The rocket attack came ahead of PA President Mahmoud Abbas scheduled speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday following heightened tensions in Jerusalem during the high holiday season.
Just in time to claim victim status again…
But at last check? Firing a rocket at civilians is a war crime.
Hamas and Fatah are part of a Unity Government.
Abbas should be arrested as a war criminal the moment he lands in NYC….
Maybe Israel will live up to it's evil reputation and simply drone strike his ass..
Yesterday’s announcement that Iraq is going to engage in intelligence sharing with Russia and Syria has been met negatively by Pentagon officials, who say that it “complicates” the US war and dramatically weakens America’s own intelligence gathering abilities.
This problem appears to be largely a function of US annoyance at the information sharing, which means the Pentagon intends to limit intelligence sharing with Iraq, seemingly out of spite, and will subsequently get less intelligence from Iraq in return.
Iraqi Defense Ministry officials revealed today that they are also open to the idea of Russia carrying out surveillance flights over Iraqi airspace, likely reflecting their desire to keep getting reports from a foreign air force, even if it’s not the US.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren criticized the Russian efforts, but insisted the US war would continue with or without intelligence sharing. He suggested Iraq should’ve recognized that they were already “well-served” by US surveillance flights over their country and spurned Russia’s offer.
The Russians are assholes, alright. Country is collapsing, losing population, drinking itself to death, soon to be broke, but by God Pooty knows how to kill moslems when he wants to do so. See the remains of Chechnya..
I have lots of sympathy for Pooty in that regard. Of the 20 some convicts in the world today over 90% are the moslems vs. whomever the nearest neighbor might be......in Russia, in China, in the Philippines, in India, with Israel...you name it, if there's a conflict there's almost always moslems behind it....
conflicts, not convicts.....though if there were justice in the world, 90% if the convicts would be moslems too....the only group that always wants to crash the party....
We have gone from the victory-at-any-cost mindset of World War II to the exit-at-any-cost mindset of the Obama years......
.............. “It’s too hard” and “I don’t want to play” are not acceptable answers because what they produce is precisely what we have gotten: adversaries seizing the initiative and setting in motion a potential permanent redistribution of power and influence in a strategically important region of the world. (By the way, this will soon include Afghanistan, another place the U.S. plan for getting the heck out of Dodge has floundered. Iran is already seeking greater influence in that country as stumbling and political infighting in Kabul and the rise of IS have raised the specter of growing instability in that battered land.)
Voice Leave it to Vlad (and the Supreme Leader)
The Obama plan to exit the Middle East now becomes clear.
(By the way, this will soon include Afghanistan, another place the U.S. plan for getting the heck out of Dodge has floundered. Iran is already seeking greater influence in that country as stumbling and political infighting in Kabul and the rise of IS have raised the specter of growing instability in that battered land.)
Obama is a disaster. The only question is whether he is intentionally so, or not.
I keep getting SOS signals from the Rand Paul Campaign, begging for money..... I notice he is turning his attention to raising money to stay in the Senate.............
He will drop out soon. Huckabee too is sinking really fast.....the herd is thinning......
Meanwhile, over on the Democratic side of things, all the talk is whether Drinkin' Joe Biden the Plagiarist is going to jump aboard the clown car.......
It is not the Republican Party that needs an exorcist these days.......Criminal H. Clinton, Venezuela Bernie, Drinkin' Joe......Good God !
Revisiting the Kennedy Assassination for the umpteenth time -
September 29, 2015 A Shot Fired From Grassy Knoll?
George Lardner, Washington Post
The House Assassinations Committee may have been right after all: There was a shot from the grassy knoll.
That was the key finding of the congressional investigation that concluded 22 years ago that President John F. Kennedy's murder in Dallas in 1963 was "probably . . . the result of a conspiracy." A shot from the grassy knoll meant that two gunmen must have fired at the president within a split-second sequence. Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of firing three shots at Kennedy from a perch at the Texas School Book Depository, could not have been in two places at once.
A special panel of the National Academy of Sciences subsequently disputed the evidence of a fourth shot, contained on a police dictabelt of the sounds in Dealey Plaza that day. The panel..............
The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald reports that the California senator and her military-contractor husband Richard Blum are essentially blackmailing the University of California into punishing students who speak out against Israel.
From The Intercept:
One of the most dangerous threats to campus free speech has been emerging at the highest levels of the University of California system, the sprawling collection of 10 campuses that includes UCLA and UC Berkeley. The university’s governing Board of Regents, with the support of University President Janet Napolitano and egged on by the state’s legislature, has been attempting to adopt new speech codes that — in the name of combating “anti-Semitism” — would formally ban various forms of Israel criticism and anti-Israel activism.
Under the most stringent such regulations, students found to be in violation of these codes would face suspension or expulsion. In July, it appeared that the Regents were poised to enact the most extreme version, but decided instead to push the decision off until September, when they instead would adopt non-binding guidelines to define “hate speech” and “intolerance.”
One of the Regents most vocally advocating for the most stringent version of the speech code is Richard Blum, the multi-millionaire defense contractor who is married to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. At a Regents meeting last week, reported the Los Angeles Times, Blum expressly threatened that Feinstein would publicly denounce the university if it failed to adopt far more stringent standards than the ones it appeared to be considering, and specifically demanded they be binding and contain punishments for students found to be in violation. ... Blum’s verbatim comments at the Regents meeting are even creepier than [The San Francisco Chronicle’s] reporting suggests:
“I should add that over the weekend my wife, your senior Senator, and I talked about this issue at length. She wants to stay out of the conversation publicly but if we do not do the right thing she will engage publicly and is prepared to be critical of this university if we don’t have the kind of not only statement but penalties for those who commit what you can call them crimes, call them whatever you want. Students that do the things that have been cited here today probably ought to have a dismissal or a suspension from school. I don’t know how many of you feel strongly that way but my wife does and so do I.”
... The specific UC controversy is two-fold: whether, in combating “anti-semitism,” the university should adopt the State Department’s controversial 2010 definition of that term, and separately, whether students who express ideas that fall within that definition should be formally punished up to and including permanent expulsion. What makes the State Department definition so controversial — particularly for an academic setting — is that alongside uncontroversial and obvious examples of classic bigotry (e.g., expressing hateful or derogatory sentiments toward Jews generally), that definition includes a discussion of what it calls “Anti-Semitism Relative to Israel.”
First Amendment? What an antiquated and bigoted idea.
Speaking of the thought police. They are never satisfied even when they win.
Cherry 2000? Well, Better Make That Cherry 2050!
By 2050, human-on-robot sex will be more common than human-on-human sex, says report
A shocking new report from a futurologist reveals predictions about the future of sex and robots
In the report, Dr. Pearson writes:
- By 2030, most people will have some form of virtual sex as casually as they browse porn today - By 2035 the majority of people will own sex toys that interact with virtual reality sex - We will start to see some forms of robot sex appearing in high-income, very wealthy households as soon as 2025 - We will start to see robot sex overtaking human-human in 2050 - Leisure spending could grow by a factor of five, and the sex market in 20 years could be three times bigger than today and seven times bigger by 2050. - Sex toys will account for a UK market of over £1bn
He makes the point that augmented and virtual reality technology are in development, with Oculous Rift being due for release in 2016.
One might think that with the current trends driven the by PC elitists throughout the liberal West including here in the US where we have seen examples of them trying to eliminate the concept of male/female altogether, they, including radical feminists, would welcome this change, one that would eliminate the last reason for any physical interaction between the sexes.
Evidently not. Even when they get everything they want, they still complain.
Dr Kathleen Richardson and fellow campaigners are worried that they will inspire misogynistic attitudes towards woman, and unrealistic sex expectations
They've started a campaign called the Campaign Against Sex Robots
They say "We propose that robots are a product of human consciousness and creativity and human power relationships are reflected in the production, design and proposed uses of these robots. As a result, we oppose any efforts to develop robots that will contribute to gender inequalities in society."
The way the PC thought police are progressing, you may want to hold off pre-ordering that new sex robot. Soon it may e against the law to even think about ordering one.
On the other hand, given the slim chance the 'sex robot' will be allowed in a future sterile PC sanitized brave new world, the modular scientists at Soul's R US Tech have been given the task, in our role as secondary supplier, of developing modular components for future robots. The dishwasher-safe components (patent pending) will be marketed under the logo Money Parts.
Don't worry about the University of California system supporting the Jews.
Worry about all those demos around campus where the moslems, and their 'liberal' supporting chant"
"Jews to the ovens" ....................
Quirk segues a concern about freedom of speech into a cheap ad for his new robo-sex partner which will be 'dishwasher safe' or some shit.
Well that's Quirk for ya, always looking to make a buck on some perverted idea or other.....
If our society has gone so wrong that the men no longer appreciate sex with real living responsive women we are doomed and have no one to blame but ourselves.
University of California, Berkeley. In March, someone spray-painted “Zionists should be sent to the gas chamber” in a university bathroom. And shortly thereafter, a swastika was found on a university-owned building.
yeah it sucks that Jews fight back...
Too bad deuce.
If it were me? I'd set up Jews to be bait for the jew haters to attack, then break the attackers knees.
Yeah it would be fun, send a Jew with a "I love Israel" tee shirt down the campus and wait for the islamic nazis to try to attack..
Maybe break a few bones, duct tape the attackers to flag polls, photograph them after pouring paint and skunk oil on them...
The situation is clear, it is almost LEGAL to bully, harass, attack, intimidate and harm jews on U of C campuses. Time to beat the crap out of the attackers...
I agree and see my post above, which I wrote before reading yours.
My brother, the moment he retired from doctoring, having made his wad in California, immediately left for Oregon, is holed up in a nice cabin by a river, devoting all his remaining years to fishing.
Here is the proposed 'Statement of Principles Against Intolerance' that was rejected by the University of California regents.
E4
Office of the President
TO MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION POLICY:
DISCUSSION ITEM
For Meeting of September 17, 2015
THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA’S STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES AGAINST INTOLERANCE
BACKGROUND
The Regents are strongly committed to a University community that upholds the core principles of respect, inclusion, academic freedom, and the free and open exchange of ideas. Accordingly, as discussed at the July Regents meeting, a statement reflecting these principles has been developed and is outlined below for discussion.
Regents of the University of California’s Statement of Principles Against Intolerance
The University of California is committed to protecting its bedrock values of respect, inclusion, and academic freedom. Free expression and the open exchange of ideas – principles enshrined in our national and state Constitutions -- are part of the University’s fiber. So, too, is tolerance, and University of California students, faculty, and staff must respect the dignity of each person within the UC community. Intolerance has no place at the University of California. We define intolerance as unwelcome conduct motivated by discrimination against, or hatred toward, other individuals or groups.
It may take the form of acts of violence or intimidation, threats, harassment, hate speech, derogatory language reflecting stereotypes or prejudice, or inflammatory or derogatory use of culturally recognized symbols of hate, prejudice, or discrimination.
Everyone in the University community has the right to study, teach, conduct research, and work free from acts and expressions of intolerance. The University will respond promptly and effectively to reports of intolerant behavior and treat them as opportunities to reinforce the University’s Principles Against Intolerance.
This statement of principles applies to attacks on individuals or groups and does not apply to the free exchange of ideas in keeping with the principles of academic freedom and free speech. This statement shall not be interpreted to prohibit conduct that is related to the course content, teaching methods, scholarship, or public commentary of an individual faculty member or the educational, political, artistic, or literary expression of students in classrooms and public forums that is protected by academic freedom or free speech principles...
The statement is intended to reflect the principles of the Regents of the University of California and shall not be used as the basis to discipline students, faculty, or staff.
Discipline is covered under existing policies including the following:
Policies Applying to Campus Activities, Organizations and Students, 100.00: Policy on Student Conduct and Discipline, Personnel Policies for Staff Members pertaining to discipline and separation, or University Policy on Faculty Conduct and the Administration of Discipline (Academic Personnel Manual [APM] - 016).
University leaders will take all appropriate steps to implement the principles.
Addendum
The following non-exhaustive list contains examples of behaviors that do not reflect the University’s values of inclusion and tolerance, as described in the Regents of the University of California’s Statement of Principles Against Intolerance. Vandalism and graffiti reflecting culturally recognized symbols of hate or prejudice. These include depictions of swastikas, nooses, and other symbols intended to intimidate, threaten, mock and/or harass individuals or groups.
Questioning a student’s fitness for a leadership role or whether the student should be a member of the campus community on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, sex, or sexual orientation.
Depicting or articulating a view of ethnic or racial groups as less ambitious, less hardworking or talented, or more threatening than other groups.
Depicting or articulating a view of people with disabilities (both visible and invisible) as incapable.
And why did the University of California regents "reject" the proposed Statement of Principles Against Intolerance?
Evidently, the proposed statement just wasn't quite specific enough. The regents rejected the proposed wording because it insulted Jewish students by failing to take a stand against anti-Semitism. Evidently, condemning intolerance on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, sex, or sexual orientation is insufficient because it doesn't specifically mention anti-Semitism.
The denouement with the regents came after Jewish groups and pro-Israel activists spent months petitioning UC to ask the regents to adopt the anti-Semitism definition used by the U.S. State Department, which links condemnation of Israel to anti-Jewish bigotry. UC instead gave the regents a generic statement opposing intolerance toward all.
Rumor has that in a letter to the University of California regents, Kim Jong Un, has demanded that the policy statement include a statement that any action or instance of anyone associated with, attending, contracting for, related to, or passing through the UofC that in any way criticizes North Korea be considered guilty of anti-Korean bigotry. The island of Fugi has submitted a similar letter as have the leadership of both the Scientologists and the Rosicrucians. It is presumed that numerous other countries and groups will follow suit. Canada and the Boy Scouts of America have both been mentioned.
Whoops. There I go again. Using those doggone 'facts' that are so bothersome to our dynamic duo.
It's a crime to deface another's property. There is no doubt specific rules and policies of the UofC outlining punishments for those actions. The perps should be punished to the full extent of the rules and the law.
However, punishing crimes is a lot different than shutting down dissent and stifling first amendment rights. The same dolts that complain of Assad's or Iran's silencing of of the voices of dissent in those countries now politic for the same thing here.
Jeez Quirk, make it simple for poor ol' Uncle Bob.....
Do you think it is proper and legal for organized mobs to chant and scream "Jews to the ovens" on University of California property, or is this some kind of hate crime and incitement to violence ?
You say you went to university during the Vietnam War. I have to doubt it. Political debate, discussion of social issues, that's what it is all about. It a place where people learn how to take in arguments and debate them, to form opinions, even if those change later in life. It's the process that's important. You would shut that off. I say bullshit.
The anti-Semitic graffiti WiO mentioned is illegal. University officials were investigating them. They had reported it to the police. As I stated above, the criminal acts are illegal and the perps should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. If there is proof that a specific person (s) was yelling hate-speech they should be punished under colleges rules.
However, all of that is irrelevant when it comes to attempts to shut down legitimate dispute. It has nothng to do with freedom of thought or freedom of speech. When it comes down to it, face it, anti-Semitism may be vile and disreputable but it is not illegal.
The first amendment allows us to think and say what we want as long as it doesn't present a precipitant danger to someone else. When the line is crossed it's up to the law to respond to it not some PC pricks called regents.
Now, you answer for me.
I put up copy of the proposed statement on intolerance that was rejected by the regents. Read it. Then tell me...
1. What is wrong with it?
2. Why was it rejected?
3. Why should anyone accept the asinine definition of anti-Semitism that states any criticism of Israel or its policies is de facto anti-Semitism?
4. If you accept that definition, then how can you criticize the policies of any country?
5. Do you even care?
.
You took exception to the post Deuce put up thus accepting the verdict of the University of California regents in rejecting the proposed policy
World set for emerging market mass default, warns IMF
Higher US interest rates will expose weaknesses in emerging market corporations which have gorged themselves on cheap debt, IMF warns
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issued a double warning over higher US interest rates, which it said could trigger a wave of emerging market corporate defaults and panic in financial markets as liquidity evaporates
The IMF said market liquidity, or the ease with which investors can quickly buy or sell a securities without shifting their price, was 'prone to sudden evaporation', particularly in bond markets.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issued a double warning over higher US interest rates, which it said could trigger a wave of emerging market corporate defaults and panic in financial markets as liquidity evaporates.
