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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Mark Tapson</title>
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		<title>North Korea&#8217;s War on Sony</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/north-koreas-war-on-sony/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=north-koreas-war-on-sony</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Dec 2014 05:24:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cyberwar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hacking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kim Jong-Un]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247991</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why pop culture matters.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/north-korea-kim-jong-un.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247994" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/north-korea-kim-jong-un-450x338.jpg" alt="north-korea-kim-jong-un" width="292" height="219" /></a>If anyone still needs convincing that pop culture matters, that even the frivolous fluff can impact politics and world affairs, here is dramatic evidence: an otherwise unremarkable Hollywood comedy that hasn’t even been released yet has led to the crippling cyber-hacking of a major corporation, threats of 9/11-style terrorism against movie theaters and other targets including the White House, self-censorship by the entertainment industry, and increased tension between the U.S. and North Korea’s already unstable and belligerent Kim Jong Un, each of whom blames the other while a suspiciously quiet China watches from the sidelines. And the fiasco isn’t over yet.</p>
<p>For those who haven’t been following the story, it began in recent weeks when a hacker group calling itself Guardians of Peace cyber-attacked Hollywood’s Sony studios and released thousands of the production company’s private emails and other confidential information like employee Social Security numbers. It’s been devastating in a number of ways, including internal turmoil arising out of embarrassing emails that may end in the sacking of film chairman Amy Pascal – not to mention an estimated $100 million blow to Sony.</p>
<p>The instigation for the hacking seems to be an upcoming Sony comedy called <i>The Interview</i>, starring James Franco and Seth Rogan as talk show hosts who are coerced by the CIA into assassinating tyrant Kim Jong Un during a trip to North Korea to interview him. Kim was not amused by the concept; neither were many progressives who felt that a comedy about killing a head of state was in poor taste and that Sony brought the subsequent hacking upon itself (of course, these are the same people who thought that a 2006 <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-405644/George-Bush-assassination-film-wins-award.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">feature film about the assassination of George W. Bush</span></a> was just dandy). Class action lawsuits from Sony employees who were affected by the cyber attack are <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/new-lawsuit-claims-sony-s-758443"><span style="color: #0433ff;">gearing up</span></a>, claiming that “Sony knew it was reasonably foreseeable that producing a script about North Korea&#8217;s leader Kim Jong Un would cause a backlash.”</p>
<p>After an investigation, the FBI officially <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/12/17/us-government-saw-interview-approved-theaters-upping-security/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">declared</span></a> that North Korea was behind the hacking (while not necessarily originating from inside its borders), which Obama called an act not of war, but of vandalism; he promised a “proportional response.” The totalitarian state took great umbrage at the accusation; it not only denied the attack, it generously offered to help the U.S. ferret out the real culprit, much like O.J. Simpson offered to help find his wife’s killer. The North Korean news media even <a href="https://docs.zoho.com/writer/ropen.do?rid=b6wwvb9f5be98f2b840829a0785b152ed84b9#bookmark="><span style="color: #0433ff;">accused</span></a> the U.S. of “gangster-like behavior” and claimed to have evidence that our government itself was deeply involved in the production of <i>The Interview</i>. “Toughest counteraction will be taken against the White House, the Pentagon and the whole US mainland, the cesspool of terrorism,” threatened a statement from North Korea.</p>
<p>The Guardians of Peace followed up the cyber-attack by issuing a threat of possible terrorist activity against any theaters that dared screen <i>The Interview</i>. “The world will be full of fear,” read their English-challenged message:</p>
<blockquote><p>We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places “The Interview” be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to. Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made…</p>
<p>Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your house is nearby, you’d better leave.) Whatever comes in the coming days is called by the greed of Sony Pictures Entertainment. All the world will denounce the SONY.</p></blockquote>
<p>The Department of Homeland Security <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sony-hack-no-evidence-active-758460"><span style="color: #0433ff;">said</span></a> that there was “no credible intelligence to indicate an active plot against movie theaters within the United States.” But stars Seth Rogan and James Franco <a href="http://variety.com/2014/film/news/seth-rogen-and-james-franco-cancel-all-media-appearances-for-the-interview-1201380917/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">cancelled</span></a> all media appearances in the wake of the controversy. Most theater chains <a href="http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/12/18/theater-chains-opting-not-to-show-the-interview"><span style="color: #0433ff;">opted</span></a> not to show the film, and then Sony <a href="http://variety.com/2014/film/news/sony-has-no-further-release-plans-for-the-interview-1201382167/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">decided</span></a> against releasing <i>The Interview</i> at all in any form — including VOD or DVD.</p>
<p>(This wasn’t the only film shut down by the recent North Korean displeasure. Shooting of actor Steve Carell’s thriller <i>Pyongyang</i>, about a Westerner in North Korea who is accused of espionage, <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steve-carells-north-korea-thriller-758901"><span style="color: #0433ff;">has been cancelled</span></a> as well.)</p>
<p>President Obama threw Sony under the bus, claiming that they should have called him first rather than set a bad precedent by backing down to North Korea. (This is the same President whose administration blamed the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi on an unknown YouTube trailer for an utterly incompetent movie about the life of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Hillary Clinton <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/25/father-of-seal-killed-in-benghazi-hillary-told-me-we-will-make-sure-that-the-person-who-made-that-film-is-arrested-and-prosecuted/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">told</span></a> the father of one of the Benghazi victims, “We will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”) Sony responded by claiming that it <i>did</i> contact the White House first.</p>
<p>Regardless, human rights activists <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sony-hack-activists-drop-interview-758529?facebook_20141216"><span style="color: #0433ff;">are planning</span></a> to airlift DVDs of <i>The Interview</i> into Kim country via hydrogen balloons. Fighters for a Free North Korea, run by a former government propagandist who escaped to South Korea, has for years used balloons to get transistor radios, DVDs and other items into North Korea in order to open up the outside world to the news-deprived masses. Thor Halvorssen’s Human Rights Foundation in New York has been helping to finance the balloon drops, and will add DVD copies of <i>The Interview </i>as soon as possible.</p>
<p>Halvorssen says that Hollywood is largely unaware that its movies and TV shows are being used so effectively in this manner. The past dozen or so drops, for example, have included copies of <i>Braveheart</i>, <i>Battlestar Galactica </i>and <i>Desperate Housewives</i>. “Viewing any one of these is a subversive act that could get you executed,” Halvorssen says, “and North Koreans know this, given the public nature of the punishments meted out to those who dare watch entertainment from abroad.” [<a href="http://acculturated.com/freedom-and-the-power-of-pop-culture/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">I have written elsewhere</span></a> about these risks that the freedom-starved North Koreans undertake just to watch a contraband film] “<i>The Interview</i> is tremendously threatening to the Kims,” Halvorssen continues. “They cannot abide by anything that portrays them as anything other than a god. This movie destroys the narrative” – much like the satirical 2004 film <i>Team America: World Police</i> famously lampooned Kim Jong Un’s monstrous father.</p>
<p>While our tabloid news media seem obsessed with the more inconsequential and gossipy aspects of this affair – like the emails in which Sony executives disparage Angelina Jolie’s talent and make racial jokes at Obama’s expense – there are serious ramifications of the cyber-hacking mystery. The entertainment industry as a whole, for example, failed to show a quick and united resistance to the threats of a foreign tyrant. But more significantly, the Guardians of Peace exposed America’s vulnerability to the warfare of the future – cyberwar.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>Has the West Lost the Will to Live?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/has-the-west-lost-the-will-to-live/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=has-the-west-lost-the-will-to-live</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2014 05:38:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Australia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hostage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lindt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sydney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247687</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is returning to business-as-usual after terrorist attacks a sign of strength or giving up?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/sydney-hostage-crisis-in-photos-05.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247688" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/sydney-hostage-crisis-in-photos-05-450x337.jpg" alt="CAFE SIEGE SITUATION" width="300" height="225" /></a>When it became too obvious to deny that the hostage crisis in Sydney, Australia was an act of Islamic terrorism, Prime Minister Tony Abbott asked Aussie citizens for calm, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/12/15/hostage-situation-reportedly-unfolding-in-sydney-chocolate-shop/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">saying</span></a>, “The whole point of politically motivated violence is to scare people out of being themselves. Australia is a peaceful, open and generous society – nothing should ever change that. And that’s why I would urge all Australians today to go about their business as usual.” That’s what a politician is expected to say. But what he should have said is that the time for business-as-usual is over.</p>
<p>Recently my friend Doris Wise Montrose – founder of <a href="http://cjhsla.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors</span></a> and its related site for self-defense instruction, <a href="http://cjhsla.org/jewscanshoot/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Jews Can Shoot</span></a> – brought to my attention something she found disconcerting. It was a Facebook post by a very popular Israeli news blogger, a brief update on the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/video-cctv-footage-released-of-stabbing-in-israeli-supermarket-9905059.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">knife attack</span></a> perpetrated by a young Arab on shoppers in a Jerusalem supermarket. This update was accompanied by mention of the blogger’s own mundane shopping trip to a different supermarket, and a photo of the contents of his cart.</p>
<p>Doris commented to him that connecting the two experiences in the same breath, in the same tone, seemed oddly cavalier. The blogger replied that it was simply an acknowledgement that this is the way of life in Israel – her citizens refuse to be cowed; they proudly carry on even with terrorism in their midst. Business as usual.</p>
<p>Last month novelist Jack Engelhard, who writes a weekly column for Israel’s <i>Arutz Sheva</i>, wrote an <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/16006#.VIAUezHF-Sr"><span style="color: #0433ff;">op-ed</span></a> questioning precisely this attitude of proudly taking terrorism in stride. He noted that in the wake of four rabbis being hacked to death in a Jerusalem synagogue, for example, Israeli life went on as before. Engelhard wrote: “Hurray for Jewish bravado,” but</p>
<blockquote><p>are Israelis getting too used to this? Is this a case of Israelis proving that nothing can stop them, or is this a case of Israelis accepting their fate as sheep doomed to be slaughtered? When will it end… how can it end… when no matter what happens ‘everything is back to normal’?</p></blockquote>
<p>You often hear the cliché that if we let the terrorists change our way of life, change who we are, then they win. But they <i>have</i> changed our way of life and who we are as a culture. Look at what has become of air travel in the wake of 9/11 and the bungling Shoe Bomber: passengers shuffling along like cattle in long security lines, removing our shoes and laptops, submitting to invasive scans by the useless TSA, etc. This is but one example of our “new normal,” and as incidents like the Boston Marathon bombing and the Jerusalem synagogue butchering and the Sydney hostage-taking become more and more common, they too will become our new normal.</p>
<p>The jihadists need not carry out another 9/11 or a nuclear strike in order to ultimately prevail. Terrorism is a war of attrition, a strategy of <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/11/23/death-by-a-thousand-cuts-2/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">death by a thousand cuts</span></a>. That means we live with the subtle but ever-present expectation that a so-called “lone wolf” like the Sydney gunman, or a suicide bomber, or a well-trained team of merciless slaughterers like the Mumbai or Nairobi terrorists could strike anywhere at any time: a mall, a café, a market, a school, a synagogue, a subway, anywhere.</p>
<p>For the victims of terrorism life doesn’t go on at all, and it is forever altered for the surviving family members and friends. The rest of us live with the knowledge that next time, it could be us or our loved ones. The psychic attrition is incalculable, and it sits in our consciousness like a cancer no matter how much we tell each other that we must not live in fear.</p>
<p>In an <a href="http://blogs.forward.com/jj-goldberg/197232/holocaust-lesson-dont-just-mourn-fight-back/#ixzz3L6nz9euR"><span style="color: #0433ff;">address</span></a> to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust earlier this year, J.J. Goldberg of the <i>Jewish Daily Forward</i> praised those Jews during the Holocaust who “fought back by surviving another day in the face of the inhuman killing machine, and then another day and another. They fought back by maintaining their humanity and dignity in the face of utter depravity.”</p>
<p>But that is not fighting back; it certainly is not victory. It’s simply a dignified surrender. To accept living under the cloud of terrorism while declaring stubbornly that it won’t change us is a terrible self-delusion. It is a fatal misconception to believe that simply denying terrorists the satisfaction of terrorizing us is any kind of a victory at all. Our humanity and dignity mean nothing if depravity wins, if our civilization succumbs to a hungrier, more ruthless one, if the world enters a Dark Age under a totalitarian theocracy. The only victory worth having will come when we bring the terrorism to an <i>end</i>.</p>
<p>The West is in decline for a number of reasons, one of which is its cultural capitulation in the face of an ascendant Islamic fundamentalism. It is as if we, or at least our leaders and elites, have lost the cultural will to live. We need to get in touch with a sort of cultural rage, a fierce determination to crush threats to our culture, our values, and our liberty. We need to demonstrate that our tolerance has reached an end, that there will be no more coexistence with an ideology openly dedicated to our destruction. “Never mind <i>normal</i>,” as Jack Engelhard put it. To paraphrase his wish for Israel, for once let our blood “be exceptional and cause for nausea and trembling” among our enemies. Show the jihadists that there will be no more business-as-usual capitulation, and that they can expect us to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc8fqgbU_SU"><span style="color: #0433ff;">unleash hell</span></a> in retaliation for a single drop of Western blood.</p>
<p>We have a President who actually announced to the world that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” At the rate we’re going, it won’t. One thing is certain: the future will belong to the culture that is not hamstrung by cultural self-doubt, that is not mired in apologetic self-abasement, that is not burdened by historical guilt induced through decades of politically correct indoctrination, and that burns with a will to win, no matter how long it takes or what it costs. The future will belong to the lions, not the lambs.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>WaPo: Believe Rape Accusations Even If They’re False</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/wapo-believe-rape-accusations-even-if-theyre-false/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=wapo-believe-rape-accusations-even-if-theyre-false</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2014 05:32:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[libel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rape]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UVA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Washington Post]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246931</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Don’t let facts get in the way of the agenda.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/uva-melting-down-after-explosive-rape-article-660x400.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246933" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/uva-melting-down-after-explosive-rape-article-660x400-450x343.jpg" alt="uva-melting-down-after-explosive-rape-article-660x400" width="367" height="280" /></a>As the shocking allegations of a fraternity party gang rape at the University of Virginia come unraveled, progressives whose cause is to condemn America for a so-called “rape culture” have chosen to double down in defense of the apparent falsehood. The <i>Washington Post</i> even ran an astoundingly un-American piece that suggests we should believe rape accusations, <i>regardless of whether they are true</i>.</p>
<p><i>Rolling Stone</i>, the music and politics magazine that can stay relevant only by sexualizing everyone (including terrorists – remember its <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/17/rolling-stone-features-boston-bombing-suspect-dzhokhar-tsarnaev-on-cover/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">dreamy cover photo</span></a> of Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?), broke the lurid story only to have it fall apart thanks to <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/05/rolling-stones-botched-account-of-a-uva"><span style="color: #0433ff;">unconscionably sloppy journalism</span></a>. But progressives cannot let the truth get in the way of the agenda, so Zerlina Maxwell rushed to fill the breach with the aforementioned <i>WaPo </i>piece initially entitled “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/no-matter-what-jackie-said-we-should-automatically-believe-rape-claims/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">No matter what Jackie said, we should automatically believe rape claims</span></a>” (“Jackie” is the victim’s pseudonym).</p>
<p>The thrust of Maxwell’s piece is that “the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.” She begins by saying that many people</p>
<blockquote><p>will be tempted to see [the collapse of the UofV gang-rape allegation] as a reminder that officials, reporters and the general public should hear both sides of the story and collect all the evidence before coming to a conclusion in rape cases. This is what we mean in America when we say someone is “innocent until proven guilty.” After all, look what happened to the Duke lacrosse players.</p></blockquote>
