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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Daily Mailer</title>
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		<title>Obama Frees a Nuclear Terrorist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-frees-a-nuclear-terrorist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-frees-a-nuclear-terrorist</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-frees-a-nuclear-terrorist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 05:47:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gitmo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mohammed Zahir]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[release]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248321</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is there any terrorist Obama won’t free?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ws.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248323" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ws-284x350.jpg" alt="ws" width="213" height="263" /></a>Which terrorist will Obama set loose next from Gitmo? A better question might be is there any terrorist he won’t free? Is there an Al Qaeda or Taliban Jihadist who poses too much of a threat to the United States for Obama to free with a lot of airline miles and Michelle Obama’s recipe for arugula fruitcake?</p>
<p>If Obama has a red line when it comes to releasing terrorists, we haven’t seen it yet.</p>
<p>There appears to be no threat that a terrorist can pose and no crime he has committed too severe to prevent him from getting a plane trip out of Gitmo at taxpayer expense.</p>
<p>The last releases saw terrorists rated as high risk freed by Obama. They included fighters with experience on the battlefield and covert operations. <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-christmas-gift-to-isis-and-al-qaeda/">Obama set loose a suicide bomber</a>, a document forger and a bomb maker who trained other terrorists to make bombs. Those are exactly the sorts of enemies whose license to Jihad will cost lives.</p>
<p>But that’s nothing compared to Obama’s latest gift to the Jihad.</p>
<p>When Mohammed Zahir was caught, among his possessions was found a small sealed can marked, in Russian, “Heavy Water U235 150 Grams.”</p>
<p>According to the classified report, the uranium had been identified by Zahir “in his memorandum as being intended for the production of an “atom bomb.”</p>
<p>Zahir was not just another captured Jihadist. He was the Secretary General of the Taliban’s Intelligence Directorate and was in contact with top leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. His possessions included a fax with questions intended for Osama bin Laden and he had been arrested on suspicion of possessing Stinger missiles.</p>
<p>But that may not have even been the worst of it.</p>
<p>Among the items was a notebook containing references to large sugar shipments to Washington D.C. Investigators believed that sugar was used as a code word for heroin. The Black Sea stops mentioned in the notebook are major hubs for smuggling heroin and for nuclear smuggling as well.</p>
<p>Not only was Mohammed Zahir a terrorist kingpin, but he was also a drug kingpin and the notebook suggested that his eye was on the United States of America.</p>
<p>It was no wonder that Mohammad Zahir had been rated as posing a high risk, but Obama had already freed a number of other high risk Guantanamo Bay detainees. Yet Zahir was the closest thing to a major nuclear terrorist in United States custody. Freeing him was wildly irresponsible even by the standards of a leader who had sacrificed thousands of Americans in a futile effort to “win” Afghan hearts and minds.</p>
<p>Nor did Obama even bother with the plausible deniability of releasing him to a South American country, the way he had with his previous batch of ISIS recruits, or at least to Qatar. Instead Mohammed Zahir went back directly to the battlefield in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Obama couldn’t have done more without handing over the blueprints for constructing a nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>And yet it wasn’t surprising that Obama would free Mohammed Zahir. He had <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/12/4_gitmo_detainees_tr.php">already freed Zahir’s old boss</a>, the Taliban’s Deputy Minister of Intelligence, as well as another senior Taliban intel official under whom Zahir had used to work. It just happened to be Zahir’s turn.</p>
<p>If the other Gitmo detainees freed by Obama are deadly, Zahir was part of an effort to engage in the mass murder of Americans using weapons of mass destruction. Considering how many Gitmo detainees returned to terrorism once they were released, it is highly likely that Zahir will go on doing what he used to do and that American soldiers and civilians will end up paying the price for Obama’s license to Jihad.</p>
<p>Zahir wasn’t released on his own. Accompanying him back to the motherland of terror were Khi Ali Gul, who was linked to Al Qaeda’s Haqqani Network, Shawali Khan, the member of group that merged with Al Qaeda and Abdul Ghani, who had frequently bragged about his high rank in the Taliban and had participated in rocket and mine attacks on American soldiers.</p>
<p>These men were assessed as very dangerous. Like the last batch released, they’re almost certain to return to the industry of terror.</p>
<p>Even as <a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2014/12/oops-u-s-offers-5-mil-reward-al-qaeda-terrorist-released-gitmo/">a $5 million bounty has been put on</a> the head of Ibrahim al-Rubaysh, a Gitmo terrorist released for rest and rehabilitation in Saudi Arabia, the same mistakes that led to his release continue to be made.</p>
<p>Ibrahim al-Rubaysh returned to play a leading role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Mohammed Zahir and his pals will have an even shorter trip to get back into the fight. They won’t even have to go through the charade of being rehabilitated before they return to their bloody trade.</p>
<p>With the release of the latest batch of Taliban figures, Obama is helping the Taliban rebuild its organizational structure at the top. Even while he’s declaring victory over the Taliban, he is helping the Taliban win.</p>
<p>And in the process he is sending dangerous men back into the fight. Men like Mohammed Zahir.</p>
<p>Mohammed Zahir may not go back to his old tasks of smuggling heroin to Washington D.C. or trying to assemble materials for an atomic bomb. Or this top Taliban intelligence official may decide to pick up where he left off. It’s bad enough that Obama is empowering Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb, but now he has also managed to aid the Taliban’s search for weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>Americans no longer expect the man in the White House not to release terrorists. We no longer expect him not to release dangerous terrorists who will go on to kill Americans. Now we also know that it’s useless to expect him not to release terrorists caught trying to assemble materials for a nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>We’ve tried to grade Obama on a curve when it comes to national security, but the curve just got nuked.</p>
<p>The very lowest possible expectation we can have of Obama is that he won’t release a nuclear terrorist. And even this lowest of all possible expectations proved too much for him to live up to.</p>
<p>Which terrorists will Obama release next? The answer appears to be all of them.</p>
<p>Obama had sought to take Osama alive so he could receive a trial in civilian court. The SEALS put a stop to that plan and to Osama, but if they hadn’t, then next week we might be seeing Osama bin Laden boarding a plane to Qatar or Afghanistan with a can of uranium tucked under one arm.</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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		<item>
		<title>Return of the 1960s</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/return-of-the-1960s/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=return-of-the-1960s</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/return-of-the-1960s/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 05:47:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[1960s]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shootings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248435</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A dark past revived under America's Radical-in-Chief. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1379512720-OaklandCopCar2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248436" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1379512720-OaklandCopCar2.jpg" alt="1379512720-OaklandCopCar2" width="348" height="260" /></a>In 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama signified that he represented a sea-change in the nature of American politics. Obama proclaimed that as a member of the younger generation — born in 1961, at the tail end of the baby boom — he no longer wanted to participate in the stale and tired politics of the 1960s. Instead, he wanted to thrust America forward into a &#8220;different kind of politics,&#8221; one beyond the &#8220;psychodrama of the baby-boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage.&#8221;</p>
<p>Like most of what President Obama said, this turned out to be a lie. President Obama isn&#8217;t merely a reflection of 1960s politics. He represents a return to those ugly politics: the nastiness of anti-cop sentiment, the divisiveness of generalized anti-Western foreign policy, the idiocy of a war between the sexes and against the exclusivity of the traditional family structure. President Obama isn&#8217;t representative of a new breed. He is the child of the 1960s politics he once claimed to abhor.</p>
<p>Those politics, at least, had the excuse of an uglier America — one fresh with the wounds of Jim Crow, the sins of sexism, the controversy of Vietnam. Today&#8217;s 1960s reruns seem wildly out of context. But that&#8217;s the point: For the radicals of the 1960s, just as for the establishment Obamaites of today, context simply does not matter. When you are attempting to craft utopia, context is irrelevant — and human beings become either tools or obstacles toward the creation of that utopia. The vision never changes. Only the calendar does.</p>
<p>And so we&#8217;re watching racial tensions on a scale unseen since the 1970s play out across America — with the support of the political establishment. The images of police officers turning their backs on New York Mayor Bill De Blasio mirror the images of officers booing New York Mayor John Lindsay in 1972 at the funeral of Officer Rocco Laurie.</p>
<p>The images of rioters burning down Ferguson mirror the images of rioters burning down Detroit in 1967. Never mind that America of 2014 is not the America of 1967 or 1972 — if Obama and his allies have to recreate that chaotic era to forward their own political ends, they will.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re watching the foreign policy of the hard-left McGovernites re-establish itself, this time from the Oval Office. The images of Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., railing against the CIA on the floor of the Senate over the CIA&#8217;s use of enhanced interrogation techniques mirror the images of Senator Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., railing against the American military in the aftermath of the Winter Soldier hearings of 1971. The images of the Yazidis starving on mountaintops in Iraq mirror the images of Vietnamese rushing onto boats to escape the horrors of the communists in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re watching the divisive domestic politics of the social radicals reassert themselves. The images of failed Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis standing in pink sneakers to list the glories of late-term abortion mirror the images of Gloria Steinem blathering about &#8220;reproductive freedom&#8221; in 1971. The images of Nancy Pelosi touting freedom from &#8220;job lock&#8221; thanks to Obamacare mirror the images of President Johnson effectively doing the same thanks to the war on poverty.</p>
<p>President Obama and his ilk quest for a return to hopier, changier times — times like the 1960s. And so they will take us all back to the future. Sadly, our future will then be no more than a reversion to insanity of our past.</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>Islamic Law: Girls Can Be Married Even &#8216;In The Cradle&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/islamic-law-girls-can-be-married-even-in-the-cradle/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamic-law-girls-can-be-married-even-in-the-cradle</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 05:45:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[child]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Girls]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marriage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248424</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The difference between Sharia and common decency reaffirmed once again.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/174549556.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248426" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/174549556-415x350.jpg" alt="BAHRAIN-RELIGION-ISLAM-RAMADAN" width="309" height="261" /></a>Originally published by </i><i><a href="http://www.vieinter.com/themiddleeast/islamic-law-girls-can-be-married-even-if-they-are-in-the-cradle/">Veritas International Enterprise</a>.</i></p>
