Mayor: Don’t Shout Allahu Akbar in Venice or You’ll Get Shot

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Jihadis often scream this as they commit mass murder in the name of Islam, but Muslims shout it in other contexts as well, and so there has been the predictable reaction to Brugnaro’s words: “The mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, a center-leftist politician, shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ at Brugnaro after his speech to mock him.” And then this doubly predictable follow-up: “But he later apologized if the joke had caused any offense.”

But what Brugnaro was essentially saying was that he was going to fight back, and not lay down and appease the jihadis and Islamic supremacists, as so many others do. Is there anything wrong with that? Plenty, for today’s Leftists.

“Don’t Shout Allahu Akbar in Venice or You’ll Get Shot, Says Mayor,” by Jack Moore, Newsweek, August 24, 2017:

An Italian mayor has caused controversy after saying that anyone who shouts “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great” in Arabic, in the main square of the northern city of Venice, will be shot on the spot.

Luigi Brugnaro, a right-wing politician, was speaking about extremism at a conference in the city of Rimini. He said that Venice was a safer place than Barcelona, with greater security measures in place….

“In contrast with Barcelona, where they had not set up protection, we keep our guard up. If someone shouts Allahu Akbar while running through St Mark’s Square, we’ll shoot them,” Brugnaro said. “A year ago, I said [they’d be shot] after four steps, now I’m saying it would happen after three.”

He further emphasized his point in Venetian, uttering the words “Ghe Sparemo,” or “we will shoot him.”…

“In Venice, we arrested four terrorists who wanted to blow up the Rialto Bridge, saying they wanted to go to Allah. But we’ll send them straight to Allah before they can do any damage.”…

The mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, a center-leftist politician, shouted “Allahu Akbar” at Brugnaro after his speech to mock him. But he later apologized if the joke had caused any offense.

“It was not my intention to offend anybody, least of all the Muslim community. I did not intend to joke about their religion, nor evoke the tragic events of recent days,” he wrote on Facebook.

But unlike Nardella, Venice’s mayor stood by his comments. “I have never been politically correct, I am incorrect,” he said….

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The Crashing Fall of Journalism at the New York Times

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The New York Times represents a special case in the spiraling loss of credibility among the American mainstream media. For generations now, it has been the dominant newspaper in America; the most well-known and the most influential. It’s motto is “All the news that’s fit to print.”

But it also has been a leader in the leftward lurch in journalism, which has now turned into a full-throttle route of any remnants of fair and objective reporting. The Times has made itself into a thought-leader of the American progressive movement and an overt propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. It drips with unmistakeable partisanship.

It’s motto more accurately now might be: “All the progressive news we can find, and some we just make up.”

In recent months the New York Times has been infested by several major errors that were so obviously egregious that the newspaper was forced to make corrections — albeit in as hidden a way as possible. (Nobody likes to admit they’re wrong, and all the more so to the whole world. But this is supposed to be the most prestigious news organization in the country.)

Here’s a quick look at three recent corrections — largely forced through actual journalism by increasingly invaluable alternative media sources. Note that every “error” hurt Republicans and helped Democrats. That is not a coincidence. These are not honest mistakes. They may not be on purpose, but they reveal a mindset that easily believes whatever damages Republicans and helps Democrats — sometimes without question. Of course, this bleeds into all of it’s journalism, not just errors.

The Times’ unforced errors

For several months, all of the mainstream media, led by the Times and Associate Press, were repeating ad nauseam that 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed Russia had meddled in the 2016 election. This became fact on social media and even most conservatives accepted it as true. In June, the Times repeated this “fact”as part of a long “news” screed against Trump’s claims.

But The Daily Caller News Foundation’s fact-checking team had thoroughly exposed the fraud a month earlier. In a surprise to most all news consumers, it was simply not true. Only four intelligence agencies had actually come to that conclusion.

How did this happen? Astonishingly, The Democrat media accepted a Democrat politician’s statement as fact and ran with it without verification. Hillary Clinton used the claim in a presidential debate, and apparently everyone accepted it without even the most basic fact-checking. After almost a year of faulty reporting — including months leading up to the election, which translated into how many votes for Clinton? — the Times was forced into issuing a correction, as did the Associated Press. But it will live on as a fact in social media forever.

On Aug. 8, the Times ran a story under the headline “Scientists Fear Trump Will Dismiss Blunt Climate Report.” The Times reported very importantly that scientists leaked a copy of the report to them because the scientists were “concerned that it would be suppressed.” The message throughout the story was one of the media’s favorite scary Trump narratives — dangerous Donald Trump might suppress the report.

One problem. The potentially “suppressed” report was made public seven months earlier in January and actually went through a public comment period for three months, during which time anyone could read and comment on it. In fact, at the time of the story and still today, the Internet Archive maintains a copy of the report in its public domain database.

After an immediate outcry, the Times was forced to run a correction the next day, at the bottom of the story, which was edited. But the actual thrust of the story remains. Honest journalism would take it down and redirect to the correction alone. There was no story.

It’s not hard to guess what happened. Activist “scientists” thought it lacked coverage, so they thought that sending it to the Times as a “leak” would gin up negative Trump coverage. Boy would it! This is just conjecture, but unfortunately, quite believable.

After a Democrat activist opened fire on congressional Republicans’ baseball practice in May, the Times used a long-debunked conspiracy theory to attack Sarah Palin in an editorial. As the media and Democrat activists attempted to do right after the shooting of Democrat Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011, the editorial linked Palin’s campaign messaging and a map to the shooting of Giffords.

The editorial stated: “Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.”

Of course, because we have social media and alternative media sources, there was a huge backlash to the editorial. In fact, at the very time of the shooting it was known that the Palin map was irrelevant because the shooter had been obsessed with Giffords for three years. So the Time issued another correction:

“An editorial on Thursday about the shooting of Representative Steve Scalise incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords. In fact, no such link was established. The editorial also incorrectly described a map distributed by a political action committee before that shooting. It depicted electoral districts, not individual Democratic lawmakers, beneath stylized cross hairs.”

Remember, these are just the most recent and worst factual errors that were publicly caught, not beginning to peal back the ongoing extinguishing of Democrat scandals and exploding of supposed Republican wrongdoings.

Axing their own watchdog

The bias is not hard to see for right-of-center American news consumers.

But now it appears the newspaper itself has all but given up on trying to be fair, accurate, professional and responsive to readers.

The position of public editor was created in 2003 to “investigate matters of journalistic integrity” where the editor would respond to questions of accuracy, fairness and so on after another scandal in the newsroom. The position was “established to receive reader complaints and question Times journalists on how they make decisions.” The Times went through several public editors until eliminating the position in May, four months after the inauguration of President Trump.

Explaining the elimination, Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., said in a memo that the public editor’s role was outdated. “Our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be,” he wrote. “Our responsibility is to empower all of those watchdogs, and to listen to them, rather than to channel their voice through a single office.”