<p><i>Exactly</i> – look at what happened to them. But then she goes on to reject that reasonable restraint: “In important ways,” she wrote, “<i>this is wrong</i>. We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says” [emphasis added] – after all, false accusations are “exceedingly rare,” she claims. But then she quotes an FBI statistic that 2-8% of allegations are false; that is not “exceedingly rare.”</p>
<p>In any case, it wouldn’t matter if the figure were only 1% &#8211; in this country we don’t suspend the presumption of innocence just “to offer our hand of support to survivors.” Maxwell disagrees: “The time we spend picking apart a traumatized survivor’s narration on the hunt for discrepancies is time that should be spent punishing serial rapists.”</p>
<p>It should go without saying, especially to someone with a law degree like Maxwell, that we shouldn’t be “punishing serial rapists” if they haven’t yet been proven to <i>be</i> serial rapists. She has created a false choice between believing and disbelieving the accused. It is not the job of law enforcement to believe or disbelieve a victim’s story; it is their job to determine if a crime has been committed, to investigate it, to examine the evidence, and then to act accordingly. Maxwell wants to reverse that process; too bad if the accusation falls apart under later scrutiny.</p>
<p>And what of the man she’s willing to falsely if temporarily accuse of the ugly crime of rape? Well, he would have “a rough period” for the duration of the investigation, Maxwell generously concedes. For example, he might lose some Facebook friends – yes, she actually wrote that. But when his name is cleared everything will return to normal. Certainly no one would suggest that a real rape victim’s trauma is not significant, but Maxwell is willfully ignoring the damage done to a man falsely smeared as a sexual predator.</p>
<p>Her op-ed was so stunningly and self-evidently wrong that it <a href="http://soopermexican.com/2014/12/06/why-wapo-changed-headline-to-zerlina-maxwells-insane-rape-allegation-opinion-article/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">incurred a wave of Twitter wrath</span></a> and negative comments, resulting in either Maxwell or the <i>WaPo</i> editors backing off and replacing “automatically” in the headline with “generally,” which is little improvement.</p>
<p>“Democratic strategist” Maxwell is of the school of thought, and I use that word loosely, that we live in a rape culture and if only we taught men not to rape, then women would be relieved of the burden of having to protect themselves from it (“strategist,” by the way, is the title given to someone has no official authority or function except to serve as a media mouthpiece for talking points).</p>
<p>Rape culture is the theory that sexual assault becomes normalized when a culture condones the objectification and trivialization of women. Radical feminists have managed to push the term to the forefront of our conversations about the sexes today, promoting the ugly notion that all men are literal or latent rapists who need to be deprogrammed out of their acculturated misogyny.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/miss-usas-self-defense-empowerment/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">I’ve written before for FrontPage</span></a>, America doesn’t have a rape culture any more than we have a murder culture. We have a culture that considers both to be heinous violent crimes. We have a culture so unforgiving of rape that even <i>false</i> accusations of it ruin men’s lives. We don’t “teach” men to rape, and the vast majority of American males would never even consider such a depraved act.</p>
<p>According to 2013 Bureau of Justice <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&amp;iid=4594"><span style="color: #0433ff;">statistics</span></a>, the estimated annual rate of female rape or sexual assault victimizations in this country declined 58% from 1995 to 2010. To cite this is absolutely not to trivialize the terrible violation that is rape; it is not to suggest that anything more than zero sexual assaults is acceptable; and it is not to encourage complacency. It is only to emphasize that not only are we not enmeshed in a rape culture, but things seem to be improving significantly.</p>
<p>However, there are violent deviants who will and do rape, and the world will never rid itself of that evil minority. That’s just reality, but it’s not the utopian reality that progressives insist upon. To believe that we can simply teach that rape is unconscionable – which we already do – and that the crime will then disappear is a childish and useless utopian fantasy.</p>
<p>When a pregnant teenager in the Sudan <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/18/sudan-pregnant-alleged-rape-victim-charged-adultery"><span style="color: #0433ff;">faces death</span></a> by stoning for being gang-raped, <i>that</i> is a rape culture. But a privileged Western woman like Zerlina Maxwell is insanely focused on smearing innocent men in order to peddle the myth that American culture is little better.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
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<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Dept. of Ed. Supports Classroom Memorials to Michael Brown</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/dept-of-ed-supports-classroom-memorials-to-michael-brown/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dept-of-ed-supports-classroom-memorials-to-michael-brown</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2014 05:39:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Department of Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[memorial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Teaching for Change]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246747</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lynch mob justice trumps education.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/53f7dd490fbb5.preview-620.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246748" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/53f7dd490fbb5.preview-620-436x350.jpg" alt="53f7dd490fbb5.preview-620" width="283" height="227" /></a>If you are mystified as to why the left strives so hard to make martyrs out of such unlikely role models as Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, both killed in self-defense, just keep in mind Rahm Emanuel’s credo: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”</p>
<p>Within days of the shooting of Brown in August, a “Professor of Science and Education” named Christopher Emdin posted (and then updated in October) a piece for <i>Huffington Post</i> entitled “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-emdin/5-ways-to-teach-about-michael-brown-and-ferguson-in-the-new-school-year_b_5690171.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">5 Ways to Teach About Michael Brown and Ferguson in the New School Year</span></a>.” That article was given new life when a link to it was <a href="https://twitter.com/AfAmEducation/status/538433447945961473"><span style="color: #0433ff;">tweeted</span></a> by the White House Am-Af Ed just after Thanksgiving. It included the acronym for “in case you missed it” – indicating that the administration thought the article’s content important and valid enough to bring to people’s attention once again.</p>
<p>What is <a href="http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/whieeaa/about-us/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Am-Af Ed</span></a>? It is the U.S. Department of Education’s Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, an Obama creation designed to improve educational opportunities for blacks in America. But of course, educational excellence doesn’t mean the same thing to the Alinsky protégés in the White House as it does to most Americans. To the radical left, education is about mobilizing, galvanizing, and deploying armies of social justice warriors.</p>
<p>The Am-Af Ed tweet also included Twitter links to: left-leaning PBS; Teaching for Change, whose motto is “Building Social Justice Starting in the Classroom”; and <a href="http://www.rethinkingschools.org/index.shtml"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Rethinking Schools</span></a>, whose mission is “social justice teaching and education activism… to build broad democratic movements for social and environmental justice.” See a pattern developing there?</p>
<p>Teaching for Change devotes an entire page to “<a href="http://www.teachingforchange.org/teaching-about-ferguson"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Teaching About Ferguson</span></a>” to help indoctrinators – I mean, educators – enable students to “be proactive in their own communities” – because apparently it’s less important to give students of color an education than it is to pump them up for community action. The page is replete with items about the history of racism in America, along with positive references to Malcolm X, radical historian Howard Zinn, and the Black Panthers. That would be the same Black Panthers whose recent plot to bomb the Gateway Arch and murder the Ferguson police chief and a St. Louis prosecutor was stalled because <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/27/two-black-panther-members-unable-to-buy-bombs-because-ebt-card-didnt-have-enough-money/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the racist thugs ran out of EBT credit</span></a>. What a standard for academic excellence they set.</p>
<p>Emdin’s <i>Huffington Post</i> piece urges that educators “set the appropriate tone for the school year” by focusing on “events and issues that mean something to students,” especially “youth of color” – by which he means the Michael Brown shooting and what he calls “the recent events in Ferguson.” Those “events” now have expanded beyond Ferguson and include rioting, burning, looting, and murdering, and the <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/11/29/absolutely-terrified-young-christmas-carolers-burst-into-tears-as-michael-brown-protesters-surround-them-shut-down-show/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">harassment</span></a> of Christmas-caroling children for good measure. It is “imperative that teachers find a way to bring this issue into the classroom,” he writes, otherwise “we are loosing [sic] opportunities to make powerful connections” – because successful community organizing depends on ramping up racial grievances and victimhood. Never mind the powerful connections that a good education would instill in students’ minds.</p>
<p>His 5 steps to not letting this crisis go to waste begin with asking students what they have heard or know about Brown and Ferguson. From there the indoctrinators – oops, there I go again – are to connect the Brown shooting to other, similar controversial black deaths such as those of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, to make students “more sociopolitically aware” and to develop “emotional awareness, empathy, and other skills necessary to be informed citizens.” Actually, emotional awareness, whatever that is, and empathy are unnecessary to be an informed citizen; they are, however, necessary in order for youth to be manipulated by progressive race-mongers into believing that <i>feeling</i> trumps <i>facts</i>.</p>
<p>Third, Emdin recommends that students “write letters to all those who are involved in the shooting. This includes politicians, police officers, the families of victims of the violence, and even the deceased.” This apparently helps “students lean [sic] how to write while conveying emotion” – because again, emphasizing emotion is a critical element in community organizing. And while the students devote all this time to writing emotionally-charged letters to everyone involved in a case in which the evidence supports the white officer’s story and demolishes the racially self-serving lies initially spread about the shooting, the rest of their education languishes on the sidelines.</p>
<p>Emdin’s fourth proposal would ordinarily beggar belief, except that by now, nothing that emerges from leftist propagandizing in the American educational system should surprise anyone. He recommends that students <i>create a memorial to Brown</i> on a classroom bulletin board, to “honor Michael Brown and other people who have been victims of police and other violence.” That’s an actual memorial to a man who <i>initiated</i> violence against a cop after strong-arming a local storekeeper in the commission of a crime. That is the man that Emdin and the Department of Education want to hold up as an inspiration to youth of color. This, Emdin claims, helps teachers to “<i>form classroom solidarity</i>” [emphasis added] – because classroom solidarity, and not the development of individual critical thinking skills, is crucial to “rethinking schools.”</p>
<p>Finally, Emdin wants teachers to “carry the theme for the rest of the year” to get the students “beyond meaningless assignments like writing and talking about what they did over the summer&#8230; [They] begin to see the classroom as a space where the teaching affects real life, and where assignments have meaning” – because without the transformative goal of racial payback and social justice, readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic obviously have no real life applications.</p>
<p>Are such recommendations really ways in which Af-Am Ed intends to produce educational excellence in students of color? For all of Christopher Emdin’s lip service to the “critical thinking skills” he claims his plan promotes, it will produce not academic excellence but more dumbed-down youth animated by racial anger – just the way the Alinsky protégés want it.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
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<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Beyoncé Stands with Rioters in New Video</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/beyonce-stands-with-rioters-in-new-video/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=beyonce-stands-with-rioters-in-new-video</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2014 05:46:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[byonce]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hijab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rioters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246620</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The world’s biggest pop star incites violence.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beyonce.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246622" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beyonce-450x299.jpg" alt="beyonce" width="274" height="182" /></a>Just in time to add fuel to the Ferguson fire, superstar singer Beyoncé has re-released a <a href="https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2014/11/29/beyonce-sports-niqab-in-new-ferguson-like-rioting-video/">video</a> for her dirge-like, 2013 single “Superpower,” in which she makes rioting against law enforcement look hip and romantic.</p>
<p>The overlong video opens with an image of the Black Power fist – a hint of things to come. Then the camera finds Beyoncé striding in super slo-mo down a stretch of urban Los Angeles devastation in a flesh-baring outfit that is difficult to describe; suffice it to say that, like too much fashion today, it is runway-fabulous but no one would wear it outside of a Beyoncé video. The salient point is that her getup inexplicably pairs this semi-nudity with a niqab, which she draws up over her face, exposing only her eyes.</p>
<p>This apparently displeased some Muslims. Twitter lit up with <a href="https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2014/11/29/beyonce-sports-niqab-in-new-ferguson-like-rioting-video/">complaints</a> such as, “Dear Beyoncé: Do you think you’re going to get away with wearing a version of Islamic head-dress, niqab, while promoting your Demonic music?” Another tweet: “Quoting our holy Quran and dressing in a niqab isn’t a fashion statement you dumb beyonce.” In the video’s context, it’s possible that Beyoncé intended for the look to be more Occupy Wall Street than Islamic. Or perhaps she was wearing a niqab to make Muslim head coverings sexier and more culturally acceptable. If so, it failed to convince at least one feminist, who lashed out on Twitter: “Sorry, Beyonce. Probably not in the best interest for women’s rights to make the niqab fashionable. Just sayin’.”</p>
<p>Back to the video. Beyoncé is gradually joined by a growing crowd of chic, wannabe revolutionaries sporting edgy hairstyles and clothing that looks like a privileged designer’s ridiculous fantasy of how urban youth dress. Some of them conceal their identities with gas masks and scarves, Occupy-style, because they know they’re about to commit crimes.</p>
<p>The dirge drags on as Beyoncé pouts, scowls, and growls. Her mob smashes car windows with baseball bats, hurls Molotov cocktails, and burns cop cars while Beyoncé sings: “The laws of the world never stopped us once/’Cause together we got plenty super power.” Except for the music and the ultrachic posturing, it suggests the real-life “sensitive urban zones” of Paris, where immigrant “youth” go on nightly, car-immolating rampages and challenge the police in territorial skirmishes.</p>
<p>As the song draws mercifully to a close, the privileged Beyoncé – having peeled off the niqab and donned a camouflage jacket that costs probably $3000 – faces off with her defiant, multicultural mob of chiseled cheekbones against a line of cops in riot gear. She stands next to a man in a balaclava reminiscent of her niqab. The two of them clasp hands <em>Thelma and Louise</em>-style in anticipation of the confrontation to come. The message: rioting, property destruction, anarchy, and attacking cops are cool – and nothing influences youth more than the aura of cool.</p>
<p>Who cares, you ask? She’s just another left-leaning celebrity exposing her own political ignorance. Why is her video important? It’s important because Beyoncé is arguably the biggest entertainer in the world now. With over 118 million albums sold, she is the top artist of the 2000s, with 17 Grammy awards, a Golden Globe nomination, and untold millions of fans worldwide. Her pop culture influence is incalculable, and pop culture – not politics – is where the progressive control takes root. When Beyoncé weighs in on an issue like the Ferguson tinderbox, her fans absorb the message and pump their fists along with her.</p>
<p>The video was actually first released last December, long before the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Why would Beyoncé believe that this is an appropriate time to put it back in the public eye?</p>
<p>Keep in mind that she is married to rapper Jay-Z, who has none of Beyoncé’s talent but all of her racial supremacism and political radicalism.* His song lyrics are replete with profanity, racial slurs, misogyny, glorification of violence, and expressions of racial grievance – not to mention anti-police hatred. “Dirt Off Your Shoulder”<em> </em>boasts of giving “a middle finger to the law.” A music video titled “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJt7gNi3Nr4">No Church in the Wild</a>,” which “Superpower” resembles, celebrates anarchy and depicts police trying to quell a violent riot. And “<a href="http://www.mrc.org/articles/obama-welcomes-jay-z-support-violent-misogynistic-lyrics-and-all">99 Problems</a>” features a verse about blacks being racially profiled by the “motherfu**ing law.” In 2009 he released a <a href="http://www.mrc.org/articles/obama-welcomes-jay-z-support-violent-misogynistic-lyrics-and-all">song</a> in honor of the newly-elected Obama entitled “My President is Black” (imagine if a country singer back in 2005 had performed a song called “My President is White”). The massively wealthy Jay-Z (he and his wife have a net worth of $1 billion) has also been a <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jay-z-occupy-wall-street-shirt-rocawear-260334">supporter</a>, or at least an exploiter, of the Occupy movement.</p>
<p>The two are arguably Obama’s closest, and certainly most famous, friends in the entertainment industry. MTV even <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/1694108/jay-z-obama-bromance/">described</a> their relationship with the President as “a mutual affection society” and Jay-Z’s friendship with him a “bromance.” In September 2012, Jay-Z and Beyoncé hosted a $40,000-per-person <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/18/obama-jay-z-beyonce-fundraiser_n_1895494.html">fundraising</a>reception which <a href="http://www.mrc.org/biasalerts/lapdog-abc-trip-cuba-obama-donors-beyonce-and-jay-z-much-ado-about-nothing">took in</a> more than <a href="http://theybf.com/2012/09/18/beyonce-jay-z-raise-4-million-parties-with-president-obama-at-4040-club">$4 million</a> for Obama’s re-election campaign. Subsequently the dynamic duo were given State Department permission for a grand, whitewashed <a href="http://www.mrc.org/biasalerts/lapdog-abc-trip-cuba-obama-donors-beyonce-and-jay-z-much-ado-about-nothing">tour</a> of the Communist utopia in Cuba, where Jay-Z appeared <a href="http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/04/who_needs_to_get_informed_on_che_guevara_jay-z_or_marco_rubio.html">wearing</a> a Ché T-shirt (in solidarity with a murdering coward who held musicians and <a href="http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3657/che_guevara_was_no_hero_he_was_a_racist">blacks</a> in contempt).</p>