<p>Muslim attempts at “reformation” <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/muslim-reformers-forever-talking-the-talk-never-walking-the-walk/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">continue to be limited to words not actions</span></a>.  A few days ago, efforts to set a minimum age for marriage in Saudi Arabia “<a href="http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabia-grand-mufti-says-no-opposition-to-underage-marriage-1.1429882"><span style="color: #0433ff;">received a blow</span></a> after the Grand Mufti said there was nothing wrong with girls below 15 getting married.”</p>
<p>Two years earlier, the justice ministry began pushing for setting a minimum age in the Arabian kingdom.  According to Gulf News, “It submitted an integrated study on the negative psychological and social effects of underage marriages to religious scholars and requested a fatwa that sets a minimum age.”</p>
<p>However, the <i>ulema</i>—the “religious scholar,” the learned ones of Islamic law—responded by totally ignoring the request.  Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority, its Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, shrugged the whole matter off by saying “There is currently no intention to discuss the issue.”  In other words, case closed.</p>
<p>Although the brief Gulf News report focuses on the age 15, going back to earlier reports when the justice ministry began bringing this issue up, one discovers that the issue at stake is full-blown pedophilia.</p>
<p>Back in 2011, for example, Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, issued a fatwa <a href="http://alwatan.kuwait.tt/ArticleDetails.aspx?Id=124848"><span style="color: #0433ff;">asserting</span></a> that there is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.”</p>
<p>Appearing in Saudi papers, the fatwa complained that “Uninformed interference with Sharia rulings by the press and journalists is on the increase”—likely a reference to the justice ministry’s advocacy—“posing dire consequences to society, including their interference with the question of marriage to small girls who have not reached maturity, and their demand that a minimum age be set for girls to marry.”</p>
<p>Fawzan insisted that nowhere does Sharia (or Islamic law) set an age limit for marrying girls: like countless Muslim scholars before him, he relied on Koran 65:4, which discusses marriage to females who have not yet begun menstruating (i.e., are prepubescent) and the fact that Muhammad, Islam’s role model, married Aisha when she was six or seven, “consummating” the marriage—or, in modern/Western parlance, <i>raping</i> her—when she was nine.</p>
<p>The grand point of the Saudi fatwa, however, is not that girls as young as nine can be married, based on Muhammad’s example, but rather that there is no age limit whatsoever.  The only question open to consideration is whether the girl is physically capable of handling her “husband.”  Fawzan documented this point by quoting <a href="http://www.sifatusafwa.com/en/hadeeth/1037-sharh-sahih-al-bukhari-li-ibn-battal-449h.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ibn Battal’s authoritative exegesis of Sahih Bukhari</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The ulema [Islam’s scholars and interpreters] have agreed that it is permissible for fathers to marry off their small daughters, even if they are in the cradle.  But it is not permissible for their husbands to have sex with them unless they are capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men.  And their capability in this regard varies based on their nature and capacity.  Aisha was six when she married the prophet, but he had sex with her when she was nine [that is, when she was deemed capable].</p></blockquote>
<p>Fawzan concluded his fatwa with a warning: “It behooves those who call for setting a minimum age for marriage to fear Allah and not contradict his Sharia, or try to legislate things Allah did not permit.  For laws are Allah’s province; and legislation is his exclusive right, to be shared by none other.  And among these are the rules governing marriage.”</p>
<p>Once again, case closed.</p>
<p>Fawzan, of course, is not <a href="http://islamqa.com/en/ref/22442"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the</span></a> <a href="http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3023.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">first</span></a> to insist on the legitimacy of <a href="http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Islam_and_Pedophilia"><span style="color: #0433ff;">pedophilia in Islam</span></a>.  Nor is this just some theoretic, abstract point; the lives of countless young girls are devastated because of this teaching.  Recall, for instance, the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415871/Yemeni-child-bride-8-dies-internal-injuries-night-forced-marriage-groom-40.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">8-year-old girl who died</span></a> on her “wedding” night as her “husband” raped her; or the 12-year-old who <a href="http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/yemen/yemeni-12-year-old-dies-while-giving-birth-to-a-stillborn-1.539240"><span style="color: #0433ff;">died giving birth to a stillborn</span></a>; or the 10-year-old who made headlines by <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/10/marriage_saudi_arabiastyle_1.asp"><span style="color: #0433ff;">hiding </span></a> from her 80-year-old “husband.”</p>
<p>Finally, it should be borne in mind that Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz—the highest Islamic authority in the land of Islam’s birth—not only dismisses calls to place an age restriction for marriage, but is the same Grand Mufti who called for the destruction of all Christian churches on the Arabian Peninsula (<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/saudi-mufti-destroy-churches/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">as first reported here</span></a>).</p>
<p>The consistency makes perfect sense.  After all, in the eyes of non-Muslims, or “non-believers,” Sharia law is nothing less than a legal system built atop the words and deeds of a seventh century Arab, whose behavior—from pedophilia and <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muhammad-and-islams-sex-slaves/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">sex-slavery</span></a> to war mongering and plundering to destroying non-Muslim places of worship—was very much that of a seventh century Arab.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss scholar of Islam <strong>Louis Lionheart</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang</strong> discuss <strong>The Case of Mohammad and Aisha</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MxX7NPbZ8z4" 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>The Police Brutality &#8216;Epidemic&#8217; Lie</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jack-kerwick/the-police-brutality-epidemic-lie/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-police-brutality-epidemic-lie</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 05:40:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack Kerwick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brutality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[epidemic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nypd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[STATISTICS]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248430</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Misinformation that kills. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Police-IMG_4105.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248432" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Police-IMG_4105-397x350.jpg" alt="Police-IMG_4105" width="330" height="291" /></a>Recently, I claimed that everyone—politicians, academics, and media commentators—who promoted the idea that police brutality is a national “epidemic,” or even a “growing concern,” as one self-styled libertarian put it, share some culpability for the murders of the two NYPD officers who were gunned down in their vehicle right before Christmas.</p>
<p>More specifically, they are responsible, obviously, not for intending or consciously encouraging the murder of police, but for creating a climate for police officers that’s even more hostile than that in which officers must spend their days and nights.  After all, we don’t need Richard Weaver to inform us that “ideas have consequences.”  Even simpletons and liars will concede this much.</p>
<p>And only simpletons and liars can deny that this idea—the idea of a “pandemic” of police brutality sweeping the nation—has the consequence of endangering police officers.</p>
<p>Yet this idea isn’t just dangerous.</p>
<p>It is also a lie.  And it is a huge lie at that.</p>
<p>“Police brutality” is an all-purpose piece of rhetoric that, as such, can mean anything and everything—and, thus, nothing at all. When anti-police misologists—a “misologist” was the word that the 18<sup>th</sup> century philosopher Immanuel Kant used when referring to an enemy of reason—sound off about “police brutality,” they are referring to the police’s unjustified use of force.</p>
<p>Now, all but anarchists concede that police are authorized to use force when necessary and when it’s proportionate to the situation in question. When, however, the force deployed is unnecessary and/or excessive, then the force is unjustified. This—the unnecessary and/or excessive use of force—is “police brutality.”</p>
<p>So, is this a growing national phenomenon, an epidemic?</p>
<p>Not even close.</p>
<p>According to the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), in 1999, of 44 million people who had face-to-face interactions with police officers, less than one-half of one percent was “threatened with or actually experienced force.”</p>
<p>Notice, the assertion here isn’t that less than one-half of one percent—it bears repeating: one-half of one percent!—was subjected to the use of unjustified force; the claim is that of 44 million, this miniscule fraction of people were either threatened with—threatened with—or subjected to the use of force per se.</p>
<p>What this in turn means is that the number of people who were “brutalized” by police is even smaller than “less than one-half of one percent.”</p>
<p>According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS), of a national population estimate of roughly 240, 000,000 comprised of people of 16 years of age or older, of those who dealt with the police in some capacity in 2002, 2005, and 2008, 1.5%, 1.6%, and 1.4%, respectively, were either threatened with or subjected to force by the police.</p>
<p>In 2008, 22% of those falling into the latter group admitted that they “argued with, cursed at, insulted, or verbally threatened the police.”  Twelve percent reported that they were “disobeying” and/or “interfering” with police.</p>
<p>Of the 84% of people who felt that the threat or use of police use force was “improper,” only 14% filed a complaint.</p>
<p>To further underscore just what a whopper of a lie is the notion that “police brutality” is a nationwide epidemic, consider this: Among those included in the class of people who have had to deal with police are those who have called on the police for assistance.  And among those who have done so, about 85 percent claimed to have been “satisfied with the police response.”  Moreover—shocker of shockers!—Hispanics (86%) and blacks (85%) were slightly more satisfied than were whites (83%). Finally, about 90 percent of people who requested police assistance said that they would do so again.</p>
<p>Only in the fevered imagination of the cop-hating ideologue is “police brutality” a national crisis, or any sort of crisis.</p>
<p>Of course, none of this is to deny that there are bad cops.  Genuinely abusive police officers, like those who abuse their power and authority anywhere, deserve to be crucified.  But there is zero justification for abstracting from these relatively few instances a rule encompassing police officers generally.</p>
<p>Numbers aside, just some rudimentary common sense—a rare commodity nowadays, and practically nonexistent among the police-hating ideologues—should determine that in this Age of the Camera—a time in which everyone and their mother is armed with surveillance apparatus—the police have no real option but to be better behaved than ever before.</p>
<p>Jeremy Bentham described the doctrine of “natural rights” as “nonsense on stilts.”  The dogma—and make no mistakes about it, for the anti-police misologists, this is nothing less than a dogma—that “police brutality” is an epidemic, a crisis, blah, blah, blah, is indeed nonsense on stilts.  But it is more than this: It is nonsense that kills.</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>Glazov Gang 2014 Episode of the Year &#8212; Dinesh D&#8217;Souza</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/glazov-gang-2014-episode-of-the-year-dinesh-dsouza/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=glazov-gang-2014-episode-of-the-year-dinesh-dsouza</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 05:15:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Alinsky]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Dinesh D'Souza]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The acclaimed conservative author and filmmaker discussed his stellar new book and motion picture.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/dd.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248439" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/dd.jpg" alt="dd" width="289" height="159" /></a><strong>[</strong><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to <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>
