 2012, when same-sex couples
were included.
“Digitalization means that we communicate ever more with pictures,”
said Rubin Dranger. “They have never been so important and so dominant
as today and therefore we also need to be conscious about what the
pictures represents.”
She told TT it was “obvious” that the emojis should represent everyone.
A reminder that I am in Chicago, where the Sabbath doesn't start for a long time....
An appearance by a New York City mayoral candidate at a Brooklyn synagogue has resulted in the New York Daily News taking a swipe at the mechitza that separates men from women during services at every Orthodox synagogue.
This morning's NY Daily News criticized the New York City
Republican mayoral candidate for being respectful of Jewish customs. In
the Orthodox Jewish tradition men and women are separated during prayer
services. When Republican candidate Joe Lhota visited the Shomer Shabbos
Synagogue on Wednesday, he stood in the back as a prayer service was
going on.
In the video above around the
46 second mark one can hear a member of the congregation ask Lhota to
have the women in his entourage wait outside because prayers were going
on.
Missouri State Fair officials and politicians on Sunday
condemned the performance of a rodeo clown who donned a mask resembling
President Obama during Saturday’s bull riding competition.
A tempest over the incident erupted after the Show Me Progress website reported a Facebook account of it.
The Facebook writer said he had taken a Taiwanese student to the
rodeo in Sedalia Saturday night. During the bull riding segment a rodeo
clown appeared wearing an Obama mask.
“The announcer wanted to know if anyone would like to see Obama run down by a bull,” the posting said. “The crowd went wild. He asked it again and again, louder each time, whipping the audience into a lather.”
Another clown then apparently joined the performance.
“One of the clowns ran up and started bobbling the lips on the mask and the people went crazy,” the posting said. “Finally
a bull came close enough to him that he had to move so he jumped up and
ran away to the delight of the onlookers hooting and hollering from the
stands.”
Numerous sources have pointed out that a similar incident occurred at the same state fair in 1994 involving a clown dressed as George W. Bush and there was no outrage (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). Show me that lack of bias: The rodeo's announcer has been forced to resign as a result of the incident (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). But of course, he claims he's protesting the fact that the clown wasn't banned.
An attorney for rodeo announcer Mark Ficken said that his
resignation from the group is not an acknowledgment of wrongdoing on his
part but rather a protest that the association has not banned the rodeo
clown from its membership.
Ficken's resignation from the rodeo
group comes as he tries to hold on to his job as superintendent of the
Boonville School District. The school system announced Monday that it is
hiring an investigator to look into whether Ficken was involved in any
"inappropriate conduct" during Saturday's bull riding event at the
Missouri State Fair in Sedalia.
Unfortunately, the clown has now been banned too. Tell me this doesn't reek of political correctness....
Missouri State Fair officials have now who wore a President Obama mask during a performance that mocked the president.
Fair officials also say they are
with the Missouri Rodeo Cowboys Association, which ran the event, and
that the association's personnel and performers must undergo sensitivity
training if they are to work with the fair again. That association,
meanwhile, has saying it wishes to "extend a sincere apology for the
inappropriate act during the Bull Riding at the Saturday performance of
the MRCA Rodeo."
...
Several news outlets have identified the performer in the Obama mask. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, one of those outlets,
of that man as saying the clown's act was "entertainment. ... He's
supposed to make the crowd laugh, and just like those shows, he made the
crowd laugh."
NPR has not independently confirmed the clown's identity.
But of course when it was Bush, it didn't matter. Disgraceful.
The CIA added Boston Marathon terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother Zubeidat to the terror watch list in 2011.
Previously U.S. officials have said
only that the FBI investigated Tamerlan. But in March 2011, the Russians
asked the FBI to look into Tsarnaev and his mother because of concerns
they were religious militants who planned to travel back to Russia, the
official said.
The FBI found nothing to link either
person to terrorism, and the FBI closed the investigations in June 2011.
Then, the Russians in the fall sent the same warning to the CIA. The
CIA asked the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center to add the mother’s
and son’s names to its huge, classified database of people known to be
terrorists and those who are suspected of having terror ties, called the
Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE.
Being in that database does not mean
the U.S. government has evidence that links someone to terrorism. About a
year ago, there were some 745,000 names in the database. Intelligence
analysts add names and partial names to TIDE when terror-related
intelligence is shared with them.
Tsarnaeva said it would not surprise her if she was listed in a U.S. terror database.
“It’s all lies and hypocrisy,” she
told the AP from Dagestan. “I’m sick and tired of all this nonsense that
they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular
person, and I’ve never been mixed up in any criminal intentions,
especially any linked to terrorism.”
Note the politically correct third paragraph. Political correctness is behind the failure to take proper precautions in the Tsarnaev case. This is from Breitbart.com's Big Peace.
Of particular concern is that around the same time the FBI was informed
about Tsarnaev, the Obama administration’s policies handling terrorism
relating in any way to Islamic extremists changed.