That falls somewhere between disingenuous and weak gruel. Number one, the two are not mutually exclusive. It’s hardly as though the existence of the public editor marginalized the social media stewards. They surely do not need “empowering.” And number two, none of those social media overseers have the insider view of the newsroom and understanding of the Times that the public editor did. Now the public editor often acted as a defender of the Times’ journalism, but some could be excellent critics with insight only they had. That is gone, and it is gone on purpose.

It seems more likely they eliminated the position because they have no intent to be responsive to all readers — just the ones they are going after, i.e. liberals, Democrats, anti-Trumpers #theresistance.

And here’s the real nugget. The last public editor, Liz Spayd, was actually a pretty fair watcher of the watchdogs and one who refused to tow the company line — in this case, the anti-Trump resistance. Times Editor Dean Baquet called some of her works “bad columns” and “fairly ridiculous.” She in fact was less than a year into her two-year term. The Times could not just fire her for being even-handed, so they dumped the entire position, eliminating the only real pretext of honest and fair journalism.

Result: cratering and curated readership

The results of all this, in which the Times acts as a representative of the journalism integrity problems facing all newspaper, were predictable and are easy to see.

Newspaper circulation nationally peaked in 1973 at 63 million weekday readers, according to Journalism.org, part of the Pew Research Center. The total number of weekday readers as of 2016 was under 35 million. As bad as that sounds, with readership falling nearly in half, it’s actually much worse.

In 1973, the population of the United States was 211 million people. In 2016, it was 323 million people. This means that newspaper “penetration” — the percentage of Americans reading a daily newspaper — nose-dived during that period. In 1973, penetration was 30% — nearly one in three Americans reading newspapers. By 2016, it was less than 11%, just one in 10 Americans.

While the internet and technological revolution certainly impacted newspapers, it’s worth noting that readership was flat during the 80s and into the 90s and was declining through the 90s, when the internet was but a shadow of what it is today — and while the population continued to climb. So clearly it is not all because of technology, which is what many newspaper people insist on believing. Their blindness, much of it intentional, has ruined their industry.

What’s revealing, and is cementing the old guard media’s position as the liberal media for liberal readers, is that virtually no one in the industry can see how their own biases are turning off half of the population — and how that is a definitive part of their decline.

Redefining in the age of Trump

This is doubly so in the era of Trump. The Washington Post unveiled a new slogan recently that is nearly apocalyptic: “Democracy dies in darkness.” Social media users relentlessly mocked the Post for the new slogan. But in the fevered hatred of Trump in American newsrooms, it seemed like a good fit.

As did the Times’ decision to air it’s own apocalyptic commercial during the Academy Awards. “The truth is hard to find. The truth is hard to know. The truth is more important now than ever,” the Times ad states at the end. There is little doubt that they actually think they are the arbiters of telling the truth, despite their overt partisanship, errors and fabrications.

The New York Times has been king of this self-inflicted industry takedown, consistently talking of its high level of journalistic integrity, while acting as a Democrat content-provider.

With cable news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC dumping all journalistic pretense, newspapers had a chance to return to the role of trusted news sources. But the same doctrinaire liberals that occupy virtually all cable news outlets also occupy virtually all newspaper newsrooms. They are the same people with the same worldviews doing the same things, only through a different medium.

This is all a shame. Because a truly fair and balanced media would be of inestimable value to the Republic. That now appears to be a lost cause, thanks solely to the media itself.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act.

Too funny! Now Canadian PM Trudeau tones down his welcome to refugees!

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I thought I was done posting for the day, but could not resist this ‘oopsy’ moment!

He wanted to stick it to Trump! And, earn an ‘attaboy’ from his hero—Obama!

From the UK Telegraph (and lots and lots of other media sources):

Justin Trudeau has sought to tone down the warm welcome he promised to migrants, after arrivals at the Canadian border hit 250 a day, leaving immigration officials struggling to cope with the influx.

The Canadian prime minister tweeted shortly after President Donald Trump announced the halt of the US refugee programme that Canada would still be a haven.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada,” he said.

 

Screenshot (785)

They are all yours Justin, all yours!

Much more here.

Three quarters of a million likes! Three quarters of a million people on twitter who don’t know squat!

HA! HA! HA!

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Alert to Mainers: Local community college prez wants Somalis to move to Aroostook County

Obama Policy That Encourages Banking Discrimination Is Finally Ending by Daniel J. Mitchell

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Trump has been President for more than 200 days and those of us who want more economic liberty don’t have many reasons to be happy.

Obamacare hasn’t been repealed, the tax code hasn’t been reformed, and wasteful spending hasn’t been cut.

The only glimmer of hope is that Trump has eased up on the regulatory burden. More should be happening, of course, but we are seeing some small steps in the right direction.

Let’s share one positive development.

Operation Choke Point

Professor Tony Lima of California State University opined back in January in the Wall Street Journal that Trump could unilaterally boost growth by ending a reprehensible policy known as “Operation Choke Point.”

…the Trump administration could shut down Operation Choke Point. This program, enforced by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., targets “risky” banking customers and pressures banks to deny them credit. It’s unnecessary: If these industries are really risky, banks would not want their business. The real purpose of Operation Choke Point is to target industries that are out of favor…, among them: Coin dealers, money-transfer networks and payday lenders. Sales of ammunition and firearms (Second Amendment, anyone?) and fireworks (legal in some states). …Other legal goods and services such as surveillance equipment, telemarketing, tobacco and dating services. …Denying credit hampers an industry’s growth. Eliminating Operation Choke Point would encourage growth. It costs nothing. And someday it may reduce enforcement spending.

And Professor Charles Calomiris from Columbia University echoed those views a few weeks later.

Imagine you have a thriving business and one morning you get a call from your banker explaining that he can no longer service your accounts. …That’s what happened to many business owners as the result of an Obama administration policy called Operation Choke Point. In 2011 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. warned banks of heightened regulatory risks from doing business with certain merchants. A total of 30 undesirable merchant categories were affected…the FDIC explained that banks with such clients were putting themselves at risk of “unsatisfactory Community Reinvestment Act ratings, compliance rating downgrades, restitution to consumers, and the pursuit of civil money penalties.” Other FDIC regulatory guidelines pointed to difficulties banks with high “reputation risk” could have receiving approval for acquisitions.

Keep in mind, by the way, that Congress didn’t pass a law mandating discrimination against and harassment of these merchants.

The Washington bureaucracy, along with ideologues in the Obama Administration, simply decided to impose an onerous new policy.

In effect, the paper pushers were telling financial institutions “nice business, shame if anything happened to it.”

But at least when mobsters engage in that kind of a shakedown, there’s no illusion about what’s happening.

Telling Bankers Their Business

Professor Calomiris explained that this regulatory initiative of the Obama Administration made no sense economically.