<p>This year’s<strong> Glazov Gang 2014 Episode of the Year Award</strong> goes to two special episodes &#8212; each of them joined by a stellar titan who is on the front-lines of the culture and terror war courageously defending our civilization&#8217;s freedom.</p>
<p>One of the winning episodes was with <a href="http://www.americathemovie.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Dinesh D’Souza</strong></a>, acclaimed conservative author and filmmaker who is the author of the book, <strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/America-Imagine-World-without-Her/dp/162157203X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1406272202&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=america+dinesh" target="_blank">America: Imagine a World Without Her</a> </strong>– which is also a<a href="http://www.americathemovie.com/" target="_blank"> <strong>major motion picture</strong></a>.</p>
<p>We are honored to present the special episode,<strong> “America: Imagine a World Without Her,”</strong> below.</p>
<p>Our other Glazov Gang 2014 episode award winner was with <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/glazov-gangs-2014-episode-of-the-year-geert-wilders/"><strong>Geert Wilders</strong></a> and ran in <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/glazov-gangs-2014-episode-of-the-year-geert-wilders/">yesterday&#8217;s issue</a>.</p>
<p>The Glazov Gang team extends special thanks to all of our guests, viewers and supporters and wishes all of them a happy, healthy and successful new year.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/h1DQjj1VxHw" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>To watch previous <em>Glazov Gang</em> episodes, </strong><a href="http://jamieglazov.com/"><strong>Click Here</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamie.glazov"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> Jamie Glazov’s </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamie.glazov"><strong>Fan Page</strong></a><strong> on Facebook.</strong></p>
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		<title>Daniel Mael: Badge of Courage at Brandeis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/daniel-mael-badge-of-courage-at-brandeis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=daniel-mael-badge-of-courage-at-brandeis</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:55:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248379</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Freedom Center student leader under fire from radicals for exposing cop-hater.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/dm.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248382" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/dm-294x350.jpg" alt="dm" width="188" height="224" /></a>After cop-hating lynch mobs got what they were chanting for – the execution of two New York police officers – there was widespread disgust and anger among decent, sane Americans. Among others, there was indifference, amusement, and even celebration.</p>
<p>Brandeis University student Khadijah Lynch, for example, an undergraduate representative for the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, took to Twitter to express that she found the murders of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos, a Latino father of two, and Wenjian Liu, an Asian-American newlywed, to be hilarious: “lmao, all i just really dont have sympathy for the cops who were shot. i hate this racist f**king country,” read the junior’s illiterate tweet.</p>
<p>Fellow Brandeis student Daniel Mael, a Horowitz Freedom Center student leader and TruthRevolt reporter, took to TruthRevolt.com to <a href="http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/student-leader-no-sympathy-executed-nypd-officers">publicize</a> Lynch’s tweet and others of hers like it, such as these:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;i have no sympathy for the nypd officers who were murdered today&#8221;<br />
&#8220;what the f**k even IS &#8216;non-violence&#8217;&#8221;<br />
&#8220;ya&#8217;ll out here waiting for a white messiah, im waiting for Malcolm X to return.&#8221;<br />
&#8220;the fact that black people have not burned this country down is beyond me&#8221;<br />
&#8220;I am in riot mode. F**k this f**king country&#8221;<br />
&#8220;I need to get my gun license. asap.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Outrage ensued over her militant hatefulness. To curb any excessive anger, Mael <a href="https://www.facebook.com/daniel.mael/posts/762799603774296">wrote</a> on his Facebook page:</p>
<blockquote><p>Any threats made against Khadijah Lynch are repulsive and morally reprehensible. What Lynch wrote was vile and so to are some of the threats made against her. It must stop. Now. We must overcome vicious hatred through real dialogue and a strong commitment to a better future.</p></blockquote>
<p>Lynch <a href="https://twitter.com/punqros3">made her Twitter page private</a> and resigned from her position as an undergraduate department representative. Complaining that her public tweets were her “own personal opinion,” she warned TruthRevolt – illiterately again, suggesting that a $60,000-a-year Brandeis education is failing her or vice versa – that she did not want her tweets “publicized in any form and if you do not abide my wishes i constitute your disregard as slander.”</p>
<p>Apparently she is unaware that slander is spoken, not written (which is libel), and that she was not misrepresented. As Alan Dershowitz <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Alan-Dershowitz-Brandeis-student-New-York-police/2014/12/27/id/615191/">put it</a>, addressing the controversy,</p>
<blockquote><p>Republishing someone’s published words could not possibly constitute slander, libel, or any other form of defamation, because you can’t be slandered by your own words.</p></blockquote>
<p>Suddenly regarding themselves as First Amendment champions, some Brandeis students leapt to Lynch’s defense. As reported by the <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/23/brandeis-students-rally-around-peer-with-no-sympathy-for-dead-cops/"><em>Daily</em> <em>Caller</em></a>, senior Michael Piccione, <a href="http://www.brandeis.edu/studentaffairs/srcs/scb.html">a member of the student conduct board</a>, was upset that a conservative website had called her out for the tweets. He sent an email to the Brandeis President, administrators, faculty, and students entitled “VERY IMPORTANT: Holding Daniel Mael accountable, and other threats to student safety!” In it he <a href="http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2014/12/23/brandeis-student-receives-threats-racist-remarks-tweets-new-york-police-shooting/">declared</a> that Mael had “potentially violated multiple parts” of a Brandeis code of student conduct including “stalking,” and complained that Mael had “exposed Khadijah” to what Piccione falsely characterized as TruthRevolt’s “largely white supremacist following.” So he condemns supremacism unless it’s black, and libel unless it’s against conservatives.</p>
<p>Another student, sophomore William Amara, spewed obscenities on the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/brandeis2017">Brandeis Class of 2017 official Facebook page</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>I am sorry that Khadijah has to put up with these f**king assholes publishing and likely distorting her private opinions to further incite racial hatred and oppression. I hope the university will stand with you if these c**ks**kers cause things to escalate further.</p></blockquote>
<p>He too described the reporting of Lynch’s tweets as “slander.”</p>
<p>The Brandeis Asian American Student Association proclaimed “sympathy” and a “readiness to stand by” Lynch as well, even though one of the slain NYPD officers was Asian-American. On <a href="https://www.facebook.com/brandeisaasa/posts/823505541045663?fref=nf">Facebook</a>, the student group claimed that Lynch “has been wrongfully targeted and harassed.” “We recognize your right to speak freely” they declared, although no one was denying her that.</p>
<p>As Dershowitz <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Alan-Dershowitz-Brandeis-student-New-York-police/2014/12/27/id/615191/">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of the academic hard left, where bigoted speech by fellow hard leftists is protected, but counter expression is labeled as “harassment,” “incitement,” and “bullying.” Imagine how different the reaction of these same radical students would be if a white supporter of the KKK had written comparably incendiary tweets.</p></blockquote>
<p>A <a href="https://www.change.org/p/brandeis-community-students-alumni-and-friends-stand-in-support-of-khadijah-lynch?recruiter=5267490&amp;utm_source=share_petition&amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=share_twitter_responsive">Change.org petition</a> adorned with black power fists and black liberation colors was created to “stand with Khadijah.” It charges, with inexplicable capitalization, that Mael’s article was “Libel,” “Defamation of Character,” and “Cyber bullying.” It has 1,220 signatures as of this writing, a week after posting.</p>
<p>On December 28, another <a href="https://www.change.org/p/brandeis-ensure-daniel-mael-s-safety-and-free-speech-rights?recruiter=48992946&amp;utm_source=share_petition&amp;utm_medium=facebook&amp;utm_campaign=autopublish&amp;utm_term=des-lg-no_src-reason_msg&amp;utm_content=rp_petition_fb_share_desc%3Acontrol">Change.org petition</a> was posted – this one in support of Mael and featuring the Brandeis and NYPD logos (the latter with a black mourning band). It demanded that Brandeis President Fred Lawrence end his silence about the controversy, hold accountable any Brandeis student who threatens or intimidates another student, and condemn any Brandeis student or faculty member who expresses support for the murder of policemen. “Students have the right to their opinions,” reads the petition, but “the University has the duty to judge some opinions as beneath contempt.” As of this writing, a day after the petition was posted, it has accumulated 2,253 signatures.</p>
<p>President Lawrence did break his silence. In an email to the Brandeis community, he expressed “deep sympathy and respect for the slain officers and for their families, colleagues and friends,” urged civil discussion, and committed to the free speech and safety of his students. He also, in no uncertain terms, sided with the critics of Lynch’s tweets:</p>
<blockquote><p>I thus join those who have condemned any lack of sympathy with these officers and with those who mourn their murder.</p></blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile the backlash against Mael intensified. His condemnation of threats against Lynch didn’t seem to be reciprocated. Human rights attorney Brooke Goldstein of the <a href="http://www.thelawfareproject.org/">Lawfare Project</a> noted that:</p>
<blockquote><p>Mael, as well as his immediate and extended family (including his grandmother), have since received threatening messages and harassing phone calls to their homes&#8230;</p>
<p>Campus police have advised Mael that he will be a target when he returns to campus, and that it is reasonable to expect that his tires may be slashed, his car keyed, and that other violent acts may be perpetrated against him. Mael has also been advised not to travel alone on campus during the day or night and to carry a bottle of mace.</p></blockquote>
<p>When it comes to race, the left always wants it both ways. Khadijah Lynch’s black supremacist tweets are defended, but a conservative quoting them is hate speech. The Black Panthers are preparing for a race war, but the nonviolent Tea Party is scorned as a racist hate group. A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumia_Abu-Jamal">black nationalist executing a white police officer</a> has a horde of activists and celebrities petitioning for his release, but a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown">white cop defending himself</a> against a black attacker is a racist murderer.</p>
<p>As the Freedom Center has noted innumerable times, campuses across the United States are dominated by leftist intolerance and racial activism among students and faculty alike. It takes no small degree of courage for a student like Mael to expose some of the radicals poisoning the campus atmosphere, exposing himself to their potentially violent wrath. The Freedom Center is proud to have Daniel Mael representing it and taking a brave and noble stand for truth and against totalitarianism.</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>Hollywood’s Last Stand</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hollywoods-last-stand/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hollywoods-last-stand</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:50:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Americans are the only safe villains left.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/article-2656810-1EB7C4F100000578-425_634x351.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248363" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/article-2656810-1EB7C4F100000578-425_634x351-450x249.jpg" alt="article-2656810-1EB7C4F100000578-425_634x351" width="331" height="183" /></a>Americans are the only people in the world who go to see movies in which they are the villains.</p>