PJ Media’s Patrick Poole noted in May, 2012 that the FBI training manual's counter-terrorism lexicon made no mention of terrorism in regards to al Qaeda, Hamas, jihad, Islam, or the Muslim Brotherhood.
“The fact is religion has been expunged from counterterrorism training,”
said counterterrorism specialist with the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies Sebastian Gorka to the Washington Times. He added, “The FBI can’t talk about Islam and they can’t talk about jihad.”
In October of 2011, an organization called “Muslim Advocates,” a group
composed of fifty-seven Muslim advocacy groups from across the country,
signed and sent a letter to high level Obama administration officials.
They urged the administration to enact a widespread purge within law
enforcement departments and agencies of any materials that could be
deemed biased or discriminatory against Muslims.
The letter was sent to then-Counterterrorism and Deputy National
Security Advisor (now CIA Director) John Brennan, as well as Attorney
General Eric Holder, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary
of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller,
National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and Deputy National Security
Advisor Denis McDonough.
The Boston Marathon terror attack and the news that members of the Tsarnaev family were marked as potential terrorists ought to raise a huge red warning flag for the United States. Either the US must kill its political correctness or the political correctness will kill it.
Satire: The Boston Marathon bombing -- The FBI investigates
For those of you who viewed the previous post, you have seen this already. This is the main skit of this week's LATMA tribal update and it looks at the FBI investigation into the Boston Marathon terror attack..
Let's go to the videotape.
The sad part is that this satire is not far away from the reality.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Tuesday, February 19.
The last refuge of anti-Israel activists
A few weeks ago, the New York Times reported Pro Palestinian speakers attract protests outside.
The event at Brooklyn college was a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions
(BDS) event focused on delegitimizing Israel. To read the New York Times
account, one doesn't get a sense of what was controversial about the
event:
Controversy had grown over the past week at the Midwood college,
where nearly a fifth of the undergraduate population is Jewish, over the
event organized by a student group, Students for Justice in Palestine.
The college’s political science department agreed to co-sponsor the
speakers along with more than two dozen other groups.
Jewish leaders on and off campus had criticized the college and its
president, Karen L. Gould, for sponsoring the talk, which they said
helped legitimize the B.D.S. movement, which refers to Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions. Its goal is to pressure Israel to restore
disputed territories and grant equal rights to Palestinians.
Throughout the week, the right to academic freedom served as the
backbone to arguments in favor of the college’s sponsorship of the
event.
In support of the event there was a New York Times editorial, Litmus tests:
One dispiriting lesson from Chuck Hagel’s nomination for defense
secretary is the extent to which the political space for discussing
Israel forthrightly is shrinking. Republicans focused on Israel more
than anything during his confirmation hearing, but they weren’t seeking
to understand his views. All they cared about was bullying him into a
rigid position on Israel policy. Enforcing that kind of orthodoxy is not
in either America’s or Israel’s interest.
Brooklyn College is facing a similar trial for scheduling an event on
Thursday night with two speakers who support an international boycott
to force Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories.
While this page has criticized Israeli settlements, we do not advocate a
boycott. We do, however, strongly defend the decision by the college’s
president, Karen Gould, to proceed with the event, despite withering
criticism by opponents and threats by at least 10 City Council members
to cut financing for the college. Such intimidation chills debate and
makes a mockery of the ideals of academic freedom.
Really now. There's no litmus test being demanded to show if someone is
pro-Israel or not. However someone who thinks that American governmental
institutions controlled by Israel or who thinks that Israel is
illegitimate to the point that it must be boycotted like South Africa
was, can safely be said not to be pro-Israel. Furthermore to argue that
the BDS movement is simply an anti occupation protest, ignores what BDS leaders really say.
Among the cultural institutions a boycott might target are those
Israeli universities that are judged to be either actively in league
with the government’s policies toward the Palestinians, or complicit
with those policies by virtue of remaining silent while they are being
implemented. To the charge that a boycott of academic institutions is a
violation of academic freedom, B.D.S. supporters reply that because the
state of Israel abrogates the academic freedom of Palestinian
professors and students (by denying them funding, access and mobility),
it is an affirmation, not a derogation, of academic freedom to refrain
from engaging in intellectual commerce with Israeli universities. You
can’t invoke academic freedom, they say, when you’re denying it to
others. So the lines of battle are set with both sides claiming to be
academic freedom’s champion, and it is easy to see why a college might
be thought to be an appropriate venue for a discussion of the matter.
But a number of New York city politicians didn’t see it that way, and
they proceeded to say the predictable wrong things. On Jan. 29, nine
members of the Council of the City of New York wrote in a letter to the
president of Brooklyn College, Karen L. Gould, to declare that, along
with others, they found it “offensive” that the college was giving
“official support and sponsorship to speakers who equate terrorists with
progressives and the Israeli people with Nazis.” Indeed so offended
were they that they reminded Gould, in a tone of unmistakable threat,
that as legislators they had many calls on the funds at their disposal,
and that by persisting in its plan to host the event, the college risked
financial loss: ‘We do not believe this program is what the taxpayers
of our city…want their tax money to be spent on.”