It is rather comical that regulators would use the excuse of regulatory risk management to punish banks. Banks are in the business of gauging risk and have every incentive to avoid customer relationships that could hurt their reputation. Regulators, on the other hand, have shown themselves unwilling or unable to acknowledge risk, the most obvious example being the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008.

And he also explained why Operation Choke Point was such a reprehensible violation of the rule of law.

The FDIC’s regulators never engaged in formal rule-making or announced penalties for banks serving undesirable clients. Such rule-making likely would have been defeated in congressional debate or under the Administrative Procedures Act. Instead, regulators chose to rely on informal decrees called “guidance.” …Financial regulators find regulatory guidance particularly expedient because it spares them the burden of soliciting comments, holding hearings, defining violations, setting forth procedures for ascertaining violations, and defining penalties for ignoring the guidance. Regulators prefer this veil of secrecy because it maximizes their discretionary power and places the unpredictable and discriminatory costs on banks and their customers.

Well, we have some good news.

The Trump Administration has just reversed this terrible Obama policy. Politico has some of the details.

The Justice Department has committed to ending a controversial Obama-era program that discourages banks from doing business with a range of companies, from payday lenders to gun retailers. The move hands a big victory to Republican lawmakers who charged that the initiative — dubbed “Operation Choke Point” — was hurting legitimate businesses. …House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte…and House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), along with Reps. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) praised the department in a joint statement. “We applaud the Trump Justice Department for decisively ending Operation Choke Point,” they said. “The Obama Administration created this ill-advised program to suffocate legitimate businesses to which it was ideologically opposed by intimidating financial institutions into denying banking services to those businesses.”

And Eric Boehm of Reason is pleased by this development.

A financial dragnet that ensnared porn stars, gun dealers, payday lenders, and other politically disfavored small businesses has been shut down. Operation Choke Point launched in 2012… It quickly morphed into a questionably constitutional attack on a wide range of entrepreneurs who found their assets frozen or their bank accounts closed because they were considered “high-risk” for fraud. …Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd called Operation Choke Point “a misguided initiative” and confirmed that DOJ was closing those investigations… “Law abiding businesses should not be targeted simply for operating in an industry that a particular administration might disfavor,” Boyd wrote. …The repudiation of Operation Choke Point is a welcome development, says Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute.

I shared a video last year that explained Operation Choke Point in just one minute. But that just scratched the surface, so here’s a video from Reason that explains in greater detail why Operation Choke Point was so repulsive.

Kudos to the Trump Administration for reversing this awful policy.

But hopefully, this is just the first step. Regulators are still squeezing financial institutions in an attempt to discourage them from doing business with low-tax jurisdictions. This policy of “de-risking” exists even though so-called tax havens generally have tighter laws against dirty money than the United States.

Trump should put an end to that misguided policy.

Ultimately, what’s really needed is a complete rethink of money-laundering laws and regulations.

Amazingly, some politicians actually want to make these laws even worse. Ideally, Trump will move completely in the other direction.

P.S. While it’s good that Trump has reversed Operation Choke Point, his Administration has moved in the wrong direction on civil forfeiture policy. One step forward and one step backward is not a recipe for more growth and prosperity.

Reprinted from International Liberty.

Daniel J. Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.

RELATED ARTICLE: Operation Choke Point Is Over. But Without Major Reforms, It Could Happen Again.

Millennials Are in a Love Triangle with Capitalism and Socialism by Andrew J. Taylor

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There’s been a lot of talk recently about how Millennials – the generation born between roughly 1980 and 2000 – think about economics. Much of it was sparked by the fanatical support for self-described “Democratic Socialist” Bernie Sanders from young people in the Democratic primary for president last year.

Millennials have economic attitudes that are different from older Americans.

Gallup found in April 2016 that, whereas Hillary Clinton had a net favorability rating of -23 among 18-24 year-olds, Sanders’s score was +39.

A Harvard University poll administered at about the same time revealed how this has been translated into policy views. The survey reported that only 42% of Millennials supported capitalism. According to a contemporaneous Gallup poll, that was about 10 percentage points lower than the general population. The Harvard survey showed 33% of Millennials wanted socialism.

So Millennials have economic attitudes that are different from older Americans. But is their economic behavior different? Do they walk the socialist walk?

Here, the evidence is decidedly mixed.

Health Care

Socialists tend to embrace public goods because all citizens can consume them. Millennials certainly like them. A Pew Research Center poll from June revealed 45% of 18–29-year-olds favored a single-payer health care system. This was 14 percentage points higher than any other single age group.

Census data show Millennials adopted health insurance more rapidly than any other age cohort when Obamacare began in 2014-15. I’m not entirely sure what kind of political philosophy this behavior illustrates, but it does seem to suggest Millennials embraced the Affordable Care Act, legislation most people believe moved health care in this country solidly to the left.

Recycling and Personal Consumption

Socialism, unlike capitalism, makes a virtue of constrained personal consumption. A major reason for this, of course, is that it is less suited to production. But the connection has helped fuse ecology to socialism in the platforms of left-wing parties across the globe.

You may have heard the argument that Millennials are more environmentally conscious than the rest of us – they don’t use plastic shopping bags or flush the toilet, etc. A survey commissioned by Rubbermaid reported earlier this year that two-thirds of Millennials would give up social media for a week if everyone at their company recycled.

Interestingly, however, the data on behavior do not bear this out. A 2014 Harris poll conducted for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) revealed that whereas roughly a half of respondents over thirty said they “always” recycled, only a third of the younger group did.

Millennials talk about saving the planet for humanity, behavior a socialist mindset deems heroic, but they do not seem to be doing more than anyone else to secure our world’s survival.

Transportation

Millennials also use public transportation much more than other groups. Over one-fifth ride a bus or train on a daily or almost-daily basis according to a Pew survey from late 2015. This was nearly double the proportion of any other age group.

Indeed, younger people seem to have much less love than their elders for that ultimate of American private goods, one’s own car. The number of licensed drivers in both the 24-29-year-old and 30-34-year-old cohorts decreased by about 10% between 1983 and 2014 according to the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. The drop for 18-year-olds was a fifth. At the same time, everyone over 45 continues their love affair with the automobile.

This seems consistent with the socialist rejection of material goods, but whether this is correlation or causation is unclear.

Sharing Economy

Moreover, Millennials have almost single-handedly nurtured the “sharing” economy – a marketplace in which peer-to-peer transactions are facilitated by a software platform that permits participants to divide consumption, as exemplified by Uber and Airbnb. According to Vugo, 57% of all ridesharing customers are aged 25 to 34.

The sharing economy may sound quite socialist because it seems to eschew private ownership. But as Duke professor Mike Munger has pointed out, people, in general, wish to consume the services that tangible goods provide, not the goods themselves. The sharing economy, in fact, provides access to the services of more material goods than the user would otherwise have – whether that’s a five-minute ride in a car or a two-day stay in a house. Its fundamental principles, therefore, are capitalist.