<p>Russians stayed away from Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit with its Slavic villains (though Chinese audiences liked it well enough). And movies with Chinese villains can’t get made because the People’s Republic has more devastating penalties for offending studios than a mere hacking. Instead of leaking private emails, the studios simply aren’t allowed to release their movies in the world’s second biggest film market.</p>
<p>Hollywood’s titans take a break from patting themselves on the back for their commitment to freedom of expression and eagerly rush to work with the censors of the Chinese Communist Party to make their movies acceptable to China.</p>
<p>Muslim villains can’t appear in movies at all since September 11. The last time a movie had a villain named Mohammed, the filmmaker ended up hauled out of his home and tossed into jail. Hillary Clinton, Hollywood’s choice, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/white-house-ordered-prosecution-of-mohammed-filmmaker/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">had assured grieving Benghazi family</span></a> members that instead of punishing their son’s killers, she would “have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”</p>
<p>With script control like that, it’s no wonder that you don’t see many Muslim movie villains. Not when Hillary is planning her presidential victory tour.</p>
<p>What does all that leave Hollywood scriptwriters with? Aliens, comic book villains and North Korea.</p>
<p>North Korea is a perfect villain because it isn’t a film market. Even possession of an American film can mean death. You can’t release the next weepy melodrama or comic book movie there which makes it fair game. And so a small nasty country with no sense of humor became the favorite movie villain of a gutless entertainment industry.</p>
<p>James Bond took on North Koreans in Die Another Day, the North Koreans invaded the White House in Olympus Has Fallen (or rather a radical faction of North Koreans, even before the Sony hack Hollywood was staking out a cautious position) and took over America in the Red Dawn remake.</p>
<p>These cinematic victories over North Koreans (or North Korean extremists) were hollow displays of Hollywood cowardice and the panicked response to The Interview stripped the hollow pretense of that courage away. And all that remains is the Great American Villain.</p>
<p>If Hollywood can’t even pick on North Korea, a country with no political or economic influence in the West, then it has no safe targets left. All that Hollywood can do is continue exporting anti-Americanism in movies which make the American military and American traditionalists into the villains.</p>
<p>Anti-American movies are a safe export. By making anti-American movies, Hollywood saves Russia and China a lot of money on propaganda. Instead of having to manufacture their own stories about the Yankee Devils, they can buy them directly from the Yankee Devils.</p>
<p>Or as Lenin was said to have put it, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”</p>
<p>The entertainment industry has made anti-Americanism into its biggest export. In another age, Hollywood exported the values of a vibrant and promising nation. Now it exports dystopian fantasies, post-apocalyptic societies, corporate made satires about corporations and other narratives which depict the collapse and fall of America as the inevitable outcome of its dysfunctional society and warped values.</p>
<p>North Korea could never make better anti-American movies than Hollywood does. It’s one reason why Hollywood movies play to large audiences in countries like China and Russia where America is disliked.</p>
<p>This is the courageous storytelling that the entertainment industry prides itself on as it cringes before dictators while abusing Americans. But courage was never Hollywood’s strength. Before Hollywood studios were allowing Chinese Communists to censor their movies, they had extended that same privilege to Nazi Germany.</p>
<p>Joe Kennedy warned Hollywood, “You guys are going to be responsible for pushing the United States into war against the Nazis unless you stop your anti-Nazi films, your anti-Hitler propaganda.”</p>
<p>But Joe was wasting his time. Between Hollywood’s Communists (the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League changed its name to American Peace Mobilization once Hitler and Stalin made their dirty deal) and the native cowardice of the studio bosses, there wasn’t much to censor.</p>
<p>The Nazi as the standby villain had to wait until the actual Nazis had been defeated. Real Nazis were too dangerous to offend. So were Communists and Islamic terrorists. And now even North Koreans.</p>
<p>Regardless of who was behind the Sony hack, the industry reacted with kneejerk appeasement. That was the way that MGM had reacted to Nazi demands for censorship. Before theaters were turning their backs on The Interview, British theaters were turning up their noses at Chaplin’s self-financed The Great Dictator because it might offend Hitler at a time when appeasement was still the watchword.</p>
<p>While The Interview has been compared to The Great Dictator, Chaplin made his movie because he genuinely thought that Hitler needed to be opposed. By contrast The Interview is a typically ironic muddle with no moral center whose only reason for existing is its own miserably unfunny absurdity.</p>
<p>What Chaplin had was a point of view. Hollywood tends to have a political agenda, but nothing it will fight for or defend. Nothing that it truly believes in.</p>
<p>Hollywood has a long history of pandering to totalitarian regimes and ideologies. The difference is that it no longer does so under American colors. Instead it pretends to speak truth to power with its anti-Americanism while pandering to every dictator abroad.</p>
<p>With its British stars, Australian locations and Qatari investors, there isn’t much American about Hollywood these days except its anti-Americanism. That is one reason why Hollywood movies often perform better abroad than they do at home. Hollywood is becoming irrelevant in America. North American box office receipts fell 5 percent this year and 15 percent during the summer.</p>
<p>But that doesn’t matter because the international box office is holding strong.</p>
<p>A post-American entertainment industry naturally draws on American villains. Its stock of foreign villains is now exhausted. After the Sony hack, studios rushed to cancel North Korean themed movies before even waiting for the outcome of the investigation. And without North Korean villains to implausibly seize the White House and invade America, that leaves Americans as the villains.</p>
<p>At a time when few countries are willing to tolerate being ‘villainized’ in Hollywood films, Americans are still expected to subsidize their own demonization.</p>
<p>Unlike North Korea, Hollywood doesn’t take them seriously.</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>Israeli Right to Dominate Election</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/israeli-right-to-dominate-election/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israeli-right-to-dominate-election</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:45:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How the Left lost Israel. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Benjamin-Netanyahu.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248369" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Benjamin-Netanyahu-427x350.jpg" alt="Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Canada's PM Stephen Harper on the side lines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York" width="322" height="264" /></a>In early December, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu fired his justice and finance ministers and called for the dissolution of the parliament and new elections. Frequent internal bickering coupled with open dissention from within the ranks of his coalition partners made Netanyahu’s position untenable and forced him to act resolutely. Elections are due to be held on March 17, 2015 and if past elections are any guide, this one promises to have the requisite amount of drama and mudslinging.</p>
<p>Navigating the labyrinth of the Israeli electoral process is a daunting task. Unlike the United States which has a 2-party system, Israel is a parliamentary democracy which maintains a multi-party system of government. There are 120 parliamentary seats up for grabs in Israel’s parliament or Knesset, as it is called in Hebrew. The party which garners a majority of Knesset seats may lead but no single party in Israel’s history has ever won a majority of parliamentary seats. Parties are therefore required to form coalitions to obtain the requisite majority which often makes for strange bedfellows.</p>
<p>The economy and the security situation are two likely factors that will figure most prominently in voters&#8217; minds when they go to the polls in March. Barring an unforeseen event like a major corruption scandal, Prime Minister Netanyahu of the center-right Likud party, who has led the country since 2009, will almost certainly be the next prime minister in a coalition composed of centrist and right-wing parties.</p>
<p>Since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993, there has been a rightward shift in Israeli political thinking making the likelihood of a center-right coalition more probable. This rightward trajectory has only been strengthened by Palestinian duplicity, the emergence of the Iranian nuclear threat, terrorist groups like ISIS and general upheaval in the Arab world. Netanyahu is perceived as a seasoned and experienced leader who can successfully navigate Israel through these threats. He is also credited with strengthening the Israeli economy by privatizing state-owned industries, lowering tax burdens and streamlining bureaucratic processes which hampered private sector activity.</p>
<p>The two largest parties of the center-right bloc are the Likud and Yisrael Beitenu parties. The latter is headed by Avigdor Lieberman, who currently holds the position of minister of foreign affairs. He has at times clashed with Netanyahu but the two maintain ideologically similar positions. A massive police corruption investigation into Yisrael Beitenu’s dealings has hurt the party’s standing in the polls whose splintered seats will likely go to other center-right or right-wing parties.</p>
<p>A new center-right party headed by ex-Likud minister Moshe Kahlon, called Kulanu, is projected to win between 9 and 10 seats. The right-wing Bayit Yehudi party headed by Naftali Bennet (who currently holds three ministerial portfolios) is projected to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the current election. His party is expected to win at least 15 seats, a net gain of four, according to recent polls.</p>
<p>The former minister of finance who was fired by Netanyahu, Yair Lapid, who heads the “centrist” Yesh Atid party, is expected to be the big loser with a whopping loss of 10 seats, down to a paltry 9. Despite his criticism of Netanyahu and his party’s expected poor showing in the upcoming elections, it would be unsurprising to find him once again in a governing coalition headed by Netanyahu’s Likud party.</p>
<p>Israel no longer has a center-left party. Most of the large parties who maintained this label have dramatically shifted their positions well to the left of the Israeli mainstream which explains their consistently poor showing in recent Israeli elections. Much of Israel’s constituency views their positions on security as either naïve or dangerous. Indeed, it was the Israeli Left that rehabilitated Yassir Arafat’s international image, from terrorist pariah to international statesman. And it was the Israeli Left that exposed Israelis to a reign of terror in early 2000 through gross miscalculation and misguided foreign policies.</p>
<p>The largest leftist party is the Labor party which garnered a paltry 15 seats in the last election. Up until 1977, the Labor party was Israel’s dominant party but its credibility was tarnished by political scandal, leftist ideologues and elitist policies which disenfranchised a large segment of Israel’s constituency. A smaller leftist party called Meretz received just 6 seats. Their combined strength represents a mere shell of the center-left’s former years of dominance.</p>
<p>A third leftist party, formed just before the last election, called Hatnua, also received 6 seats. Its leader, Tzipi Livni, served as minister of justice in the current Likud-led coalition before she was fired by Netanyahu.</p>
<p>Ideologically, Livni is a leftist but in reality she is devoid of any principle and will sell herself to the highest bidder in an effort to maintain a position of influence. Within a relatively short period of time, she switched parties on three occasions, abandoning Likud to join the now near-defunct Kadima party and then forming her own Hatnua party after losing a bid for Kadima’s leadership. She has now joined forces with Labor conditioned upon an agreement that allows her to serve as prime minister on a rotating basis with Labor’s head, Isaac Herzog.</p>