The IMF said corporate debts in emerging markets ballooned to $18 trillion (£12 trillion) last year, from $4 trillion in 2004 as companies gorged themselves on cheap debt.
It said the quadrupling in debt had been accompanied by weaker balance sheets, making companies more vulnerable to US rate rises.
.
"As advanced economies normalise monetary policy, emerging markets should prepare for an increase in corporate failures," the IMF said in a pre-released chapter of its latest Financial Stability Report.
Emerging market corporate debt has grown to $18bn Photo: International Monetary Fund
It warned that this could create a credit crunch as risks "spill over to the financial sector and generate a vicious cycle as banks curtail lending".
In a double warning, the IMF said market liquidity, or the ease with which investors can quickly buy or sell securities without shifting their price, was "prone to sudden evaporation", particularly in bond markets, when the Federal Reserve started to raise interest rates.
It said a steady growth environment and "extraordinarily accommodative monetary policies" around the world had helped to maintain a "high level" of liquidity. However, it warned that this was not the same as "resilient" liquidity that could support markets in time of stress.
"Liquidity is like the oil in an engine, when there's too little of it, the machine starts stuttering."
Gaston Gelos, IMF
Gaston Gelos, head of the IMF's global financial stability division, said these factors were "masking liquidity risks" that could trigger violent market swings.
"Liquidity is like the oil in an engine, when there's too little of it, the machine starts stuttering," he said.
The IMF said an "illusion" of abundant liquidity may have encouraged "excessive risk taking" by some investors that could cause market ructions if many investors suddenly rushed to the exit.
"Even seemingly plentiful market liquidity can suddenly evaporate and lead to systemic financial disruptions," the IMF said.
"When liquidity drops sharply, prices become less informative and less aligned with fundamentals, and tend to overreact, leading to increased volatility. In extreme conditions, markets can freeze altogether, with systemic repercussions."
Bond inventories have fallen considerably since the financial crisis. However, regulators have argued that this position was unsustainable.
Banks have scaled-back their market making activities in the wake of the financial crisis, which has reduced their ability to act as a stabilising force by absorbing excess supply.
Structural factors, such as large holdings of relatively illiquid securities by mutual funds and concentrated holdings by institutional investors, could also exacerbate a sell-off.
Market liquidity indicators for high-yield and emerging market bonds have started to weaken relative to those for investment-grade bonds.
While the IMF said central bank bond buying had been positive because it provided the market with a "committed and solvent buyer" to support the market, it said higher interest rates would "inevitably boost volatility".
"Smooth normalization of monetary policy is crucial." IMF
"Smooth normalisation of monetary policy is crucial" to avoid "sudden drops" in risk appetite, the IMF added, as it urged central banks to stand ready to "set up policies in advance that will maintain market functioning during periods of stress", such as stepping into the short-term money markets to offer loans.
A ban on some debt default insurance instruments had drained liquidity from some markets, the IMF found
It also urged EU policymakers to "reevaluate" regulations brought in to restrict transactions on credit default swaps (CDS) of sovereign debt, which provide insurance against default but the IMF said had distorted the market.
While the IMF said tighter regulation had played a role in tighter liquidity conditions, it said evidence that it would make the next financial crisis worse was "still lacking".
"Indeed, the reforms have made the core of the financial system safer," the IMF said.
As best I can recall, the last "Rufus Extension" of his deadline for an ISIS free Iraq was until the last day of Obama's term in office -
Even this is, to say the least, looking 'iffy' -
World | Tue Sep 29, 2015 1:01pm EDT Related: World, Syria, Iraq U.S. fails to stop flow of foreign fighters to Islamic State: study WASHINGTON | By Patricia Zengerle
A member loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) waves an ISIL flag in Raqqa June 29, 2014. Reuters/Stringer
Nearly 30,000 foreigners, including more than 250 Americans, have joined Islamic State and other militant groups to fight in Syria and Iraq, double the number a year ago, a congressional study released on Tuesday showed.
The United States is doing too little to stop the flow of fighters, according to the six-month study by Republicans and Democrats on the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.
The report called urgently for a nationwide strategy for combating the threat from such fighters, with better information sharing within the United states and internationally. (here)
A year ago, authorities estimated there were 15,000 foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, including 100 Americans...........
Berkeley, Bazian, and Barghouti Promote BDS Hatred and bigotry reach new levels in Berkeley. September 30, 2015 Cinnamon Stillwell 0 1
A member of a Berkeley, California city commission ostensibly devoted to the “social welfare needs” of “low-income residents,” who was dismissed after introducing a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) resolution has found a champion in UC Berkeley Department of Near Eastern studies (NES) lecturer Hatem Bazian.
Bazian provided the introduction to a September 18 lecture co-sponsored by NES and delivered by Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). An audience of approximately two hundred, comprised mostly of students and including local anti-Israel activists, twenty or so women in hijabs, and a tall man with a “Palestine” sash around his neck who, during the Q&A, claimed to work for the virulently anti-Israel online magazine Electronic Intifada, filled a large lecture hall in UC Berkeley’s Dwinelle Hall.
Before introducing Barghouti, Bazian rallied the audience to the “cause” of Cheryl Davila, the former Human Welfare & Community Action Commission (HWCAC) member. Davila was removed from her post at the outset of HWCAC’s September meeting by City Councilman Darryl Moore, who appointed her in 2009, because she refused to withdraw the “Divestment From the Israeli Occupation” resolution (see page 70) she sponsored. Moore alleged that Davila neglected to notify him about the controversial proposal and claimed it was a misuse of the commission. HWCAC will revise and vote on the resolution in October and if passed, it will proceed to the Berkeley City Council for a vote. The council has rejected two previous Israel divestment measures.
Davila was in the audience, and after introducing her to loud applause, Bazian blamed her removal on an imagined bias against anti-Israel activists:
[T]his is the type of democracy you face when you deal with Palestine. I will say that you [the commission] have a progressive agenda except when it comes to Palestine.
He then made a ludicrous comparison between Davila’s situation and that of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whose opposition to the Vietnam War, Bazian claimed, culminated in his assassination:
Seventy-seven percent of the American public was against Martin Luther King. . . . Most of the newspapers nationally were against Martin Luther King because he opposed the Vietnam War. Therefore, today, you have the Martin Luther King building here; you have the street . . . in downtown Berkeley. We have many streets and many schools across the country. MLK was right. And, Cheryl, in your resolution, you were right and history will prove you right.
Bazian, director of UC Berkeley’s Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project, is accustomed to melodramatic claims of victimhood, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. He is also the founder of the radical anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a point of pride driven home by his admonishment to reporters in attendance: “At least historically be accurate: SJP was created on this campus in 1992.” The fact that SJP—which, along with Bazian’s other creation, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), co-sponsored Barghouti’s lecture—endorsed Davila’s divestment resolution further demonstrates his bias.
A proponent of the BDS movement, Bazian urged audience members to “sign the mailing list” for the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), another co-sponsor of the lecture that counts a good number of Middle East studies academics among its organizers and endorsers. Engaging in predictably spurious comparisons between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa, Bazian disdained any move, then or now, towards “constructive engagement.”
Barghouti followed by explaining “Why it’s so important for academics in the country to support the academic boycott.” As a movement that, he maintained, “rejects all forms of discrimination, including anti-Semitism,” BDS is something “any decent liberal” should support. If one were to judge by Barghouti’s delivery alone, which was calm, measured, and, at times, humorous, singling out the world’s lone Jewish state for economic boycott—which he excused by citing “U.S. support” as the deciding factor—would appear entirely reasonable.
Why boycott academia, “the most progressive sector of any society?” Barghouti asked rhetorically. His answer cited Israeli academe’s complicity in “branding” the country as what it, in fact, truly is: a liberal democracy with gay and women’s rights. He then accused Israeli universities of being “entrenched in their role of planning, implementing, justifying, and whitewashing Israel’s regime of oppression.” He claimed that BDS “targets institutions, not individuals”; thus, it’s acceptable for “an Israeli professor” to be “invited to teach at Berkeley,” given that there is no “agreement with an Israeli university” or any “institutional links.” Barghouti asserted that such a boycott constitutes a mere loss of “privileges,” not a “threat to academic freedom.”
Of PACBI’s role in the American BDS movement, Barghouti bragged that “spreading the academic boycott to U.S. academic associations” has been its primary achievement. The significance of the Modern Language Association, the American Studies Association, and others considering BDS resolutions is that the “taboo” of discussing “Israel and boycott in the same sentence” has been “shattered.” Today, he concluded ominously, “It’s not beyond the pale.”
For around twenty minutes during Barghouti’s lecture, a small group of student protesters stood silently in the front of the room with signs reading, “Banning the Ideas of One Nation Is Discrimination” and “UC Berkeley Academic Departments Support Limiting Academia.” Neither Barghouti nor the audience acknowledged their presence and it was a far cry from the disruptive protests, heckling, and violence that has met pro-Israel speakers on campus.
It’s difficult to say which was more egregious: Bazian’s encouragement of the city of Berkeley to boycott Israel, Barghouti’s coolly delivered apologia for bigotry, or the fact that an event devoted entirely to cheerleading for BDS was co-sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Department of Near Eastern studies. It is a testament to the state of the field that contempt for the truth and the embrace of agitprop and indoctrination over rigorous, objective scholarship is, to paraphrase one of the speakers, no longer beyond the pale.
Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
Bazian provided the introduction to a September 18 lecture co-sponsored by NES and delivered by Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). An audience of approximately two hundred, comprised mostly of students and including local anti-Israel activists, twenty or so women in hijabs, and a tall man with a “Palestine” sash around his neck who, during the Q&A, claimed to work for the virulently anti-Israel online magazine Electronic Intifada, filled a large lecture hall in UC Berkeley’s Dwinelle Hall.
:o)
Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
Campus Watch is a web-based project of the Middle East Forum, a think tank with its headquarters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to its website, Campus Watch "reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them."[1] Critics of Campus Watch say that it is a pro-Israel lobbyist organization involved in harassing, blacklisting, or intimidating scholars critical of Israel.[2][3][4]
Campus Watch was launched in 2002 by Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes. It is headed by Winfield Myers.[5]
Dossiers
Campus Watch encourages students to submit reports about college professors.[2] In 2002, Campus Watch created a controversy when it compiled these reports into 'dossiers' critical of various professors at institutes of higher learning in the United States, in which it detailed their supposedly "anti-Israeli statements".[6] In response to the posting of the dossiers on its website, many individuals sent harassing emails and phone calls to the profiled professors, and the website was widely condemned in the media for supposedly engaging in "McCarthyesque" intimidation.[7][8][9] The Campus Watch project was derided as a "War on Academic Freedom";[3] in protest, more than 100 academics asked to be listed along with those accused by Campus Watch.[7][10] The response of Judith Butler, a comparative literature professor at Berkeley, was circulated on the Internet:
"I have recently learned that your organization is compiling dossiers on professors at U.S. academic institutions who oppose the Israeli occupation and its brutality, actively support Palestinian rights of self-determination as well as a more informed and intelligent view of Islam than is currently represented in the U.S. media. I would be enormously honored to be counted among those who actively hold these positions and would like to be included in the list of those who are struggling for justice".[9]
Rashid Khalidi, a professor at Columbia University who was the subject of a critical dossier on the website, suggested that the Campus Watch campaign was an attempt to silence legitimate criticism, "by tarring it with the brush of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, truly loathsome charges."[11] Khalidi taped an anonymous phone call he received, subsequent to the Campus Watch dossier publication, that says: "Khalidi, Columbia alumni love Campus Watch because they keep an eye on thugs like you. We have our eye on you. You'd better watch out."[12]
After two weeks, Campus Watch removed the dossiers from its website.[13] It continues to collect information from students,[2] though it no longer publishes such dossiers.[14] According to Juan Cole, one of the professors who was subject to Campus Watch's dossiers, the website continued to spread false information about him even after the dossiers were removed: "The removal of the individual dossiers is merely a cosmetic change, since the same academics are still being spied on, only under the rubric of spying on their campuses instead."[15]
An article in The Nation suggests that Daniel Pipes is "an anti-Arab propagandist", and his Campus Watch project aims to "smear" academics critical of the Israeli occupation or of American foreign policy.[3] Campus Watch's project was identified, in The Nation and elsewhere,[16] as resembling a decades-old AIPAC project:
In 1979 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) formed its Political Leadership Development Program, which "educates and trains young leaders in pro-Israel political advocacy," enlisting hundreds of college students to collect information on pro-Palestinian professors and student organizations. By 1983 the program had attracted more than 5,000 students on 350 campuses in all fifty states. The next year the findings were published as The AIPAC College Guide: Exposing the Anti-Israel Campaign on Campus, which surveyed 100 campuses and instructed students on how best to counter a "steady diet of anti-Israel vituperation." Around the same time, the Anti-Defamation League covertly distributed a twenty-one-page booklet containing "background information on pro-Arab sympathizers active on college campuses" who "use their anti-Zionism as merely a guise for their deeply felt anti-Semitism."
Joel Beinin, who has often been criticized by Campus Watch, has accused Daniel Pipes of being "beholden to Israeli right wing politics."[17] According to Beinin, "After failing in his own pursuit of an academic career, Pipes has evidently decided to take revenge on the scholarly community that rejected him", in the...
The Mushroom Cloud ISIS Has In Store For Us A sobering warning. September 30, 2015 Matthew Vadum 0 1
The totalitarian mass murderers of Islamic State are hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons and using them against their enemies in the West, a reporter who was embedded with the Salafi jihadist fighters in occupied Syria is warning.
German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer, who spent 10 anxious days living in Islamic State-held Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in Syria with the jihadists, wants the world to know that the terrorist group is deadly serious about unleashing a "nuclear tsunami" on those who oppose its efforts to create an Islamic caliphate.
"This is the largest religious cleansing strategy that has ever been planned in human history," he said.
The West has "no concept of the threat it faces" from Islamic State and "dramatically" underestimates the threat posed by the group, said the former German politician who was allowed to embed with the group because of his high-profile criticism of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
"They are extremely brutal," according to Todenhöfer. "Not just head-cutting. I'm talking about the strategy of religious cleansing. That's their official philosophy. They are talking about 500 million people who have to die."
He describes his jihadist odyssey in a new book called Inside IS - Ten Days In The Islamic State. At time of writing it wasn’t clear if the author plans to release an English-language version. (The German-language book is titled Inside IS - 10 Tage im 'Islamischen Staat'.)
Todenhöfer's disturbing revelations come 20 months after President Obama sat down with David Remnick of the New Yorker and dismissively likened Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) as a "jayvee," or junior varsity, team. "If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant," Obama said in January last year.
Congenitally in denial about the threat that Muslim expansionism poses to free nations, Obama said last fall that "ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim."
Even now as Islamic State continues racking up horrifying, barbaric atrocities, the Appeaser-in-Chief maintains that Islamic State can be vanquished with tough love and social programs.
At the United Nations yesterday Obama said waging war against such terrorist groups won't accomplish anything.
"Ideologies are not defeated with guns," Obama told UN delegates. "They are defeated by better ideas -- a more attractive and compelling vision."
As someone who spent time with the jihadists, Todenhöfer agrees with Obama that Western military intervention against Islamic State would be pointless.
"I don't see anyone who has a real chance to stop them. Only Arabs can stop [Islamic State]. I came back very pessimistic."
Islamic State fighters are significantly more "dangerous and organized" than people in Western nations assume and "completely sure they will win this fight," the Daily Mail (UK) reports the 75-year-old veteran war correspondent saying.
Islamic State "fighters are much smarter and more dangerous than our leaders believe. In the Islamic State, there is an almost palpable enthusiasm and confidence of victory, which I have not seen in many war zones."
The group uses its gruesome, graphic beheading videos to cow civilian populations into submission before invading an area, he added.
The newspaper account continued:
Mr Todenhöfer went on to say that ISIS have plans for mass genocide, with the aim or eradicating all atheists and religions that are not "people of the book" or who do not subscribe to their particular brand of Islam.