<p>Music entertainers have a long tradition of anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian lyrics aimed at a rebellious youth audience. I don’t expect Beyoncé to come out with a pro-police anthem or an ode to Darren Wilson. But to <em>re-release</em> a video that openly advocates violent conflict with the police at this time of heightened tension between blacks and law enforcement is irresponsible at best, and incitement to violence at worst. The fact that Beyoncé is so closely linked to the President of the United States makes it all the more unconscionable, albeit unsurprising, since the “post-racial” Obama, who <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/17/obama-told-civil-rights-activists-keep-ferguson-staying-on-course/">urged</a> protesters to “stay the course,” hasn’t lifted a finger to quell the violent animus over Ferguson.</p>
<p>* Some of what followed was excerpted and paraphrased from the Horowitz Freedom Center’s <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2588">Discover the Networks</a> resource site about Jay-Z.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>The Real War on Women</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/the-real-war-on-women-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-real-war-on-women-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2014 05:20:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[akp]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War on Women]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Their oppression under Islam intensifies.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/th.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-246566" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/th.jpg" alt="th" width="300" height="203" /></a>It’s been a busy week for the oppression of women under Islam.</p>
<p>A day or two before Americans sat down to turkey dinner on Thanksgiving, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan – President Obama’s best friend in the Middle East, a man who has made it <a href="http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/09/there-is-no-moderate-islam.html">abundantly clear</a> how he feels about moderate Islam and who has <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/29/turkey-women-laugh_n_5630416.html">warned</a> that women shouldn’t laugh in public – further endeared himself to feminists everywhere at a summit hosted by an Istanbul-based women’s group when he <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/25/world/europe/turkey-erdogan-women/">declared</a> that a woman cannot do every job that a man can do because “it is against her delicate nature.” He dug the hole deeper for himself by <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkish-president-equality-between-men-and-women-is-against-nature-9879993.html">claiming</a> that Islam dictated motherhood to be the primary role of women. However, he insisted that his government has always supported equal rights for women and always would.</p>
<p>If that’s true, then perhaps his government could turn its attention to the <a href="http://m.clarionproject.org/news/turkey-epidemic-murders-women-seeking-divorce">epidemic</a> of honor murders being committed against Turkish women, many of whom were murdered for seeking to divorce their husbands. Last month in Istanbul, a young mother in the middle of divorce proceedings was <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/woman-murdered-by-husband-in-istanbul-.aspx?PageID=238&amp;NID=73418&amp;NewsCatID=341">stabbed to death </a>by her husband in front of their child. Her murder is the latest of 287 cases documented by a Turkish human rights and advocacy group known as “We Will Stop Women Murders.”</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/19/turkish-women-divorce_n_6133470.html">reported by <em>Huffington Post</em></a>, the numbers are up from 238 last year, including the slaying of a 30-year old mother of two seeking a divorce. Her abusive husband simply walked into the hair salon where she worked and stabbed her to death without a word. This was after having abused her, forcing a miscarriage, and holding her hostage in their home.</p>
<p>Despite its modern reputation, Turkey has some of the highest levels of violence against women in Europe (as well as some of the lowest levels of <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/eu-urges-members-to-stop-stalling-with-turkey-1412764978">female participation in politics</a> and education). Rights activists claim that violence against women has skyrocketed since 2003 when the Islamist AKP party came into power. According to the Turkish Ministry of Justice, from 2003 until 2010, there was a 1,400 percent increase in the number of murders of women.</p>
<p>“The AKP government came under harsh criticism after the release of this information,” <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/turkeywomenmurder.html">says Pinar Tremblay</a>, a Turkish journalist. “So in a last-ditch effort to save its reputation, [after 2010] it started altering the numbers.” The government simply did not report on thousands of women who were murdered, Tremblay says.</p>
<p>She puts forth three reasons why have the numbers increased so dramatically. First, the value of women in Turkish society has always been low, but it has sunk even lower in the ten years under the AKP. Second is the notion of honor; Turkish society traditionally blames the woman for a variety of offenses to honor such as seeking a divorce, and the harm done to a man’s reputation is considered a partial or complete justification for murder. As the Freedom Center’s own Robert Spencer <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/09/does-islam-justify-honor-killings">writes</a>, “No passage in the Koran discusses honor killings, but Muslim clerics justify them and secular Muslims either do not punish them or pass laws to mitigate punishment for them. With this, Muslims make honor killings a part of Islam.”</p>
<p>The third reason is leniency in punishment for honor violence. “If the murderer behaves properly, he can receive amnesty in a year or two,” says Tremblay. “This leniency feeds from the fact that a woman’s life is worthless in Turkey and encourages other murderers. Indeed, there have been police reports that perpetrators have Googled possible punishments they might receive before killing their woman,” she added.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in India, TV presenter and actress Gauhar Khan was <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/12/01/tv-presenter-assaulted-for-showing-to-much-skin-report-says/?intcmp=features">assaulted</a> last week by an audience member who thought her clothing bared too much skin. “Being a Muslim woman, she should not have worn such a short dress,” the man <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/horrified-tv-presenter-attacked-live-4726226">reportedly said</a> when arrested for assault.</p>
<p>But Khan’s slap on the cheek was a slap on the wrist compared to Bollywood actress Veena Malik, who was <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/pakistan-sentences-bollywood-actress-to-26-years-in-prison-for-marriage-scene-depicting-the-prophet-muhammads-daughter-130370/"><span><span><span>sentenced</span></span></span></a><span><span> to 26 years in prison for blasphemy by Pakistan’s anti-terrorism court for appearing in a televised wedding scene based on the marriage of the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s daughter. Depictions of Muhammad are considered blasphemous under Islam. Malik has been a target of Islamic fundamentalists ever since a 2011 <span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-MyoBmGF_g"><span><span>video interview</span></span></a></span> in which she boldly lashed out at a mufti’s disapproval of her un-Islamic dress and behavior.<span> </span></span></span></p>
<p><span><span><span><span><span>The </span></span></span>court also convicted Malik’s husband and the host of the show which aired the offending scene. Both were sentenced to 26 years in jail as well, and all three will have to pay an additional fine of nearly $50,000, surrender their passports and sell their properties. “The malicious acts of the proclaimed offenders ignited the sentiments of all the Muslims of the country,” the court order read, “and hurt their feelings, which cannot be taken lightly and there is need to strictly curb such tendency.” </span></span></p>
<p>Such mistreatment of women isn’t limited to Islamic territories. In England (although some could argue that England itself is now an Islamic territory), news broke last week that thirteen Somali men were <a href="https://bbc1.azurewebsites.net/news/uk-england-bristol-30095960">convicted</a> of a string of child sex abuse crimes in Bristol, and one of the convicted told the court that sharing girls for sex “was part of Somali culture” and “a religious requirement.” To <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/11/uk-muslim-rape-gang-member-says-raping-girls-a-religious-requirement">quote</a> Spencer again, “The savage exploitation of girls and young women is, unfortunately, a cross-cultural phenomenon, but only in Islamic law does it carry divine sanction”:</p>
<blockquote><p>According to Islamic law, Muslim men can take “captives of the right hand” (Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 33:50). The Qur’an says: “O Prophet! Lo! We have made lawful unto thee thy wives unto whom thou hast paid their dowries, and those whom thy right hand possesseth of those whom Allah hath given thee as spoils of war” (33:50). 4:3 and 4:24 extend this privilege to Muslim men in general. The rape of captive women is also sanctioned in Islamic tradition.</p></blockquote>
<p>The rape of captive women is the ongoing nightmare currently faced by the thousands of Kurdish and Yazidi women <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=21795">enslaved</a> by the Islamic State. The practice “accords with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality,” as Spencer <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/11/uk-muslim-rape-gang-member-says-raping-girls-a-religious-requirement">noted</a> in relation to a female Kuwaiti politician who <a href="http://www.translatingjihad.com/2011/06/video-kuwaiti-activist-i-hope-that.html">spoke out</a> in favor of the sexual slavery of non-Muslim women.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the Western media, the focus on the oppression of women is reserved for such idiocy as the “unattainable” <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/30/disney-princess-real-waistline_n_6076634.html">waistlines on Disney princesses</a>. Now that’s a <em>real</em> war on women.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
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<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Justifying the Rioting</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/justifying-the-rioting/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=justifying-the-rioting</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/justifying-the-rioting/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Dec 2014 05:08:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Darren Wilson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marc Lamont Hill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Riot]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246392</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Rage is not justice.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/sd.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246395" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/sd.jpg" alt="sd" width="269" height="201" /></a>Rather than denounce the shameful lawlessness demonstrated by many “protesters” demanding “justice” in the wake of the grand jury decision about Officer Darren Wilson, progressives are doubling down by posting rationalizations for the rioting.</p>
<p>Marc Lamont Hill, for example, author of a book on “hip hop pedagogy” who hilariously <a href="http://www.marclamonthill.com/about">describes</a> <em>himself</em> as “one of the leading intellectual voices in the country,” <a href="https://twitter.com/marclamonthill/status/537112561221517312">tweeted</a>, “The story of ferguson tonight is way bigger than looting or violence. People are angry. People are hurting. They&#8217;re killing us with impunity.” This is nonsense. People don’t loot and burn down neighborhood businesses because they are angry and hurting; they do so because trumped-up racial controversies give a criminal element the cover to commit crimes against business owners who had nothing to do with the controversy. Rioters steal big-screen TVs and Nike sneakers because they’re hurting? Ridiculous. They steal them because they are opportunistic thieves.</p>
<p>The hugely popular Gawker site, in an <a href="http://gawker.com/actually-riots-are-good-the-economic-case-for-riots-i-1663629918">article</a> claiming that “riots are good,” actually argues that “rioting is economically efficient”: “Since state authorities are always and everywhere most concerned about capital and business interests, threatening to impose costs on them via rioting should have a similar impact on police incentives” – by which it means that destructive rioting now supposedly discourages the police from shooting innocent black males later. What it really dissuades economically is businesses starting up or rebuilding in a neighborhood devastated by looters. The costs it imposes are not on the police, but on the victimized local business owners and their employees. But then, celebrity gossip is Gawker’s strong suit, not economics or common sense.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most unintentionally comical defense of rioting is from <em>Mask Magazine</em>, “an online style + living magazine for antagonist youth.” With a title that could have come straight out of the satiric site <em>The Onion</em>, “Hey, Step Back with the Riot Shaming” explains irrationally that “[People of color] are criminals because we are <em>seen as criminals</em>.” [emphasis in original] So, simply being viewed with suspicion causes people to commit crimes? The writer argues (actually, he doesn’t “argue” anything; he just spews a lot of whiny victimhood) that blacks don’t “own” neighborhoods; there <em>are</em> black-owned businesses, he concedes, but in the next breath he claims that “we don’t have shit,” and so apparently it’s all right to loot and burn the black-owned neighborhood businesses that he says blacks don’t have.</p>
<p>Even before the grand jury decision, as early as August right after the shooting of Michael Brown, a site called the New Inquiry put up a piece with the straightforward title, “<a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/in-defense-of-looting/">In Defense of Looting</a>.” It was Marxist, racist agit-prop written by a guy whose bio identifies him as “a member of the punk band Vulture Shit.” Here’s a sample: “Only if you believe that having nice things for free is amoral, if you believe, in short, that the current (white-supremacist, settler-colonialist) regime of property is just, can you believe that looting is amoral in itself.” Here’s another: “Looters are only stealing from the rich owners’ profit margins. Those owners, meanwhile, especially if they own a chain like QuikTrip, steal forty hours every week from thousands of employees who in return get the privilege of not dying for another seven days.” This sounds like easily dismissed, Occupy lunacy, but unfortunately it is representative of the “thinking” of a depressing percentage of young people.</p>
<p>Also in August, the radical Salon.com posted a <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/08/12/in_defense_of_black_rage_michael_brown_police_and_the_american_dream/">piece</a> “in defense of black rage,” in which the writer states about rioting, “I refuse to condemn the folks engaged in these acts, because I respect black rage… How dare people preach and condescend to these people and tell them not to loot, not to riot? Yes, those are destructive forms of anger, but frankly I would rather these people take their anger out on property and products rather than on other people.”</p>
<p>But what Salon and other riot apologists refuse to acknowledge is that those products and property don’t exist in a vacuum; they belong to people who had nothing to do with the controversy and yet whose lives are seriously damaged, and in some cases ruined, by the looting and burning of that property.</p>
<p>In addition to these intellectually insupportable attempts to justify rioting, other progressive voices took the opportunity to simply fuel the fire. In apparent response to tweets that the rioters should “go back to Africa,” <em>The Atlantic</em>’s popular Ta-Nahisi Coates, perhaps best-known for his recent article supporting slave reparations, <a href="https://twitter.com/tanehisicoates/status/537742938248605697">tweeted</a>, “Not how this works. We are here to run you out, not the other way around.” If he’s saying that blacks are here to run whites out of the country, then that’s a rather militantly racist admission.</p>
<p>Another militant, UPenn’s willfully <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/08/24/after-reading-her-tweet-youll-understand-why-an-ivy-league-professor-deleted-this-racial-comment-on-the-vmas/">illiterate</a> Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies Anthea Butler – whose <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/the-4-most-unhinged-responses-to-the-zimmerman-verdict/">unhinged response</a> to the George Zimmerman verdict I have previously written about – <a href="http://religiondispatches.org/americas-racist-god-meets-miss-celie-darren-wilson-not-indicted/">posted</a> an equally unhinged response this time, an inflammatory article asserting that Michael Brown was a “sacrifice to the god of white supremacy.”</p>
<p>In all fairness, not all the progressive voices attempted to whitewash the rioting or fan the flames. Charles M. Blow of <em>The New York Times</em>, for example, kept a relatively even keel in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/opinion/charles-blow-fury-after-ferguson.html?_r=0">his Wednesday op-ed</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>No one of good character and conscience condones rioting or looting or any destruction of property. Those enterprises aren’t only criminal, they’re fruitless and counterproductive and rob one’s own neighborhood of needed services and facilities and unfairly punish the people who saw fit to follow a dream and an entrepreneurial spirit, and invest in themselves and those communities in the first place.</p></blockquote>
<p>“But people absolutely have a right to their feelings,” Blow continues, “including anger and frustration.” Of course. But what the riot apologists won’t acknowledge is that violent rage is not justice or justification.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
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		<title>Twitter Seeks to Silence Journalist’s Ferguson Coverage</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/twitter-seeks-to-silence-journalists-ferguson-coverage-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=twitter-seeks-to-silence-journalists-ferguson-coverage-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Dec 2014 05:49:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Charles C. Johnson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[journalist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246422</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When journalism doesn’t fit the leftist narrative.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/cjrr.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246399" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/cjrr-450x251.jpg" alt="cjrr" width="283" height="158" /></a>Charles C. Johnson is an investigative journalist with a knack for enraging progressives. His recent coverage of issues in Ferguson has made him such a gadfly that trolls in social media convinced Twitter to shut down his account – because, as Johnson put it, “Twitter apparently has a journalism problem.”</p>
<p>Johnson, who has worked with both the late, great Andrew Breitbart and Alan Dershowitz, is the founder and editor-in-chief of Gotnews.com, which seeks “to transform journalism by empowering everyday people, experts, and sources to break news” – very much a Breitbartian aim. A contributor to the Daily Caller and The Blaze, Johnson is also the author of <em>Why Coolidge Matters: Leadership Lessons from America’s Most Underrated President</em> and <em>The Truth About the IRS Scandal</em>. He has written for <em>Wall Street Journal</em>, <em>New York Post</em>, <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, <em>American Spectator</em>, and others.</p>