<p>There are also three ultra-orthodox parties vying for seats in the upcoming elections. They are the UTJ party, the Shas party and a newly formed party which splintered from Shas called Ha’am Itanu. The ultra-orthodox parties primarily concern themselves with religious affairs and securing government funding for their respective religious institutions. They tend to lean rightward but will just as easily form a coalition with a leftist bloc for the right price. In the last election, the ultra-orthodox parties were marginalized. It is too soon to say what impact, if any, they will have in the upcoming election.</p>
<p>There are three Arab parties with a combined total of 11 seats that generally vote as a bloc. They are all anti-Israel and aside from engaging in parliamentary polemics, have no effect on Israeli policy.</p>
<p>The Obama administration would naturally like to see the emergence of a leftist coalition, one more compliant with Obama’s demands concerning Israeli concessions. This is unlikely to occur. Israelis are <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/the-white-house-stabs-israel-in-the-back-again/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">distrustful</span></a> of Obama and for <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/obama-vs-netanyahu/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">good reason</span></a>. They have no illusions about the prospects of peace with the Palestinians and will vote for a leader who they feel has the requisite experience in dealing with emerging threats. Despite Obama’s open <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/obama-vs-netanyahu-whos-the-real-coward/">disdain</a></span> for Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel’s center-right seems poised to lead again.</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>Glazov Gang&#8217;s 2014 Episode of The Year: Geert Wilders</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/glazov-gangs-2014-episode-of-the-year-geert-wilders/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=glazov-gangs-2014-episode-of-the-year-geert-wilders</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:44:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[2014 Episode of the Year]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Geert Wilders']]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A titan and courageous truth-teller crystallized the only way the West will be able to preserve itself.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Geert.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248392" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Geert-450x272.jpg" alt="Geert" width="309" height="187" /></a><strong>[</strong><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to <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.]</p>
<p></strong></a>This year’s<strong> Glazov Gang 2014 Episode of the Year Award</strong> goes to two special episodes &#8212; each of them joined by a stellar titan who is on the front-lines of the culture and terror war courageously defending our civilization&#8217;s freedom.</p>
<p>One of the winning episodes was with<strong> Geert Wilders,</strong>  the founder and leader of the “Party for Freedom” — which is currently the fourth-largest party in the Dutch parliament. Mr. Wilders is best known for his brave stance against, and truth-telling about, Islam. He is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Marked-Death-Islams-Against-West/dp/1596987960" target="_blank"><em>Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me</em></a>.</p>
<p>We are honored to present the episode,<strong> <span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" tabindex="0" data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}"><span class="hasCaption">“The West’s Battle For Freedom,” </span></span> </strong>below. We will run the other Glazov Gang 2014 episode award winner in our next issue.</p>
<p>The Glazov Gang team also extends special thanks to all of our guests, viewers and supporters and wishes all of them a happy, healthy and successful new year.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/69-nah7rIOc" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>And don&#8217;t miss Jamie Glazov&#8217;s introduction of Geert Wilders at the Freedom Center&#8217;s 2014 Restoration Weekend:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/115501286" width="460" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>To watch previous <em>Glazov Gang</em> episodes, </strong><a href="http://jamieglazov.com/"><strong>Click Here</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Books and Movies by Cubans Themselves</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/books-and-movies-by-cubans-themselves/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=books-and-movies-by-cubans-themselves</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:41:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Orlando Jimenez Leal]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Where those who seek actual knowledge about Cuba can find it.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ah.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-248336" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ah-231x350.jpg" alt="ah" width="231" height="350" /></a><strong>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/">The Sacramento Bee</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Former California legislator Tom Hayden contends that key episodes in Cuban history are “best recalled” through “The Godfather: Part II” (“50 years later it’s time for closure and moving on”; Forum, Dec. 21). Those who seek actual knowledge of Cuba will find it in two films by actual Cubans.</p>
<p>When Cuban Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa returned from his military campaign in Africa, “8A,” a play on his name, began to appear on walls all over the island. Cubans believed the popular general was the only one with a chance to topple Fidel Castro’s communist dictatorship. Castro knew it, too.</p>
<p>He held a show trial for Ochoa and put it on satellite television. Cuban filmmaker Orlando Jimenez Leal taped it and made the documentary “8A.” Viewers can see the regime’s lawyers demanding that their clients get the death penalty.</p>
<p>Castro agreed and on July 13, 1989, duly carried out the sentence by firing squad, just like back in the day. No appeal process, and no more threat from Arnaldo Ochoa and others.</p>
<p>In “Improper Conduct,” Jimenez Leal and cinematographer Nestor Almendros portrayed the Castro regime’s repressions against political dissidents, journalists, poets and homosexuals. The New York Times called the film “convincing,” and former Castro supporter Susan Sontag said, “The discovery that homosexuals were being persecuted in Cuba shows how much the left needs to evolve.”</p>
<p>Hayden has written a new book, “Listen Yankee! Why Cuba Matters.” Sounds fascinating, but readers might want to compare it to books by actual Cubans.</p>
<p>In “Against All Hope,” which has been compared to Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” Cuban dissident Armando Valladares charts 20 years in Castro’s prisons, and the violence he and other political prisoners suffered. Arrested in 1960, Valladares was not freed until 1982, through the efforts of French President Francois Mitterand and human rights organizations.</p>
<p>In “Family Portrait With Fidel,” Carlos Franqui charts the Cuban Revolution from 1959 to 1964. Franqui broke ranks over Castro’s shift to Soviet communism, after which “nothing worked.” The privations of the regime get extensive treatment in Heberto Padilla’s novel, “Heroes are Grazing in My Garden.”</p>
<p>In “The Longest Romance,” Humberto Fontova calculates that between 65,000 and 85,000 people have died trying to escape Cuba, 30 times the number of casualties at the Berlin Wall. Cuba’s prison population includes Eusebio Penalver, “the world’s longest suffering black political prisoner.”</p>
<p>Hayden has written a great deal about himself but recently showed up in “Leading with Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton.” Author Lee Ellis was shot down over North Vietnam, imprisoned and tortured. Americans were kept in cages with their legs tied together and arms laced behind the back until the elbows touched and shoulders pulled out of joint.</p>
<p>Some were kept awake for two weeks and beaten, but the treatment wasn’t just physical. As Ellis explains, the guards piped in propaganda broadcasts by Hayden, a “regular speaker” who supported the regime and said the reports of torture were nothing but lies.</p>
<p>Hayden issued an apology of sorts, but his worshipful public relations for the Cuban regime questions his sincerity. That regime remains a one-party military dictatorship and massive violator of human rights. So Amnesty International reports will also serve as helpful companions to Hayden’s new book.</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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<div style="width: 1px; height: 1px; color: #000000; font: 10pt sans-serif; text-align: left; text-transform: none; overflow: hidden;">Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article4941084.html#storylink=cpy</div>
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		<title>The Islamic Republic Is Not Cuba</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-islamic-republic-is-not-cuba/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-islamic-republic-is-not-cuba</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:40:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[diplomatic]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[What the Mullahs really think of Obama's surrender to Castro. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/39.si_.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248372" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/39.si_-450x253.jpg" alt="39.si" width="329" height="185" /></a>The diplomatic deal between the Obama administration and Raul Castro&#8217;s government and the transformation of the relationship between Cuba and Washington have made some scholars, politicians and policy analysts excited with respect to utilizing the same method in the case of another longstanding foe, the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Some have been calling for applying a Cuban-style deal &#8212; back-channel diplomacy and the lifting of the embargo and economic sanctions &#8212; to Iran in order to restore full diplomatic ties with the ruling clerics.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, this point of view totally ignores the complexity of the Iranian government and the nature of its ideological, political and institutional underpinnings. In other words, an analogy between Cuba and the Islamic Republic falls apart when the reality is examined.</p>
<p>First of all, Iran poses a much stronger geopolitical threat to the US (and its allies) than Cuba does.  The Islamic Republic has been a major player in scuttling US foreign policy objectives and opposing its allies (including Israel) in the Middle East. Cuba, unlike the Islamic Republic, did not repeatedly call for elimination and annihilation of the State of Israel.  In addition, the Iranian government is supporting and is behind the creation of several crucial militia proxies in the region which have led to further destabilization and conflict in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Secondly, a deal with the US would likely be viewed as a zero-sum game for the Iranian leaders. Iran’s ruling clerics would not be likely to accept any compromises on their top foreign policy priorities, such as: Keeping President Bashar al Assad in power; withdrawing its financial, advisory, intelligence, and military support to the Iraqi and Syrian governments; and assisting formidable proxies such as Hezbollah and Shiite militia groups in Iraq and Yemen.</p>
<p>In addition, in the Cuban case, there did not exist any international consensus on the embargo or economic sanctions against the Cuban government. For example, many European countries were doing business with the Cuban government. On the other hand, in the case of the Islamic Republic, the four rounds of economic sanctions on the Iranian government resulted in the approval of the five members of the UN Security Council, including Russian and China. Unlike Cuba, many regional and global powers are dubious about Iran’s nuclear and regional hegemonic ambitions.</p>
<p>More fundamentally, unlike Castro, Khamenei has shown no real interest and willingness in fully normalizing diplomatic ties with the United States. For example, the Obama administration received no positive response from Khamenei through President Obama’s recent letter or through back-channel diplomacy. In addition, there is no official public debate among Iranian politicians, across various spectrums of Iran’s political system, to even allow the opening of a US embassy in Tehran.  The Islamic Republic’s domestic opposition to normalizing ties with the US is much higher in comparison to the Cuban case.  Although the Obama administration has taken some back-channel steps to negotiate with the Islamic Republic, Iran’s Supreme Leader has not responded with signs of willingness to normalize relationships, and he has been clear in not trusting the “Great Satan.”</p>