"The IS want to kill... all non-believers and apostates and enslave their women and children. All Shiites, Yazidi, Hindus, atheists and polytheists should be killed," he [wrote separately].
"Hundreds of millions of people are to be eliminated in the course of this religious 'cleansing.'"
"All moderate Muslims who promote democracy, should be killed. Because, from the IS perspective, they promote human laws over the laws of God.
"This also applies to - after a successful conquest - the democratically-minded Muslims in the Western world."
Todenhöfer covered some of the same ground in January when he spoke to Al Jazeera about what he experienced while living with the jihadists.
“I always asked them about the value of mercy in Islam,” but “I didn’t see any mercy in their behavior,” he said.
“Something that I don’t understand at all is the enthusiasm in their plan of religious cleansing, planning to kill the non-believers… They also will kill Muslim democrats because they believe that non-ISIL-Muslims put the laws of human beings above the commandments of God.”
Todenhöfer was appalled at how “willing to kill” the jihadists were. “They were talking about [killing] hundreds of millions. They were enthusiastic about it, and I just cannot understand that."
According to the Daily Mail, when Todenhöfer arrived in Islamic State-controlled territory, the terrorists took away the mobile phones that he and his son, who worked as his cameraman, had brought with them. He had spent months communicating with the group over Skype before it granted him permission to enter its territory.
Of course I'd seen the terrible, brutal beheading videos and it was of course after seeing this in the last few months that caused me the greatest concern in my negotiations to ensure how I can avoid this. Anyway, I made my will before I left. People there live in shellholes, in barracks, in bombed-out houses. I slept on the floor, if I was lucky on a plastic mattress. I had a suitcase and a backpack, a sleeping bag.
As one might expect, Todenhöfer isn't exactly a fan of the U.S.-led Global War on Terror, which in the eyes of some gives his words extra weight.
As an elected member of the Bundestag from 1972 to 1990, he was the Christian Democratic Union's parliamentary spokesman on disarmament, according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW). "In 1980, he paid a visit to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan—the first of what would become many visits to crisis regions. Over time, he became a committed pacifist and critic of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Meanwhile, an American lawmaker warned that President Obama's cavalier approach to U.S. border security and insistence on importing thousands of Syrian refugees will help Islamic State in its quest to terrorize Americans.
“I don’t think that the United States needs to have an open-door policy—this Obama policy—that is going to allow ISIS to come into our country, set up bases of operation illegally at the taxpayers’ expense,” U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) said.
Babin also blamed Obama for the bloody mess in Syria.
“I think that his weak, vacillated foreign policy and his decisions and him drawing the red line and then doing nothing after the red line is crossed by [Syrian dictator Bashar al-] Assad has created this entire situation.”
Increasing the quota for Syrian refugees beyond Obama's current limit of 10,000 is a “terrible and unwise idea,” the congressman said. Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, the administration's director of national intelligence, has warned that Islamic State operatives are hiding among the millions of Syrian refugees heading to Europe and the U.S.
And a report from Breitbart News yesterday served as a unsettling reminder of the consequences of President Obama's refusal to secure America's porous border with Mexico:
EDINBURG, Texas – One illegal immigrant has been formally charged with capital murder and another is expected to be charged soon in connection with the execution of two men and the burning of the victims’ corpses in Texas. The two jailed illegal immigrants are said to be members of a fearsome gang called the Tri-City Bombers which has been tied to multiple massacres and high profile murders in the past.
This week, investigators with the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office arrested 22-year-old Edwin Adrian Salinas for his suspected role in the case. Authorities had initially arrested him on unrelated drug charges, but once in custody, homicide detectives were able to link him to the double murder.
Like illegal aliens, Islamic State terrorists don't use official border crossings.
And now let us remember the worst economic prediction ever
Everybody makes mistakes, but not all mistakes are created equal. Take writer Michael Kinsley's 2010 warning that hyperinflation was "our biggest economic threat" that could be "a disaster story on the level of Hurricane Katrina, if not 9/11 itself."
Now, the craziest part is that Kinsley admitted this was, well, kind of crazy. "Every economist I admire," he wrote, "is convinced that inflation will remain low for as long as we can predict. But, he added, "I can't help feeling that the gold bugs are right," while conceding that this "fear is not the result of economic analysis" but rather comes from "the realm of psychology."
"Am I crazy," he wondered, or was everybody else for ignoring the inflation bogeyman under the bed? Well, two years later, he concluded that it had to be everybody else. "Barring a miracle," he predicted, "there will be a fierce storm of inflation in the next few years."
So I guess we got a miracle. Inflation has gone from 2 percent when Kinsley first sounded the alarm in 2010 to 2.6 percent when he did again in 2012 to 0.3 percent today. Wheelbarrows full of cash that is not. Wallets will still suffice.
Like I said, everyone makes mistakes, and Kinsley told me he made one here. But, at the same time, he remains worried that "memories are short" and "many liberals have moved on to the view that more inflation would actually be a good thing." He was, he said in an e-mail, "bewildered recently by a New York Times headline declaring that Stanley Fischer, Vice Chairman of the Fed, was 'Optimistic About Inflation,'" where 'optimistic' referred to the fact that Fischer "saw 'good reason' to expect that inflation would rebound to a healthier pace."
"Do we want polio to rebound to a healthier pace," he asked me, "or Donald Trump?" The very idea, he said, "sounds insane."
Well, it's not. You can have too little inflation just like you can have too much inflation. That, after all, is why the Federal Reserve doesn't try to keep prices completely stable, but rather growing 2 percent a year. The problem with zero inflation, as a Fed Governor named Janet Yellen pointed out in 1996, is that it makes it harder for the economy to recover from a recession. That's because companies need a little inflation to "grease the wheels," as Yellen put it, of pay cuts.
Think about it like this. Any time a shock hits the economy, businesses that aren't as profitable as they thought they'd be need to cut costs—which means wages. Now, they could do that by cutting everybody's paychecks, but they don't. It turns out that companies don't like paying people less, because, get this, people don't like being paid less. Corporate bosses would rather preserve whatever morale they can by giving some people a pink slip rather than by giving everybody a pay cut. But they might not have to do either if there was enough inflation. Higher prices would do the job of cutting people's inflation-adjusted wages, so that companies could cut wages by keeping them the same—and not firing anyone. A little inflation, in other words, can mean a little less unemployment.
The other important thing to remember is it's not how much the Fed cuts interest rates that matters to the economy, but how much it cuts inflation-adjusted interest rates. If inflation is zero, that means the lowest inflation-adjusted rates can go is also zero, and so a weak economy might not get the stimulus it needs. (Although, as we've found out, it might not with 2 percent inflation either, at least not after a once-in-three-generations financial crisis.) That's why economists agree that the economy is better off with a small amount of inflation, but not on how much that is. Before the recession, there was a consensus, for no particular reason, that 2 percent was the right number, but the recession has made economists like Paul Krugman, Olivier Blanchard, and Laurence Ball argue that it should be a little higher, say, 4 percent, to try to get things going and prevent something like this from happening again. But in any case, the idea that the economy could use more inflation than the 0.3 percent it has now isn't a crackpot one. It's a mainstream one.
What was odd, though, was worrying about high inflation at the same time that unemployment was so high. Now, that did happen in the 1970s, but it's hard to see how it could happen today. Workers don't have the cost-of-living-adjustment contracts they used to, which means that price spirals won't turn into wage spirals that become even bigger price spirals. Not only that, but the Fed monitors people's inflation expectations as a double check against that ever happening again. Before, people might have thought inflation was going to be 3 percent, and so asked for a 5 percent raise, which would then turn inflation into 7 percent—and then make people expect 9 percent inflation. It was a self-reinforcing process. So that's why the Fed makes sure that people expect 2 percent inflation and only 2 percent inflation today.
But Kinsley ignored all that, and argued that the government's deficit determines inflation. It doesn't. At least not outside of a few extreme examples, like Zimbabwe, where the government spends so much more than it can even borrow that it has to print the rest. That is how hyperinflation works, but not how the U.S. economy does. Our government actually borrows the money it needs. That's why our inflation rate depends on what the Fed wants it to be, and not what the budget deficit forces it to be. Indeed, there is zero relationship between the two—an R-squared of 0.006—since the Fed started de facto targeting inflation in 1988.
Even if you don't love the national debt, you can at least stop worrying that it's going to set off an inflation bomb.
But, as Kinsley asked me, if "government deficits never lead to inflation and a bit of inflation is a good thing anyway," does that mean that "we can just print money to pay for" whatever we want? Well, not generally—except for right now. What this misses is that the rules change when interest rates are zero. Banks are content to just sit on newly-printed money when rock-bottom lending rates mean the cost of doing so is nil. Especially when the Fed says it will un-print enough of this money to keep inflation from rising much at all. Why do anything with your money if you won't make any from lending it, and you won't lose any from inflation? You won't. So none of this money makes its way into the economy and inflation stays in hibernation, even as the Fed retires trillions of dollars of debt with all the money it has printed. (When the Fed buys bonds, it remits interest payments back to the Treasury, so the government starts paying itself instead of paying the banks that used to own them). That's as free as lunch gets.
But what if banks start lending all this money out? Won't the economy overheat, spark massive inflation and turn into 1970s America, if not 1920s Germany? In a word, no. The Fed has plenty of tools, with mind-numbing names like reverse repos and interest on reserves, to vacuum up as much of that money as it wants—and, if history is any guide, it's going to want to vacuum it all up. That's because the Fed takes its 2 percent inflation target quite seriously. If anything, it takes it too seriously, getting ready to raise rates even though there isn't any inflation to speak of. This is not a central bank that is going to fall asleep at the inflationary wheel.
Sometimes the obvious answer is the correct one. Today's Fed isn't going to let low inflation turn into hyperinflation. Today's government isn't going to force the Fed to do so. And Paul Krugman knows more about economics than Glenn Beck.
Whoops. There I go again. Using those doggone 'facts' that are so bothersome to our dynamic duo.
It's a crime to deface another's property. There is no doubt specific rules and policies of the UofC outlining punishments for those actions. The perps should be punished to the full extent of the rules and the law.
Quirk lives in a perfect world.
Those that seek free speech against Israel are despicable but legal.
No matter the actual anti-jewish violence it cheers on...
No Quirk, you and your silly questions are so yesterday.
The Jew haters and Israel bashers on college campuses are over the top, they beat up our kids, they intimidate, they stalk, they terrorize.
"law enforcement"? Is a joke.
So I counter.
Let those (like you) talk of policies and rules and freedom of speech, I will advocate the Jews learn self defense.
What will turn the tide of the free expression of violence towards Jews is catching those that attack and perpetrate the crimes of violence and beat the crap out of them.
Fear.
Right now? the Jew haters have no fear. They are winning as they believe they have the right to literally pit in our faces, punch us, throw fire bombs, rocks and stab us...
It's time to respond, not with 911 calls, documentation and whining but with overwhelming disproportionate violence against those that use violence.
But in America today? You have a culture of elevating the attacking thug as victim. Can you say Gentile Giant?
It seems to me the rules pertaining to demonstrations out in 'society' should not pertain on a college campus anyway.
It is like disturbing the library. The entire campus should be considered a library. It is a place for learning, supposedly. It is not a place for political demonstrations.
I would arrest them all for disturbing the peace, and making it impossible for students to study in quiet.
Let them get a demo permit out in society somewhere, the assholes.
Quirk's attitude would change rapidly were the chant:
"Catholics to the gas chambers"
No. It wouldn't. Catholics have dealt with prejudice throughout their history here in the US. In the 1850's, there was a whole political party composed of nativists, the Know-Nothings, who were opposed to the Catholics in this country. I had to laugh at the article that pointed out the high dudgeon Jewish organizations assumed when a candidate for one of the committees at the UofC was asked if her Jewishness would affect her decisions on the board. Hell, when Kennedy was running for president, he was asked the same question about his Catholicism. He answered the question and moved on. Evidently, he was a little less thin-skinned than you boys.
those that seek to murder Jews as a people don't just debate.
I aint thin skinned.
But my skin don't stop a knife.
All I can say is when you and your grand kids are being attacked I'd like to see how you will react.
You remind me Of Dukakis…
Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis didn't exactly charm his way into voters' hearts during the 1988 debates with his response about whether he would support the death penalty should his wife, Kitty, be raped and murdered.
I tried to find all these attacks you are talking about on Jewish students, WiO.
I googled, 'Attacks on Jewish Students at the University of California'.
I found a lot about boycotts, debates, jeering (something we see all the time at political speeches), and I saw a lot about those two incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism. Attacks, stabbings? Not so much. Well, not any. But I only went trough the first couple pages. Maybe was on page 6 or 8 0r 15 like that report on the 550,000 Sunnis Iran has killed in Iraq since 2011.
I did find this though,
The UC Davis vote and two hate crimes against Jewish organizations in Davis have drawn national interest in recent weeks from organizations on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, as well as people on social media. Comedienne Roseanne Barr this week defended Israel through a series of inflammatory tweets, including one that said she hopes the Davis campus “gets nuked” and another that simply had the hashtag “#nukeUCDavisJewHaters.”
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article9936056.html#storylink=cpy
You are always trying to equate different groups. I guess we could say...
September 30, 2015 In Volkswagen's Defense By Paul Murphy
First, let me say that I drive a Volvo XC70 - a 300 HP, 5000 pound, gas guzzler that gets about 9,000 miles per ticket -- and have never owned, or wanted, either a Volkswagen or an Audi.
It's unfair to hold today's Volkswagen AG accountable for the sins of its founders, but I have never understood how leftist anti-war protestors and peaceniks could commute to their riots in cars and vans whose design Ferdinand Porsche largely stole from Tata at Hitler's orders -- but then, I don't understand how adoring posters of mass murderers like Mao and Che Guevara with peace symbols and flowers makes sense either.
The bottom line on both observations, however, is that I don't like VW's cars, don't like the company, and have no friends who bought that company's products new - but none of this means that I can't see the upside of what VW is said to have done.
Specifically, it is possible to see their "defeat device" (basically a piece of software that detunes diesel engines during testing, but lets them run hot and clean in actual customer use) as an inspired bit of civil disobedience.
So, with that in mind, here's how Volkswagen could use the difference between the "de facto" real world application of the rule and the "de jure" world of law to defend themselves.
The legal defense is straightforward: the law generally requires these engines to pass EPA specified tests at the time of testing -- and they do. This is, in most jurisdictions, simple, black letter law: there is literally no legal substance to the charge against them.
The reality based defense, however, would be that the rule is known to be both unrealistic in economic and technical terms, and environmentally counterproductive. Basically VW would defend itself by attacking the rule maker and pushing the idea that the whole is thing is driven by the leftist agenda, not environmental concern.
There are two reasons this works:
1. The costs of the rule are easy to quantify, but the deaths due to NOx and particulate matter cited to justify it exist only as a computational artifact -- in reality not a single death, or even major illness, can be directly attributed to NOx or particulates emitted from a VW, or any other diesel, in normal outdoor use.
Some useful measures of the environmental impact that would have been produced had the rule been followed are, furthermore, both easy to estimate and easy to defend as real.
To illustrate I'll make up some ballpark numbers: suppose the net effect of the rule if applied would be to decrease the mileage your (lying) neighbor gets on his diesel Volkswagen from a claimed 68.75 MPG to a real 55 MPG -- in part because the engine burns fuel less efficiently and in in part because it has to run at a higher RPM to produce comparable power. Now assume 400,000 VW diesels averaging 20,000 miles a year over eight years, and you get the guess that the EPA wanted to force VW customers to buy and burn an additional 230 million gallons of fuel over the period. Figure an average $3 and 23 pounds of exhaust per gallon, and this rule shows as a $698 million dollar differential tax burden on VW owners -- and 5.3 billion pound assault on the environment.
2. This issue has a long history at both the EPA and VW with both sides well aware of each other's positions and actions since at least 1998. As a result VW can present the current blow-up as a politically motivated EPA action breaking a longstanding unspoken agreement to ignore a stupid rule known to be both environmentally and economically counterproductive.