<p>“It’s no secret that I’ve been targeted by the Ferguson mob for publishing material that they don’t like,” Johnson wrote at Gotnews. For example, he reported that Michael Brown’s stepdad Louis Head, who <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/11/video-compilation-mikebrown-s-parents-incite-a-riot-burn-this-btch-down/">incited a riot</a> by telling protesters, “Let’s burn this b*tch down!” <a href="http://gotnews.com/breaking-cops-michaelbrown-stepfather-inciting-ferguson-race-riot-blood-gangbanger/">was a former Blood gangbanger</a>. Johnson is also delving into information provided by Ferguson police that Brown himself had been charged with 2<sup>nd</sup> degree murder – but that was as a juvenile, so the records have been sealed. Now that Brown is dead, Johnson has sued for the release of those records. That investigation is still ongoing, Johnson told me.</p>
<p>Then, after the grand jury came back without an indictment for Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, <em>The New York Times</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/news/ferguson/2014/11/24/quiet-wedding-for-darren-wilson-police-officer-in-ferguson-shooting/?_r=0">published</a> the home address of Wilson and his wife. It was an unconscionable and reckless act, considering the target it put on the Wilsons’ backs, but not an unexpected one from the leftist news media, which have been known to willfully endanger people on the wrong side of the leftist narrative before (e.g., the gun owners whose addresses were <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/25/us/new-york-gun-permit-map/">mapped out</a> in <em>Journal News</em>).</p>
<p>In response, Charles Johnson called the homes of the writers responsible for the article, Julie Bosman and Campbell Robertson, to ask them about it. Bosman later tweeted that she revised the piece by removing a photo that contained specific information which should not have been made public. But it <em>had been</em> made public and the potential damage was done. Charles Johnson felt that turnabout is fair play, so he posted Bosman’s and Robertson’s home addresses online as well. <a href="http://gotnews.com/breaking-cops-nyt-reporter-published-darrenwilson-address-calling-cops-nonstop/">According to Johnson</a>, Bosman has been phoning the police incessantly complaining of harassment and requesting protection.</p>
<p>Afterward, Johnson was <a href="http://gotnews.com/journalist-chuckcjohnson-censored-twitter-support-ferguson-mob/">notified</a> by Twitter that his account had been “permanently suspended” without any warning. “I didn’t violate Twitter’s terms of service,” he said. “Twitter just decided that I had. They’ve decided to make up the rules as they go and work with the mob to target journalists.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t the first time his Twitter account had been suspended – he had been shut down twice before: once after he published the name of the Ebola nurse Nina Pham twelve hours before the major networks did, and again after he published the address of Youngor Jallah, the daughter of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan’s fiancée and the <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/10/06/Dallas-County-Judge-Abandons-Ebola-Exposed-Family">last person to have contact</a> with Duncan. “I have liberal trolls that follow me around and try to get me suspended,” Johnson told me in a phone conversation Friday.</p>
<p>Johnson urged his thousands of followers to contact Twitter and complain about the shutdown of his account – it must have worked, because that “permanent suspension” was lifted after only fifteen hours. During that time, the controversy brought him over a thousand new Twitter followers. Johnson complained that “I’ve been threatened with death threats and had my site hacked but I’ve pressed on. Twitter hasn’t suspended any of these accounts… If my account is suspended, the <em>New York Times</em> journalists’ accounts @campbellnyt &amp; @juliebosman should also be suspended.”</p>
<p>Johnson strongly suspects there was a political motivation to the censorship. He noted that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey “wants to run for mayor of New York City. He’s a well-known liberal Democrat. Imagine if he got power if this is how Twitter treats journalists.”</p>
<p>Johnson’s Twitter account is back to going strong, and he and Gotnews.com continue to investigate Ferguson-related stories, such as “<a href="http://gotnews.com/breaking-meet-rich-white-guy-running-black-boycott-capitalism-ferguson/">Meet The Rich White Guy Who Is Running the Black Boycott of Capitalism #Ferguson</a>” and “<a href="http://gotnews.com/breaking-overwhelmed-ferguson-police-welcome-libertarian-oath-keepers-militia-protect-order/">Overwhelmed #Ferguson Police Welcome Libertarian ‘Oath Keepers’ Militia To Protect Order</a>.” Johnson is also pursuing his goal of taking down the biased mainstream media one journalist at a time. “I will soon be running a professional team of oppo research committed to nothing more than exposing the media frauds. We will go one by one,” he wrote in a recent <a href="https://twitter.com/ChuckCJohnson/status/538876028119027712">tweet</a>.</p>
<p>None of this is likely to win Charles C. Johnson any friends within traditional news or political circles. But as Johnson has <a href="http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2014/07/02/chuck-c-johnson/12052915/">said</a> in a different context, “I don&#8217;t really care what the political consequences of doing the right thing is.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>‘Privileged’ Georgetown Student ‘Understands’ His Mugging</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/privileged-georgetown-student-understands-his-mugging/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=privileged-georgetown-student-understands-his-mugging</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/privileged-georgetown-student-understands-his-mugging/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Nov 2014 05:14:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Georgetown Student]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mugging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oliver Friedfeld]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246260</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Congratulations, academia, you win.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ft.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246263" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ft-450x337.png" alt="ft" width="259" height="194" /></a>In the November 18 issue of the university newspaper <em>The Hoya</em>, Georgetown senior Oliver Friedfeld wrote an op-ed about his own mugging at gunpoint the weekend before. It was entitled, “<a href="http://www.thehoya.com/i-was-mugged-and-i-understand-why/">I Was Mugged and I Understand Why</a>.” His explanation is another nail in the coffin of American sanity and another victory for progressive brainwashing in academia.</p>
<p>Asked by a reporter if he were surprised that an armed robbery occurred in upscale Georgetown, the “solidly middle-class” Friedfeld immediately replied, “Not at all.” After all, he explains, “We live in the most privileged neighborhood within a city that has historically been, and continues to be, harshly unequal.”</p>
<p>Since economic disparity undoubtedly caused his attackers to rob him, Friedfeld thinks it’s unfair to refer to them as “thugs,” “criminals” or “bad people.” He “trusted” that they weren’t out to hurt him; they only wanted his possessions. “While I don’t know what exactly they needed the money for” – I’m guessing an iPhone, new Air Jordans, or drugs, but almost certainly not food to survive – “I do know that I’ve never once had to think about going out on a Saturday night to mug people&#8230; The fact that these two kids, who appeared younger than I, have even had to entertain these questions suggests their universes are light years away from mine.”</p>
<p>Apparently it is common sense and a grasp of individual responsibility that are light years away from Friedfeld’s experience. First of all, he has no way of knowing if these “kids” are worse off than he; they could be fellow Georgetown students, for that matter. Second, he has never had to contemplate threatening people with a (probably illegally obtained) firearm in order to take what doesn’t belong to him, not because he has never been poor, but because, like most of us, he has chosen to be law-abiding. To assume that poverty <em>made</em> them rob him is an unconscionable slap in the face to the impoverished who work hard and long to make ends meet but who nonetheless have the honor, dignity, and moral conscience to lead law-abiding lives. But this is the progressive mindset: that some vague, irresistible entity called “society” somehow overrides our personal ability to choose to act rightly or wrongly.</p>
<p>“I’d venture to guess,” Friedfeld continues, “that our attackers have had to experience things I’ve never dreamed of.” So what? People are not automatically compelled by their “experiences” to commit armed robbery; they must make many decisions along the way, choices that are their <em>own</em> responsibility. Not necessarily in this order: they make decisions to commit a felony, to obtain (again, probably illegally) a firearm, to load it, to conceal it and their identity, to go out and stalk a victim, to select one and then to draw that weapon and force the victim to the floor at gunpoint to take his possessions. At every step of the way, that criminal is under his own power to stop himself, to call off this felonious act that could very well result in an innocent person’s death.</p>
<p>“When I walk around at 2 a.m., nobody looks at me suspiciously,” says Friedfeld, “and police don’t ask me any questions. I wonder if our attackers could say the same.” Again, so what? Does he truly believe that people are driven to commit crimes because others view them with suspicion? This reasoning isn’t compassionate, it’s simply nonsensical. It’s depressing to think that the Georgetown University education Friedfeld has pursued for four years hasn’t resulted in critical thinking skills.</p>
<p>He goes on: “Who am I to stand from my perch of privilege, surrounded by million-dollar homes and paying for a $60,000 education, to condemn these young men as ‘thugs?’ It’s precisely this kind of ‘otherization’ that fuels the problem.” You read that correctly: he has no right to judge armed bandits who were willing to shoot him had he resisted, because that would be “otherizing” them, or some such politically correct idiocy.</p>
<p>For a moment, let’s grant Friedfeld’s point. Let’s assume the armed robbers did indeed steal from him because poverty drove them to it. If that’s so, then Friedfeld is so brainwashed that he can’t see that <em>he</em> has been otherized by the <em>criminals</em> who targeted him for his affluence. <em>He</em> has been made the rich <em>Other </em>fromwhom it is acceptable to steal. Because, income disparity.</p>
<p>“Young people who willingly or unwillingly go down this road have been dealt a bad hand,” writes Friedfeld. But even the D.C. police officer who responded to the mugging told Friedfeld that he too had come from difficult circumstances, and yet had made the choice not to turn to crime. “This is a very fair point,” Friedfeld conceded. “We all make decisions.” It’s more than a fair point – it is the <em>only</em> point. Regardless of one’s situation, your choices – not your situation – define you.</p>
<p>“If we ever want opportunistic crime to end, we should look at ourselves first&#8230; When we play along with a system that fuels this kind of desperation, we can’t be surprised when we’re touched by it.” Again, he has no evidence to assume that his attackers were driven by “desperation,” but in any case, opportunistic crime will never end, because human beings will never rid themselves of greed or immorality. All the income equality in the world won’t bring an end to that.</p>
<p>Brace yourself for Friedfeld’s pathetically weak conclusion: We must “devote real energy,” he writes, “to solving what are collective challenges. Until we do so, we should get comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins. I can hardly blame them.” So his solution to armed robbery is to urge us to accept being compassionate, understanding victims until we can get our collectivist utopia up and running.</p>
<p>To paraphrase Iriving Kristol, a liberal is simply a conservative who hasn’t been mugged by reality yet. But today, not only is a mugging not enough to drive some sense into a young progressive, it actually <em>confirms</em> his worldview about economic inequality. It confirms, not the armed robber’s guilt, but the <em>victim’s</em> guilt for (presumably) being better off. This is precisely the sort of “victim-blaming” that drives progressives into a rage when applied toward rape victims. But when it comes to “white privilege” and “income inequality,” moral equivalence rules, and reason flies out the window.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
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		<title>British Police Failing to Arrest Muslim Sex Offenders</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/british-police-failing-to-arrest-muslim-sex-offenders/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=british-police-failing-to-arrest-muslim-sex-offenders</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Nov 2014 05:48:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rape gangs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rotherham]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UK]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244389</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Manchester authorities have higher priorities. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/uk.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244407" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/uk-285x350.jpg" alt="uk" width="247" height="303" /></a>Depressing revelations about the sexual abuse of teens and young women in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England continue to rear their ugly head. Just last week the Freedom Center’s own Robert Spencer wrote about reports that the “sexual exploitation of vulnerable children has become the social norm in some parts of Greater Manchester.” Now the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2815055/Police-cap-arrests-Rochdale-sex-abuse-inquiry-Social-worker-whistleblower-says-dozens-offenders-streets.html#ixzz3HnTrTWa2"><em>Daily Mail</em> reports</a> that dozens of child sex offenders are still at large there because the police <em>aren’t bothering to arrest them</em>.</p>
<p>In early 2012 nine “Asian” men (the Euro-media’s familiar euphemism for “Muslim”), ages 22 to 59, were <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9239126/Rochdale-grooming-trial-gang-convicted-for-sex-trafficking.html">convicted</a> of rape and sex trafficking and jailed for a total of 77 years. They had “groomed” vulnerable white girls as young as 13, passed them around the group for sex, and kept the victims quiet with alcohol, food and small sums of money. Even more disgusting was the later revelation that the girls were victims of the grooming gang longer than necessary because police and social workers who were aware of the abuse turned a blind eye to it, rather than clamp down on the mostly Pakistani gang and be accused of racism.</p>
<p>Last Wednesday, Greater Manchester’s Police and Crime Commissioner put forward a report listing a whopping 13,000 cases of child sex abuse in the last six years, of which only 1,078 offenders were convicted. The Commissioner promised to review the unsolved cases of sex abuse allegations, but whistleblower Sara Rowbotham isn’t optimistic that further justice will be served.</p>
<p>According to Rowbotham, a social worker with more than 13 years experience who was responsible for gathering the main evidence in the 2012 Rochdale investigation, the police have put a “cap” on the number of child sex offenders they would arrest for raping and abusing young females. She said that during the 2012 case, police officials became “obsessed” with convicting just nine of the perpetrators, while “limited resources and manpower” resulted in the police allowing many more sex offenders to remain on the loose:</p>
<blockquote><p>It’s very shocking, but there are dozens of child sex offenders still on the streets because they put a cap on the number of people they would arrest. In the end this was just a tiny proportion of the number of offenders raping and abusing children and they were allowed to escape. But not only did they cap the number of offenders but they also put a ceiling on the number of victims they would interview and proceed with.</p></blockquote>
<p>She said that even today the police weren’t doing enough:</p>
<blockquote><p>It’s still going on. The same perpetrators are still out there because police put a ceiling on the number of arrests. The actual number of suspects is huge but the number of victims is equally large. They are still having to deal with the trauma of that on a day-to-day basis knowing no one has ever been brought to justice for abusing them.</p></blockquote>
<p>Rowbotham, let go from her job back in February, said she was frustrated that no one has been held to account for the police’s and social workers’ failings. She was also disappointed with the results of a report led by Member of Parliament Ann Coffey. “The victims deserve their evidence to be taken seriously,” she said. “I referred dozens of cases to the police that I know were never acted upon.”</p>
<p>But Coffey said the child sex abuse cases in Rochdale and other Manchester areas were a “deafening wake-up call.” She has proposed measures aimed at improving arrest and conviction rates of child sex offenders in Greater Manchester (including a review of cases whose investigations have stalled), new initiatives led by children themselves, and more training for public sector workers to recognize the “grooming” aspect of sex trafficking.</p>
<p>As for Rowbotham’s charge of police apathy, Ian Hanson, chairman of the Greater Manchester Police Federation, said,</p>
<blockquote><p>It is grossly unfair that both the organization and our police officer members collectively are singled out and blamed by some for what is a failure of the whole system. We expect officers to build relationships with victims in the most difficult circumstances imaginable in a fraction of the time where often the education and social care system has failed to do so.</p></blockquote>
<p>Detective Superintendent Jonathan Chadwick said that “Operation Doublet,” the sex-trafficking investigation launched in the wake of the Rochdale convictions, remains ongoing, with “a large number of staff being assigned to building relationships and trust with the victims and, wherever possible, dealing with those responsible through the criminal justice system.”</p>
<p>The tragedy is that all of these efforts are shaping up to be too little, too late. This trafficking became widespread in the first place because Manchester authorities were bound so tightly in the straitjacket of political correctness that, rather than face the stigma of charges of racism and so-called “Islamophobia,” they allowed girls and young women to be horribly abused. Had the perpetrators been white Englishmen, justice presumably would have been swifter. As Robert Spencer has pointed out, this kind of sexual exploitation may not be limited to Muslim culture, but “only in Islamic law does it carry anything approaching divine sanction.” [For chapter and verse of that sanction, read Robert’s piece <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/10/robert-spencer-in-frontpage-uk-child-sex-exploitation-now-the-norm">here</a> at Jihadwatch.]</p>
<p>Over recent decades, Islamic supremacists and their progressive sympathizers (and not only in England, but throughout the West) have so effectively demonized anyone who dares raise concerns about Islam, that even today, the Manchester authorities remain more concerned about suppressing the full extent of their cowardly failure than eradicating a Muslim sex trafficking gang. As tragic as this is for the victims, it’s also indicative of a larger, cultural tragedy. A host culture that cannot muster the will and self-confidence to stand up to a subculture hostile to the host’s values is doomed.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss<strong> The Glazov Gang&#8217;s </strong>special 2-part series on<strong> Muslim Rape Gangs in the UK</strong>:</em></p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Y27t01dx9Wg" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NWKTTPyK1-o" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