<p>The signal that Iranian leaders received from the Cuban deal is not what the Western mainstream media depicts: That Iran is optimistic about normalizing ties with the US. The message that Tehran received was that the Islamic Republic has to persist in its policies as well as ideology, and that economic sanctions will ultimately fail. As foreign ministry spokeswoman <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/iran-hails-us-cuba-thaw-proof-sanctions-dont-193418574.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Marzieh Akfham</span></a> articulated, &#8220;The defense by the Cuban government and people of their revolutionary ideals over the past 50 years shows that policies of isolation and sanctions imposed by the major powers against the wishes of independent nations are ineffective.&#8221;</p>
<p>The fundamentals of the Islamic Republic are centered on opposition to the United States, which Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, established. The Supreme Leader derives power and legitimacy from this stance. If the Iranian government changed this fundamental organizing principle, it would not be able to yield power from its loyalists, hard-line constituents, and define itself as the “Islamic” Republic of Iran.</p>
<p>Finally, it is crucial to point out that many young and middle class Iranian people would like to see the normalization of relationship with the United States. Some have expressed their hope through twitter and other social media outlets. However, there is a significant gap between what ordinary Iranian citizens desire to happen, and what the ruling clerics hope to ideologically and geopolitically achieve.</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>The Left&#8217;s Use of Black People</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/walter-williams/the-lefts-use-of-black-people/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-lefts-use-of-black-people</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:35:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[African American]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How progressives keep African Americans in a perpetual state of grievance.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/de-blasio.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248375" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/de-blasio-450x340.jpg" alt="de-blasio" width="336" height="254" /></a>Back in the day, when hunting was the major source of food, hunters often used stalking horses as a means of sneaking up on their quarry. They would walk on the opposite side of the horse until they were close enough to place a good shot on whatever they were hunting. A stalking horse not only concealed them but also, if their target was an armed man and they were discovered, would take the first shot. That&#8217;s what blacks are to liberals and progressives in their efforts to transform America — stalking horses.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s look at some of the ways white liberals use black people. One of the more obvious ways is for liberals to equate any kind of injustices suffered by homosexuals and women to the black struggle for civil rights. But it is just plain nonsense to suggest any kind of equivalency between the problems of homosexuals and women and the centuries of slavery followed by Jim Crow, lynching, systematic racial discrimination and the blood, sweat and tears of the black civil rights movement.</p>
<p>The largest and most powerful labor union in the country is the National Education Association, with well over 3 million members. Teachers benefit enormously from their education monopoly. It yields higher pay and lower accountability. It&#8217;s a different story for a large percentage of black people who receive fraudulent education. The NEA&#8217;s white liberals — aided by black teachers, politicians and so-called black leaders — cooperate to ensure that black parents who want their children to have a better education have few viable choices.</p>
<p>Whenever there has been a serious push for school choice, educational vouchers, tuition tax credits or even charter schools, the NEA has fought against it. One of the more callous examples of that disregard for black education was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio&#8217;s cutback on funding for charter schools where black youngsters were succeeding in getting a better education.</p>
<p>That was de Blasio&#8217;s way of paying back New York&#8217;s teachers union for the political support it gave him in his quest for the mayor&#8217;s office.</p>
<p>White liberals in the media and academia, along with many blacks, have been major supporters of the recent marches protesting police conduct. A man from Mars, knowing nothing about homicide facts, would conclude that the major problem black Americans have with murder and brutality results from the behavior of racist policemen. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are about 200 police arrest-related deaths of blacks each year (between 300 and 400 for whites). That number pales in comparison with the roughly 7,000 annual murders of blacks, 94 percent of which are committed by blacks. The number of blacks being murdered by other blacks is of little concern to liberals. Their agenda is to use arrest-related deaths of blacks to undermine established authority.</p>
<p>Liberals often have demeaning attitudes toward blacks. When Secretary of State John Kerry was a U.S. senator, in a statement about so many blacks being in prison, he said, &#8220;That&#8217;s unacceptable, but it&#8217;s not their fault.&#8221; Would Kerry also say that white prison inmates are also faultless? Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin told us: &#8220;It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes. &#8230; (The problem) is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income.&#8221; The liberal vision is that fathers and husbands can be replaced by a welfare check.</p>
<p>Liberals desperately need blacks. If the Democratic Party lost just 30 percent of the black vote, it would mean the end of the liberal agenda. That means blacks must be kept in a perpetual state of grievance in order to keep them as a one-party people in a two-party system. When black Americans finally realize how much liberals have used them, I&#8217;m betting they will be the nation&#8217;s most conservative people. Who else has been harmed as much by liberalism&#8217;s vision and agenda?</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>The Top Anti-Muslim Hate Crime Hoaxes of 2014</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/the-top-anti-muslim-hate-crime-hoaxes-of-2014/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-top-anti-muslim-hate-crime-hoaxes-of-2014</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:55:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Faking “Islamophobic” hate crimes is a big business.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_248315" style="width: 314px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1098205_734437936582467_220314144_n-352x350.jpg"><img class="wp-image-248315" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1098205_734437936582467_220314144_n-352x350.jpg" alt="1098205_734437936582467_220314144_n-352x350" width="304" height="302" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Navjoat Aulakh</p></div>
<p>On Christmas morning, a man drove up to the Islamic Cultural Center in Fresno, threw rocks through the windows, and then entered the center and destroyed things inside. The local ABC outlet, KFSN, <a href="http://abc30.com/news/fresno-police-calling-islamic-cultural-center-burglary-a-hate-crime/451696/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reported Friday</span></a> that “Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer says it is clear the incident is a hate crime which is why the FBI is also investigating this case.” But <a href="http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/12/27/4303923_suspect-identified-in-fresno-islamic.html?rh=1"><span style="color: #0433ff;">on Saturday</span></a>, it turned out that the incident was not an “anti-Muslim hate crime” at all: the vandal was <a href="http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/12/27/4303923_suspect-identified-in-fresno-islamic.html?rh=1"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Asif Mohammad Khan, a Muslim</span></a>. The destruction at the Islamic Cultural Center in Fresno was yet another in a long series of fake hate crimes designed to prop up the fiction that Muslims in the U.S. are routinely targets of discrimination and harassment.</p>
<p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/12/27/4303923_suspect-identified-in-fresno-islamic.html?rh=1">According to Khan’s sister Samia,</a></span> the vandal is (like the recent French attackers who screamed “Allahu akbar” while trying to kill infidels) mentally ill. She also said that he was a devout Muslim who prayed five times daily. Dyer revealed that Khan had in recent days written that Osama bin Laden was the most inspirational person in his life. Dyer explained that Khan’s vandalism of the mosque “was not geared towards the Islamic community, it was not geared to the Islamic faith or any of those things and was simply to get back at a few people at the center who had belittled him and in his eyes bullied him.”</p>
<p>Dyer and other law enforcement authorities were extremely unlikely to consider it as they investigated Khan’s crimes, but the Hamas-linked <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=154325C2-EF71-48FD-B33C-B5A584CFB8CF"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Council on American-Islamic Relations</span></a> (CAIR) <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/023204.php"><span style="color: #0433ff;">and</span></a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/023150.php"><span style="color: #0433ff;">other Muslims</span></a> have on many occasions in the past not hesitated to stoop even to fabricating “hate crimes,” including attacks on mosques. CAIR and other groups like it want and need hate crimes against Muslims, because they can use them for political points and as weapons to intimidate people into remaining silent about the jihad threat.</p>
<p>This has happened many times in 2014. Here are five of the most egregiously manipulative examples:</p>
<p><b>1. The Saleh and Akbar viral video.</b></p>
<p>In October, the Muslim bloggers Adam Saleh and Sheikh Akbar released a video entitled “Racial Profiling Experiment.” It showed the duo in Western clothing, coming to blows in front of an indifferent NYPD cop. In the second part of the video, they pass by the same cop in Muslim garb, arguing mildly – only to be harassed and frisked by the same policeman.</p>
<p>The video went viral. The Huffington Post hysterically proclaimed that it offered a “small glimpse into the ugly world of racial profiling.” Hamas-linked CAIR called for an investigation. But then it turned out that the whole thing had been staged. <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/NYPD-racial-profiling-hoax-video-675432"><span style="color: #0433ff;">The Smoking Gun</span></a> called the video a “cynical and duplicitous attempt to capitalize on New York City’s documented racial profiling problems.”</p>
<p><b>2. The German mosque arson.</b></p>
<p>Another “Islamophobic” hate crime took place in Germany in February, when there was an arson attack at the Central Mosque in Cologne. But in October, a Muslim who had been held in a psychiatric ward ever since he had been arrested (as the mainstream media and law enforcement officials have now apparently agreed that all Muslims who commit acts of violence are mentally ill) <a href="http://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2014/10/10/mosque-arson-in-germany-turk-confesses-to-attacks/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">confessed</span></a> to having set the fire.</p>
<p>“I wanted to make a clear sign,” the arsonist explained. “Because<b> </b>they treated me badly at the Koran school. It has always hurt me.” He also had tried to burn down two other mosques; it wasn’t reported whether or not he had been to Qur’an school and been treated badly in all three. But until he was apprehended, his arson attacks provided rich material for the “Islamophobia” mythmakers.</p>
<p><b>3. The burned Qur’ans in Dearborn.</b></p>
<p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.pressandguide.com/articles/2014/06/17/news/doc5399f810f0f03443588853.txt?viewmode=fullstory">Last June</a></span>, after three burned Qur’ans were found in front of the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center in Dearborn, the mosque’s imam, Sheikh Husham Al-Husainy met with lawyers to discuss his proposal for a statute criminalizing the desecration of holy books. “We want all of the religions to cooperate with us,” he declared, “to bring respect to the word of God, whether the Quran, Bible, or Torah.”</p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/news/id_9053/Iraqi-American-man-arrested-while-burning-Quran-in-Dearborn.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">as it turned out</span></a>, the Qur’an barbecuer was none other than a Muslim named Ali Hassan Al-Assadi. Al-Husainy opined that al-Assadi was (surprise, surprise) “mentally unstable.” Crazy or not, the discovery that al-Assadi had burned the Qur’ans threw a large monkey wrench into al-Husainy’s plans to use the incident as the cornerstone of his campaign against the freedom of expression.</p>
<p><b>4. The Montclair State University attack.</b></p>