Entrepreneurialism

A 2014 Bentley University survey of Millennials reported that two-thirds of respondents expressed a desire to start their own business. But Millennial behavior is different. An analysis by the Wall Street Journal last year found that the proportion of Americans under 30 who own a business has dropped by 65% since the 1980s. Millennials might say they want to be Mark Zuckerberg, but they’re not particularly entrepreneurial.

There does exist therefore a disconnect between Millennial economic attitudes and behavior. What explains it? The generation is intrigued by the idea of socialism. It embraces many of its values and the public policies that would bring it about. But Millennials’ behavior is ambiguous. Entrepreneurship in private enterprise is not a particularly appealing career path to them in practice.

Additionally, Millennials’ reduced consumption is probably as much a function of economic necessity as it is a sacrifice of their personal wants to some grand social plan. The Great Recession has left them playing financial catch-up. A Pew analysis of census data reveals 15% of 25-to-35-year-olds still live with their parents. Traditionally that fraction has been around one tenth. A 2016 study by the left-leaning Center for American Progress found that Millennials make less than Gen Xers did in their early 30s. They only earn about the same as Boomers, who are 30 years older and 50% less likely to have graduated from college.

So perhaps there’s another explanation: When they appear to be rejecting capitalism, it’s often because Millennials are simply adjusting America’s core economic principles to new technologies and economic realities.

Reprinted from Learn Liberty.

Andrew J. Taylor

Andrew J. Taylor

Andrew J. Taylor is professor of Political Science in the School of Public and International Affairs at NC State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut and teaches courses in American politics, including Introduction to American Government, the Presidency and Congress, the Legislative Process, Public Choice and Political Institutions, and the Classical Liberal Tradition.

VIDEO: Taking down violent Antifa Marxists and the Alt-‘Right’

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The Revolutionary Act clears up the clouds of media confusion over who the alt-right is and who Antifa is on the ABC panel. I explain how neither have anything to do with the Right in America.

Censorship Is Alive And Well In the United States!

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Harry Truman sagely observed,

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is on the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

Clearly, the protection of speech, no matter how offensive that speech may be, is a time-honored, foundational plank in our nation’s birth and of our system of government. Indeed, our freedom to develop ideas free of government interference, and then deliver them without censure is so important that it earned a place within the most hallowed protections memorialized in the First Amendment of the Constitution, “Congress shall make no law. . . abridging the freedom speech.”

Consequently watching the devolution of our protections during the past two weeks would be as harrowing an experience for the Framers of the Constitution as it ought to be for every one of us who values our independence and fears the consequences of government encroachment.

The latest assault on our freedoms comes from fascist elements decorated with the perfect disguise; the cloak of anti-fascism. These promoters of disorder, violence, and hatred have managed to present themselves as fighters against bigotry while dismantling the very democracy in whose freedoms they take comfort in organizing their spiteful and evil campaigns. And the worst thing about it is that those on the left, and the uneducated who join them, are all too eager to swallow their poison and promote the dismantling of the nation’s foundational precepts.

Case in point?

The prelude to Boston

The run-up to the Aug. 19 Boston Rally was clearly a tumultuous affair. Charlottesville, reeling from the city council’s decision to remove the Robert E. Lee Statue from its place of prominence in the public square (itself an act of censorship and thought control), saw a group of individuals organize a rally to protest the decision. Tragically, the members of the rally spewed hatred and ridiculous, indefensible messages of white supremacy and racism. But they clearly had a right to assemble and deliver their venomous speech.

In response, radical left wing elements hijacked the flag of righteousness and presented themselves with the proclaimed intent of mounting a counter-protest. But they were armed with the willingness, and perhaps even the desire, to engage in violence and promote mayhem.

We do not have any information over who started the violent confrontations in Charlottesville, but suffice it to say that violence did ensue directly resulting in the death of one upstanding citizen who clearly was not there to engage in any activity she did not have the right to pursue, and of two police officers charged with guarding the peace who died when their helicopter crashed.

Boston had been previously scheduled to host a rally by a group calling itself the Boston Free Speech Coalition on the weekend following the events in Charlottesville. Precious little was known about this group.  Through a radio interview the day prior to the rally, we learned that the group consisted of seven young people ages 17-23. Their leader and speaker was a young man named John Medlar. The Boston Free Speech Coalition had been in existence for less than a year and had successfully organized one event in its history, an event that took place in May 2017, at the gazebo in Boston Commons, the same location which was to house the Aug. 19 rally.  That event, although attended by counter-protesters, had been a peaceful affair.

We also know that the Boston Free Speech Coalition had no formal ties to any fringe groups and that their raison d’etre was their concern over what they perceived to be an erosion of First Amendment speech rights in our country. They cooperated fully with the authorities and gave the Boston Police Department every assurance that a) they were totally disinterested in causing any trouble; and b) they would cooperate fully in making sure that peace and order be maintained.

It is true that in their May 2017, rally, they provided a stage for some pretty detestable speakers, but the Boston Free Speech Coalition openly disavowed themselves of their views. Again, their priority was to serve as a conduit for all speech. In fact, recurrently, Medlar said that he had invited all to share in the forum, regardless of the political inclinations of their views.

When Medlar was asked if his group sympathized with white nationalists or Nazis, he said, “The problem with white supremacy is that they don’t extend rights to other people. They use the First Amendment as a shield to protect themselves, but because they’re supremacists, they don’t extend the same rights to people of color, and we believe that the Constitution applies to everyone.”

And this is all we knew — and still know — about the Boston Free Speech Coalition.

Frankly, this doesn’t sound like a hate group. They may be naive.  They may be idealistic, as young people are wont to be. But in their dealings, there is no evidence at all that they a) wanted any trouble; or b) hated anyone or anything, except the assault on the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The censorship efforts of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh

But how about government? Did the government consider the Boston Free Speech Coalition a hate group? Well, to answer that question, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh consulted that pinnacle of neutral arbitration on the matter, the Southern Poverty Law Center — the same extreme leftist group that classified the Christian based organizations like the Family Research Council as hate groups.

And what did the Southern Poverty Law Center tell the mayor?  Well, according to Mayor Walsh, they told him the following: “The Southern Poverty Law Center has been guiding communities throughout the nation on how to handle hate groups.”

Wait! Stop!

Who said the Boston Free Speech Coalition is a hate group? The Southern Poverty Law Center? Well, the Southern Poverty Law Center couldn’t say that the Boston Free Speech Coalition is a hate group because, there is no history to the group! Moreover (I checked), the Southern Poverty Law Center does not — repeat — not(!!) list the Boston Free Speech Coalition as a hate group in its website!

So is it you, Mr. Mayor? Are you singlehandedly calling the Boston Free Speech Coalition a hate group?

Well, it seems so, and if that’s true, then the government of Boston has just injected itself on behalf of one party in a political debate — about free speech no less! And even more offensively, the Mayor brings all the power of the city against that group (Truman’s prophesied “opposition”) with the sole purpose of dissuading people from listening to their speeches.