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		<title>A Professor’s Left Illusions</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/a-professors-left-illusions/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-professors-left-illusions</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Nov 2014 05:39:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anti americanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Danusha Goska]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[illusions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Leftist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244252</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The revelations of a former "progressive."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Danusha_Goska.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244254" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Danusha_Goska-450x337.jpg" alt="Danusha_Goska" width="312" height="234" /></a>Recently I was contacted by Dr. Danusha Goska – a writer and professor in New Jersey, the author of the novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Save-Send-Delete-Danusha-Goska/dp/1846949866"><em>Save Send </em>Delete</a>, and a former leftist. “I am a teacher,” she introduced herself to me. “I see what my former comrades on the left have done to young minds.” She shared with me her excellent <em>American Thinker</em> articles “<a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/07/ten_reasons_i_am_no_longer_a_leftist.html">Ten Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Leftist</a>,” “<a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/08/coming_out_as_proisrael_on_facebook.html">Coming Out as Pro-Israel on Facebook</a>,” and “<a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/08/islam_postmodernism_and_poltiical_correctness.html">Islam, Postmodernism, and Political Correctness</a>,” which prompted me to ask if she would be willing to share some of her political revelations and thoughts with FrontPage Mag.</p>
<p><strong>Mark Tapson</strong>: <em>Professor Goska, you wrote that you decided to leave the left when you decided that, instead of hating, you “wanted to spend time with people building, cultivating, and establishing, something that they loved.” Can you elaborate on that?</em></p>
<p><strong>Danusha Goska:</strong> When I was a grad student, I was stricken with a crippling illness, a vestibular disorder, for which there is little proven treatment. I spent whole days functionally paralyzed and unable to stop vomiting.</p>
<p>My social world then was utterly left-wing: former Peace Corps volunteers, university students and professors, artists and writers. A subset of my left-wing friends repeatedly hammered into me how much they hated America on my behalf. “Oh, I hate America because we don’t have socialized medicine. Oh, I hate America because there’s so much capitalist pollution and that’s probably why you are sick.”</p>
<p>I can’t tell you how freakishly weird these interactions were. I used to want to shout at people: “Why do you think that telling me how much you hate America is helping me? It’s not helping me. Please do something positive. I have an illness that makes me vomit and paralyzes me and I can’t go to the grocery store. I could use some seltzer water. Am I asking too much?”</p>
<p>And they could not do that small thing – bring a friend who can’t stop puking some seltzer water. But they could rage against the Catholic Church for – what – not selling Vatican artwork and funding my surgery.</p>
<p>I am still friends with some of these folks. They are still banging the same drum: how imperialistic America is. How hypocritical Christianity is. How life-destroying capitalism is. They never talk about doing anything positive for anyone because I don’t think they ever do. Their entire political and ethical stance consists of loudly denigrating capitalism, Western Civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Islamic gender apartheid, systematic abortion of female fetuses in China, India’s caste system that reduces over a hundred million human beings to the status of pariah dogs: none of these ever receive a peep of criticism.</p>
<p>It is my unscientific impression that devout Christians and Jews, including secular Jews, are the people most likely to be consciously and regularly doing something concrete, however small, to make the world a better place. I stumbled across a Facebook meme about a 99-year-old Iowa seamstress who creates one dress every day for children in Africa. I immediately thought, “She’s got to be a Christian.” I googled the story and discovered that she sews for a Christian charity.</p>
<p>“If not me, who? If not now, when?” are words that many of my Jewish acquaintances live by, whether they know Rabbi Hillel or not. This includes secular Jews, who, in my own unscientific, subjective experience, are disproportionately represented among those who do concrete things, however small, to make the world a better place.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>You mentioned to me that, as a teacher, you see what your former comrades on the left have done to young minds. What have</em> <em>they done?</em></p>
<p><strong>DG:</strong> Two years ago, one of my students said, “I wish we had been taught to feel proud of something. To feel part of something. To love our country and to feel that we were part of some big thing, like they did back during World War Two. I guess that kind of patriotism, of being part of something, is just not popular anymore.”</p>
<p>Mind: I did not steer the conversation this way at all. This yearning was voiced, spontaneously, by my student. And there’s more: this student is a Muslim. This young, Muslim-American student was hungering to be encouraged to esteem her own country, and American teachers denied her that.</p>
<p>Students are taught about America’s failures. That’s a good thing. I’m glad I teach my students about Jim Crow. Context is everything. Two months after graduating from college, my first job was teaching in a remote village in Africa. I discovered that Arabs have an ongoing slave trade in Africa. This one fact rocked my world. I had been led to believe that the Atlantic Slave Trade was the alpha and omega of slavery, and that if only we could wrest control from these inherently oppressive white males we’d be one step closer to Utopia.</p>
<p>“Where there is no vision the people perish.” There is a hole in young people that can be filled only by transcendent ideals. Those ideals should be formed in response to neutral facts, not ideological indoctrination. Vulnerable young minds should be cherished, not exploited as recruits.</p>
<p>I am a teacher, not a minister or counselor. I don’t try to sell students on any one point of view. I do try to introduce them to the tools and methods of inquiry: peer review scholarship, the formation of research questions, the testing of hypotheses, investigating alternative points of view.</p>
<p>There are too many professors who don’t do that. There are too many professors who use the power they have – the power of grades, yes, but also the power of funding, humiliation, intimidation, flattery and inclusion into the in-crowd – to pressure students to adopt a given point of view as the route to success. That point of view is all too often a nihilistic, scorched earth cynicism that, as mentioned above, tears down but builds nothing to replace the targets of its destruction, and that encourages academic elites to assume an unearned status as above the common man.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>You’ve written that we must overcome the stultifying effects of political correctness, and that “free speech is the best friend Muslims have.” What do you mean by that?</em></p>
<p><strong>DG:</strong> First, thank you for asking me this. This matter is very urgent and close to my heart. I grew up, and currently live, in Passaic County, New Jersey, which is said to have the second largest Muslim population in the U.S. I grew up with Arabs and with Muslims. I have had Muslim friends, boyfriends, bosses, coworkers, and students. I love many Muslims. I feel for them the kind of love you feel for any close friend. When I was a girl, one day a Muslim friend turned to me and said, “When the time for jihad comes, if you don’t accept Islam, I will have to kill you.”</p>
<p>The simple truth is that Islam is different from the other world belief systems: Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. None of these includes anything like the call to jihad. Islam does. No, most Muslims are not active jihadis, but a critical mass are, and we cannot predict which Muslim will become an active jihadi. We need free speech about jihad in order to solve the dilemma we all face: peaceful integration of existing Muslim populations into American life, a rational foreign policy, and our own security. We need this free speech from professionals for whom speech is their sharpest tool: journalists, political, military and religious leaders, academics, and creative artists.</p>
<p>Right now we are not hearing free speech. Rather, we hear dogma fashioned to forfend free speech. This dogma is so predictable we could all chant its creed in unison: “Islam means peace. Not all Muslims are terrorists. The Bible contains shocking verses. Christians do bad things.” We recently heard Ben Affleck and Nick Kristof mouthing these Orwellian bromides on the October 3 episode of <em>Real Time with Bill Maher</em>. In the absence of the free flow of ideas, the average Joe, who is not as stupid or as docile as the Ben Afflecks and Nick Kristofs of the world think he is, is becoming fearful and concluding that our culture is not addressing jihad. Many average Joes are deciding that they are free agents, and must go it alone. You can see it in internet discussions. People – nice people, average people – are talking about what kind of ammunition they are stockpiling.</p>
<p>What is better for Muslims in the U.S.? A frank conversation about our best response to jihad, or our cultural leaders mouthing bromides that demonize free inquiry, while millions of average people plan to be vigilantes? Can we please have the conversation we need to have about, say radical mosques and how petro-dependency steers public policy before we start shooting innocent people? If Americans felt that they could openly express their fears about jihad and receive honest and informed replies, if they felt that their leaders had their best interests at heart and were addressing radical mosques, petro-dependency and the threat of free agent jihadis, I don’t think as many people would be talking about stockpiling ammo.</p>
<p>I think of one Muslim man I know. He is a mechanic. He interacts with Americans all day long. He is liked and respected by his customers. He’s an older guy who has lived in this country most of his life. He sacrificed much to leave his Muslim-majority homeland and come here to enjoy the fruits of democracy. I think the chances of his ever hurting anyone are near zero. He has expressed to me his hatred and rejection of terrorism. I think this man would be totally open to America having a frank conversation about addressing extremism in our country. But we are afraid to have that conversation. I think my Muslim friend believes more in American ideals like free speech than someone like Ben Affleck. I think the Ben Afflecks of the world fail my Muslim friends.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>Tell us about your novel </em>Save, Send, Delete<em>, a debate between a Catholic and an atheist</em>. <em>What’s the philosophical thrust of that debate, and why was it important enough to you to write a book about it?</em></p>
<p><strong>DG:</strong> <em>Save Send Delete</em> is a true story. Several years back I was wrestling with the big, hard questions: Is there a God? Why is there suffering? I saw an atheist on TV and I sent him an email. To my great surprise, he wrote back. We corresponded for a year, debating the existence of God, and we fell in love.</p>
<p><em>Save Send Delete</em> isn’t a left-wing book or a right-wing book. It’s about confronting God and love and trying to dig down as deeply as possible for worthy, livable truth. But even if I were not a believing Christian, I would shudder at the message of “capital A” Atheists. Recently Salon made waves by publishing Jeffrey Tayler’s criticism of Islam. Here’s the thing – Jeffrey Tayler is a proselytizer who exploits discomfort with Islam to peddle capital A Atheist tracts. “If you don’t like suicide bombings you should agree with me that all religion is evil,” is his main idea. Religion, he says, is like pestilence-spreading rats in the sewer. We must eradicate it. This has long been the thinking of mass murderers from the French Terror to the Khmer Rouge.</p>
<p>Capital A Atheists use their “Flying Spaghetti Monster” concept to sell total relativism. All religions are the same; Mother Teresa is just as bad as Osama bin Laden. We may as well believe in a Flying Spaghetti Monster as in anything else. This extreme relativism is deadly. Our inability to differentiate between cultures is comparable to being unable to differentiate between nourishment and poison.</p>
<p><em>Save Send Delete</em> makes the case not only for faith, but for civilization, in the face of the absolute relativism, the scorched earth, of the capital A Atheist Flying Spaghetti Monster mentality. In it I write about being a teacher who communicates to her students that Western Civilization, for all its flaws, is worth it.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Will UC Berkeley Nix Maher Commencement?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/uc-berkeley-tries-to-nix-maher-commencement/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=uc-berkeley-tries-to-nix-maher-commencement</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/uc-berkeley-tries-to-nix-maher-commencement/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Oct 2014 04:55:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Affleck]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commencement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Maher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[uc berkeley]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243956</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Truth-telling about Islam is not allowed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bill-Maher.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244051" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bill-Maher-450x243.jpg" alt="Bill-Maher" width="296" height="160" /></a>One has to appreciate the tragic irony that in the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary year of the <a href="http://fsm.berkeley.edu/">Free Speech Movement</a> at UC Berkeley, a petition is being circulated there to disinvite the controversial Bill Maher as commencement speaker, because of his “racist and bigoted” views.</p>
<p>I am no fan of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1689">Bill Maher</a>. He’s an Obama supporter who favors income redistribution, race preferences, abortion, tough gun control, and the outlawing of home schooling. He dismisses conservatives as racist, Christians as mental defectives, Americans as “stupid,” and the Second Amendment as “bullsh*t.” I believe university students deserve a prestigious, accomplished commencement speaker with more <em>gravitas</em> than a foul-mouthed standup comic whose days are spent hanging out in the Playboy mansion grotto (in fact, I don’t believe celebrities in general should be invited to speak at commencements).</p>
<p>But at least the atheist Maher has enough intellectual integrity to realize that not all religions are the same. He also has the courage to openly criticize Islam, something that a microscopically small number of public figures have the <em>cojones</em> to do. And let’s face it: it is his position on Islam that sparked the resistance of the UC Berkeley petition, because if Maher’s insults were limited to bashing Sarah Palin and Christians, no objection would have been raised.</p>
<p>He recently had <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/maher-and-harris-educate-affleck-about-islam/">a notable dustup</a> on HBO’s <em>Real Time with Bill Maher</em> with the self-appointed voice of Muslims everywhere, Ben Affleck. In it, Maher and guest Sam Harris tried to reason with an inflamed Affleck about the, shall we say, <em>problematic</em> nature of Islam, which Harris called “the mother lode of bad ideas.” Maher sided with Harris, and Affleck called their attitude “gross and racist,” despite the always-overlooked fact that – all together now – <em>Islam is not a race</em>. Mere days before that, Islamic dissembler Reza Aslan <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=10&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CFAQFjAJ&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediaite.com%2Ftv%2Freza-aslan-slams-maher-for-facile-arguments-about-muslim-violence%2F&amp;ei=Bi9PVMD1EcbxoASw0YLACA&amp;usg=AFQjCNEcjqXHUdDrohr2NIOgonptqa4K-w&amp;sig2=oaSEZcTHDHfxeN8VeRoP2Q">took Maher to task</a> on CNN for his “facile arguments” about Islam.</p>
<p>That was three weeks ago. Shortly thereafter, a <a href="https://www.change.org/p/university-of-california-berkeley-stop-bill-maher-from-speaking-at-uc-berkeley-s-december-graduation">Change.org petition</a> was initiated by Associated Students of the University of California Senator Marium Navid, who, <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2014/10/26/students-spring-opposition-bill-maher-announced-keynote-speaker/">according to the school’s <em>Daily Californian</em></a>, is backed by the Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian Coalition, or MEMSA, and Khwaja Ahmed, an active MEMSA member. The petition asks UC Berkeley to stop him from speaking at the commencement ceremony. It has garnered 2,089 signatures as of this writing Tuesday night.</p>
<p>The petition claims that Maher “has no respect for the values UC Berkeley students and administration stand for.” I don’t know what those values are, but apparently a speaker who tests the boundaries of the comfort zone of sensitive Berkeley students, who uphold a selective “tolerance” as the highest of virtues, is intolerable. After all, “too many students are marginalized by his remarks and if the University were to bring this individual as a commencement speaker they would not be supporting these historically marginalized communities.” Heaven forbid that colleges might not make “historically marginalized communities” their focus, or that grown students might have to endure “remarks” that marginalize them.</p>
<p>As evidence that Maher is a “blatant” racist bigot who “perpetuates a dangerous learning environment,” the petition lists a few examples of his “hate speech.” They include: insults of religions in general (not only Islam); a shockingly racist assertion that Western values are better than non-Western ones; a smackdown of Hamas (because criticizing a terrorist organization is obviously racism); a statement that too much of the Muslim world shares the values of ISIS (no comment); and this truism, which not even Ben Affleck denied: “Islam is the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f**king kill you if you say the wrong thing.”</p>
<p>“It’s not an issue of freedom of speech, it’s a matter of campus climate,” Navid said. “The First Amendment gives him the right to speak his mind, but it doesn’t give him the right to speak at such an elevated platform as the commencement. That’s a privilege his racist and bigoted remarks don’t give him.” While it is true that free speech doesn’t guarantee him a commencement speaker slot, what her argument masks is the sad fact that today’s university students are intolerant of anyone and anything that challenges their biases and makes them feel uncomfortable. Too many of them are not interested in testing received wisdom and expanding their horizons, but in protecting their favored illusions and wrapping themselves in the force-field of victim status.</p>
<p>Claire Chiara, president of Berkeley College Republicans, also is no fan of Maher but said she has no issue with his confirmation as commencement speaker. “He’s a very prominent public figure, and I’m certain that he’s not going to treat a commencement speech at a prestigious university the way he treats his talk show.” Imagine that: Republican rationality and tolerance.</p>
<p>Navid, however, believes that Maher is beyond the pale. According to <em>The Daily Californian</em>, her office launched a campaign with the semi-oxymoronic name, “Free Speech, Not Hate Speech,” asking students to express their outrage to the Chancellor and the director of external relations. Of course, hate speech is quite simply speech you don’t agree with, so if you believe it must be suppressed, then you cannot claim to support free speech.</p>
<p>Again, I’m no fan of Maher, but I’m even less of a fan of the progressive/Islamist hypocrisy, intolerance, and smear tactics behind the petition to have him disinvited as speaker.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Dracula and the Sultan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/dracula-and-the-sultan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dracula-and-the-sultan</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 29 Oct 2014 04:43:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dracula movie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dracula Untold]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islamophobic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vlad]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243854</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is the new Dracula movie Islamophobic?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/du.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-243869" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/du.jpg" alt="du" width="214" height="339" /></a>Always comfortable with Hollywood’s distortion of history as long as it suits their propagandistic motives, progressives and their Islamic allies are the first to try to discredit films that don’t fit their narrative. You can be sure that any film they attack on grounds of supposed “historical inaccuracy” must be uncomfortably close to the truth.</p>