Notice, in this context, that this type of rule doesn't originate with the Republican initiated and passed Clean Air Act, it originates with Carter's EPA; the key precedents were established (largely through real and threatened judicial activism) during the Clinton administration; and that VW's use of today's "defeat device" was enabled by Clinton-era requirements with respect to on-board automotive diagnostics and triggered by the fleet fuel efficiency requirements imposed by the Obamacon in 2009.
So, what's Volkswagen's defense? It met the letter of a law imposed by bureaucrats acting in bad faith on bad science; put its customers first; reduced environmental risks and/or exposure for all Americans; and is now taking that act of civil disobedience into the legal and political arenas in support of its customers, its shareholders, and the environment.
I don't thinking shouting "Sieg Heil VW!" wholly appropriate, but if they fight, no jury containing at least one articulate conservative is going to convict them -- and smarter customers will probably express their approval of the company's actions where it counts: at the dealerships.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/in_volkswagens_defense.html#ixzz3nEWILEED Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
The story of how the Nazis wiped out 58,000 Jews in Kolomyja. Galicia, setting the local ghetto afire and torturing the president of the Jewish community to a point where he committed suicide in the presence of Gestapo officials, was told today to Jewish organizations here by an eye-witness of the tragedy.
Thousands of the Jewish victims were burned alive by the Nazis and other thousands were taken to neighboring woods and shot. The ghetto was burned to the ground to insure that not a single Jew remained alive in any hideouts there.
Yes quirk, Jews have a history of being murdered by your ancestors…..
SO pardon me if I don't really give a shit about your "thinned skin" comment.
I had to laugh at the article that pointed out the high dudgeon Jewish organizations assumed when a candidate for one of the committees at the UofC was asked if her Jewishness would affect her decisions on the board. Hell, when Kennedy was running for president, he was asked the same question about his Catholicism.
I tried to find all these attacks you are talking about on Jewish students, WiO.
I googled, 'Attacks on Jewish Students at the University of California'.
I found a lot about boycotts, debates, jeering (something we see all the time at political speeches), and I saw a lot about those two incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism. Attacks, stabbings? Not so much. Well, not any. But I only went trough the first couple pages. Maybe it was on page 6 or 8 or 15 like that report on the 550,000 Sunnis Iran has killed in Iraq since 2011.
I did find this though,
The UC Davis vote and two hate crimes against Jewish organizations in Davis have drawn national interest in recent weeks from organizations on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, as well as people on social media. Comedienne Roseanne Barr this week defended Israel through a series of inflammatory tweets, including one that said she hopes the Davis campus “gets nuked” and another that simply had the hashtag “#nukeUCDavisJewHaters.”
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article9936056.html#storylink=cpy
You are always trying to equate different groups. I guess we could say...
Quirk: I googled, 'Attacks on Jewish Students at the University of California'.
Congrats, why not google "'Attacks on Jewish Students"?
Why do you have to narrow the search unless you are editing the results??????
But then you mention: I found a lot about boycotts, debates, jeering (something we see all the time at political speeches), and I saw a lot about those two incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism. Attacks, stabbings? Not so much. Well, not any. But I only went trough the first couple pages. Maybe it was on page 6 or 8 or 15 like that report on the 550,000 Sunnis Iran has killed in Iraq since 2011.
Interesting you fail to mention the DOZENS of attacks of Jews across the world?
Is a stabbing in israel of an American Student not meaningful to you?
Or Paris?
Or New York?
Quirk you remind of the lawyer for OJ.
Arguing if the glove doesn't fit you must acquit
Intellectually dishonest.
How about if the glove doesn't fit you can't use the glove…. ALL other evidence is ok to use.
To listen to you speak? I can see how a coward like you thinks..
Jews need thicker skin. Jews need to call 911.
No quirk, Jews need to stomp into the ground those that attack them.
Why Are Student Leaders and Jewish Bruins Under Attack ... www.thetower.org/.../why-are-student-leaders-and-jewish-kids-frightene... One of America's most prominent campuses has become a cesspool of anti-Israel hate, intimidation, and cyberbullying. A student reports from the front lines of ... Temple Univ. Jewish Student Punched In Face And Called ... www.truthrevolt.org/.../temple-univ-jewish-student-punched-face-and-ca... Aug 20, 2014 - A Jewish student on the campus of Temple University was assaulted on .... UPDATE II: SJP has denied that the perpetrator in the attack was a ... Student Voices of Fear at Being Jewish Amidst Growing ... www.amchainitiative.org/student-voices-being-jewish-on-campus/ March 2015, Jewish DePaul Student (Sarah) – “I felt like I was being undervalued and attacked on my own campus,” Read more; June 2014, Jewish DePaul ... Jewish Students Under Siege on College Campuses ... www.newsmax.com/US/...Jewish-students.../626815/ Newsmax Media Feb 25, 2015 - Tags: Israel | US colleges | Jewish students | anti-Semitism | campus ... to that student, following "a widespread anti-Israel/anti-Semitic attack ... UCLA: Student Government Candidate Attacked for Being ... www.breitbart.com/.../ucla-student-government-candidate-attack... Breitbart Mar 1, 2015 - On February 10, four members of the nine-member UCLA student government initially voted against appointing a female Jewish candidate, ... Jewish Student 'Punched' by Pro-Palestinian Student at ... www.breitbart.com/.../jewish-student-punched-by-pro-palestinia... Breitbart Aug 21, 2014 - Jewish Student 'Punched' by Pro-Palestinian Student at Temple University; Update–Suspect in Attack Against Jewish Temple University ... Temple U. Jewish student attacked at pro-Palestinian booth ... www.timesofisrael.com › Israel & the Region The Times of Israel Aug 21, 2014 - Daniel Vessal punched in the face following verbal confrontation at Students for Justice in Palestine table.
Pro-Palestinian students heckle Cal-Davis opponents with ... www.foxnews.com/.../pro-palestinian-students-heckle-... Fox News Channel Feb 3, 2015 - ... Davis heckled Jewish students and shouted “Allahu Akbar” at them ... by anti- Israel groups to attack Israel and pro-Israel students on campus. ► The Jewish Press » » Attempted Lynch Attack on 5 US ... www.jewishpress.com › ... › Jewish › Antisemitism The Jewish Press Sep 3, 2015 - Palestinian Arabs in Hebron attempted to lynch five religious Jews from the U.S., tourists who mistakenly entered ... Yeshiva students actually.
19 Jewish Students Injured As New Nazi Attacks Occur at ... www.jta.org/.../19-jewish-students-injured-as-... Jewish Telegraphic Agency Vienna (Oct. 26). Nineteen Jewish students were injured today when renewed Nazi disturbances broke out at the University of Vienna, the Anatomical Institute ... Toulouse and Montauban shootings - Wikipedia, the free ... https://en.wikipedia.org/.../Toulouse_and_Montauban_shootin... Wikipedia On 19 March, four people, including three children, were killed at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish day school. Thereafter, the Vigipirate, France's terror alert system , ... Attacks - Perpetrator - Reactions - Aftermath
It is not only illegitimate it is as I have said more than once it is ill-advised and hurts their cause.
I have suggested they would have been been much further ahead and probably had their own state at this point if 45 years ago they had eschewed the terrorism and instead concentrated world opinion on the occupation through peace peaceful protests, work stoppages etc,.
When you have no facts you make them up. When you can't support an argument, you change the subject.
The subject we were discussing was Jewish harassment at the UofC and the assault on the first amendment by the regents there, as well as, the political blackmail by the husband of of a US senator.
You expanded the discussion by bringing up attacks on Jewish students, not at the UofC, there weren't any, but around the entire fucking world.
The issues have nothing to do with each other. If you want to talk about the second fine but don't use it as an justification to excuse the actions of politically correct UofC regents. There is no excuse.
I am still waiting for your answers to the question in my last post below.
Quirk: I googled, 'Attacks on Jewish Students at the University of California'.
Congrats, why not google "'Attacks on Jewish Students"?
Simple. The conversation started with Deuce putting up a post on threats by Barbara Boxer's husband to the other regents at the UofC because their proposed Statement of Principles on Intolerance which condemned intolerance on the basis of on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, sex, or sexual orientation didn't have a specific, strong, clear statement about anti-Semitism.
For most of this stream you have been arguing about that, you proposing violence and your buddy proposing creating a campus wide library. For your part, you offered up and condemned the attacks and stabbing of Jewish students. When challenged on that you print up a laundry list of attacks from around the world. What the fuck does that have to do with what's going on at the UofC or even in the US for that matter? With the attempts to stifle debate there? With the abrogation of the first amendment?
Above, I put up the actual proposal for the Statement of Principles on Intolerance that was rejected at the UofC. I doubt you read it. But I ask that you do and then answer the same questions I asked your buddy.
1. What is wrong with it?
2. Why did it have to be rejected?
3. Why should anyone accept the asinine definition of anti-Semitism that states any criticism of Israel or its policies is de facto anti-Semitism?
4. If you accept that definition, then how can you criticize the policies of any other country?
Bob, you are the one who should be thrown in jail for your hate filled fraudulent rumors that you publish here. Snope.com as a source for your facts shows just how ignorant you are.
Of course, it makes it easy. You don't have to think.
You don't have to come up with facts.
You don't have to come up with arguments.
Won't answer my questions? Of course not. It's easy that way.
You don't have to confront uncomfortable facts.
Hamas attacks Israel. Easy, anti-Semitic.
The PA tries to negotiate with Israel. Easy, anti-Semitic.
Others try BDS boycotts. Easy, anti-Semitic.
A statement of principles condemning ALL forms of bigotry. Easy, anti-Semitic since it didn't use the specific word anti-Semitic.
Criticism of any specific Israeli policy. Easy, anti-Semitic.
Pointing out that you are either a bald-faced liar, or are completely ignorant of all things Israeli (multiple examples available on request from history, to the Oslo Accords, to the current situation in the ME). Easy, anti-Semitic.
But why restrict it to gentiles? The majority of American Jews are opposed to a specific Israeli policy. Easy, The majority of American Jews are appeasers.
You are nothing if not consistent. Everyone in the world is against you. You are the perpetual victim. You don't have the balls to make a straight forward argument without trying to divert and change the subject and when you eventually come up empty you charge anti-Semitism. Even when people agree with you you call them anti-Semitic.
Man Uses Raccoon To Start Breathalyzer Equipped Car; Raccoon Then Attacks Driver
A man who needed to blow into a Breathalyzer to start his car was too drunk to do so. What he did next is almost unbelievable. He somehow found a raccoon going through the garbage, captured it and then used the raccoon to blow into the breathalyzer.
Let he who has not kidnapped a raccoon to blow into the ignition breathalyzer interlock system cast the first stone: pic.twitter.com/dTAXQ9GMNB
— Stephen Quinn (@CBCStephenQuinn) September 30, 2015
According to a report that was shared on Imgur, the raccoon became unconscious so the man left the raccoon in the car and drove off. A short time after, the raccoon woke up and started to attack the driver.
According to telegraph.co.uk:
He did not stop driving, however, and so he crashed into a residential fence.
The vehicle then apparently ‘came to a stop’ in a swimming pool.
I’m not one to judge, but generally when you have a Breathalyzer on your steering wheel it’s there because you haven’t made the best decisions in the past. And this, I have to believe, is this man’s rock bottom. It’s also probably the raccoon’s.
How cool is this?
ReplyDeleteHamas just fired a rocket from Gaza into Israel.
The rocket attack came ahead of PA President Mahmoud Abbas scheduled speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday following heightened tensions in Jerusalem during the high holiday season.
Just in time to claim victim status again…
But at last check? Firing a rocket at civilians is a war crime.
Hamas and Fatah are part of a Unity Government.
Abbas should be arrested as a war criminal the moment he lands in NYC….
Maybe Israel will live up to it's evil reputation and simply drone strike his ass..
On, that's right only America does that…
:)
THE PENTAGON IS ANNOYED
ReplyDeleteYesterday’s announcement that Iraq is going to engage in intelligence sharing with Russia and Syria has been met negatively by Pentagon officials, who say that it “complicates” the US war and dramatically weakens America’s own intelligence gathering abilities.
This problem appears to be largely a function of US annoyance at the information sharing, which means the Pentagon intends to limit intelligence sharing with Iraq, seemingly out of spite, and will subsequently get less intelligence from Iraq in return.
Iraqi Defense Ministry officials revealed today that they are also open to the idea of Russia carrying out surveillance flights over Iraqi airspace, likely reflecting their desire to keep getting reports from a foreign air force, even if it’s not the US.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren criticized the Russian efforts, but insisted the US war would continue with or without intelligence sharing. He suggested Iraq should’ve recognized that they were already “well-served” by US surveillance flights over their country and spurned Russia’s offer.
What a bunch of assholes.
DeleteRussia is the best option.
Deletethey will slaughter any and all arabs/moslems/brown people they deem needed for their peace.
They did it in Chechnya, Georgia, Hungry, Afghanistan. They did it to the Jews, they did it to themselves.
SO what if 7 million starved to death under Stalin, they are cool, at least according to our Comrade Deuce!!!
reeducation camps, labor camps, relocation of whole populations (forced) they KNOW how to PARTY!!!!
American "assholes" are nothing compared to the USSR/Russians…
LOL
Now Russia is helping Iran complete it's takeover of Iraq and Syria.
DeleteIran just gave Hezbollah 75 tanks….
Iran just order 20 billion in fighter jets and comm satellites, what me worry?
Russia/USSR did this for decades with the arabs before the were thrown out of the middle east by egypt.
The arabs bought a ton of shit, Israel destroys it all, Russia gets paid for useless crap (against Israel) and the arabs reorder…
LOL
Now Russia is going to sell Iran a ton of crap. israel will have to destroy it. Iran will have to reorder.
Putin will make billions..
The Russians are assholes, alright. Country is collapsing, losing population, drinking itself to death, soon to be broke, but by God Pooty knows how to kill moslems when he wants to do so. See the remains of Chechnya..
DeleteI have lots of sympathy for Pooty in that regard. Of the 20 some convicts in the world today over 90% are the moslems vs. whomever the nearest neighbor might be......in Russia, in China, in the Philippines, in India, with Israel...you name it, if there's a conflict there's almost always moslems behind it....
conflicts, not convicts.....though if there were justice in the world, 90% if the convicts would be moslems too....the only group that always wants to crash the party....
DeleteWe have gone from the victory-at-any-cost mindset of World War II to the exit-at-any-cost mindset of the Obama years......
ReplyDelete.............. “It’s too hard” and “I don’t want to play” are not acceptable answers because what they produce is precisely what we have gotten: adversaries seizing the initiative and setting in motion a potential permanent redistribution of power and influence in a strategically important region of the world. (By the way, this will soon include Afghanistan, another place the U.S. plan for getting the heck out of Dodge has floundered. Iran is already seeking greater influence in that country as stumbling and political infighting in Kabul and the rise of IS have raised the specter of growing instability in that battered land.)
Voice
Leave it to Vlad (and the Supreme Leader)
The Obama plan to exit the Middle East now becomes clear.
By David Rothkopf
September 28, 2015
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/28/leave-it-to-vlad-and-the-supreme-leader-obama-iraq-iran-middle-east/
***********************
Cute little cartoon there Deuce. Totally without any coherent meaning, but cute none the less.
***************
Dang, looks like Trey Gowdy is declining to run for Speaker....
(By the way, this will soon include Afghanistan, another place the U.S. plan for getting the heck out of Dodge has floundered. Iran is already seeking greater influence in that country as stumbling and political infighting in Kabul and the rise of IS have raised the specter of growing instability in that battered land.)
DeleteObama is a disaster. The only question is whether he is intentionally so, or not.
Anybody followed the story about the US military guy that is getting punished for intervening in the raping of a young boy in Afghanistan ?
DeleteHe should get a medal, but in ObamaDemocraticPartyWorld he wasn't respectful enough of 'local traditions'.
I keep getting SOS signals from the Rand Paul Campaign, begging for money..... I notice he is turning his attention to raising money to stay in the Senate.............
ReplyDeleteHe will drop out soon. Huckabee too is sinking really fast.....the herd is thinning......