The Mayor continues, “[The Southern Poverty Law Center] recommend[s] that people not confront (sic) these rallies. So we are urging everyone to stay away from the Commons.”

Translation, “Don’t go to the rally because the City of Boston says this is a hate group and the City of Boston does not want you to hear their message.”

This is the way of dictatorships.

Look, I’m not saying the invited speakers would have been anything other than repulsive. But they had the right to say whatever they were going to say, and the government dissuading others from listening is a core violation of the relationship we have established through our Constitution and its Amendments.

That the mayor of Boston would have behaved in such a manner demonstrates either a gross disregard or a fatal misunderstanding of the importance of free speech to any country claiming to be a representative democracy.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

Mr. Mayor, in your zeal to align yourself with the left and ridicule the right, in your own small, little way and within earshot of the final resting places of those who died to protect our freedoms, you just took that very step.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act.

Fact Checking Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Sequel’

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Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Sequel, is riddled with junk science and hysterical alarmism.

Sadly, Gore plans to inflict his self-aggrandizing propaganda film on our kids.

Now you have a means to fight back!

Marc Morano posted a detailed review and fact check of Gore’s Hollywood-hyped ‘masterpiece’ over at CFACT’s Climate Depot.

Marc pulled from our detailed archives to provide facts, figures and graphs that dispel Gore’s horror stories.

No Al, whether its glaciers, ice, flooding, war, polar bears, you name it, it’s your film, not the planet, that’s full of hot air. And CFACT’s special report takes down your hype with hard facts!

Gore is particularly shameless about blaming extreme natural weather events on global warming — even though they would have occurred whether people walked the Earth or not.

Read our Climate Depot special report for yourself, and share it with your friends, family and neighbors.

Arm yourself with the facts today!

A Middle East Grand Bargain Must Create Kurdistan by Sherkoh Abbas and Robert Sklaroff

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President Trump’s itinerary during his first overseas trip revealed both his goal and its attendant strategy—although it remains officially unstated—as he tries to fashion a durable end to the Syrian civil war and the birth of a restructured region.

In the process of touching-base with the nerve-centers of each of the three major Middle East religions, he attempted to eliminate the Islamic State without empowering Iran.

Conspiratorial Liberals yelp when he recruits Russia, and acolytes of the Obama Administration condemn his having maneuvered around Tehran.

But he must defang the ayatollahs, lest they ally with North Korean missile-rattlers and threaten World War III.

This is why he keeps an armada in the Gulf, while maintaining a beefed-up presence in the Sea of Japan and encouraging Beijing to block Pyongyang from nuke-testing, for he must stretch the depleted military in theaters a half-globe apart until it has been rebuilt.

And that’s why he has embedded Americans with Kurdish forces attacking Raqqa, for it is impossible to be a “player” without having placed pieces onto the board.Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the U.S. national security adviser, was triggered to inform Turkey on May 1st  that the Kurds were to receive heavy machine guns, mortars, anti-tank weapons, and armored cars after the Turks had lethally-bombed Kurdish forces in northeast Syria the prior Tuesday. That reflected autocrat Erdo?an having again  “distracted”  world attention from targeting the primary target, the Islamic State.

Accommodating this major reconfiguration of regional forces, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia saw no need to arm the Syrian Kurds, but said Moscow would maintain working contacts with them.

Secretary of Defense James “Jim” Mattis had decided to arm the Kurds directly rather than via any regional country, finally reversing Obama’s following-from-behind intransigent passivity.

He is implementing key aphorisms derived from his storied career defending America.

Indeed, Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) recognized arming the Kurds constitutes “an immense milestone.”

In the process, Mattis has recognized The Road to Defeating the Islamic State Runs through Kurdistan, an essay—illustrated by a settlement-map—that succinctly details the historic, military, economic, religious and political implications of this overdue stance.

Visiting Trump in this charged atmosphere, Erdo?an chose the wrong time to be bellicose against Israel and America.  His post-referendum dictatorial effort to promote Jihad was again manifest through two decrees; one that expelled more than 4,000 civil servants and another that banned television dating programs.

That these actions were  not being well-received. That was reflected in the fact that the latter two hyperlinks [al-Monitor and Aljazeera] are from Arab websites, suggesting welcome-recognition of a tilt toward inter-alia the Sunni Gulf states, plus Qatar, the locale of a major American military presence over NATO-aligned Ankara ,which is increasingly aligning with Iran against the potential for Kurds to achieve independence.

That  would serve as the culmination of battle-plans we have proposed for almost a decade.  In 2008, we identified  Kurds as  an “invisible people”  and   advocated confronting the major source of global terrorism,The Road to Iran Runs through Kurdistan – and Starts in Syria. In 2015, we showed why the United States cannot evade this trouble-spot,[The Pathway to Defeating ISIS Runs Though Kurdistan – And Starts in America. In 2013, we  concluded The Kurds can lead a reconstituted  Syria, at peace with all of her neighbors.  In 2014, we suggested NATO Must Help the Kurds Now.

That is  why Kurds are seeking recognition of their enormous military sacrifice and their unique political feat, noting their carefully-constructed federal system in Rojava;  the area of Northern Syria comprised of four self-governing cantons.

Resolving vague territorial claims would yield a regional Diaspora in Turkey, Iran, and Russia, although Stalin purged much of the USSR-population a half-century ago.

Recognizing that Russia has unilaterally created safe-zones, and buzzed American jets near Alaska and Crimea, it will remain vital to coordinate militaries functioning in close-quarters, to ensure spheres of influence do not inadvertently trigger  conflict.

If America retracts support for anti-Islamist Kurds, Erdo?an will be free to promote his brand of Muslim Brotherhood ideology; the dangerous ramifications of which have been explored [Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future].

NATO can reassure Turkey that creation of an independent Kurdistan south of its border, joining with the federated section of northern Iraq, will remove inordinate fears that secession-agitation will persist on its eastern reaches.

Turkey needs to accept this type of endpoint, for its military killed six members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in air strikes in northern Iraq .

What really irks Erdo?an is that “U.S. arming Syrian Kurds shattered Turkey’s Ottoman Empire ambitions. ” Both  America and Turkey will face a de-facto proxy-war unless Erdogan heeds the more conciliatory tone struck by his Prime Minister.

The schism between the United States and Turkey was illustrated during their press  event.  These leaders deemed different entities as “terroristic”.  Trump cited PKK; whereas Erdo?an cited YPG/PYD .

This perhaps explains the anguish expressed by Turkish security guards, when they beatprotesters—primarily Kurds and Armenian outside t their D.C. embassy .

We suggest the following blueprint should be followed to prompt Moscow to help oust Iran from Syria . It would allow the Kurdish-plurality in northwestern Syria to extend its governance to the Mediterranean Sea, blocking Turkey from expansionist temptations.