<p>Writing in the <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/10/what-historical-inaccuracies-dracula-untold-tell-us-about-rise-islamophobia"><em>New Statesman</em></a> (and reprinted in the <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119991/dracula-untold-islamophobic"><em>New Republic</em></a>), Turkish writer Elest Ali asks the burning cinematic question, “Is <em>Dracula Untold</em> an Islamophobic movie?” She’s referring to the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0829150/?ref_=nv_sr_1">new Universal picture</a> starring Luke Evans and Dominic Cooper, a fanciful epic about the actual historical source of the outlandish Dracula legend we all know and love: Vlad Tepes III, 15<sup>th</sup> century Romanian hero and legend who dared resist invasion by the feared Ottoman empire.”</p>
<p>Elest Ali recently saw the film in Turkey with a friend who declared, “That film was very anti-Muslim.” “What else is new?” she replies – because we all know how openly bigoted Hollywood currently is toward Muslims, am I right? Ali decided to write about her issue with the movie’s “historical accuracy, and contemporary significance.” Non-spoiler alert: she denounces it as Islamophobic, the kneejerk, go-to accusation leveled at anything and anyone that doesn’t shine a flattering light on Islam or Muslims (<a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/maher-and-harris-educate-affleck-about-islam/">see Affleck, Ben</a>).</p>
<p>“Hollywood is no genius when it comes to accurate representation,” she begins, and I couldn’t agree more. From the “Bush lied, people died” message of Matt Damon’s <em>The Green Zone</em>, to the ahistorical moral equivalency of the Crusades epic <em>Kingdom of Heaven</em>, to the lies about Ronald Reagan and race in <em>Lee Daniels’ The Butler</em>, Hollywood rewrites history to ensure that its dramatic version <em>becomes</em> history in the popular imagination.</p>
<p>But <em>Dracula Untold</em> doesn’t suit Ali’s biases, so she casts the suspicion of bigotry over it. “In the current climate of global political tension and escalating Islamophobia,” she asks, without considering Islam’s responsibility for the former or providing any evidence of the latter, “what political statement does <em>Dracula Untold </em>make in pitting our vampire hero against the armies of Mehmet II?” Probably no political statement at all was intended by the filmmakers, but in any case it wasn’t the statement Ali wanted to see.</p>
<p>She suggests that in Vlad’s time (which she oddly labels “the Age of Enlightenment,” a period that was at least two centuries distant), Islam was an “appealing,” “fast-spreading faith” that was “glamorized” by “wealthy, cultivated Muslim travelers” in Europe, seducing large numbers of European converts. In fact, Islam has always spread not because its appeal is irresistible (except to barbarous killers like today’s ISIS sympathizers), but through the coercive power of the sword. She feels that the movie’s use of the word “Turk” to characterize the glamorous, cultivated, multicultural Ottomans is a subtle historical slur, “an attempt to tribalize the Islamic faith and associate it with foreign, potentially threatening powers, which were the common enemy.” Well, in the time and place in which the movie is set, the Islamic Ottoman empire <em>was</em> a threatening foreign power. For that matter, Turkey <em>today</em> is a threatening foreign power.</p>
<p>“I’ll fill you in on some more history,” Ali continues condescendingly before proceeding to whitewash the imperialist Sultan Mehmet II, while dismissing Vlad as “progenitor of the vampire myth.” She claims that Vlad’s father, the Prince of Wallachia (essentially present-day Romania), “willingly offered” the Sultan his two sons in return for helping him keep the throne against his enemies. This is laughably false. Vlad the elder was seized and his sons Vlad III and Radu the Handsome were taken as hostages to ensure the father’s fealty as a vassal of the Sultan. Young Vlad was a “guest” of the Sultan for six years; meanwhile, according to biographers Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally in <em>Dracula: Prince of Many Faces</em>, the beautiful young Radu initially did his best to resist Mehmet’s sexual advances before eventually succumbing and becoming his lover and a Janissary general. Ali doesn’t mention Mehmet’s bisexuality or Vlad’s fierce refusal to convert to Islam.</p>
<p>Ali continues in her imaginary take on history: When Vlad later “started wreaking carnage across the Balkans, Mehmet II dispatched Radu to quell his brother’s blood-thirst.” Wrong. Vlad was well aware that Mehmet fancied himself a conqueror on the scale of Caesar, Alexander, and Hannibal. Mehmet’s ambition was to bring all of Europe into his imperialistic fold, and Vlad was determined to make Wallachia the tip of the spear of Christian European resistance to Islam. He began by sending a very defiant message to the Sultan: he took Mehmet’s emissaries, who came demanding an overdue payment of the jizya, and nailed their turbans to their heads.</p>
<p>“Vlad’s insurrection was not dissimilar to the terror tactics of the so-called Islamic State,” Ali claims in her ongoing attempt to demonize him (as an aside, the Islamic State is not “so-called”; it is the name that those butchers have proudly given themselves). She is not at all incorrect about Vlad’s terror tactics – details of his widespread cruelty make your hair stand on end – but what she does not acknowledge is that Vlad learned such merciless tactics <em>from the Ottomans</em> while he was their hostage as a boy. He learned them well enough that when Mehmet himself marched upon Wallachia to seize it, he was so horrified to be greeted by a forest of 20,000 impaled Ottoman soldiers that he had to be talked out of turning tail back home.</p>
<p>Ali complains that Vlad waged a campaign of guerilla attacks against Mehmet’s larger army, including dressing his men in Ottoman uniforms and using his fluent Turkish to slip into the enemy’s camps. She says this as if unaware that the warlord prophet Muhammad himself taught that “war is deception.” Vlad would have made Muhammad proud.</p>
<p>Ultimately, his hated brother Radu was victorious and Vlad was offered sanctuary by his ally Matthew Corvinus and his clan. “But frankly,” writes Ali, “they’d also had enough of his grizzly antics, so they imprisoned him on charges of treason. True story,” she says, as if we should take her word for it. In fact, Vlad was <em>falsely</em> charged with treason for political reasons; Matthew later allied with Vlad to help him retrieve the Wallachian throne from a Turkish prince. True story.</p>
<p>“Vilification of Islam has reached such heights,” Elest Ali whines, without acknowledging the many obvious reasons why Islam itself might be to blame for that, “that even when the Sultan is cast opposite history’s bloodiest-psycho-tyrant, it’s Dracula who emerges as the tragic hero.” Vlad the Impaler – not the fictional Dracula – certainly earned his nickname, but he is by no means history’s “bloodiest-psycho-tyrant.” That honorific could go to any number of modern monsters such as, say, Ismail Enver Pasha, one of the principal architects of Turkey’s Armenian Genocide. But don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood to dramatize the truth about that.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>The Management of Savagery</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/the-management-of-savagery/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-management-of-savagery</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 27 Oct 2014 04:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Abu Bakr Naji]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[caliphate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Management of Savagery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ummah]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243742</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The strategy behind the bloodlust.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/the-management-of-savagery.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-243835" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/the-management-of-savagery-275x350.jpg" alt="abu-bakr-naji-the-management-of-savagery-the-most-critical-stage-through-which-the-umma-will-pass-1.jpg" width="275" height="350" /></a>If there is a positive side to the rise of ISIS, it is that the West has had its head jerked from the sand and has been made to witness a bottomless, bloodthirsty evil: crucifixions, beheadings, enslavement of women, live burial of children, mass executions. Even John Kerry, a man not known for grasping (or admitting) the truth about jihad, acknowledges that this brutality “underscores the degree to which [ISIS] is so far beyond the pale with respect to any standard by which we judge even terrorist groups.” But as one analyst writes, this violence is not “whimsical, crazed fanaticism, but a very deliberate, considered strategy” – one that seems to derive in part from a book called <a href="http://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu-bakr-naji-the-management-of-savagery-the-most-critical-stage-through-which-the-umma-will-pass.pdf"><em>The Management of Savagery</em></a>.</p>
<p>In the spring of 2004 a strategist who called himself Abu Bakr Naji published online<em> The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Ummah Will Pass</em> (later translated from the Arabic by William McCants, a fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center). The book – what the <em>Washington Post</em> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-the-mein-kampf-of-jihad/2014/09/25/4adbfc1a-44e8-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html">calls</a> the <em>Mein Kampf</em> of jihad – aimed to provide a strategy for al-Qaeda and other jihadists. “The ideal of this movement,” wrote Lawrence Wright in <em>The</em> <em>New Yorker</em>, “as its theorists saw it, was the establishment of a caliphate that would lead to the purification of the Muslim world.”</p>
<p>Naji believed that a civil war within Islam would lead to that Sunni caliphate, so he recommended a merciless campaign of violence in Muslim lands to polarize the population, expose the inability of the state to maintain control, attract followers, and create a spreading network of “regions of savagery.”</p>
<p>“The management of savagery” refers to controlling the chaos that results from that breakdown of order. The requirements for the administration of savagery are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Establishing internal security</li>
<li>Providing food and medical treatment</li>
<li>Securing the borders against the invasion of enemies</li>
<li>Establishing Sharia law</li>
<li>Establishing a fighting society at all levels and among all individuals.</li>
</ul>
<p>The manifesto proposes that the jihadists exhaust an overstretched America through a patient war of attrition and a manipulation of the media to dismantle the superpower’s “aura of invincibility.” It demands that the enemy be made to “pay the price” for any and all attacks carried out against the jihadists, even if the retribution takes years, in order to instill in the enemy “a sense of hopelessness that will cause him to seek reconciliation.” No mercy must be shown: “Our enemies will not be merciful to us if they seize us. Thus, it behooves us to make them think one thousand times before attacking us.”</p>
<p>Shocking violence is a key element of that strategy. “The beheadings and the violence practiced by [the Islamic State] are not whimsical, crazed fanaticism, but a very deliberate, considered strategy,” writes <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/iraq-isis-alqaeda_b_5542575.html">British analyst Alastair Crooke</a>. “The seemingly random violence has a precise purpose: It’s [sic] aim is to strike huge fear; to break the psychology of a people.” For example, Naji recommends that in instances in which hostage demands are not met, “the hostages should be liquidated in a terrifying manner, which will send fear into the hearts of the enemy and his supporters.”</p>
<p>Naji believed that “we need to massacre” others as Muslims did after the death of Muhammad. “We must make this battle very violent,” the book <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/12/the-calculated-madness-of-the-islamic-states-horrifying-brutality/">says</a>. “If we are not violent in our jihad and if softness seizes us, that will be a major factor in the loss of the element of strength.”</p>
<p>But the violence isn’t intended merely to terrify, but to “drag the masses into battle.” Naji’s strategy requires polarizing the Muslim world and convincing any moderates who had hoped for U.S. protection that it is futile.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, this violence is actually a part of Allah’s mercy to all mankind. Putting apostates and infidels to the sword is merciful compared to the wrath that Allah himself would rain down:</p>
<blockquote><p>Some may be surprised when we say that the religious practice of jihad despite the blood, corpses, and limbs which encompass it and the killing and fighting which its practice entails is among the most blessed acts of worship for the servants… Jihad is the most merciful of the methods for all created things and the most sparing of the spilling of blood.</p></blockquote>
<p>Among those who are hostile to this mercy are “infidels among the Jews and the Christians and others who accused Islam of severity and mercilessness in all of its religious practices,” as well as “those who say that Islam is a religion of mercy and peace and that jihad is immoderate and excessive and that it has nothing to do with Islam!” Clearly Abu Bakr Naji is one of the many misunderstanders of Islam who didn’t get the memo about its peaceful nature.</p>
<p>In Naji’s conclusion, he stresses that “our battle is a battle of <em>tawhid</em> [the oneness of Allah] against unbelief and faith against polytheism. <em>It is not an economic, political, or social battle</em>.” [Emphasis added] The recent documentary feature released by ISIS called <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/isis-ignites-flames-of-war/"><em>Flames of War</em></a>, used as a recruiting tool for Muslim brethren in the West, confirms their religious aim and motivation. In addition to missing the memo about Islam meaning peace, apparently Naji also neglected to read all the memos from Western apologists about Islamic terrorism being spawned by poverty and Western oppression and exploitation.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it seems that President Obama and Secretary Kerry, who continue to insist that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, never got Abu Bakr Naji’s memo either – the one entitled <em>The Management of Savagery</em>.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>There’s No Place Like Utopia</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/theres-no-place-like-utopia/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=theres-no-place-like-utopia</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2014 04:54:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[filmmaker]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joel Gilbert]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[progressivism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[There’s No Place Like Utopia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243720</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new documentary exposes the progressive fantasy.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/homeUtopia.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243721" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/homeUtopia.jpg" alt="homeUtopia" width="306" height="177" /></a><strong>To order <em>There&#8217;s No Place Like Utopia</em>, <a href="http://www.theresnoplacelikeutopia.com/buy-dvd/">click here</a>.</strong></p>
<p>In the classic tale <em>The Wizard of Oz</em>, Dorothy and friends peer behind the curtain to discover that the great and powerful Wizard of the Emerald City is not who he seems. Now in the new documentary <a href="http://www.theresnoplacelikeutopia.com"><em>There’s No Place Like Utopia</em></a>, filmmaker <a href="http://www.joelgilbert.net">Joel Gilbert</a> sets off on a whimsical, eye-opening, occasionally animated (<em>a lá</em> Michael Moore), Oz-like journey of his own, skipping down the Yellow Brick Road of failed socialist promises and peeling back the curtain to reveal Barack Obama as America’s very own fraudulent Wizard.</p>
<p>Gilbert is also the director and writer of the documentaries <em>Dreams from My Real Father</em>, <em>Atomic Jihad: Ahmadinejad’s Coming War</em>,<em> Obama’s Politics of Defeat</em>,and <em>Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and the Revolt of Islam</em>. In his latest, he is our guide, traveling from New York to Los Angeles speaking with former Obama voters who are much less enamored of him now that his promises of prosperity have turned out to be empty lies.</p>
<p>This Yellow Brick Road leads through the impoverished wastelands of Democrat-ruled fiefdoms like Detroit, Denver, Newark and Chicago. Gilbert strolls through what look like the bombed-out husks of former factories, churches, police stations, and projects (and indeed, those ruins are compared to photos of the post-war Berlin landscape). When he asks a black Newark woman how Democrat star politician Cory Booker has improved the city in the last eight years, she looks at him in astonishment and says, “Do you mean, how has he <em>destroyed</em> it?”</p>
<p>Along the way Gilbert bumps into notables like Jesse Jackson, Michelle Obama’s mother, and most interestingly, Peggy Joseph, the Florida woman who scored brief internet fame for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI">announcing</a> after the 2008 election that she would no longer have to work because Obama was going to pay her mortgage and her gas. Much to Joseph’s disappointment, Obama not only didn’t follow through, but her mortgage and gas prices are even higher. She educated herself politically since 2008, and does not support him today. Neither do some of Gilbert’s other interviewees, poor blacks in communities increasingly devastated over the decades by progressive policies.</p>
<p>The aim of those policies “is the creation of the perfect future: Utopia,” says interviewee David Horowitz. “It’s the kingdom of heaven on earth.” Progressivism is rebranded socialism (author Jerome Corsi tells Gilbert that the word “progressive” was a “public relations feint”), and Konstantin Preobrazhensky, author of <em>FSB: The Trojan Horse</em>, declares that “socialism is a religion, and the leader is God on earth.”</p>
<p>Those leaders include charismatic men like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, who promised people a workers’ paradise. Barack Obama is depicted in the documentary as the latest in that line of socialist charlatans. As Corsi tells Gilbert,</p>
<blockquote><p><em>The Wizard of Oz</em> is the great fable of the lie of trusting this all-knowing, this all-powerful human being that has all the answers. At the Emerald City, suddenly all your problems are solved… But when you finally get behind the curtain, you realize it’s all deception, it’s all a smoke-and-light show. The wizard is just a carnival hawker.</p></blockquote>
<p>And yet the brainwashing runs deep. Gilbert speaks with young Chinese tourists in Washington D.C. who declare Chairman Mao “a great man” despite having made “great mistakes” – like the starvation of 50 million Chinese, which the tourists freely admit.</p>
<p>That brainwashing in America came partly when hardcore revolutionaries like Obama’s terrorist friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn realized that they couldn’t foment a full-blown revolution, but they could discredit the American dream. And so we see footage of Michelle Obama speaking to crowds before Barack’s election, painting a picture of an America that had failed its dreamers – and urging voters to see her husband as their brilliant savior, their new Wizard.</p>
<p>Obama dismissed the free market (“It has never worked”), but a former auto plant owner in Detroit tells Gilbert that the free market does work, by rewarding good behavior and punishing bad. But the Democrats’ welfare system rewards bad behavior. Author Jack Cashill says that the socialists discovered that the non-working man who depends on the government for his continued existence is even more useful than the working man, because the ultimate aim of social welfare programs, says Corsi, is “dependent, sheep-like voters.” It is an intentional strategy to use poor people, not help them. “They’re stuck in Oz,” says Cashill. “They never get home.”</p>