Meanwhile, over on the Democratic side of things, all the talk is whether Drinkin' Joe Biden the Plagiarist is going to jump aboard the clown car.......
It is not the Republican Party that needs an exorcist these days.......Criminal H. Clinton, Venezuela Bernie, Drinkin' Joe......Good God !
Revisiting the Kennedy Assassination for the umpteenth time -
ReplyDeleteSeptember 29, 2015
A Shot Fired From Grassy Knoll?
George Lardner, Washington Post
The House Assassinations Committee may have been right after all: There was a shot from the grassy knoll.
That was the key finding of the congressional investigation that concluded 22 years ago that President John F. Kennedy's murder in Dallas in 1963 was "probably . . . the result of a conspiracy." A shot from the grassy knoll meant that two gunmen must have fired at the president within a split-second sequence. Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of firing three shots at Kennedy from a perch at the Texas School Book Depository, could not have been in two places at once.
A special panel of the National Academy of Sciences subsequently disputed the evidence of a fourth shot, contained on a police dictabelt of the sounds in Dealey Plaza that day. The panel..............
http://www.realclearhistory.com/2015/09/29/a_shot_fired_from_grassy_knoll_308.html
WASH TIMES: Huma's Bill Clinton secret... Developing........Drudge
ReplyDeleteHhmmmmm.....this might be interesting......
There's nothing impossible when it comes to these people.....
Is there an exorcist in the house ?
Stand by.....
The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald reports that the California senator and her military-contractor husband Richard Blum are essentially blackmailing the University of California into punishing students who speak out against Israel.
ReplyDeleteFrom The Intercept:
One of the most dangerous threats to campus free speech has been emerging at the highest levels of the University of California system, the sprawling collection of 10 campuses that includes UCLA and UC Berkeley. The university’s governing Board of Regents, with the support of University President Janet Napolitano and egged on by the state’s legislature, has been attempting to adopt new speech codes that — in the name of combating “anti-Semitism” — would formally ban various forms of Israel criticism and anti-Israel activism.
Under the most stringent such regulations, students found to be in violation of these codes would face suspension or expulsion. In July, it appeared that the Regents were poised to enact the most extreme version, but decided instead to push the decision off until September, when they instead would adopt non-binding guidelines to define “hate speech” and “intolerance.”
One of the Regents most vocally advocating for the most stringent version of the speech code is Richard Blum, the multi-millionaire defense contractor who is married to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. At a Regents meeting last week, reported the Los Angeles Times, Blum expressly threatened that Feinstein would publicly denounce the university if it failed to adopt far more stringent standards than the ones it appeared to be considering, and specifically demanded they be binding and contain punishments for students found to be in violation. ... Blum’s verbatim comments at the Regents meeting are even creepier than [The San Francisco Chronicle’s] reporting suggests:
“I should add that over the weekend my wife, your senior Senator, and I talked about this issue at length. She wants to stay out of the conversation publicly but if we do not do the right thing she will engage publicly and is prepared to be critical of this university if we don’t have the kind of not only statement but penalties for those who commit what you can call them crimes, call them whatever you want. Students that do the things that have been cited here today probably ought to have a dismissal or a suspension from school. I don’t know how many of you feel strongly that way but my wife does and so do I.”
... The specific UC controversy is two-fold: whether, in combating “anti-semitism,” the university should adopt the State Department’s controversial 2010 definition of that term, and separately, whether students who express ideas that fall within that definition should be formally punished up to and including permanent expulsion. What makes the State Department definition so controversial — particularly for an academic setting — is that alongside uncontroversial and obvious examples of classic bigotry (e.g., expressing hateful or derogatory sentiments toward Jews generally), that definition includes a discussion of what it calls “Anti-Semitism Relative to Israel.”
Read more here.
—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata
.
DeleteFirst Amendment? What an antiquated and bigoted idea.
Speaking of the thought police. They are never satisfied even when they win.
Cherry 2000? Well, Better Make That Cherry 2050!
By 2050, human-on-robot sex will be more common than human-on-human sex, says report
A shocking new report from a futurologist reveals predictions about the future of sex and robots
In the report, Dr. Pearson writes:
- By 2030, most people will have some form of virtual sex as casually as they browse porn today
- By 2035 the majority of people will own sex toys that interact with virtual reality sex
- We will start to see some forms of robot sex appearing in high-income, very wealthy households as soon as 2025
- We will start to see robot sex overtaking human-human in 2050
- Leisure spending could grow by a factor of five, and the sex market in 20 years could be three times bigger than today and seven times bigger by 2050.
- Sex toys will account for a UK market of over £1bn
He makes the point that augmented and virtual reality technology are in development, with Oculous Rift being due for release in 2016.
One might think that with the current trends driven the by PC elitists throughout the liberal West including here in the US where we have seen examples of them trying to eliminate the concept of male/female altogether, they, including radical feminists, would welcome this change, one that would eliminate the last reason for any physical interaction between the sexes.
Evidently not. Even when they get everything they want, they still complain.
Dr Kathleen Richardson and fellow campaigners are worried that they will inspire misogynistic attitudes towards woman, and unrealistic sex expectations
They've started a campaign called the Campaign Against Sex Robots
They say "We propose that robots are a product of human consciousness and creativity and human power relationships are reflected in the production, design and proposed uses of these robots. As a result, we oppose any efforts to develop robots that will contribute to gender inequalities in society."
The way the PC thought police are progressing, you may want to hold off pre-ordering that new sex robot. Soon it may e against the law to even think about ordering one.
.
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DeleteOn the other hand, given the slim chance the 'sex robot' will be allowed in a future sterile PC sanitized brave new world, the modular scientists at Soul's R US Tech have been given the task, in our role as secondary supplier, of developing modular components for future robots. The dishwasher-safe components (patent pending) will be marketed under the logo Money Parts.
.
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DeleteDr. Richardson is concerned about "unrealistic sex expectations".
Hmm.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11898241/By-2050-human-on-robot-sex-will-be-more-common-than-human-on-human-sex-says-report.html
.
Don't worry about the University of California system supporting the Jews.
DeleteWorry about all those demos around campus where the moslems, and their 'liberal' supporting chant"
"Jews to the ovens"
....................
Quirk segues a concern about freedom of speech into a cheap ad for his new robo-sex partner which will be 'dishwasher safe' or some shit.
Well that's Quirk for ya, always looking to make a buck on some perverted idea or other.....
If our society has gone so wrong that the men no longer appreciate sex with real living responsive women we are doomed and have no one to blame but ourselves.
where the moslems and their liberal supporters chant
DeleteThis seems like an incitement to violence to me, but I'm old fashioned.
The University of California system sucks, as does all of California, to be honest.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteUniversity of California, Berkeley. In March, someone spray-painted “Zionists should be sent to the gas chamber” in a university bathroom. And shortly thereafter, a swastika was found on a university-owned building.
ReplyDeleteyeah it sucks that Jews fight back...
Too bad deuce.
If it were me? I'd set up Jews to be bait for the jew haters to attack, then break the attackers knees.
Yeah it would be fun, send a Jew with a "I love Israel" tee shirt down the campus and wait for the islamic nazis to try to attack..
DeleteMaybe break a few bones, duct tape the attackers to flag polls, photograph them after pouring paint and skunk oil on them...
The situation is clear, it is almost LEGAL to bully, harass, attack, intimidate and harm jews on U of C campuses. Time to beat the crap out of the attackers...
I agree and see my post above, which I wrote before reading yours.
DeleteMy brother, the moment he retired from doctoring, having made his wad in California, immediately left for Oregon, is holed up in a nice cabin by a river, devoting all his remaining years to fishing.
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DeleteHere is the proposed 'Statement of Principles Against Intolerance' that was rejected by the University of California regents.
E4
Office of the President
TO MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION POLICY:
DISCUSSION
ITEM
For Meeting of September 17, 2015
THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA’S STATEMENT OF
PRINCIPLES AGAINST INTOLERANCE
BACKGROUND
The Regents are strongly committed to a University community that upholds the core principles of respect, inclusion,
academic freedom, and the free and open exchange of ideas. Accordingly, as discussed at the July Regents meeting, a statement reflecting these principles has been developed and is outlined below for discussion.
Regents of the University of California’s Statement of Principles Against Intolerance
The University of California is committed to protecting its bedrock values of respect, inclusion, and academic freedom. Free expression and the open exchange of ideas – principles enshrined in our national and state Constitutions -- are part of the University’s fiber. So, too, is tolerance, and University of California students, faculty, and staff must respect the dignity of each person within the UC community. Intolerance has no place at the University of California. We define intolerance as unwelcome conduct motivated by discrimination against, or hatred toward, other individuals or groups.
It may take the form of acts of violence or intimidation, threats, harassment, hate speech, derogatory language reflecting stereotypes or prejudice, or inflammatory or derogatory use of culturally recognized symbols of hate, prejudice, or discrimination.
Everyone in the University community has the right to study, teach, conduct research, and work free from acts and expressions of intolerance. The University will respond promptly and effectively to reports of intolerant behavior and treat them as opportunities to reinforce the University’s Principles Against Intolerance.
This statement of principles applies to attacks on individuals or groups and does not apply to the free exchange of ideas in keeping with the principles of academic freedom and free speech. This statement shall not be interpreted to prohibit conduct that is related to the course content, teaching methods, scholarship, or public commentary of an individual faculty member or the educational, political, artistic, or literary expression of students in classrooms and public forums that is protected by academic freedom or free speech principles...
{...}
.
DeleteCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATIONAL POLICY
September 17, 2015
The statement is intended to reflect the principles of the Regents of the University of California and shall not be used as the basis to discipline students, faculty, or staff.
Discipline is covered under existing policies including the following:
Policies Applying to Campus Activities, Organizations and Students, 100.00:
Policy on Student Conduct and Discipline, Personnel Policies for Staff Members pertaining to discipline
and separation, or
University Policy on Faculty Conduct and the Administration of Discipline (Academic Personnel Manual [APM] - 016).
University leaders will take all appropriate steps to implement the principles.
Addendum
The following non-exhaustive list contains examples of behaviors that do not reflect the University’s values of inclusion and tolerance, as described in the Regents of the University of California’s Statement of Principles Against Intolerance.
Vandalism and graffiti reflecting culturally recognized symbols of hate or prejudice. These include depictions of swastikas, nooses, and other symbols intended to intimidate, threaten, mock and/or harass individuals or groups.
Questioning a student’s fitness for a leadership role or whether the student should be a member of the campus community on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, sex, or sexual orientation.
Depicting or articulating a view of ethnic or racial groups as less ambitious, less hardworking or talented, or more threatening than other groups.
Depicting or articulating a view of people with disabilities (both visible and invisible) as incapable.
.
.
Deletehttp://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/sept15/e4.pdf
.
.
DeleteAnd why did the University of California regents "reject" the proposed Statement of Principles Against Intolerance?
Evidently, the proposed statement just wasn't quite specific enough. The regents rejected the proposed wording because it insulted Jewish students by failing to take a stand against anti-Semitism. Evidently, condemning intolerance on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, sex, or sexual orientation is insufficient because it doesn't specifically mention anti-Semitism.
The denouement with the regents came after Jewish groups and pro-Israel activists spent months petitioning UC to ask the regents to adopt the anti-Semitism definition used by the U.S. State Department, which links condemnation of Israel to anti-Jewish bigotry. UC instead gave the regents a generic statement opposing intolerance toward all.
Rumor has that in a letter to the University of California regents, Kim Jong Un, has demanded that the policy statement include a statement that any action or instance of anyone associated with, attending, contracting for, related to, or passing through the UofC that in any way criticizes North Korea be considered guilty of anti-Korean bigotry. The island of Fugi has submitted a similar letter as have the leadership of both the Scientologists and the Rosicrucians. It is presumed that numerous other countries and groups will follow suit. Canada and the Boy Scouts of America have both been mentioned.
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DeleteWhoops. There I go again. Using those doggone 'facts' that are so bothersome to our dynamic duo.
It's a crime to deface another's property. There is no doubt specific rules and policies of the UofC outlining punishments for those actions. The perps should be punished to the full extent of the rules and the law.
However, punishing crimes is a lot different than shutting down dissent and stifling first amendment rights. The same dolts that complain of Assad's or Iran's silencing of of the voices of dissent in those countries now politic for the same thing here.
The hypocrisy is palpable.
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Jeez Quirk, make it simple for poor ol' Uncle Bob.....
DeleteDo you think it is proper and legal for organized mobs to chant and scream "Jews to the ovens" on University of California property, or is this some kind of hate crime and incitement to violence ?
Is it improper, yet legal ?
Or is it both improper and illegal ?
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DeleteYou say you went to university during the Vietnam War. I have to doubt it. Political debate, discussion of social issues, that's what it is all about. It a place where people learn how to take in arguments and debate them, to form opinions, even if those change later in life. It's the process that's important. You would shut that off. I say bullshit.
The anti-Semitic graffiti WiO mentioned is illegal. University officials were investigating them. They had reported it to the police. As I stated above, the criminal acts are illegal and the perps should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. If there is proof that a specific person (s) was yelling hate-speech they should be punished under colleges rules.
However, all of that is irrelevant when it comes to attempts to shut down legitimate dispute. It has nothng to do with freedom of thought or freedom of speech. When it comes down to it, face it, anti-Semitism may be vile and disreputable but it is not illegal.
The first amendment allows us to think and say what we want as long as it doesn't present a precipitant danger to someone else. When the line is crossed it's up to the law to respond to it not some PC pricks called regents.
Now, you answer for me.
I put up copy of the proposed statement on intolerance that was rejected by the regents. Read it. Then tell me...
1. What is wrong with it?
2. Why was it rejected?
3. Why should anyone accept the asinine definition of anti-Semitism that states any criticism of Israel or its policies is de facto anti-Semitism?
4. If you accept that definition, then how can you criticize the policies of any country?
5. Do you even care?
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You took exception to the post Deuce put up thus accepting the verdict of the University of California regents in rejecting the proposed policy
Bob would have to think to do as you ask Quirk - that is a bridge too far.
Delete.
ReplyDeleteWorld set for emerging market mass default, warns IMF
Higher US interest rates will expose weaknesses in emerging market corporations which have gorged themselves on cheap debt, IMF warns
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issued a double warning over higher US interest rates, which it said could trigger a wave of emerging market corporate defaults and panic in financial markets as liquidity evaporates
The IMF said market liquidity, or the ease with which investors can quickly buy or sell a securities without shifting their price, was 'prone to sudden evaporation', particularly in bond markets.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issued a double warning over higher US interest rates, which it said could trigger a wave of emerging market corporate defaults and panic in financial markets as liquidity evaporates.
The IMF said corporate debts in emerging markets ballooned to $18 trillion (£12 trillion) last year, from $4 trillion in 2004 as companies gorged themselves on cheap debt.
It said the quadrupling in debt had been accompanied by weaker balance sheets, making companies more vulnerable to US rate rises.
.
"As advanced economies normalise monetary policy, emerging markets should prepare for an increase in corporate failures," the IMF said in a pre-released chapter of its latest Financial Stability Report.
Emerging market corporate debt has grown to $18bn Photo: International Monetary Fund
It warned that this could create a credit crunch as risks "spill over to the financial sector and generate a vicious cycle as banks curtail lending".
In a double warning, the IMF said market liquidity, or the ease with which investors can quickly buy or sell securities without shifting their price, was "prone to sudden evaporation", particularly in bond markets, when the Federal Reserve started to raise interest rates.
It said a steady growth environment and "extraordinarily accommodative monetary policies" around the world had helped to maintain a "high level" of liquidity. However, it warned that this was not the same as "resilient" liquidity that could support markets in time of stress.
"Liquidity is like the oil in an engine, when there's too little of it, the machine starts stuttering."
Gaston Gelos, IMF
Gaston Gelos, head of the IMF's global financial stability division, said these factors were "masking liquidity risks" that could trigger violent market swings.
"Liquidity is like the oil in an engine, when there's too little of it, the machine starts stuttering," he said.
The IMF said an "illusion" of abundant liquidity may have encouraged "excessive risk taking" by some investors that could cause market ructions if many investors suddenly rushed to the exit.