The multi-front war against Islamists is recognized by Western leaders such as US Senator Ted Cruz (R, Texas) and globally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—to have supplanted the Cold War paradigm of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Perhaps the ultimate method to illustrate the wisdom of this approach is to discount an oppositional paradigm, such as the false claim that American involvement in Syria would merely be a manifestation of Western Imperialism in Rojava.

Instead, America should  implement Point 12  of Woodrow Wilson’s 14-Point Plan that advocated establishing Kurdistan more than a century ago.

At  long last, America Must Recognize Kurdistan  by serving as midwife for a new country [assuming this is the electoral outcome of the originally scheduled September 25 plebiscite sponsored by the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq. That  would assist in finally defeating  the Islamic State.  This would offer immediate and long-term geo-political  dividends.

ABOUT SHERKOH ABBAS

Sherkoh Abbas is President of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria.

ABOUT ROBERT SKLAROFF

Robert Sklaroff is a physician-activist and supporter of Kurdish self-determination.

This article constitutes the policy of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, conveyed to America and to the world, representing the Kurds of Syria.

RELATED ARTICLE: Netanyahu, the First World Leader to Endorse Independent Kurdistan, Hits Back at Erdogan for Supporting Hamas

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Collier County School Superintendent Patton: Why Do You Propagandize School Test Scores?

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On August 21, the Collier County School District published an Assessment Brief regarding its Cambridge advanced testing scores for students (click here).   The Assessment Brief “highlights” those subjects where district students performed well, but fails to mention the low scoring subjects.  In follow-up, Steve Bracci sent the below e-mail to School Superintendent Dr. Kamela Patton:

From: Steve Bracci
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2017 9:27 AM
To: ‘Kamela Patton’ <patton@collierschools.com>
Cc: ‘Roy Terry’, ‘Erika Donalds’, ‘Kelly Lichter’, ‘Erick Carter’, ‘Stephanie Lucarelli’
Subject: Cambridge test results

Superintendent Patton –

Why do you repeatedly insist on propagandizing the district’s scores?  The Cambridge AICE scores you posted on the website are an example.  You cherry-picked the “highlights” showing the top scoring categories, but overlook the categories where the District does poorly. (25% in Biology, 36% in History, 29% in English literature, 0% in Chemistry, 0% in Math).

In fact, in each of these non-highlighted categories, the district’s test performance dramatically decreased year-over-year in these core subjects:

Biology dropped from 33% to 25%
History dropped from 38% to 36%
English Lit dropped from 56% to 29%
Chemistry dropped from 30% to 0 %
Math dropped from 29% to 0%

By your strategy, it seems you think the public is either (i) too stupid or (ii) too lazy to read the data that follows the highlights.  It also seems you are more interested in “marketing” the school district than real classroom success.  Sad!

Sincerely, Steve Bracci

This is posted not to criticize the performance of students or teachers, but rather, to demonstrate the dysfunctionality of a behemoth school district administration that is so hell-bent on aggrandizing its own image, that it distorts the truth about school-based performance.  If Superintendent Patton feels the need to twist statistics to show constant success, without recognizing areas where there needs to be improvement, then Patton is the problem, not the solution.

Those who support the Superintendent without calling out such falsehoods are engaging in politics of an unhealthy sort, with an agenda of protecting the Superintendent at all costs, at the sake of student performance.

RELATED ARTICLE: Thanks to the Teachers Union, Poorest Students in New York Will Be Taught By Worst Teachers

Muslim terrorist slaughters Israeli family of three because ‘he heard laughing’

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A military court hearing revealed the pathological evil behind the massacre of the three Salomon family members by self proclaimed Hamas terrorist, 19 year old Omar al-Abed. He has been indicted on 10 charges, 3 of murder and 2 of attempted murder.

Allegedly he chose to enter the Halamish home when he heard laughter coming from within. The innocent victims were celebrating a shabbat dinner and birthday of a grandson.

The description of the unmitigated hatred and savagery that al-Abed unleashed is beyond description.

It is no wonder that when news of the horror was released that many in Israel and abroad suggested the death penalty might be an appropriate sentence.

Israel has only sentenced one person to death and that was SS bureaucratic and mastermind Adolph Eichmann hung by court order on May 23, 1962 for his role in the murder in unspeakable ways of six million European men, women and children.

As we have posted previously, Omar who will likely serve consecutive terms in an Israel jail will be paid a salary of $3,100 a month remitted to his family by the PLO/Fatah.

al-Abed’s heinous crime prompted the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee to pass the eponymous Taylor Force Act on August 4th, just prior to the summer recess. The Act will impound US funds for Palestinian Authority projects. We noted that half of the $693 million in foreign donor funds are used for these ‘pay for slay’ stipends.

Read this Times of Israel report on al-Abed’s indictment for his monstrous crimes:

An indictment filed by the Israeli military prosecution Thursday against the terrorist who killed three members of the Salomon family said Omar al-Abed chose their home in the Halamish settlement after hearing laughter emerging from within.

The 19-year-old native of the neighboring Palestinian village of Kobar was charged with the murders of Yosef, Elad, and Chaya Salomon and the attempted murders of Yosef’s wife Tova and daughter-in-law Michal along with her five children.

Along with the indictment, military prosecution requested that Abed remain behind bars until the end of legal proceedings against him. The army also said that the Salomon family has been “constantly updated” on the proceedings against Abed.

After sneaking into Halamish late Friday night on July 21, the indictment said, Abed “noticed that the house to his right was dark and quiet, while the house to his left was lit up, with laughter emerging from within.”

The Salomon family had been celebrating the birth of a new grandson and assumed the knock on the door was from their first guest. Upon walking inside, Abed rhetorically asked Chaya, “What about Al-Aqsa,” before thrusting his knife to the hilt into her stomach, the indictment said.

In a Facebook post published before he set out from his village, Abed wrote that Palestinians needed to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The previous day, heavy clashes broke out between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police in and around Jerusalem over new security measures at the Temple Mount, following a terror attack on July 14 in which three Israeli Arabs killed two Israeli police officers using weapons smuggled onto the site.

The 10 counts against Abed also include a charge of conspiracy to commit intentional manslaughter. For nearly six months prior to the murders in Halamish, Abed had sought to carry out a still more deadly attack against Israelis. He had met with a friend referred to in the indictment as Zohaib, and paid him NIS 500 in order to buy guns.

When Zohaib returned to Abed two months later and told him that he was unable to obtain the weapons, the 19-year-old suggested that the two of them carry out a stabbing attack instead. Zohaib told him that they should wait until they could obtain more deadly weapons, which would allow them to kill more Israelis. However, Abed was not satisfied and decided to sneak into Halamish later that day, the indictment said.

He had also been in contact with a resident of Gaza referred to as Reem, who tried at the last minute to convince him not to carry out the attack. But after Abed made up his mind, Reem agreed to publish the Facebook post on his behalf as he set out toward the neighboring settlement.