<p>Speaking of home, Gilbert chats in Spanish with illegals from Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico looking for work outside a Home Depot. They tell him that they have come to America to make a living because socialism has deteriorated their homelands so badly. They support Obama and look forward to amnesty, which would flood the job market with millions of Democrat voters and deal an even bigger blow to the already unemployed black community.</p>
<p>Gilbert also travels to Dearborn, Michigan, the most Muslim-populated city in America. Islam, he suggests, is expanding ominously into cities whose populations are imploding, like Detroit.</p>
<p>Gilbert also walks Hollywood Boulevard, where people seem uncomfortable complaining about Obama on-camera, except one would-be rapper who is selling his CDs on the street. When Gilbert asks how he thinks Obama is similar to the Wizard of Oz, the young rapper replies, “They’re both sneaky and fake, at the end of the story.” The rapper then worries aloud that Obama, who is “a powerful man,” might see this documentary and retaliate.</p>
<p>Cashill says this reluctance to speak out stems from the fear engendered by political correctness, “the strong arm of cultural Marxism,” and there’s nothing funny about it. He adds that “The prison camp is the end of the socialist experiment.” When asked if Russia had the book <em>The Wizard of Oz</em>, former Soviet agent Preobrazhensky replies, “It was so popular that you can’t imagine,” but says the translator spent many years in a gulag.</p>
<p>Ultimately Gilbert returns home to his own Kansas – Tennessee – and concludes that the American spirit is still strong, even among many of the poor, disillusioned blacks he interviewed. They still see this country as the land of opportunity – as long as you don’t trust the Wizard.</p>
<p><span id="eow-title" class="watch-title  " dir="ltr" title="There's No Place Like Utopia - movie trailer"><strong>Watch the movie trailer for <em>There&#8217;s No Place Like Utopia</em>:</strong> </span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Foj7Fs-qliQ" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Purple Penguins and the Radical Gender Agenda</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/purple-penguins-and-the-radical-gender-agenda/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=purple-penguins-and-the-radical-gender-agenda</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 04:40:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boys]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Girls]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[purple penguins]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[transgenger]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242912</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The radical gender agenda at work.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/purple-penguins.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242917" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/purple-penguins-450x286.jpg" alt="purple-penguins" width="269" height="171" /></a>Just when you think you’ve heard the most outrageous example of progressive irrationality in our public schools – usually something to do with <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=4&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCgQFjAD&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fnews%2Fnational%2Fala-kindergartner-made-sign-suicide-contract-article-1.1970584&amp;ei=U0c6VJbWBZKuogTLwIHYDA&amp;usg=AFQjCNG8v7W2DotRN683SkCtYp67H8NzZA&amp;sig2=3wNmBs4HGgPcIkL34UO2HQ&amp;bvm=bv.77161500,d.cGU">anti-gun hysteria</a> – along comes <a href="http://m.nationalreview.com/article/389862/school-told-call-kids-purple-penguins-because-boys-and-girls-not-inclusive">word</a> that a school district in Nebraska is training teachers to abandon “gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls” in favor of “gender inclusive” euphemisms like “purple penguins” instead. You read that right.</p>
<p>“Don’t use phrases such as ‘boys and girls,’ ‘you guys,’ ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ and similarly gendered expressions to get kids’ attention,” instructs a training <a href="http://watchdog.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/10/Gender-inclusive-training-handouts.pdf">document</a> <a href="http://watchdog.org/174768/gender-inclusive/">given out</a> by a staffer on a “district equity team” to middle-school teachers at Lincoln public schools. Instead, say “hey campers” or “create classroom names and then ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet on the rug,” it advises.</p>
<p>“When I read about this,” said a friend of mine, “I was sure it was satire.” Well, we inhabit a satirical world now, and our children inhabit an educational culture perverted and dumbed-down over the last several decades by political correctness and social justice progressives. Our schools are no longer focused on educational standards that will make us competitive in the real world; instead, they are obsessed with pushing social justice – and that includes a radical agenda to indoctrinate kids <a href="http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/08/29/cps-mandates-sexual-health-education-for-kindergartners/">as early as kindergarten</a> about sex. Its ultimate goal is the promotion of promiscuity and the dissolution of the very concept of gender, thereby destroying “patriarchal” culture, delegitimizing parental authority, and dismantling the family unit.</p>
<p>The instructions distributed to Lincoln teachers are part of a list called “12 steps on the way to gender inclusiveness” developed by Gender Spectrum, an <a href="https://www.genderspectrum.org/">organization</a> that “provides education, training and support to help create a gender sensitive and inclusive environment for children of all ages.” <em>All ages</em>. The document warns against asking students to “line up as boys or girls,” and suggests organizing them instead by whether they prefer “skateboards or bikes/milk or juice/dogs or cats/summer or winter/talking or listening… Always ask yourself,” the document says, “‘Will this configuration create a gendered space?’” Actually, what teachers should always be asking themselves is, “Are my students learning?”</p>
<p>Also on the list? Decorating the classroom with “all genders welcome” door hangers and asking all students about their preferred pronouns – because the gender spectrum is apparently so broad now that our current set of pronouns is insufficient. If teachers absolutely have to mention that genders exist at all, the document advises that they be listed as “boy, girl, both or neither.” Both? Neither?</p>
<p>“Avoid using ‘normal’ to define any behaviors,” the document urges. By all means, children should be taught to tolerate others who are different; but eradicating the very notion that normal behavior even exists is not tolerance – it is a denial of reality and an irrational reorienting of children’s understanding of themselves and the natural order.</p>
<p>Speaking of tolerance, the training materials instruct teachers to be intolerant of anyone who references gender “in a binary manner… Provide counter-narratives that challenge students to think more expansively about their notions of gender.” It’s unclear how teachers are supposed to find so much time to discuss gender with students without cutting back on their readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic.</p>
<p>The teachers were also given a handout created by the ironically-named Center for Gender Sanity which explains to them that “gender identity&#8230; can’t be observed or measured, only reported by the individual.” And they received an infographic called “The Genderbread Person” produced by Sam Killermann, who <a href="http://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/">describes</a> himself as “a social justice comedian” and is the author of <em>The Social Justice Advocate’s Handbook: A Guide to Gender</em>.</p>
<p>Al Riskowski, executive director of the Nebraska Family Alliance, <a href="http://watchdog.org/174768/gender-inclusive/">said</a> his group has supported legislation to combat bullying, but that these training materials go “way beyond trying to teach someone how to respect another individual” to a “whole new idea of boy-girl.” The idea that “your biology at birth doesn’t designate who you are” is at odds with the beliefs of “almost everyone in the community.” He said that the school district shouldn’t have to re-educate the 99% who aren’t transgender. Clearly Riskowski must be re-educated to understand that there is no such thing as normal behavior.</p>
<p>He noted correctly that the materials seemed geared to children younger than those in middle school. A sister organization that works on such issues nationwide told Riskowski that it’s “some of the most radical material we’ve ever seen.”</p>
<p>Lincoln Superintendent Steve Joel noted that the training documents are not intended as hard-and-fast rules, only recommendations, and he has declared that he is “happy” and “pleased” with them. As for the controversy those documents have engendered (pun intended), he <a href="http://www.klin.com/Episodes.aspx?PID=2809">explains</a> that “We don’t get involved with politics… We don’t get involved with gender preferences. We’re educating all kids&#8230; and we can’t be judgmental,” he said.</p>
<p>But by sitting back and letting these gender radicals insert their indoctrinating materials into the classroom, Mr. Joel is caving in to people who are <em>consumed</em> with politics and gender preferences. That’s the problem with not being “judgmental” – moral neutrality equals moral impotence.</p>
<p>These are our schools now. Our educational system, in the grip of social justice missionaries, is hopelessly broken. Homeschooling is increasingly becoming the best option for raising educated, free children with actual critical thinking skills instead of progressive brainwashing. So of course, the progressives are beginning to target homeschooling – <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/2014/eon1005mh.html"><span><span><span>as in Connecticut</span></span></span></a><span>, where the state intends to increase its oversight of homeschooled children, purportedly because they are considered to be potential </span><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=7&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CDcQFjAG&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting&amp;ei=4T06VMekFtfqoAS_3YHgAw&amp;usg=AFQjCNHdR4Jp6bhAuFxjvN_Vc_yjIYDd-Q&amp;sig2=CeZ5QukC19HEpuTIkYf_VQ&amp;bvm=bv.77161500,d.cGU"><span><span>Adam Lanzas</span></span></a><span><span>.</span></span></p>
<p>The truth is that they are a threat not to other students but to the state’s authority. As <em>National Review</em>’s Kevin D. Williamson put it in his forceful article, “<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389680/they-are-coming-your-children-kevin-d-williamson">They Are Coming for Your Children</a>”:</p>
<blockquote><p>Home-schooling isn’t for everyone, but every home-school student, like every firearm in private hands, is a quiet little declaration of independence. It’s no accident that the people who want to seize your guns are also the ones who want to seize your children.</p></blockquote>
<p>It’s also no accident that the people who want to indoctrinate your children about sex want them too.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on this week&#8217;s <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
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<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Remembering the Battle of Tours</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/remembering-the-battle-of-tours/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=remembering-the-battle-of-tours</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 04:18:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al-Andalus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battle of Tours]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muhammad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rome]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242777</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The anniversary of one of the most important battles in history.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bot.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-242789" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bot.jpg" alt="bot" width="249" height="203" /></a>The month of October marks the anniversary of an epic event that unfortunately is no longer widely known but which nonetheless shaped the future of the Western world, and which may still hold inspiration for the West today.</p>
<p>After the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in 632, Islam spread like a bloody tide throughout the Arabian peninsula, north to the Caspian Sea and east through Persia and beyond, westward through Egypt and across North Africa all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. From there it crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and consumed all of the Iberian peninsula, or al-Andalus as the Saracens called it. In a mere one hundred years, Muhammad’s aggressive legacy was an empire larger than Rome’s had ever been.</p>
<p>By 732 that fallen Roman empire had devolved into a patchwork of warring barbarian tribes. When Abd-ar-Rahman, the governor of al-Andalus, crossed the Pyrenees with the world’s most successful fighting force and began sweeping through the south of what would become France toward Paris, there was no nation, no central power, no professional army capable of stopping them.</p>
<p>No army except one – led by the Frankish duke Charles, the eventual grandfather of Charlemagne. His infantrymen, as Victor Davis Hanson puts it in a fascinating chapter of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Carnage-Culture-Landmark-Battles-Western/dp/0385720386/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1286949193&amp;sr=1-1"><em>Carnage and Culture</em></a>, were “hardened veterans of nearly twenty years of constant combat against a variety of Frankish, German, and Islamic enemies.” Hanson writes that the Roman legions had crumbled “because of the dearth of free citizens who were willing to fight for their own freedom and the values of their civilization.” But Charles had spirited, free warriors under his command who <em>were</em> willing.</p>
<p>Sometime in October (the exact date is disputed), on the road between Poitiers and Tours (and so it is sometimes called the Battle of Poitiers) less than 175 miles from Paris, Abd-ar-Rahman arrayed his cavalry against Charles’ solid block of Frankish footsoldiers, which at 30,000 was by some estimates half the size of the Arab and Berber army (Hanson speculates that the armies were more evenly matched).</p>
<p>The opposing forces sized each other up for a full week. And then on Saturday morning Abd-ar-Rahman ordered the charge. But his cavalry, which counted on speed, mobility, and terror to defeat dying empires and undisciplined tribes, could not splinter the better-trained and better-armed Frankish phalanx. At the end of the day’s carnage, both sides regrouped for the next day’s assault.</p>
<p>But at dawn, Charles and his men discovered that the Muslim army had vanished, leaving the booty stolen from ransacked churches behind, as well as 10,000 of their dead – including Abd-ar-Rahman himself. It was not the last Muslim incursion into Europe, but it was the beginning of the end.</p>
<p>Some contemporary historians downplay the magnitude of the Muslim threat, claiming that Abd-ar-Rahman’s force was only a raiding party. They minimize the significance of the battle’s outcome, too; at least <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Crucible-Making-Europe-570-1215/dp/0393333566/ref=pd_sim_b_27">one historian even claims</a> that Europe would have been better off if Islam <em>had</em> conquered it. But Hanson notes that “most of the renowned historians of the 18<sup>th</sup> and 19<sup>th</sup> centuries… saw Poitiers as a landmark battle that signaled the high-water mark of Islamic advance into Europe.” Edward Creasey included it among his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fifteen-Decisive-Battles-World/dp/B000KU9BBO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1287994745&amp;sr=1-2"><em>The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World</em></a>. Many believe that if Charles – whom the Pope afterward dubbed Martel, or “the Hammer” – had not stopped Abd-ar-Rahman at Tours, there would have been nothing to prevent Europe from ultimately becoming Islamic. Edward Gibbon called Charles “the savior of Christendom” and wrote in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/History-Decline-Empire-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140437649/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1287994860&amp;sr=1-1"><em>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</em></a> in 1776 that if not for Charles’ victory, “perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford.”</p>
<p>If only Gibbon could see Oxford now. Not only <em>is</em> the interpretation of the Koran taught there, but <a href="http://www.oxcis.ac.uk/">Islam thrives in Oxford</a>, thanks partly to the patronage of dhimmi Prince Charles. In his essay “<a href="http://www.ijtihad.org/islamox.htm">Islam in Oxford</a>,” <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/28/voice-of-hate/">faux moderate</a> Muslim scholar Muqtadar Khan writes smugly that “Gibbon would have been surprised to learn the lesson that military defeats do not stop the advance of civilizations and the globalization of Islam is unimpeded by the material and military weaknesses of the Muslim world.”</p>
<p>Apart from his dubious suggestion that Islam has anything to do with the advance of civilization, Khan is right. Today the Islamic invasion of Europe and the rest of the West is of the demographic, not military, sort. The continent faces an immigration crisis from at least one generation of young Muslims, many of whom not only are willfully unassimilated, but who are waging cultural and physical aggression against their hosts, establishing parallel communities ruled by sharia and “no-go” zones of violence toward infidels. “Nothing can stop the spread of Islam,” <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/10/-reza-delivered-a-whitewashed.html">insists Islamic apologist Reza Aslan</a>. “There are those who would try, but it simply will not happen. Absolutely nothing can stop the spread of Islam.”</p>
<p>But Charles Martel begged to differ in 732. The tide was turned back then, and if necessary it can be turned back again, by new Martels. The conflict is different now – it’s far from being as straightforward and elemental as two armies facing off – and so those new Martels won’t necessarily be soldiers. They will also be culture warriors and activists and ordinary citizens willing to put themselves on the front lines against this new incursion. We need “free citizens willing to fight for their own freedom and the values of their civilization” – as Charles Martel and his warriors once were.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on this week&#8217;s <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Poster Project Benefits Returning Vets</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/poster-project-benefits-returning-vets/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=poster-project-benefits-returning-vets</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2014 04:40:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GallantFew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mental-health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poster project]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[suicide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[veterans]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Honoring real heroes.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gallant-Few.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242627" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gallant-Few.jpg" alt="Gallant Few" width="271" height="271" /></a>“Our culture has descended into one of ignoring the best and celebrating the least,” reads the website for GallantFew, a support network for military veterans. That means that too many of America’s best, home from war, are suffering in silence, with the result that we are losing nearly two dozen a day to suicide. GallantFew is working to change that.</p>
<p>Michael Broderick is a Marine Corps vet and an actor in Los Angeles [and – full disclosure – a friend of mine], with appearances on shows such as <em>Criminal Minds</em>, <em>The Mentalist</em>, <em>The Unit</em>, <em>24</em>, and <em>Justified</em>, among others. He also does voiceover work on national commercials and in video games like <em>Medal of Honor: Warfighter</em>. He and his wife Dana Commandatore are the founders of RethinkingAutism.com, devoted to improving the quality of life of autistic people. Michael is also involved with GallantFew, and I asked him a few questions about that.</p>