"Even seemingly plentiful market liquidity can suddenly evaporate and lead to systemic financial disruptions," the IMF said.
"When liquidity drops sharply, prices become less informative and less aligned with fundamentals, and tend to overreact, leading to increased volatility. In extreme conditions, markets can freeze altogether, with systemic repercussions."
{...}
{...}
DeleteBond inventories have fallen considerably since the financial crisis. However, regulators have argued that this position was unsustainable.
Banks have scaled-back their market making activities in the wake of the financial crisis, which has reduced their ability to act as a stabilising force by absorbing excess supply.
Structural factors, such as large holdings of relatively illiquid securities by mutual funds and concentrated holdings by institutional investors, could also exacerbate a sell-off.
Market liquidity indicators for high-yield and emerging market bonds have started to weaken relative to those for investment-grade bonds.
While the IMF said central bank bond buying had been positive because it provided the market with a "committed and solvent buyer" to support the market, it said higher interest rates would "inevitably boost volatility".
"Smooth normalization of monetary policy is crucial."
IMF
"Smooth normalisation of monetary policy is crucial" to avoid "sudden drops" in risk appetite, the IMF added, as it urged central banks to stand ready to "set up policies in advance that will maintain market functioning during periods of stress", such as stepping into the short-term money markets to offer loans.
A ban on some debt default insurance instruments had drained liquidity from some markets, the IMF found
It also urged EU policymakers to "reevaluate" regulations brought in to restrict transactions on credit default swaps (CDS) of sovereign debt, which provide insurance against default but the IMF said had distorted the market.
While the IMF said tighter regulation had played a role in tighter liquidity conditions, it said evidence that it would make the next financial crisis worse was "still lacking".
"Indeed, the reforms have made the core of the financial system safer," the IMF said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11898936/World-set-for-emerging-market-mass-default-warns-IMF.html
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What this country needs is lenders willing to make no interest loans to purchasers of dishwasher safe robo-sex partners, that's what I say....
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Congress needs to legislate such a lending practice !
I have it on the q.t. that Quirk is already lobbying for such legislation.....
As best I can recall, the last "Rufus Extension" of his deadline for an ISIS free Iraq was until the last day of Obama's term in office -
ReplyDeleteEven this is, to say the least, looking 'iffy' -
World | Tue Sep 29, 2015 1:01pm EDT
Related: World, Syria, Iraq
U.S. fails to stop flow of foreign fighters to Islamic State: study
WASHINGTON | By Patricia Zengerle
A member loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) waves an ISIL flag in Raqqa June 29, 2014.
Reuters/Stringer
Nearly 30,000 foreigners, including more than 250 Americans, have joined Islamic State and other militant groups to fight in Syria and Iraq, double the number a year ago, a congressional study released on Tuesday showed.
The United States is doing too little to stop the flow of fighters, according to the six-month study by Republicans and Democrats on the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.
The report called urgently for a nationwide strategy for combating the threat from such fighters, with better information sharing within the United states and internationally. (here)
A year ago, authorities estimated there were 15,000 foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, including 100 Americans...........
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/29/us-mideast-crisis-congress-fighters-idUSKCN0RT1VZ20150929
An American joining ISIS.....if that's not a treasonous offense I don't know what is.....
DeleteBerkeley, Bazian, and Barghouti Promote BDS
ReplyDeleteHatred and bigotry reach new levels in Berkeley.
September 30, 2015
Cinnamon Stillwell
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1
A member of a Berkeley, California city commission ostensibly devoted to the “social welfare needs” of “low-income residents,” who was dismissed after introducing a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) resolution has found a champion in UC Berkeley Department of Near Eastern studies (NES) lecturer Hatem Bazian.
Bazian provided the introduction to a September 18 lecture co-sponsored by NES and delivered by Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). An audience of approximately two hundred, comprised mostly of students and including local anti-Israel activists, twenty or so women in hijabs, and a tall man with a “Palestine” sash around his neck who, during the Q&A, claimed to work for the virulently anti-Israel online magazine Electronic Intifada, filled a large lecture hall in UC Berkeley’s Dwinelle Hall.
Before introducing Barghouti, Bazian rallied the audience to the “cause” of Cheryl Davila, the former Human Welfare & Community Action Commission (HWCAC) member. Davila was removed from her post at the outset of HWCAC’s September meeting by City Councilman Darryl Moore, who appointed her in 2009, because she refused to withdraw the “Divestment From the Israeli Occupation” resolution (see page 70) she sponsored. Moore alleged that Davila neglected to notify him about the controversial proposal and claimed it was a misuse of the commission. HWCAC will revise and vote on the resolution in October and if passed, it will proceed to the Berkeley City Council for a vote. The council has rejected two previous Israel divestment measures.
Davila was in the audience, and after introducing her to loud applause, Bazian blamed her removal on an imagined bias against anti-Israel activists:
[T]his is the type of democracy you face when you deal with Palestine. I will say that you [the commission] have a progressive agenda except when it comes to Palestine.
He then made a ludicrous comparison between Davila’s situation and that of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whose opposition to the Vietnam War, Bazian claimed, culminated in his assassination:
Seventy-seven percent of the American public was against Martin Luther King. . . . Most of the newspapers nationally were against Martin Luther King because he opposed the Vietnam War. Therefore, today, you have the Martin Luther King building here; you have the street . . . in downtown Berkeley. We have many streets and many schools across the country. MLK was right. And, Cheryl, in your resolution, you were right and history will prove you right.
DeleteBazian, director of UC Berkeley’s Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project, is accustomed to melodramatic claims of victimhood, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. He is also the founder of the radical anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a point of pride driven home by his admonishment to reporters in attendance: “At least historically be accurate: SJP was created on this campus in 1992.” The fact that SJP—which, along with Bazian’s other creation, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), co-sponsored Barghouti’s lecture—endorsed Davila’s divestment resolution further demonstrates his bias.
A proponent of the BDS movement, Bazian urged audience members to “sign the mailing list” for the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), another co-sponsor of the lecture that counts a good number of Middle East studies academics among its organizers and endorsers. Engaging in predictably spurious comparisons between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa, Bazian disdained any move, then or now, towards “constructive engagement.”
Barghouti followed by explaining “Why it’s so important for academics in the country to support the academic boycott.” As a movement that, he maintained, “rejects all forms of discrimination, including anti-Semitism,” BDS is something “any decent liberal” should support. If one were to judge by Barghouti’s delivery alone, which was calm, measured, and, at times, humorous, singling out the world’s lone Jewish state for economic boycott—which he excused by citing “U.S. support” as the deciding factor—would appear entirely reasonable.
Why boycott academia, “the most progressive sector of any society?” Barghouti asked rhetorically. His answer cited Israeli academe’s complicity in “branding” the country as what it, in fact, truly is: a liberal democracy with gay and women’s rights. He then accused Israeli universities of being “entrenched in their role of planning, implementing, justifying, and whitewashing Israel’s regime of oppression.” He claimed that BDS “targets institutions, not individuals”; thus, it’s acceptable for “an Israeli professor” to be “invited to teach at Berkeley,” given that there is no “agreement with an Israeli university” or any “institutional links.” Barghouti asserted that such a boycott constitutes a mere loss of “privileges,” not a “threat to academic freedom.”
Of PACBI’s role in the American BDS movement, Barghouti bragged that “spreading the academic boycott to U.S. academic associations” has been its primary achievement. The significance of the Modern Language Association, the American Studies Association, and others considering BDS resolutions is that the “taboo” of discussing “Israel and boycott in the same sentence” has been “shattered.” Today, he concluded ominously, “It’s not beyond the pale.”
DeleteFor around twenty minutes during Barghouti’s lecture, a small group of student protesters stood silently in the front of the room with signs reading, “Banning the Ideas of One Nation Is Discrimination” and “UC Berkeley Academic Departments Support Limiting Academia.” Neither Barghouti nor the audience acknowledged their presence and it was a far cry from the disruptive protests, heckling, and violence that has met pro-Israel speakers on campus.
It’s difficult to say which was more egregious: Bazian’s encouragement of the city of Berkeley to boycott Israel, Barghouti’s coolly delivered apologia for bigotry, or the fact that an event devoted entirely to cheerleading for BDS was co-sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Department of Near Eastern studies. It is a testament to the state of the field that contempt for the truth and the embrace of agitprop and indoctrination over rigorous, objective scholarship is, to paraphrase one of the speakers, no longer beyond the pale.
Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
Berkeley is a cess pool.
DeleteMy one commie cousin has even left, coming home to Walla Walla (water,water) Washington to die in peace.
The good people of Water Water, Washington kept the lights on for him, maintained a safe and sane place for him to lay his weary head.
DeleteHe really doesn't deserve it.
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DeleteBazian provided the introduction to a September 18 lecture co-sponsored by NES and delivered by Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). An audience of approximately two hundred, comprised mostly of students and including local anti-Israel activists, twenty or so women in hijabs, and a tall man with a “Palestine” sash around his neck who, during the Q&A, claimed to work for the virulently anti-Israel online magazine Electronic Intifada, filled a large lecture hall in UC Berkeley’s Dwinelle Hall.
:o)
Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
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Campus Watch is a web-based project of the Middle East Forum, a think tank with its headquarters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to its website, Campus Watch "reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them."[1] Critics of Campus Watch say that it is a pro-Israel lobbyist organization involved in harassing, blacklisting, or intimidating scholars critical of Israel.[2][3][4]
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Campus Watch was launched in 2002 by Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes. It is headed by Winfield Myers.[5]
Dossiers
Campus Watch encourages students to submit reports about college professors.[2] In 2002, Campus Watch created a controversy when it compiled these reports into 'dossiers' critical of various professors at institutes of higher learning in the United States, in which it detailed their supposedly "anti-Israeli statements".[6] In response to the posting of the dossiers on its website, many individuals sent harassing emails and phone calls to the profiled professors, and the website was widely condemned in the media for supposedly engaging in "McCarthyesque" intimidation.[7][8][9] The Campus Watch project was derided as a "War on Academic Freedom";[3] in protest, more than 100 academics asked to be listed along with those accused by Campus Watch.[7][10] The response of Judith Butler, a comparative literature professor at Berkeley, was circulated on the Internet:
"I have recently learned that your organization is compiling dossiers on professors at U.S. academic institutions who oppose the Israeli occupation and its brutality, actively support Palestinian rights of self-determination as well as a more informed and intelligent view of Islam than is currently represented in the U.S. media. I would be enormously honored to be counted among those who actively hold these positions and would like to be included in the list of those who are struggling for justice".[9]
Rashid Khalidi, a professor at Columbia University who was the subject of a critical dossier on the website, suggested that the Campus Watch campaign was an attempt to silence legitimate criticism, "by tarring it with the brush of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, truly loathsome charges."[11] Khalidi taped an anonymous phone call he received, subsequent to the Campus Watch dossier publication, that says: "Khalidi, Columbia alumni love Campus Watch because they keep an eye on thugs like you. We have our eye on you. You'd better watch out."[12]
After two weeks, Campus Watch removed the dossiers from its website.[13] It continues to collect information from students,[2] though it no longer publishes such dossiers.[14] According to Juan Cole, one of the professors who was subject to Campus Watch's dossiers, the website continued to spread false information about him even after the dossiers were removed: "The removal of the individual dossiers is merely a cosmetic change, since the same academics are still being spied on, only under the rubric of spying on their campuses instead."[15]
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Criticism
An article in The Nation suggests that Daniel Pipes is "an anti-Arab propagandist", and his Campus Watch project aims to "smear" academics critical of the Israeli occupation or of American foreign policy.[3] Campus Watch's project was identified, in The Nation and elsewhere,[16] as resembling a decades-old AIPAC project:
In 1979 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) formed its Political Leadership Development Program, which "educates and trains young leaders in pro-Israel political advocacy," enlisting hundreds of college students to collect information on pro-Palestinian professors and student organizations. By 1983 the program had attracted more than 5,000 students on 350 campuses in all fifty states. The next year the findings were published as The AIPAC College Guide: Exposing the Anti-Israel Campaign on Campus, which surveyed 100 campuses and instructed students on how best to counter a "steady diet of anti-Israel vituperation." Around the same time, the Anti-Defamation League covertly distributed a twenty-one-page booklet containing "background information on pro-Arab sympathizers active on college campuses" who "use their anti-Zionism as merely a guise for their deeply felt anti-Semitism."
Joel Beinin, who has often been criticized by Campus Watch, has accused Daniel Pipes of being "beholden to Israeli right wing politics."[17] According to Beinin, "After failing in his own pursuit of an academic career, Pipes has evidently decided to take revenge on the scholarly community that rejected him", in the...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_Watch
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The Mushroom Cloud ISIS Has In Store For Us
ReplyDeleteA sobering warning.
September 30, 2015
Matthew Vadum
0
1
The totalitarian mass murderers of Islamic State are hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons and using them against their enemies in the West, a reporter who was embedded with the Salafi jihadist fighters in occupied Syria is warning.
German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer, who spent 10 anxious days living in Islamic State-held Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in Syria with the jihadists, wants the world to know that the terrorist group is deadly serious about unleashing a "nuclear tsunami" on those who oppose its efforts to create an Islamic caliphate.
"This is the largest religious cleansing strategy that has ever been planned in human history," he said.
The West has "no concept of the threat it faces" from Islamic State and "dramatically" underestimates the threat posed by the group, said the former German politician who was allowed to embed with the group because of his high-profile criticism of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
"They are extremely brutal," according to Todenhöfer. "Not just head-cutting. I'm talking about the strategy of religious cleansing. That's their official philosophy. They are talking about 500 million people who have to die."
He describes his jihadist odyssey in a new book called Inside IS - Ten Days In The Islamic State. At time of writing it wasn’t clear if the author plans to release an English-language version. (The German-language book is titled Inside IS - 10 Tage im 'Islamischen Staat'.)
Todenhöfer's disturbing revelations come 20 months after President Obama sat down with David Remnick of the New Yorker and dismissively likened Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) as a "jayvee," or junior varsity, team. "If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant," Obama said in January last year.
Congenitally in denial about the threat that Muslim expansionism poses to free nations, Obama said last fall that "ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim."
Even now as Islamic State continues racking up horrifying, barbaric atrocities, the Appeaser-in-Chief maintains that Islamic State can be vanquished with tough love and social programs.
At the United Nations yesterday Obama said waging war against such terrorist groups won't accomplish anything.
"Ideologies are not defeated with guns," Obama told UN delegates. "They are defeated by better ideas -- a more attractive and compelling vision."
As someone who spent time with the jihadists, Todenhöfer agrees with Obama that Western military intervention against Islamic State would be pointless.
"I don't see anyone who has a real chance to stop them. Only Arabs can stop [Islamic State]. I came back very pessimistic."
Islamic State fighters are significantly more "dangerous and organized" than people in Western nations assume and "completely sure they will win this fight," the Daily Mail (UK) reports the 75-year-old veteran war correspondent saying.
DeleteIslamic State "fighters are much smarter and more dangerous than our leaders believe. In the Islamic State, there is an almost palpable enthusiasm and confidence of victory, which I have not seen in many war zones."
The group uses its gruesome, graphic beheading videos to cow civilian populations into submission before invading an area, he added.
The newspaper account continued:
Mr Todenhöfer went on to say that ISIS have plans for mass genocide, with the aim or eradicating all atheists and religions that are not "people of the book" or who do not subscribe to their particular brand of Islam.
"The IS want to kill... all non-believers and apostates and enslave their women and children. All Shiites, Yazidi, Hindus, atheists and polytheists should be killed," he [wrote separately].
"Hundreds of millions of people are to be eliminated in the course of this religious 'cleansing.'"
"All moderate Muslims who promote democracy, should be killed. Because, from the IS perspective, they promote human laws over the laws of God.
"This also applies to - after a successful conquest - the democratically-minded Muslims in the Western world."
Todenhöfer covered some of the same ground in January when he spoke to Al Jazeera about what he experienced while living with the jihadists.
“I always asked them about the value of mercy in Islam,” but “I didn’t see any mercy in their behavior,” he said.