<p>Combine the relentless Muslim striving for victimhood with the cult of victimhood on college campuses these days, and even non-Muslims get into the faked hate act. Last April at Montclair State University in New Jersey, a student claimed that three white men in jeans and hoodies assaulted him. They called him an “Islamic terrorist.”</p>
<p>MSU police began an investigation, only to find that the whole incident was a hoax: a student named Navjoat Aulakh had filed a false report. Aulakh may not even be a Muslim. His full name is Navjoat Singh Aulakh; “Singh” is a name closely associated with Sikhs. The Aulakhs are a Jat clan from the Punjab area, and while many Jats are Muslims, the name Singh here suggests that this young man is himself a Sikh. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/navjoat.aulakh"><span style="color: #0433ff;">His Facebook page</span></a> gives no sign that he cares about much of anything but sports and babes, but apparently he does have some significant political concerns. If he is a Sikh, this would by no means be the first time that Sikhs have served as useful idiots for the Islamic supremacist victimhood posturing enterprise. Sikhs even stood with Hamas-linked CAIR to call for the allowance of hijabs on an amusement park go-kart ride that <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/2010-muslima-dies-as-hijab-caught-in-go-kart-axle-2014-cair-demands-hijabs-on-go-karts"><span style="color: #0433ff;">had already seen one Muslima killed as her hijab was caught in the axle</span></a>.</p>
<p>In this case, a Sikh apparently tried to aid the false Muslim victimhood narrative. And failed.</p>
<p><b>5. The Shaima Alawadi murder.</b></p>
<p>Last April in El Cajon, California, an Iraqi Muslim named Kassim Alhimidi was <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/www.10news.com/news/kassim-alhimidi-found-guilty-in-beating-death-of-wife-shaima-alawadi-041714"><span style="color: #0433ff;">found guilty</span></a> of murdering his wife, Shaima Alawadi, after she had told him that she wanted a divorce.</p>
<p>Before Alhimidi was arrested, this murder was widely reported as an “Islamophobic hate crime”: a note was found by Alawadi’s body that read, “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” Leftists and Islamic supremacists made a great deal of this, claiming that the murder was the work of an “Islamophobe” who hated Shaima Alawadi for wearing a hijab. They even staged a campaign, “One Million Hijabs for Shaima Alawadi.”</p>
<p>Reza Aslan, the celebrated author of <i>Zealot</i>, <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/california-muslim-guilty-of-killing-wife-whose-murder-was-blamed-on-islamophobia"><span style="color: #0433ff;">bashed out a sub-literate tweet</span></a> blaming Pamela Geller and me for the murder: “If a 32 year old veiled mother is a terrorist than [sic] so am I you Islamophobic fucks Gellar [sic] Spencer et. [sic] al. Come find me.” This tweet indicated how much mileage the “Islamophobia” propaganda machine thought it could get from the Alawadi murder in its efforts to intimidate people into thinking it wrong to oppose jihad terror.</p>
<p>Yet it was another fake hate crime. And since the mainstream media remains so uncritical about Muslim claims of having been victimized, there will be many more in 2015.</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>Steve Moore &amp; Michael Barone at Restoration Weekend</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/steve-moore-michael-barone-at-restoration-weekend/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=steve-moore-michael-barone-at-restoration-weekend</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:50:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Two top conservative minds give their take on America's political and economic landscapes. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong style="color: #232323;">Below are the video and transcript to the panel discussion “Politics and the Economy,” which took place at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/115323365" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>When I was coming into this weekend I wasn&#8217;t even fully ready because I was like, wow, what an election we just had. Wow.  Then day three of Restoration Weekend and I&#8217;m like, wow, there is so much more to be done, and it&#8217;s so funny, this is the third year that I&#8217;ve been part of Restoration Weekend thanks to David and Michael Finch, and for years and years many of my friends who are here from Orange County, Marilyn, Cathy Grimmer, Paul and Sally Bender had said, &#8220;You&#8217;ve got to go to Restoration Weekend, no matter what the outcome of the election.  We go there and we leave feeling revived and ready to fight more.&#8221;  After this particular weekend I was thinking to myself, a weekend might not be long enough.  We should maybe start, David, Restoration Week. I don&#8217;t know.  Michael&#8217;s going to kill me for saying that.</p>
<p>We have a really great panel today.  We have two of the foremost minds of the conservative movement.  Their brains are so big that I&#8217;m intimidated to be on stage with them.  I&#8217;m going to introduce them both from left to right and they don&#8217;t need introductions, you all know them so I&#8217;ll make this quick.  Michael Barone, obviously a senior political analyst for the <i>Examiner</i>, Fox News contributor and the author of the <i>Almanac of American Politics</i>.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Co-author.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Co-author, foremost author, right?  Then second, Stephen Moore, long-time writer and editorial writer and columnist with <i>The Wall Street Journal</i>.  Now he&#8217;s the Chief Economist of the Heritage Foundation and I think his most impressive credential, because I&#8217;m biased, is that he&#8217;s also a columnist for the <i>Orange County Register</i> so, just saying.  We&#8217;re going to start our panel off with opening remarks.  We&#8217;ll start with Steve and then we&#8217;ll move to Michael with kind of their thoughts on what&#8217;s next on politics and the economy.  Then we&#8217;ll ask a couple of questions and then open it up for you all to get your questions answered as well.  Steven, let&#8217;s start with you.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Okay, so let me give you my quick &#8212; Michael is obviously the Dean of Politics.  I&#8217;m going to give you just a quick seven or eight minute kind of sketch on what&#8217;s going on with the economy.  Some of you have seen these slides before, and I&#8217;m sorry if I&#8217;m a little bit repetitive of what I said last year, but I think this is such an important message.  Let me just start by saying this, I&#8217;m incredibly bullish on the U.S. economy.  I think we&#8217;re going to see an incredible, especially after this election, I think we&#8217;re going to see a big burst out of growth.  We&#8217;ve been stuck in this 2 percent rut on growth now for six years.  This has been an incredibly weak recovery but because of a lot of factors I talk about, I just think we&#8217;re really prepped for a big recovery.  As I said last year, but I&#8217;ll repeat this, the one industry that has really almost carried the rest of the economy on its back for the last six years has been this oil and gas boom.  It&#8217;s not a surprise to anybody in this room by now.  This is an incredible expansion we are living through.  Politics is so rich with irony.  The irony of Barack Obama&#8217;s Presidency is that he will have presided over the biggest oil and gas boom in American history and this is a president who hates the oil and gas industry.  If you look at this chart you can see what&#8217;s going on here.  The red line is all employment in every industry outside of oil and gas over the last six years, and you can see the big decline obviously in employment that happened during the great recession of 2008 and 2009 and you can see what a really flimsy recovery this has been, and it has taken us so long to get back to zero.  By the way, this goes through the end of 2013.  If it went through today, we&#8217;re right back about zero; so that is to say it took us six years but we finally recovery of every job that was lost during the recession.  That&#8217;s a pretty, pretty long and slow recovery process.</p>
<p>Now look at the blue line. That&#8217;s the oil and gas industry, and it&#8217;s interesting, I was giving a talk this summer to the Oklahoma and Texas Oil and Gas Drillers Association.  By the way, I think that may even be more conservative than this group here and so I started off my speech by saying, &#8220;Congratulations, you&#8217;re the people who reelected Barack Obama.&#8221;  They weren&#8217;t real happy but without this boom, there is no way that Barack Obama would have ever been reelected because the economy would have still been in a recession in 2012.  Now what&#8217;s interesting about this boom are a couple of things.  It is not &#8212; as you know, Michael, my mentor was the Great Julian Simon and Julian Simon taught us that natural resources don&#8217;t come from the ground or from the earth. they come from the human mind.  This boom in oil and gas is such a perfect example of what Julian talked about; that the ultimate resource is the human mind because this massive amount of energy we have in this country.  It&#8217;s not as if all of a sudden overnight God endowed America with all this oil and gas. It has been there for hundreds of thousands of years.  This is a testament.  This breakthrough is a testament to incredible technological prowess.  Wild cat or entrepreneurs, most of this energy was not found by Chevron and Exxon and so on, but smaller oil drillers just went out there and found this stuff, and it&#8217;s also a result of incredible technology.  We&#8217;re just seeing technologies that have changed this industry in such a massive, massive way.</p>
<p>Now what&#8217;s interesting about this story are a couple of things.  One is that if we get this right, and I said this last year &#8212; actually I misspoke last year.  Last year I said if we get this right within five years, the United States of America is going to be energy independent.  That is to say we are going to be selling more of this stuff than we buy and that&#8217;s true, I&#8217;m going to stick with that.  It&#8217;s quite plausible that by the Year 2020 if not before, the United States will be a net exporter of oil and gas, and as you know, that is a complete game changer with respect to our economy, and it&#8217;s a game changer, by the way, with respect to our National Security.  If we can actually sell this stuff rather than buy it; you know that you&#8217;ve been reading about this, ISIS gets about $5 million a day, $5 million a day from petro dollars.  We are funding the people that are trying to kill us so if we don&#8217;t have to buy this stuff, it changes the whole geopolitical situation, but I&#8217;ve changed my tune on this.  I would simply say this.  I kind of underestimated how big this is.  Before I said five years from now we&#8217;re going to be energy independent.  Five years from now we&#8217;re going to be energy independent.</p>
<p>My new line on this is five years from now the United States of America; this great, great, great country of ours is going to be the energy dominant country in the world, the energy dominant country in the world.  The thing that&#8217;s amazing about this, if you look at that incredible boom &#8212; just think about this ladies and gentlemen, think about how big this would be and could be if you actually had a president who liked this industry.  This has happened at a time when Barack Obama is doing everything possible behind the scenes to completely decapitate this industry.  For example, the pipeline issue is a big one and, by the  way, we don&#8217;t just need the Keystone Pipeline, obviously we do; we need pipelines all over this country to get the oil and gas that we have to every area of the country and around the world where we need it.  So that&#8217;s number one, Obama is not allowing virtually any new pipelines to be built.</p>
<p>Second of all as you know, if you look at this oil and gas boom on that chart, almost all of that, 98 percent of that boom is happening on private land.  Almost none of it is happening on federal.  In fact, I saw a statistic the other day that we&#8217;re actually drilling less today on public land than we were six or seven years ago.  If we were to open up federal lands &#8212; and I&#8217;m not talking about drilling on Yosemite or Yellowstone or the precious national parks that are environmentally sensitive; I&#8217;m just talking about drilling on forest land and so on that&#8217;s basically vacant.  If we were able to do that we could literally raise trillions of dollars of revenue of the next ten years to repay our national debt or to do other things to raise revenues.  We could practically eliminate the corporate income tax and replace that with money that we could get from drilling on federal land.</p>