<p><strong>Mark Tapson</strong>: <em>Michael, what is Gallant Few and what’s the Poster Project all about?</em></p>
<p><strong>Michael Broderick:</strong> GallantFew is a veteran mentoring organization founded by retired Army Ranger Karl Monger. Their mission is to help reduce veteran unemployment and homelessness and to eliminate veteran suicide. The way they do this is to provide one-on-one peer mentoring to veterans. In other words, GallantFew will match a transitioning veteran (someone recently separated from active duty) with a veteran from their community who has already made the transition to civilian life successfully. The Poster Project is a way to raise awareness and funds for the organization.</p>
<p>The first time I did the Project, I purchased a collectible poster for <em>Band of Brothers</em> [the HBO series about the U.S. Army’s Easy Company] that had the signatures of six WWII veterans of Easy Company. I spent the next 15 months getting the signatures of 30 members of the cast and crew including Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Damien Lewis and many others. I was also able to get the signatures of two more Easy Company veterans. The Poster went to auction in 2013 and raised over $4,600.00 for GallantFew. This year, I am doing it again with a movie poster for<em> Black Hawk Down</em> [based on the true story of U.S. Army Rangers’ fierce 1993 firefight in Mogadishu].</p>
<p><strong>MT</strong>: <em>And how is that going so far?</em></p>
<p><strong>MB</strong>: It’s going well! I’ve got three signatures so far. The first was Matthew Marsden who played “Sizemore” in the film, second was Tom Sizemore who played “McKnight” and the most current signature I got was, for me, the most exciting. First Sergeant Matt Eversmann was in Los Angeles recently and he signed the poster. As you remember, 1SG Eversmann was portrayed by Josh Hartnett and his story was at the center of Black Hawk Down. Matt also recorded <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMVkktV7Pyw">a special message</a> for the actors and members of Task Force Ranger and Delta, encouraging them to get involved in The Poster Project.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>Can you talk about your own military background and how and why you became involved with Gallant Few and the Poster Project?</em></p>
<p><strong>MB:</strong> I served in the Marine Corps with HML/A-167 in a support role completing a four year enlistment and was honorably discharged in 1990. After 9/11 happened and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq got longer, I felt a real desire to do something to support my fellow veterans. I met and befriended Army Ranger Michael Schlitz and, like he does on so many, he had a powerful impact on me. I learned about the work that Mike and Karl Monger were doing with GallantFew and I wanted to support their mission. That brought about the idea for The Poster Project.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>What kinds of issues do returning veterans face when they leave combat duty and come back home, issues that civilians can’t really grasp?</em></p>
<p><strong>MB:</strong> The big three issues are the ones I mentioned before: unemployment, homelessness and suicide. GallantFew attacks these by getting at the root causes. Oftentimes a big factor in these situations is a feeling of “otherness” – veterans in general, and combat veterans in particular, often have difficulty relating to their civilian peers and vice versa. This can cause feelings of separation, which lead to isolation. In speaking to my combat veteran friends, it is this feeling of isolation that can have the most detrimental effects.</p>
<p>Civilians, on the other hand, often buy into the “damaged PTSD veteran” narrative and are uncomfortable engaging with a man or woman who has served in combat. This can unintentionally exacerbate the problem.</p>
<p>Currently, we are losing 22 veterans a day to suicide. That’s simply unacceptable.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>What about the recent VA scandal, the revelations of neglect and backlog?</em></p>
<p><strong>MB:</strong> As more and more things come out about the way the Veterans Administration has handled things, it’s clear to me that there must be major housecleaning there from the bottom to the top. This has been a long time coming. We’ve been at war for a decade and the fact that the VA is so ill-prepared leaves me dumbfounded. Even worse is the apparent dishonesty about what’s been going on there. In my opinion, it’s not simply a funding issue but an absolute systemic failure. A lack of accountability will always lead to disaster.</p>
<p>This is another reason that veterans are stepping up to help other veterans. At this point, there’s no more effective tactic than attacking these issues on a peer-to-peer level.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>What can civilians do to better show our appreciation and understanding for any vets we might know, or even don’t know but might encounter in the course of our day? How can we help Gallant Few?</em></p>
<p><strong>MB:</strong> Anyone can help GallantFew at any time. Whether you&#8217;re a veteran who would like to volunteer as a mentor or you would just like to support the mission with a donation, you can do that at <a href="http://gallantfew.org/">GallantFew.org</a> and their partners <a href="http://raiderproject.org/">RaiderProject.org</a>.</p>
<p>Your readers can support The Poster Project by visiting us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/theposterproject">Facebook</a> or on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/DaPosterProject">Twitter</a> and helping me spread the word. Likes, shares and retweets are always appreciated.</p>
<p>Finally, if you know a veteran, you can simply reach out and check in with them. It really is that simple. Whether it&#8217;s someone you know well, an online acquaintance or someone you don&#8217;t know well at all, you can ask how they&#8217;re doing. Every so often, just ask how they&#8217;re doing. That&#8217;s how anyone in your life knows you care, military or civilian. The key, though, is being ready to listen if and when they are ready to talk. Don&#8217;t worry about having answers or solutions. Just listen. Because that&#8217;s what friends do. Hell, when you&#8217;re done reading this, why not check in with a veteran you know?</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on this week&#8217;s <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
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		<title>Maher and Harris Educate Affleck about Islam</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/maher-and-harris-educate-affleck-about-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=maher-and-harris-educate-affleck-about-islam</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:46:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ben Affleck]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill Maher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Denial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Yet another leftist actor reveals his ignorance.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ds.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242481" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ds.jpg" alt="ds" width="292" height="153" /></a>I don’t usually stand with comedian Bill Maher, but last week on his <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/its-gross-its-racist-ben-affleck-and-bill-maher-clash-over-criticizing-islam/"><em>Real Time </em></a>program the provocateur once again was a voice of reason addressing the Islam Problem. His guests were atheist author Sam Harris, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, <em>New York Times</em> columnist Nicholas Kristof, and actor/director Ben Affleck of the Oscar-winning Iranian hostage crisis flick <em>Argo</em>. As you might expect from such a lineup, the discussion swiftly degenerated into the usual stalemate between facts and politically correct defensiveness.</p>
<p>“Liberals need to stand up for liberal principles,” opened Maher, “freedom of speech, freedom to practice any religion you want without fear of violence, freedom to leave a religion, equality for women, equality for minorities, including homosexuals.” When this earned applause, he continued, “these are liberal principles that liberals applaud for, but then when you say in the Muslim world, this is what’s lacking, then they get upset.”</p>
<p>Sam Harris, an atheist who, like Maher, at least understands that not all religions are the same, replied,</p>
<blockquote><p>Liberals have really failed on the topic of theocracy. They’ll criticize white theocracy, they’ll criticize Christians, they’ll still get upset over the abortion clinic bombings that happened in 1984… The crucial point of confusion is that we have been sold this meme of Islamophobia where every criticism of Islam is conflated with bigotry toward Muslims as people, and that is intellectually ridiculous.</p></blockquote>
<p>This brought whoops of approval from the audience, and a highly agitated Affleck took the opportunity to jump in and challenge Harris on his credentials for discussing Islam. Of course, Affleck, who had nothing knowledgeable to say about the religion himself, immediately proved Harris’ point by calling his statement “gross” and “racist” – buying into the standard progressive misconception that Islam is somehow a race. Maintaining his composure, Harris responded, again to applause, that we have to be able to criticize ideas. This was a point with which Affleck hastened to agree – until Harris dropped some truth that “Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas.”</p>
<p>“Jesus,” a frustrated Affleck exclaimed. He practically came out of his chair a moment later exclaiming, “How about the more than a billion people who aren’t fanatical, who don’t punish women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches, and don’t do any of the things you say all Muslims do?” This too brought applause, even though once again he was proving Harris’ point that criticizing Islam gets unfairly conflated with a broad-brush attack on all Muslims.</p>
<p>“All these billion people don’t hold these pernicious beliefs?” Maher asked. “That’s just not true, Ben.” When Harris “unpacked” the concept for an impatient Affleck, explaining about concentric circles of fundamentalism, Affleck shut down listening and simply interjected, “Let him [Kristof] talk.” Nicholas Kristof defended moderate Muslims who speak out, and Michael Steele raised the point that opposition Muslim voices don’t get media coverage, to which Maher, trying to bring the discussion back to the ideology of Islam, responded that a big reason Muslims <em>don’t</em> speak out is fear. “It’s the only religion that acts like the mafia,” Maher said. “They will f**king kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book. That’s why Ayaan Hirsi Ali needs bodyguards 24/7.”</p>
<p>Affleck, unable to restrain his righteous anger, suddenly gesticulated at Harris as he began to rant irrationally. “What is your solution, to just condemn Islam? We’ve killed more Muslims than they have us, by an awful lot, and yet somehow we’re exempted from things because they’re not <em>reeeally</em> a reflection of what we believe in…”</p>
<p>When he couldn’t be reined in from this tangent, Harris condescended, “Let me just give you what you want,” and proceeded to say that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who don’t agree with ISIS and that reformers of Islam should be supported. That didn’t pacify Affleck or Kristof, who said that Harris’ point still smacked of “the way white racists talked about African-Americans and defined blacks” – proving <em>yet again</em> Harris’ point that criticizing Islamic ideology always raises the specter of Islamophobia.</p>
<p>When Affleck began another stupid rant, equating a factual discussion of Islam with racism against blacks, Maher cut him off. “It’s based on facts. I can show you a Pew poll of Egyptians – they are not outliers in the Muslim world – that say like 90% of them believe death is the appropriate response to leaving the religion. If 90% of Brazilians thought that death was the appropriate response to leaving Catholicism, you would think it was a bigger deal.”</p>
<p>“I would think it was a big deal no matter what,” Affleck lied, trying to sound fair and balanced. People like Affleck will defend the rights of jihadists all the way up until the blade severs their heads from their bodies, but think nothing of publicly smearing all Christians as theocratic bigots.</p>
<p>“I’m simply telling you,” Affleck told Harris, “I disagree with you.” Harris calmly countered correctly with, “You don’t understand my argument.”</p>
<p>That’s because Ben Affleck is typical of uninformed but holier-than-thou, media-empowered Hollywood actors, who substitute passion for thought and utopian ideals for reality, who reject facts for <em>ad hominem</em> slurs of racism, and who wear the blinders of moral equivalence because their false god is multiculturalism. Unfortunately, we can’t dismiss the influence of such smug, ignorant loudmouths on the smug, militantly ignorant sheep who constitute their audience.</p>
<p>“We’re obviously not convincing anybody,” Bill Maher conceded. Maybe, maybe not, but unlike nearly all of his cohorts in the media, at least Maher’s willing to try.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on this week&#8217;s <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
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		<title>Conservative Comedian Michael Loftus Goes Gunning for Big Government</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/conservative-comedian-michael-loftus-goes-gunning-for-big-government/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=conservative-comedian-michael-loftus-goes-gunning-for-big-government</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/conservative-comedian-michael-loftus-goes-gunning-for-big-government/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2014 04:42:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Comedy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Loftus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Flipside]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[writer/​producer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242042</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A refreshing antidote to Jon Stewart.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/flipsidetvshow.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242304" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/flipsidetvshow.jpg" alt="flipsidetvshow" width="336" height="185" /></a>Mixing news with a dose of comic commentary has paid off for <em>The Daily Show</em>’s Jon Stewart. A Brookings Institute survey recently noted that he is a news source more trusted by liberals and independents than MSNBC is. “The real power to influence the left resides on <em>Comedy Central</em> not MSNBC,” <a href="http://www.politicususa.com/2014/06/10/jon-stewart-daily-show-trusted-msnbc-news.html">says</a> Politics USA. But if you’re searching your television lineup for a conservative antidote to Stewart, the field is rather limited. There is late night <em>Red Eye</em>’s Greg Gutfeld, there is… actually, there’s just Gutfeld. Or there was until this month, when <a href="http://theflipsideshow.com/"><em>The Flipside with Michael Loftus</em></a> debuted on <a href="http://theflipsideshow.com/stations/">television stations</a> across the country.</p>
<p>A writer/​producer on the successful sitcom <em>Anger Management</em>, comedian Michael Loftus was also a co-​producer and executive story editor on the underappreciated NBC comedy <em>Outsourced</em> and a writer on <em>The George Lopez Show</em>. He has also been a regular on TruTV’s <em>The Smoking Gun Presents</em>…, and he created and starred in History Channel’s half-hour comedy<a href="http://www.mikeloftuscomedy.com/#watch-american-wiseass"><em>American Wiseass</em></a>, in which he presented a comic take on episodes from American history to a live studio audience. He also has his own comedy album and a one-hour Comedy Central special <em>You’ve Changed</em>.</p>
<p>Featuring some standup by Loftus, satirical segments, and interviews with lively, interesting personalities such as talk show host Larry Elder, openly conservative actress Janine Turner, and Michael Ramirez, Investor’s Business Daily political cartoonist (Loftus’ <a href="http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/comedian-michael-loftus-loves-targeting-the-left-wing/30546.article">dream interview subjects</a> include Al Franken, Nancy Pelosi and the Clintons), <em>The Flipside with Michael Loftus</em> takes a right-leaning perspective on the news, commentary, and pop culture. Loftus hopes to <a href="http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/comedian-michael-loftus-loves-targeting-the-left-wing/30546.article">turn</a> the weekly half-hour (there are <a href="http://theflipsideshow.com/video/flipside-92714-featuring-michael-ramirez-of-investors-business-daily/">four episodes</a> so far) into a nightly political satire event along the lines of Stewart’s massively successful <em>The Daily Show</em>. “My producers are going to get mad at me for saying this,” he <a href="http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/comedian-michael-loftus-loves-targeting-the-left-wing/30546.article">says</a>, “but nobody is making fun of the insane liberals.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/comedian-michael-loftus-loves-targeting-the-left-wing/30546.article">youngest of five</a> from an Irish Catholic family in Columbus, Ohio, Loftus’ conservatism has been reinforced by his own parenthood. “It’s weird how when you have kids you start to think about bigger things. It’s definitely changed my comedy.” Now, Loftus <a href="http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/comedian-michael-loftus-loves-targeting-the-left-wing/30546.article">say</a>s, “I’m living the American dream. I had a great-grandfather who came over to this country because he was starving to death in Ireland, and now I can be onstage talking about politics.”</p>
<p>Last week Loftus was game to answer a few questions for FrontPage:</p>
<p><strong>Mark Tapson</strong>: <em>Michael, it’s great to have you on FrontPage Mag, and great to have something like </em>The Flipside<em> out there for those of us hungry for an alternative to Jon Stewart. What are you trying to accomplish with the show, apart from fame and fortune?</em></p>
<p><strong>Michael Loftus:</strong> Great question. I think there are millions of people who&#8217;ve been waiting for a show like this; so I guess that is what I&#8217;m really trying to do, provide an alternative. Most times when you turn on the TV and a conservative is talking, he&#8217;s shaking his fist and freaking out. I thought it’d be a nice change if somebody would come on TV, talk about these issues and be funny.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> The Flipside <em>isn’t so much about hammering progressives as it is poking fun at big government, which is pretty much a nonpartisan thing these days. You don’t shy away from sticking it to Republicans as well as Democrats. Would you call yourself a libertarian? Tea Partier? </em></p>
<p><strong>ML:</strong> Great question. I shy away from any of those labels. I used to think of myself as an Independent until they started an actual Party. I would have a hard time keeping a straight face at any “Independent” meeting; it’s like when that elf dentist meets Rudolf for the first time in that Christmas special: “Let&#8217;s be Independent together.”</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>Have you always leaned right, or did you have a “Paul on the road to Damascus” moment? </em></p>
<p><strong>ML:</strong> Great question – wow, three in a row, dude, you’re on a roll! At the very least I’ve always considered myself financially conservative. I started working at a very young age and for the longest time I wanted to know who FICA was and why they were taking all my money. Now that I’m older, I know who FICA is, but I’m still wondering why they’re taking all my money.</p>
<p><strong>MT</strong>: <em>What’s it like in the comedy circuit and working in television as a right-leaning comedian, in terms of the reaction from both audiences and other comedians</em><em>?</em></p>
<p><strong>ML</strong>: The beauty of working in comedy clubs and television is that funny always wins. Whether you personally agree or disagree with what someone’s saying, it’s hard to argue when everyone is laughing. Because in the end, funny is funny. I can have serious discussions with other comics over a cup of coffee after the show, but during the show all I wanna do is make people laugh. And that&#8217;s the great balancing act of <em>The Flipside</em>, so it’s my hope that funny always wins the day.</p>
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