“Something that I don’t understand at all is the enthusiasm in their plan of religious cleansing, planning to kill the non-believers… They also will kill Muslim democrats because they believe that non-ISIL-Muslims put the laws of human beings above the commandments of God.”
Todenhöfer was appalled at how “willing to kill” the jihadists were. “They were talking about [killing] hundreds of millions. They were enthusiastic about it, and I just cannot understand that."
According to the Daily Mail, when Todenhöfer arrived in Islamic State-controlled territory, the terrorists took away the mobile phones that he and his son, who worked as his cameraman, had brought with them. He had spent months communicating with the group over Skype before it granted him permission to enter its territory.
As he explained:
DeleteOf course I'd seen the terrible, brutal beheading videos and it was of course after seeing this in the last few months that caused me the greatest concern in my negotiations to ensure how I can avoid this. Anyway, I made my will before I left. People there live in shellholes, in barracks, in bombed-out houses. I slept on the floor, if I was lucky on a plastic mattress. I had a suitcase and a backpack, a sleeping bag.
As one might expect, Todenhöfer isn't exactly a fan of the U.S.-led Global War on Terror, which in the eyes of some gives his words extra weight.
As an elected member of the Bundestag from 1972 to 1990, he was the Christian Democratic Union's parliamentary spokesman on disarmament, according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW). "In 1980, he paid a visit to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan—the first of what would become many visits to crisis regions. Over time, he became a committed pacifist and critic of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Meanwhile, an American lawmaker warned that President Obama's cavalier approach to U.S. border security and insistence on importing thousands of Syrian refugees will help Islamic State in its quest to terrorize Americans.
“I don’t think that the United States needs to have an open-door policy—this Obama policy—that is going to allow ISIS to come into our country, set up bases of operation illegally at the taxpayers’ expense,” U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) said.
Babin also blamed Obama for the bloody mess in Syria.
“I think that his weak, vacillated foreign policy and his decisions and him drawing the red line and then doing nothing after the red line is crossed by [Syrian dictator Bashar al-] Assad has created this entire situation.”
Increasing the quota for Syrian refugees beyond Obama's current limit of 10,000 is a “terrible and unwise idea,” the congressman said. Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, the administration's director of national intelligence, has warned that Islamic State operatives are hiding among the millions of Syrian refugees heading to Europe and the U.S.
And a report from Breitbart News yesterday served as a unsettling reminder of the consequences of President Obama's refusal to secure America's porous border with Mexico:
EDINBURG, Texas – One illegal immigrant has been formally charged with capital murder and another is expected to be charged soon in connection with the execution of two men and the burning of the victims’ corpses in Texas. The two jailed illegal immigrants are said to be members of a fearsome gang called the Tri-City Bombers which has been tied to multiple massacres and high profile murders in the past.
This week, investigators with the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office arrested 22-year-old Edwin Adrian Salinas for his suspected role in the case. Authorities had initially arrested him on unrelated drug charges, but once in custody, homicide detectives were able to link him to the double murder.
Like illegal aliens, Islamic State terrorists don't use official border crossings.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260284/mushroom-cloud-isis-has-store-us-matthew-vadum
And now let us remember the worst economic prediction ever
ReplyDeleteEverybody makes mistakes, but not all mistakes are created equal. Take writer Michael Kinsley's 2010 warning that hyperinflation was "our biggest economic threat" that could be "a disaster story on the level of Hurricane Katrina, if not 9/11 itself."
Now, the craziest part is that Kinsley admitted this was, well, kind of crazy. "Every economist I admire," he wrote, "is convinced that inflation will remain low for as long as we can predict. But, he added, "I can't help feeling that the gold bugs are right," while conceding that this "fear is not the result of economic analysis" but rather comes from "the realm of psychology."
"Am I crazy," he wondered, or was everybody else for ignoring the inflation bogeyman under the bed? Well, two years later, he concluded that it had to be everybody else. "Barring a miracle," he predicted, "there will be a fierce storm of inflation in the next few years."
So I guess we got a miracle. Inflation has gone from 2 percent when Kinsley first sounded the alarm in 2010 to 2.6 percent when he did again in 2012 to 0.3 percent today. Wheelbarrows full of cash that is not. Wallets will still suffice.
Like I said, everyone makes mistakes, and Kinsley told me he made one here. But, at the same time, he remains worried that "memories are short" and "many liberals have moved on to the view that more inflation would actually be a good thing." He was, he said in an e-mail, "bewildered recently by a New York Times headline declaring that Stanley Fischer, Vice Chairman of the Fed, was 'Optimistic About Inflation,'" where 'optimistic' referred to the fact that Fischer "saw 'good reason' to expect that inflation would rebound to a healthier pace."
"Do we want polio to rebound to a healthier pace," he asked me, "or Donald Trump?" The very idea, he said, "sounds insane."
DeleteWell, it's not. You can have too little inflation just like you can have too much inflation. That, after all, is why the Federal Reserve doesn't try to keep prices completely stable, but rather growing 2 percent a year. The problem with zero inflation, as a Fed Governor named Janet Yellen pointed out in 1996, is that it makes it harder for the economy to recover from a recession. That's because companies need a little inflation to "grease the wheels," as Yellen put it, of pay cuts.
Think about it like this. Any time a shock hits the economy, businesses that aren't as profitable as they thought they'd be need to cut costs—which means wages. Now, they could do that by cutting everybody's paychecks, but they don't. It turns out that companies don't like paying people less, because, get this, people don't like being paid less. Corporate bosses would rather preserve whatever morale they can by giving some people a pink slip rather than by giving everybody a pay cut. But they might not have to do either if there was enough inflation. Higher prices would do the job of cutting people's inflation-adjusted wages, so that companies could cut wages by keeping them the same—and not firing anyone. A little inflation, in other words, can mean a little less unemployment.
The other important thing to remember is it's not how much the Fed cuts interest rates that matters to the economy, but how much it cuts inflation-adjusted interest rates. If inflation is zero, that means the lowest inflation-adjusted rates can go is also zero, and so a weak economy might not get the stimulus it needs. (Although, as we've found out, it might not with 2 percent inflation either, at least not after a once-in-three-generations financial crisis.) That's why economists agree that the economy is better off with a small amount of inflation, but not on how much that is. Before the recession, there was a consensus, for no particular reason, that 2 percent was the right number, but the recession has made economists like Paul Krugman, Olivier Blanchard, and Laurence Ball argue that it should be a little higher, say, 4 percent, to try to get things going and prevent something like this from happening again. But in any case, the idea that the economy could use more inflation than the 0.3 percent it has now isn't a crackpot one. It's a mainstream one.
DeleteWhat was odd, though, was worrying about high inflation at the same time that unemployment was so high. Now, that did happen in the 1970s, but it's hard to see how it could happen today. Workers don't have the cost-of-living-adjustment contracts they used to, which means that price spirals won't turn into wage spirals that become even bigger price spirals. Not only that, but the Fed monitors people's inflation expectations as a double check against that ever happening again. Before, people might have thought inflation was going to be 3 percent, and so asked for a 5 percent raise, which would then turn inflation into 7 percent—and then make people expect 9 percent inflation. It was a self-reinforcing process. So that's why the Fed makes sure that people expect 2 percent inflation and only 2 percent inflation today.
DeleteBut Kinsley ignored all that, and argued that the government's deficit determines inflation. It doesn't. At least not outside of a few extreme examples, like Zimbabwe, where the government spends so much more than it can even borrow that it has to print the rest. That is how hyperinflation works, but not how the U.S. economy does. Our government actually borrows the money it needs. That's why our inflation rate depends on what the Fed wants it to be, and not what the budget deficit forces it to be. Indeed, there is zero relationship between the two—an R-squared of 0.006—since the Fed started de facto targeting inflation in 1988.
Even if you don't love the national debt, you can at least stop worrying that it's going to set off an inflation bomb.
But, as Kinsley asked me, if "government deficits never lead to inflation and a bit of inflation is a good thing anyway," does that mean that "we can just print money to pay for" whatever we want? Well, not generally—except for right now. What this misses is that the rules change when interest rates are zero. Banks are content to just sit on newly-printed money when rock-bottom lending rates mean the cost of doing so is nil. Especially when the Fed says it will un-print enough of this money to keep inflation from rising much at all. Why do anything with your money if you won't make any from lending it, and you won't lose any from inflation? You won't. So none of this money makes its way into the economy and inflation stays in hibernation, even as the Fed retires trillions of dollars of debt with all the money it has printed. (When the Fed buys bonds, it remits interest payments back to the Treasury, so the government starts paying itself instead of paying the banks that used to own them). That's as free as lunch gets.
DeleteBut what if banks start lending all this money out? Won't the economy overheat, spark massive inflation and turn into 1970s America, if not 1920s Germany? In a word, no. The Fed has plenty of tools, with mind-numbing names like reverse repos and interest on reserves, to vacuum up as much of that money as it wants—and, if history is any guide, it's going to want to vacuum it all up. That's because the Fed takes its 2 percent inflation target quite seriously. If anything, it takes it too seriously, getting ready to raise rates even though there isn't any inflation to speak of. This is not a central bank that is going to fall asleep at the inflationary wheel.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSometimes the obvious answer is the correct one. Today's Fed isn't going to let low inflation turn into hyperinflation. Today's government isn't going to force the Fed to do so. And Paul Krugman knows more about economics than Glenn Beck.
ReplyDeleteWonkblog
QuirkWed Sep 30, 02:35:00 AM EDT
ReplyDelete.
Whoops. There I go again. Using those doggone 'facts' that are so bothersome to our dynamic duo.
It's a crime to deface another's property. There is no doubt specific rules and policies of the UofC outlining punishments for those actions. The perps should be punished to the full extent of the rules and the law.
Quirk lives in a perfect world.
Those that seek free speech against Israel are despicable but legal.
No matter the actual anti-jewish violence it cheers on...
No Quirk, you and your silly questions are so yesterday.
The Jew haters and Israel bashers on college campuses are over the top, they beat up our kids, they intimidate, they stalk, they terrorize.
"law enforcement"? Is a joke.
So I counter.
Let those (like you) talk of policies and rules and freedom of speech, I will advocate the Jews learn self defense.
What will turn the tide of the free expression of violence towards Jews is catching those that attack and perpetrate the crimes of violence and beat the crap out of them.
Fear.
Right now? the Jew haters have no fear. They are winning as they believe they have the right to literally pit in our faces, punch us, throw fire bombs, rocks and stab us...
It's time to respond, not with 911 calls, documentation and whining but with overwhelming disproportionate violence against those that use violence.
But in America today? You have a culture of elevating the attacking thug as victim. Can you say Gentile Giant?
Cant we all get along?
NOPE.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Delete.
DeleteAll anyone has to do is read your comment, WiO, to understand you. Your views are evident. Your solutions clear.
No need for me to comment further.
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Good Quirk.
DeleteYour words are useless.
The thugs of the world only understand force.
You cannot stop hitler youth wannabes with your methods.
But I do not have any misunderstanding. You will be there cheering on the Jew hatred as legal speech.
It is an incitement to violence.
DeleteQuirk's attitude would change rapidly were the chant:
"Catholics to the gas chambers"
What if the chant were:
Delete"Blacks to the cotton fields" ?
What then ?
It seems to me the rules pertaining to demonstrations out in 'society' should not pertain on a college campus anyway.
DeleteIt is like disturbing the library. The entire campus should be considered a library. It is a place for learning, supposedly. It is not a place for political demonstrations.
I would arrest them all for disturbing the peace, and making it impossible for students to study in quiet.
Let them get a demo permit out in society somewhere, the assholes.
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DeleteGood lord, I didn't realize how far gone you guys are. It's disturbing.
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DeleteHow friggin scared are you to debate your positions?
Evidently, so scared with those positions you want to close off all debate.
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DeleteIt's ironic you guys are the ones always bringing up Nazi tactics.
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DeleteQuirk's attitude would change rapidly were the chant:
"Catholics to the gas chambers"
No. It wouldn't. Catholics have dealt with prejudice throughout their history here in the US. In the 1850's, there was a whole political party composed of nativists, the Know-Nothings, who were opposed to the Catholics in this country. I had to laugh at the article that pointed out the high dudgeon Jewish organizations assumed when a candidate for one of the committees at the UofC was asked if her Jewishness would affect her decisions on the board. Hell, when Kennedy was running for president, he was asked the same question about his Catholicism. He answered the question and moved on. Evidently, he was a little less thin-skinned than you boys.
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DeleteIt is like disturbing the library. The entire campus should be considered a library...
Moron.
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Quick, debate?
DeleteLOL
You are so 1960's
those that seek to murder Jews as a people don't just debate.
I aint thin skinned.
But my skin don't stop a knife.
All I can say is when you and your grand kids are being attacked I'd like to see how you will react.
You remind me Of Dukakis…
Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis didn't exactly charm his way into voters' hearts during the 1988 debates with his response about whether he would support the death penalty should his wife, Kitty, be raped and murdered.
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1844704_1844706_1844712,00.html
Yeah Quirk click your heals together 3 times…
You define dullard.
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DeleteI would arrest them all for disturbing the peace, and making it impossible for students to study in quiet.
Gee, I would have thought the solution would have been obvious for you. Let them study in the library.
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DeleteIf someone breaks the law, they should be punished to the extent of that law.
If they break a university's rules, they should be punished according to the university's code.
Advocating violence as a response defines the person suggesting it.
Closing down legitimate debate is the fascist solution.
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DeleteQuirk, debate?
LOL
I tried to find all these attacks you are talking about on Jewish students, WiO.
I googled, 'Attacks on Jewish Students at the University of California'.
I found a lot about boycotts, debates, jeering (something we see all the time at political speeches), and I saw a lot about those two incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism. Attacks, stabbings? Not so much. Well, not any. But I only went trough the first couple pages. Maybe was on page 6 or 8 0r 15 like that report on the 550,000 Sunnis Iran has killed in Iraq since 2011.
I did find this though,
The UC Davis vote and two hate crimes against Jewish organizations in Davis have drawn national interest in recent weeks from organizations on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, as well as people on social media. Comedienne Roseanne Barr this week defended Israel through a series of inflammatory tweets, including one that said she hopes the Davis campus “gets nuked” and another that simply had the hashtag “#nukeUCDavisJewHaters.”
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article9936056.html#storylink=cpy
You are always trying to equate different groups. I guess we could say...
Roseanne Barr = WiO.
.
September 30, 2015
ReplyDeleteIn Volkswagen's Defense
By Paul Murphy
First, let me say that I drive a Volvo XC70 - a 300 HP, 5000 pound, gas guzzler that gets about 9,000 miles per ticket -- and have never owned, or wanted, either a Volkswagen or an Audi.
It's unfair to hold today's Volkswagen AG accountable for the sins of its founders, but I have never understood how leftist anti-war protestors and peaceniks could commute to their riots in cars and vans whose design Ferdinand Porsche largely stole from Tata at Hitler's orders -- but then, I don't understand how adoring posters of mass murderers like Mao and Che Guevara with peace symbols and flowers makes sense either.
The bottom line on both observations, however, is that I don't like VW's cars, don't like the company, and have no friends who bought that company's products new - but none of this means that I can't see the upside of what VW is said to have done.
Specifically, it is possible to see their "defeat device" (basically a piece of software that detunes diesel engines during testing, but lets them run hot and clean in actual customer use) as an inspired bit of civil disobedience.
So, with that in mind, here's how Volkswagen could use the difference between the "de facto" real world application of the rule and the "de jure" world of law to defend themselves.
The legal defense is straightforward: the law generally requires these engines to pass EPA specified tests at the time of testing -- and they do. This is, in most jurisdictions, simple, black letter law: there is literally no legal substance to the charge against them.
The reality based defense, however, would be that the rule is known to be both unrealistic in economic and technical terms, and environmentally counterproductive. Basically VW would defend itself by attacking the rule maker and pushing the idea that the whole is thing is driven by the leftist agenda, not environmental concern.
There are two reasons this works:
1. The costs of the rule are easy to quantify, but the deaths due to NOx and particulate matter cited to justify it exist only as a computational artifact -- in reality not a single death, or even major illness, can be directly attributed to NOx or particulates emitted from a VW, or any other diesel, in normal outdoor use.