Along with a bottle of water, a knife and wire cutters, Abed also placed a Quran in his backpack, which he read from when he stopped to pray one last time before climbing over the first fence toward Halamish. He used the wire cutters to break through a second fence and managed to climb nearby trees to get over the third and fourth barriers to the settlement, the indictment said.

After killing Chaya, 46, the legal document said, Abed proceeded to stab Tova, 68, who managed to escape and run upstairs shouting “terrorist.”

He went on to stab Yosef, 70, in the stomach, causing the latter to collapse to the floor.

After sustaining three stab wounds, Elad managed to wrestle the knife from Abed’s hands. The two continued to fight until Abed grabbed a wooden cutting board and bashed it over Elad’s head, causing him to collapse. Abed proceeded to stab the father of five 12 times as his children hid upstairs with his wife, Michal.

Then, noticing that Yosef was still conscious, Abed stabbed the grandfather 15 more times until he too stopped moving. At this point, a neighbor, an off-duty soldier who heard the screams, managed to shoot and wound the terrorist through the kitchen window. He and his father secured the house and waited for IDF forces to arrive.

Since the attack, security forces have arrested the father, mother, two brothers and cousin of Abed, all of whom police say knew beforehand of his intention to carry out the stabbing yet took no action to stop him or inform Israeli or Palestinian authorities.

On August 16, Israeli forces demolished the Abed family’s home in Kobar.

After the demolition, Elad’s wife Michal said the measure was insufficient and called for harsher punishments for terrorists, including the death penalty.

“Their house can be rebuilt; my home has been destroyed forever,” she said in a statement. “We need the death penalty so that these terrorists will not be able to build a new home, and if not the death penalty, then we need to seriously toughen their imprisonment conditions and withhold from them everything but the minimum, things like television or the possibility of education.”

Halamish terrorist chose home because he heard laughter – indictment

Military prosecution files 10 charges against Omar al-Abed, including 3 of murder and 2 of attempted murder

TIMESOFISRAEL.COM

Free Speech: The Left Moves In for the Kill

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The campaign to label all disagreement as “hate speech” is taking victims. My latest in PJ Media:

The Left is mounting an all-out assault against the freedom of speech, and is using Charlottesville as its Reichstag Fire moment to try to crush all dissent.

Several days ago, I received an email that set in motion a chain of events leading to my website, Jihad Watch, being dropped from PayPal. After an immense public outcry, the Jihad Watch PayPal account was restored — not that I ever intend to use it again. But this episode illustrates the Left’s determination to silence all of its foes rather than debate them, and these fascists won’t rest until no one dares oppose their agenda.

The email that started this incident has ominous implications far beyond the incident itself. Far-Left journalist Lauren Kirchner sent similar emails to other counter-jihad sites as well — here are her questions, along with the answers I sent her:

1) Do you disagree with the designation of your website as hate or extremist? Why?
Yes, certainly I do. For years, Leftists and Muslim groups with numerous ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood have smeared as “hate” all attempts to speak honestly about the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism.

In reality, it is not hateful, racist or extremist to oppose jihad terror, and the claim that it is [is] not only libelous but insidious: the intent has clearly been to intimidate people into thinking it wrong to oppose jihad terror, and it has worked, as illustrated by the neighbors of the San Bernardino jihad murderers, who saw suspicious activity at their home but didn’t report them for fear of being “racist.”

2) We identified several tech companies on your website: PayPal, Amazon, Newsmax, and Revcontent. Can you confirm that you receive funds from your relationship with those tech companies? How would the loss of those funds affect your operations, and how would you be able to replace them?

The intent of your questions, and no doubt of your forthcoming article, will be to try to compel these sites to cut off any connection with us based on our opposition to jihad terror. Are you comfortable with what you’re enabling?

Not only are you inhibiting honest analysis of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, but you’re aiding the attempt to deny people a platform based on their political views. This could come back to bite you if your own views ever fall out of favor.

Have you ever lived in a totalitarian state, where the powerful determine the parameters of the public discourse and cut off all voice from the powerless? Do you really want to live in one now? You might find, once you get there, that it isn’t as wonderful as you thought it would be.

3) Have you been shut down by other tech companies for being an alleged hate or extremist web site? Which companies?

No. This is a new thing.

First came the ridiculous claim that opposing jihad terror was “hate,” and now comes the other shoe dropping: the attempt to cut out the ground from under the feet of those who “hate.” You can only hope that you aren’t similarly defamed one day; perhaps if that does happen, you will realize (too late) why the freedom of speech is an indispensable element of a free society.

4) Many people opposed to sites like yours are currently pressuring tech companies to cease their relationships with them — what is your view of this campaign? Why?

Nazis will be Nazis. Fascists will be fascists. Today they call themselves “Antifa” and the like, but they’re acting just like Hitler’s Brownshirts did, when they shouted down and assaulted anti-Nazi speakers. Now the violent thugs work in a more genteel fashion: they just pull the Internet plug on those they hate. You, Lauren Kirchner, are aiding and abetting a quintessentially fascist enterprise. Authoritarianism in service of any cause leads to a slave society despite the best intentions of those who helped usher it in.

I was trying to appeal to any residual sense of decency and fair play that Lauren Kirchner may have had, but it was to no avail. Last Saturday at 1:45 p.m., ProPublica published its hit piece, and it led off with me:

Because of its “extreme hostility toward Muslims,” the website Jihadwatch.org is considered an active hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. The views of the site’s director, Robert Spencer, on Islam led the British Home Office to ban him from entering the country in 2013.

But its designation as a hate site hasn’t stopped tech companies — including PayPal, Amazon and Newsmax — from maintaining partnerships with Jihad Watch that help to sustain it financially. PayPal facilitates donations to the site. Newsmax — the online news network run by President Donald Trump’s close friend Chris Ruddy — pays Jihad Watch in return for users clicking on its headlines. Until recently, Amazon allowed Jihad Watch to participate in a program that promised a cut of any book sales that the site generated. All three companies have policies that say they don’t do business with hate groups.

Within hours, PayPal bowed to this defamation. At 6:02 p.m., I got an email from PayPal saying:

[D]ue to the nature of your activities, we have chosen to discontinue service to you in accordance with PayPal’s User Agreement. As a result, we have placed a permanent limitation on your account.

Inside my PayPal account was a further notice:

When you signed up for your PayPal account, you agreed to our User Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy. Because some of your recent transactions violated this policy, we’ve had to permanently limit your account … This limitation cannot be appealed.

These vague messages illustrated the Kafkaesque nature of this Leftist enterprise: PayPal, like the SPLC itself, was acting as judge, jury and executioner. No discussion, no debate, no opposing view, no appeal was possible.

The SPLC never contacts its targets to ask them to respond to charges that they are “hate groups”; it simply hands down its ruling, which the establishment media uncritically accepts. And that’s that.