The answer to this is simple: taxpayers, through their representatives,
decide whether to support a college, but once that decision has been
made in the affirmative, taxpayers and their representatives must allow
the institution they have created to carry out its mission, which is not
to reflect or ratify the ideas the public favors, but to subject all
ideas, including those the public dislikes, to the scrutiny of rational
deliberation. It can’t be the case that a program or a course must be
approved by popular vote before a college can sponsor it or put it in
the catalog. What taxpayers have bought when they fund an institution of
higher education is the independent judgment of credentialed teachers
and scholars. If they wanted an echo chamber that sent their own views
back to them, they could have funded a talk-radio show.
Of course the real question whether this was about a free and open
exchange of ideas. Lori Lowenthal Marcus reports that pro-Israel
supporters were disinvited and expelled from the event.
PRECEDING THE FEB. 7 EVENT Prior to the event there was much heated
debate over whether it was appropriate for Brooklyn College, a
publicly-funded university, to host the one-sided BDS event at all and
whether the political science department should have endorsed and
supported it.
The administration issued statements defending the department
sponsorship on the basis of academic freedom and the marketplace of
ideas. Admitting that the school-sponsored event only offered one side
of an extremely controversial and divisive event, these statements
claimed there was no suppression of ideas or speech because anyone would
be able – and all were encouraged – to “attend, listen and fully
debate.” The BDS supporters got the green light from the school and the
event took place.
THE CLAIM OF CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS Several pro-Israel students say
attempts were made to intentionally block their attendance – some
successfully – that non-conforming viewpoints were silenced and that
Jewish pro-Israel students were rounded up and thrown out of a “public”
event simply for having the “wrong” ideas.
A recording of the event, published by the Algemeiner Journal supports the claim that the pro-Israel students did nothing to disrupt the event.
It appears that those who claim a mantle of academic freedom to promote their anti-Israel agenda, are not so open about debate.
Though the political science department referred to the event as a
"forum," only one view - extreme anti-Israel activism - is represented.
Professor Butler so despises Israel that she has unapologetically
whitewashed Israel's foes, labeling Hamas and Hezbollah "social
movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a
global left."
Barghouti, meanwhile, hypocritically urges Americans to boycott all
Israeli professors, as he benefits from these same academics as a
student at Tel Aviv University.
...
The BDS double standard smacks of anti-Semitism: Targeting Israel and
only Israel, advocates hold the world's only Jewish state to a far
different standard than other democracies, much less Islamic, African,
or Latin American dictatorships. Amidst flowery anti-imperialist
rhetoric, the movement misleadingly implies that ending specific Israeli
policies, generally deemed "apartheid," would satisfy its backers. In
fact, BDS supporters envision the replacement of Israel as a Jewish
state with a bi-national, majority Palestinian, entity.
Is calling terrorist organizations "social movements" really an exercise
of academic freedom? Recall that Fish readily accepted the view of BDS
that they were really promoting academic freedom by punishing Israel
when you read of Barghouti's academic background. Are Palestinians
really denied academic freedom by Israel?
Have we seen editorials in the New York Times condemning Abu Dhabi for its arrest of a professor or questioning whether Saudi influence in the sciences deserves scrutiny? Did the New York Times question the motives of Prince Alwaleed in financing academic institutions, such as Georgetown,
and the influence he may have? In these three cases at issue was the
academic integrity of different institutions. That's where issues of
academic freedom ought to be raised.
In the case of Brooklyn College at issue was an activist, non-academic
event supported by the faculty and administration of the institution.
Did they, in any way, taint their academic standards by sponsoring a
clearly partisan event? Or does the New York Times believe that the only
standard for "academic freedom" is if an academic institution supports
anti-Israel activities?
Well, Dr. Ben Carson did say in his speech that he thought doctors should get involved in politics. Carson was blasted on CNN on Sunday morning by J Street Jan Schakowsky (D-Il).
Schakowsky accused Carson of using political correctness, rather than
fighting it: “Well, I think that there’s a political correctness that
he was trying to use to appeal to a conservative audience,” she said,
shaking her head. She went on to criticize Carson for making a
“political speech” in front of Obama and in a specifically religious
context.
I think it’s really--not really an appropriate place to make this
kind of political speech, and to invoke God as support for that kind of
view. But I think of most of all the kind of message that he was giving
shows a real empathy gap with where the American people are right now,
and I think it’s reflective of where many of the Republicans and Tea
Parties are right now, that we need to have an economy that works for
everyone.
In his address, Carson had specifically avoided taking a partisan
point of view, noting that the American bald eagle needed both a “right
wing” and a “left wing” to take flight.
Go back and watch the Carson video and notice that Michelle Obama was applauding at the end of the speech. Maybe Michelle didn't get it? Nah, that can't be. She's a genius....
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