Some useful measures of the environmental impact that would have been produced had the rule been followed are, furthermore, both easy to estimate and easy to defend as real.
DeleteTo illustrate I'll make up some ballpark numbers: suppose the net effect of the rule if applied would be to decrease the mileage your (lying) neighbor gets on his diesel Volkswagen from a claimed 68.75 MPG to a real 55 MPG -- in part because the engine burns fuel less efficiently and in in part because it has to run at a higher RPM to produce comparable power. Now assume 400,000 VW diesels averaging 20,000 miles a year over eight years, and you get the guess that the EPA wanted to force VW customers to buy and burn an additional 230 million gallons of fuel over the period. Figure an average $3 and 23 pounds of exhaust per gallon, and this rule shows as a $698 million dollar differential tax burden on VW owners -- and 5.3 billion pound assault on the environment.
2. This issue has a long history at both the EPA and VW with both sides well aware of each other's positions and actions since at least 1998. As a result VW can present the current blow-up as a politically motivated EPA action breaking a longstanding unspoken agreement to ignore a stupid rule known to be both environmentally and economically counterproductive.
Notice, in this context, that this type of rule doesn't originate with the Republican initiated and passed Clean Air Act, it originates with Carter's EPA; the key precedents were established (largely through real and threatened judicial activism) during the Clinton administration; and that VW's use of today's "defeat device" was enabled by Clinton-era requirements with respect to on-board automotive diagnostics and triggered by the fleet fuel efficiency requirements imposed by the Obamacon in 2009.
So, what's Volkswagen's defense? It met the letter of a law imposed by bureaucrats acting in bad faith on bad science; put its customers first; reduced environmental risks and/or exposure for all Americans; and is now taking that act of civil disobedience into the legal and political arenas in support of its customers, its shareholders, and the environment.
I don't thinking shouting "Sieg Heil VW!" wholly appropriate, but if they fight, no jury containing at least one articulate conservative is going to convict them -- and smarter customers will probably express their approval of the company's actions where it counts: at the dealerships.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/in_volkswagens_defense.html#ixzz3nEWILEED
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
from Cub Scout meets Russian Special Forces file -
ReplyDeleteFox News Russia issues demand to U.S.: Get your planes out of Syria..............Hot Air
http://hotair.com/
This is an example of thin skinned jews..
ReplyDeleteThe story of how the Nazis wiped out 58,000 Jews in Kolomyja. Galicia, setting the local ghetto afire and torturing the president of the Jewish community to a point where he committed suicide in the presence of Gestapo officials, was told today to Jewish organizations here by an eye-witness of the tragedy.
Thousands of the Jewish victims were burned alive by the Nazis and other thousands were taken to neighboring woods and shot. The ghetto was burned to the ground to insure that not a single Jew remained alive in any hideouts there.
Yes quirk, Jews have a history of being murdered by your ancestors…..
SO pardon me if I don't really give a shit about your "thinned skin" comment.
Quirk and his rolling clock…
DeleteBack to the 60's…
I had to laugh at the article that pointed out the high dudgeon Jewish organizations assumed when a candidate for one of the committees at the UofC was asked if her Jewishness would affect her decisions on the board. Hell, when Kennedy was running for president, he was asked the same question about his Catholicism.
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DeleteHere is one a little more timely, joker...
QuirkWed Sep 30, 12:09:00 PM EDT
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Quirk, debate?
LOL
I tried to find all these attacks you are talking about on Jewish students, WiO.
I googled, 'Attacks on Jewish Students at the University of California'.
I found a lot about boycotts, debates, jeering (something we see all the time at political speeches), and I saw a lot about those two incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism. Attacks, stabbings? Not so much. Well, not any. But I only went trough the first couple pages. Maybe it was on page 6 or 8 or 15 like that report on the 550,000 Sunnis Iran has killed in Iraq since 2011.
I did find this though,
The UC Davis vote and two hate crimes against Jewish organizations in Davis have drawn national interest in recent weeks from organizations on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, as well as people on social media. Comedienne Roseanne Barr this week defended Israel through a series of inflammatory tweets, including one that said she hopes the Davis campus “gets nuked” and another that simply had the hashtag “#nukeUCDavisJewHaters.”
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article9936056.html#storylink=cpy
You are always trying to equate different groups. I guess we could say...
Roseanne Barr = WiO.
.
I love how you argue.
Deletepulling meaningless ideas together to make more meaningless crap..
I go back to my basic premise.
Those that attack jews should be dealt with directly, with force.
Now go ahead and spin that dipshit.
Quirk: I googled, 'Attacks on Jewish Students at the University of California'.
ReplyDeleteCongrats, why not google "'Attacks on Jewish Students"?
Why do you have to narrow the search unless you are editing the results??????
But then you mention: I found a lot about boycotts, debates, jeering (something we see all the time at political speeches), and I saw a lot about those two incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism. Attacks, stabbings? Not so much. Well, not any. But I only went trough the first couple pages. Maybe it was on page 6 or 8 or 15 like that report on the 550,000 Sunnis Iran has killed in Iraq since 2011.
Interesting you fail to mention the DOZENS of attacks of Jews across the world?
Is a stabbing in israel of an American Student not meaningful to you?
Or Paris?
Or New York?
Quirk you remind of the lawyer for OJ.
Arguing if the glove doesn't fit you must acquit
Intellectually dishonest.
How about if the glove doesn't fit you can't use the glove…. ALL other evidence is ok to use.
To listen to you speak? I can see how a coward like you thinks..
Jews need thicker skin. Jews need to call 911.
No quirk, Jews need to stomp into the ground those that attack them.
I tried to find all these attacks you are talking about on Jewish students
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Jewish+students+attacked&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gws_rd=ssl
Jewish students attacked
About 1,980,000 results (0.44 seconds)
Why Are Student Leaders and Jewish Bruins Under Attack ...
www.thetower.org/.../why-are-student-leaders-and-jewish-kids-frightene...
One of America's most prominent campuses has become a cesspool of anti-Israel hate, intimidation, and cyberbullying. A student reports from the front lines of ...
Temple Univ. Jewish Student Punched In Face And Called ...
www.truthrevolt.org/.../temple-univ-jewish-student-punched-face-and-ca...
Aug 20, 2014 - A Jewish student on the campus of Temple University was assaulted on .... UPDATE II: SJP has denied that the perpetrator in the attack was a ...
Student Voices of Fear at Being Jewish Amidst Growing ...
www.amchainitiative.org/student-voices-being-jewish-on-campus/
March 2015, Jewish DePaul Student (Sarah) – “I felt like I was being undervalued and attacked on my own campus,” Read more; June 2014, Jewish DePaul ...
Jewish Students Under Siege on College Campuses ...
www.newsmax.com/US/...Jewish-students.../626815/
Newsmax Media
Feb 25, 2015 - Tags: Israel | US colleges | Jewish students | anti-Semitism | campus ... to that student, following "a widespread anti-Israel/anti-Semitic attack ...
UCLA: Student Government Candidate Attacked for Being ...
www.breitbart.com/.../ucla-student-government-candidate-attack...
Breitbart
Mar 1, 2015 - On February 10, four members of the nine-member UCLA student government initially voted against appointing a female Jewish candidate, ...
Jewish Student 'Punched' by Pro-Palestinian Student at ...
www.breitbart.com/.../jewish-student-punched-by-pro-palestinia...
Breitbart
Aug 21, 2014 - Jewish Student 'Punched' by Pro-Palestinian Student at Temple University; Update–Suspect in Attack Against Jewish Temple University ...
Temple U. Jewish student attacked at pro-Palestinian booth ...
www.timesofisrael.com › Israel & the Region
The Times of Israel
Aug 21, 2014 - Daniel Vessal punched in the face following verbal confrontation at Students for Justice in Palestine table.
Pro-Palestinian students heckle Cal-Davis opponents with ...
www.foxnews.com/.../pro-palestinian-students-heckle-...
Fox News Channel
Feb 3, 2015 - ... Davis heckled Jewish students and shouted “Allahu Akbar” at them ... by anti- Israel groups to attack Israel and pro-Israel students on campus.
►
The Jewish Press » » Attempted Lynch Attack on 5 US ...
www.jewishpress.com › ... › Jewish › Antisemitism
The Jewish Press
Sep 3, 2015 - Palestinian Arabs in Hebron attempted to lynch five religious Jews from the U.S., tourists who mistakenly entered ... Yeshiva students actually.
19 Jewish Students Injured As New Nazi Attacks Occur at ...
ReplyDeletewww.jta.org/.../19-jewish-students-injured-as-...
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Vienna (Oct. 26). Nineteen Jewish students were injured today when renewed Nazi disturbances broke out at the University of Vienna, the Anatomical Institute ...
Toulouse and Montauban shootings - Wikipedia, the free ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/.../Toulouse_and_Montauban_shootin...
Wikipedia
On 19 March, four people, including three children, were killed at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish day school. Thereafter, the Vigipirate, France's terror alert system , ...
Attacks - Perpetrator - Reactions - Aftermath
QuirkWed Sep 30, 11:39:00 AM EDT
ReplyDeleteClosing down legitimate debate is the fascist solution.
Is Hamas shooting rockets at israel also a fascist solution?
Is Hamas kidnapping and murdering Jews also a fascist solution?
Hmm…
.
.
DeleteSure.
It is not only illegitimate it is as I have said more than once it is ill-advised and hurts their cause.
I have suggested they would have been been much further ahead and probably had their own state at this point if 45 years ago they had eschewed the terrorism and instead concentrated world opinion on the occupation through peace peaceful protests, work stoppages etc,.
.
LOL
DeleteHurts their cause.
Hamas is a terrorist group, as is Fatah.
They murder and shoot rockets and stab pregnant women, butcher Jews across the middle east and europe.
But you say it's ill advised and hurts their cause…
LOL
I have a suggestion
They need to be killed like Isis..
.
DeleteBullshit and bubblegum.
When you have no facts you make them up. When you can't support an argument, you change the subject.
The subject we were discussing was Jewish harassment at the UofC and the assault on the first amendment by the regents there, as well as, the political blackmail by the husband of of a US senator.
You expanded the discussion by bringing up attacks on Jewish students, not at the UofC, there weren't any, but around the entire fucking world.
The issues have nothing to do with each other. If you want to talk about the second fine but don't use it as an justification to excuse the actions of politically correct UofC regents. There is no excuse.
I am still waiting for your answers to the question in my last post below.
.
.
ReplyDeleteQuirk: I googled, 'Attacks on Jewish Students at the University of California'.
Congrats, why not google "'Attacks on Jewish Students"?
Simple. The conversation started with Deuce putting up a post on threats by Barbara Boxer's husband to the other regents at the UofC because their proposed Statement of Principles on Intolerance which condemned intolerance on the basis of on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, sex, or sexual orientation didn't have a specific, strong, clear statement about anti-Semitism.
For most of this stream you have been arguing about that, you proposing violence and your buddy proposing creating a campus wide library. For your part, you offered up and condemned the attacks and stabbing of Jewish students. When challenged on that you print up a laundry list of attacks from around the world. What the fuck does that have to do with what's going on at the UofC or even in the US for that matter? With the attempts to stifle debate there? With the abrogation of the first amendment?
Above, I put up the actual proposal for the Statement of Principles on Intolerance that was rejected at the UofC. I doubt you read it. But I ask that you do and then answer the same questions I asked your buddy.
1. What is wrong with it?
2. Why did it have to be rejected?
3. Why should anyone accept the asinine definition of anti-Semitism that states any criticism of Israel or its policies is de facto anti-Semitism?
4. If you accept that definition, then how can you criticize the policies of any other country?
I didn't get an answer from your bud.
.
This demonstration took place in London -
Deletehttp://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/muslimprotest.asp
but we have all seen the same type of signs here in the USA.
They should all be jailed for inciting violence.
Quirk calls it "freedom of speech".
It is not. It is incitement to violence, incitement to overthrown the Constitution using violent means. It is hate 'speech' of the very worst kind.
Quirk is full of shit.
I suggest you ask your questions to those responsible for the actions in California.
DeleteTo me it once again is easy.
TO single out "jews", to harass Jews for Israel and other Israeli situations is anti-semeitc.
The BDS movement is not just about Israel, it is clearly anti-Semitic.
For me?
I love the honest hatred that the BDS'ers, the JIhadists and the far left show to Jews, Judaism, Zionism and Israel.
Just like you, rufus, rat and deuce are clear.
Your hatred is deep and expressed on multiple levels.
I will never be fooled by you or your pals that you have any decency concerning Jews, Israel inside of you.
you are an enemy of the Jewish people :)
Hope you are proud.
But your honesty also makes it easy.
Bob, you are the one who should be thrown in jail for your hate filled fraudulent rumors that you publish here. Snope.com as a source for your facts shows just how ignorant you are.
Deletewow, that's severe ash, "thrown in jail"?
DeleteLOL
this coming from a person who lies like the rain falls…
kettle calling the pot black?
eh?
If "Behead those who insult Islam" is not an incitement to violence, what the hell is it, Ash, poetry ?
Deleteummm, dude, they are fakes.
Delete.
DeleteOf course, it makes it easy. You don't have to think.
You don't have to come up with facts.
You don't have to come up with arguments.
Won't answer my questions? Of course not. It's easy that way.
You don't have to confront uncomfortable facts.
Hamas attacks Israel. Easy, anti-Semitic.
The PA tries to negotiate with Israel. Easy, anti-Semitic.
Others try BDS boycotts. Easy, anti-Semitic.
A statement of principles condemning ALL forms of bigotry. Easy, anti-Semitic since it didn't use the specific word anti-Semitic.
Criticism of any specific Israeli policy. Easy, anti-Semitic.
Pointing out that you are either a bald-faced liar, or are completely ignorant of all things Israeli (multiple examples available on request from history, to the Oslo Accords, to the current situation in the ME). Easy, anti-Semitic.
But why restrict it to gentiles? The majority of American Jews are opposed to a specific Israeli policy. Easy, The majority of American Jews are appeasers.
You are nothing if not consistent. Everyone in the world is against you. You are the perpetual victim. You don't have the balls to make a straight forward argument without trying to divert and change the subject and when you eventually come up empty you charge anti-Semitism. Even when people agree with you you call them anti-Semitic.
It's all you've got.
.
I guess, a tough question for you Bob is; is it legal to make fakes like that?
DeleteAll fakes -
Deletehttps://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A86.J3TAZgxWIxMA5TAnnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTEzbWJkMnE2BGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDRkZSQUMwXzEEc2VjA3Nj?p=Moslem+Demostrations+the+Usa&fr=yhs-mozilla-002&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-002
Man Uses Raccoon To Start Breathalyzer Equipped Car; Raccoon Then Attacks Driver
ReplyDeleteA man who needed to blow into a Breathalyzer to start his car was too drunk to do so. What he did next is almost unbelievable. He somehow found a raccoon going through the garbage, captured it and then used the raccoon to blow into the breathalyzer.
Let he who has not kidnapped a raccoon to blow into the ignition breathalyzer interlock system cast the first stone: pic.twitter.com/dTAXQ9GMNB
— Stephen Quinn (@CBCStephenQuinn) September 30, 2015
According to a report that was shared on Imgur, the raccoon became unconscious so the man left the raccoon in the car and drove off. A short time after, the raccoon woke up and started to attack the driver.
According to telegraph.co.uk:
He did not stop driving, however, and so he crashed into a residential fence.
The vehicle then apparently ‘came to a stop’ in a swimming pool.
I’m not one to judge, but generally when you have a Breathalyzer on your steering wheel it’s there because you haven’t made the best decisions in the past. And this, I have to believe, is this man’s rock bottom. It’s also probably the raccoon’s.
You gotta be shittig me :)
Guy was probably one of those old drunks who is under the illusion that he 'drives better drunk than sober'.
DeleteYou find them in every country.
Another Obama foreign policy 'success' -
ReplyDeleteSINCE OBAMA RENEWED RELATIONS, CUBA HAS 'INCREASED REPRESSION'............Drudge