William A. Jacobson notes at Legal Insurrection:

SPLC, presumably ADL, and ProPublica just don’t like Robert Spencer’s opinions about the practice of Islamism and Jihad. Yet as we have seen in other contexts, rather than winning the war of ideas, they seek to stifle free speech and, in this case, dry up sources of revenue for their political opponents.

They failed this time. PayPal restored my account Monday night after being inundated with emails from people canceling their accounts over PayPal’s fascism.

But this is no time for complacency: PayPal hasn’t suddenly become hospitable to conservative views. The Left’s anti-free speech initiative is not going to stop.

They won’t stop until Jihad Watch is shut down, my books are not offered for sale on Amazon or anywhere else, and no one will dare host a speech by me or anyone else who dares to break with their ideological lockstep.

These fascists — who call themselves “anti-fascists” — are totalitarian: they are determined not to allow their opponents to murmur the slightest whisper of dissent.

Therefore I may be out of action before too long. This initiative is advancing very rapidly, and those who should be standing up to it — the establishment Republicans and the Trump administration — don’t show any sign of even being aware it is happening….

Read the rest here.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Kenya: Muslims hack Christians to death for refusing to recite the Islamic confession of faith

Egypt’s Grand Mufti: Even if someone is a member of ISIS, “this does not lead to his expulsion from the fold of Islam”

PODCAST: Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News on PayPal and the Left’s war on the freedom of speech

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I appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News on August 22, 2017 to discuss PayPal banning Jihad Watch under Leftist pressure, and the Left’s war against the freedom of speech.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Video: Robert Spencer on the Tucker Carlson Show: The SPLC and the Left’s war on free speech

Uganda: Muslim clerics convicted of terrorism in connection with murders of rival Islamic group leaders

Truth about Race-Based Nationalism

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Any political movement based upon ethnic race alone is a “racist” movement. Only those who benefit from our endless list of engineered divisions, political beasts, are well served by the divisions they create and perpetuate. Everyone else loses…

If it is wrong for someone to be a “White Nationalist,” then it is equally wrong for someone to be a “Black Nationalist.” If it’s wrong to have a Congressional White Caucus, then it is equally wrong to have a Congressional Black Caucus, or Hispanic Caucus, or any other race-based caucus.

Nationalism is an honorable thing. Pride in and allegiance to our home country is what all Americans are supposed to possess. True nationalism has no race, no ethnicity, no divisive characteristics and no room for social separations that threaten the country. It is “patriotism.”

But the ongoing academic word-war has once again blurred these lines of clear distinction. One of the most common and powerful weapons in the global Marxist arsenal is “words.”

Many today believe that President George H.W. Bush is a “ONE World Order guy.” They believe this based on his Thousand Points of Light speech wherein he used the term “NEW World Order” to describe future peace through diplomacy in the post-Soviet Union end to the Cold War, wherein the United States was the last standing global superpower.

This was made possible by the intentional academia melding of two terms that are actually opposites… ONE World Order (global communism) and NEW World Order wherein peace could be achieved through diplomacy rather than military might, in a world with only one standing superpower. Once the two terms were intentionally melded into one, people would begin to fight against both friend and foe.

The same is true of the current divisions over White vs. Black nationalism. It’s socially popular to be “proud of your black race” and fight for black interests through organizations like The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Congressional Black Caucus, Black Lives Matter, the Black Panthers and ANTIFA. But it is every bit as much an act of racism as it is for people to pursue “White” interests only, through the KKK, skinheads and other “White Nationalist” groups.

The issue is “race-based” movements. No matter what race you are a member of, if you engage in movements based solely upon that race, you are engaged in “racist” activities. Trump was right when he criticized ALL “race-based” hatred responsible for recent ethnic clashes.

The truth is, ALL “race-based” caucuses in Congress are immoral, unethical, unconstitutional and detrimental to every American, no matter race, creed or color. They should all be abolished…

In the good ole days, when America was in the business of becoming the greatest free nation ever known to mankind, we did not celebrate “diversity” in this country, those things that divide us. We celebrated only that which united us, freedom, liberty, justice under the rule of law and prosperity for everyone through free-market capitalism. It is these things that made our young country the greatest on earth.

However today, our society has been Pavlov trained to celebrate only those things that divide us as a nation. Our “diversity…”

America is the most culturally diverse nation on earth. We are a nation of immigrants. We came from all corners of the earth, all races, creeds and colors, to unite as one people in search and defense of freedom, liberty and justice for all.

But we have allowed ourselves to be set at war with one-another. Black Nationalists vs. White nationalists – LGBT vs. Heterosexuals – Muslims vs. Christians and Jews – Democrats vs. Republicans – poor vs. rich – gender wars – everything that can be used to divide us is being used… but by whom?

Only ONE group in America benefits from these divisions – the political ruling class – the true 1% of America (government) that operates to the detriment of the other 99%, We the People of all races, creeds and colors.

“A nation divided against itself will fall…”

The global elites must make America fall from within, before they can meld America into a 3rd world level member of the global commune. They are making it fall by creating and perpetuating a plethora of divisions pitting American and American on every socio-economic racial, ethnic and geo-political dividing line until at war with each other within, our nation can no longer stand.

No one can change someone else…

No politician is the solution. They all prosper by the divisions they created and promote within us.

Only WE can change the collision course that our rulers set us upon. Black, Hispanic, French, Russian, German, Irish, English, Italian, white, brown, oriental, all of us must become American Nationalists, or America cannot survive. We must become a HUMAN race.

ALL American lives must matter, or none of them matter.

ALL acts of racism, race-based movements, must be condemned, or they will all continue to flourish until there is no America left. These divisions are destroying our country. It serves only the power-elites.

It is high time for us, the true 99% in this country, to stand together against the 1% who constantly prosper by the divisions they create and promote within us daily. It is US against THEM… not US against each other.

Until then, there is no hope for the greatest nation on earth. We are doomed as a people! We are all done as a sovereign secure nation.

Now is the time… ignore everyone who works to divide us as a people and cast off the change that bind us all. Unite on what makes all Americans instead of dividing over what makes us each unique in the world. Only together can we truly make America great again!

Child Labor Was Wiped Out by Markets, Not Government by Antony Davies & James R. Harrigan​

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In 1938 the US government passed the Fair Labor Standards Act mandating a forty hour work week, establishing a minimum wage, and prohibiting child labor. Because of legislation like this, government is often credited for making the American work environment safer and more fair. Yet, as Antony Davies and James Harrigan demonstrate with historical data, market forces were already making things easier on the American worker long before the FLSA.

Note: After this episode, Words and Numbers will be audio-only. Subscribe to the Word and Numbers podcast via iTunes.

Antony Davies

Antony Davies

Antony Davies is associate professor of economics at Duquesne University and Chief Academic Officer at FreedomTrust.

He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

James R. Harrigan

James R. Harrigan

James R. Harrigan is CEO of FreedomTrust.