<p>So that&#8217;s the second one, and the third one that&#8217;s so important and that we should all be paying attention to is these new EPA Regulations that President Obama is talking about, and this insane deal that President Obama supposedly signed with the Chinese.  Did you all follow this that the Chinese are now going to agree to reduce their carbon emissions by 25 percent by the year 2030?  That is the biggest bald-faced lie I have ever heard.  The Chinese are not going to reduce their carbon emissions.  They are laughing at us today in Beijing.  The Chinese are building a new coal burning fire plant every month in China so they are using fossil fuels. They&#8217;re going to burn this and they said to Obama, &#8220;Yeah, you go back to the United States and you cut your carbon emissions by 25 percent and we&#8217;ll do the same,&#8221; wink, wink, wink.  That isn&#8217;t going to happen.  This is just unilateral economic disarmament by the United States, and let me make another point about this because I think it is such an important issue.  I think a lot of you probably know this but can anybody in this room tell me what country of all the industrialized nations in the world, which country has reduced its carbon emissions the most over the last six years.  We have.  How many of you know that?  The United States. If you read the school books or read the newspapers you would know that.  We have reduced our carbon emissions more than any other country.  Wait a minute, how could that possibly have happened?  How could that possibly be true?  We didn&#8217;t do cap and trade.  We didn&#8217;t do, I don&#8217;t think we ever signed the Kyoto Treaty.  I don&#8217;t think we ratified it.  We didn&#8217;t have a carbon tax, all these things that all these sanctimonious Europeans said that they did.  We&#8217;ve cut our carbon emissions more than they have and I think you all know the reason why &#8212; because we&#8217;re converting electricity to natural gas.  Natural gas has become the number one source of electricity in the United States; it just surpassed coal.  Natural gas is a wonder fuel.  It is like this amazing wonder fuel.  Think about this; 1) It is abundant, we have hundreds of years&#8217; worth of natural gas in this country; 2) It is made in the USA; 3) It&#8217;s incredibly cheap; and 4) It&#8217;s a clean burning fuel.  Now why in the world would anybody be against natural gas?</p>
<p>But you know what&#8217;s amazing, the environmentalists have turned against natural gas; they&#8217;re against it even though it reduces greenhouse gasses.  Stunning, isn&#8217;t it?  I&#8217;ll make one last point about this.  If you look at electricity production today in America, because you all know this – the master resource is energy.  You can&#8217;t produce anything without energy and everything that we have, a major component of that is cheap and affordable energy.  Well if you look at our electricity today, where do we get our electricity today?  I just told you the number one source of electricity today is natural gas.  The number two source of electricity is coal.  So they don&#8217;t want natural gas, right, because they don&#8217;t want fracking.  The second source of electricity in the United States is coal.  They don&#8217;t want coal; they&#8217;re shutting down coal mines all over the country.  The third source is nuclear power.  They hate nuclear power.  The fourth source is an incredibly good, very affordable source of renewable energy, which is what?  What&#8217;s the number one source of renewable energy in American today?  I heard somebody say it. Hydropower.  Actually hydropower is a very good source of energy.  They hate hydropower too.  Why do they hate hydropower?  Because then don&#8217;t want dams, it&#8217;s going to kill the fish.  So any form of electricity production that actually works they&#8217;re against.  This leads me to an important point that I want to make.</p>
<p>You know, David, at this conference we&#8217;ve been talking a lot about the sinister elements in America today, the communists and the Jihadist and the &#8220;so-called progressives.&#8221;  I want to make a point to you that I think is really important.  I would make the argument to you that the most dangerous movement in the world today is not all of these other groups, and I&#8217;m not saying they&#8217;re not dangerous.  The most dangerous movement in the world today is the Radical Green Movement.  These people are absolutely crazy.</p>
<p>So I&#8217;m going to just kind of move on and make a couple of other quick points.  This is the crux of my argument about the economy, and this drives liberals crazy, so I want just two or three minutes to walk you through this.  If you look at this chart, the way I put it is the last 50 years there have been two great economic crises in America.  The first of course was the late-1970s and early-1980s when the United States went through what I call a mini depression.  We all remember that period.  You all remember 20 percent mortgage interest rates and 14 percent inflation and the fact that in the late-70s and early-80s America was truly deindustrializing, and if actually you read about what liberals and even a lot of conservatives were saying at that time, you remember this, Michael: America is an empire in decline, the Japanese are going to take over and actually the Soviet Model works better than ours does and so on.  That was the kind of environment that Ronald Reagan took over in and of course, in 2008 Barack Obama took office during an incredible economic crisis.  There&#8217;s no question about it.  We had lost six million jobs, the real estate bubble had burst, and half of the banks in America had collapsed.  So when Barack Obama walked into the White House, he walked into office in an incredible crisis, as he says ever speech that he gives.</p>
<p>Now here is what makes this experiment so interesting.  These two presidents used diametrically opposite approaches to dealing with the crisis, right?  So you all know the Reagan formula. It was to cut tax rates; it was to get government spending under control.  He worked with Paul Volker to slay inflation by cutting the money supply, and in a sense what Ronald Reagan did was he empowered workers and entrepreneurs and businesses to rebuild the American economy, the supply side recovery.  Barack Obama came in and did exactly the opposite, right?  Barack Obama used every single page out of the Keynesian playbook and, by the way, I&#8217;m not going to blame this just on Obama.  I would say the last year and a half or two years of the Bush Administration were a disaster too. So what did we do in response to the 2008 crisis?  Well, we bailed out big banks, insurance companies and auto companies.  We passed an $850 billion dollar so-called spending stimulus bill.  We had ObamaCare.  We had tax increases on the rich.  We borrowed $7 trillion, in six years we have borrowed $7 trillion.  This is a Keynesian&#8217;s dream, right?  We threw everything in the Keynesian playbook at that recession.  If you look at this chart, what I think is really interesting and I don&#8217;t think liberals have a good response to this.  What this chart is showing you is that the U.S. economy has grown by 2 percent under Barack Obama under his Keynesian formulation.  In fact, I think I wrote a piece on this for you guys are OCR.  You can see, so the economy has grown by 11½ percent over that period.</p>
<p>Now that&#8217;s decent but then you look at what happened under President Reagan.  Under Ronald Reagan the economy didn&#8217;t grow at 11½ percent over the recovery period; it grew at nearly 25 percent.  Now that&#8217;s a big, big difference ladies and gentlemen, that&#8217;s a huge difference.  That means, and what the number there you&#8217;re looking at, what that means, and if I updated that to today &#8212; because I don&#8217;t have the last two quarters on here. The underlying point of this chart is if the U.S. economy had grown as rapidly under Barack Obama&#8217;s recovery as it did under Ronald Reagan&#8217;s, the GDP national output and national income of this country would be $2 trillion larger today, $2 trillion.  That&#8217;s a massive number. If we were to give that $2 trillion to every single family &#8212; by the way, that&#8217;s year after year after year we&#8217;d be $2 trillion larger.  If we didn&#8217;t have that growth gap and we prorated that money to every family in America, the average family in America today would have $15,000.00 more income. $15,000.00 more income.  Now here is the amazing part about this.  The average family in America doesn&#8217;t have $15,000.00 more income in this recovery.  I think most of you know this.  The average median income family in the United States has $1,500.00 less income than when this recovery, so-called recovery, began.</p>
<p>Now why is that so important?  I think that single statistic may more than anything else explain why the Democrats had their heads handed to them a week and a half ago. Barack Obama was saying just ten days before the election, &#8220;Every single statistic shows improvement while I&#8217;ve been President.&#8221;  Well he left out the one that Americans care the most about.  What Ronald Reagan used to call &#8220;real take home pay&#8221; and &#8220;real take home pay&#8221; has been reduced and not increased over Barack Obama&#8217;s presidency, and that explains in my opinion, Michael, why 51 percent of Americans today say that the United States of America is still in a recession – because for half of the Americans it still is a recession.  When you&#8217;re losing income relative to inflation, you&#8217;re not feeling better about things; you&#8217;re feeling worse and that&#8217;s a point we have to hammer home over and over again.  One quick final point.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Okay, real quick though.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Okay, just the states.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Michael wants to talk about something.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>No, I know. I agreed not to be too long, but this is so important.  No, I just got to do the Texas thing.  So this is just the last point.  If you really want to understand the superiority of our ideas versus their ideas, we&#8217;ve got such a great, great experiment here in the United States, and it turns out the four largest states in America, two red states, Texas and Florida are obviously red states.  The two biggest blue states are California and New York.  Correct me if I&#8217;m wrong about this Michael but I believe one out of three Americans lives in those four states.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>That&#8217;s right.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>So those are the states that really matter and the basic bottom line here is that these red states, and this is what my book is about, the red states are incredibly outperforming the blue states.  You know this, migration pattern – there is a huge migration out of the Midwest and out of the Northeast into the South and to states like Phoenix and Utah and so on, and this is what liberals cannot, they cannot explain this because they kept saying, &#8220;Look, they want higher minimum wages, higher tax rates on the rich, don&#8217;t allow drilling, more regulation&#8221; and so on.  All of these things were supposed to create a worker&#8217;s paradise for the workers.  What they can&#8217;t explain is if that&#8217;s the case why are people leaving those states and what this chart is showing you is that over the last 15 years, for every job that was created in California and New York, three to four jobs were created in Texas and Florida.  Look, what&#8217;s the income tax rate today in Texas and Florida?  Zero.  How many in this room are Californians or New Yorkers?  Do you know what your highest income tax rate in California and New York is today?</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Don&#8217;t remind us.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>13.5%.  This stuff matters.  I debated Paul Krugman on this about a month ago, about the economy.  I showed him this chart and I said Paul, you&#8217;ve got the Nobel Prize in economics.  Please explain to me if your ideas are so much superior to ours, what explains this, and you&#8217;ll love this, Michael. He said, &#8220;Well there&#8217;s a very simple explanation.&#8221;  He said people are leaving because of the weather, because of the weather.  Now, actually, as with everything &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>The last year that Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex had something like 90 consecutive days of triple digit weather.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Exactly, you took my &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>I&#8217;d like to have Paul Krugman mow some lawns in that weather.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>I said to Krugman, well, Paul, that&#8217;s an interesting theory, that you say you know people, and by the way, there is some truth to that. People want to live in warmer places, and I said if that&#8217;s the thing, if this is all driven by weather, Paul, you&#8217;ve got the Nobel Prize, please explain this to me, why are people leaving San Diego and going to Houston?  He had no answer.  I&#8217;m going to stop there.  Thank you very much.  It&#8217;s been a pleasure.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Thank you Steve, and all right, Michael, ready to give us the political scoop?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Well I&#8217;ll try to give you my view of a couple of important things, including some reflections on the dialogues that have been going on here at the Restoration Weekend.  I can&#8217;t resist beginning with some census data because I can&#8217;t think of anything more interesting to do than to plow through historical census data, make tables and things like that.  Steve&#8217;s economic tables are no match for this and the match is my home State of Michigan versus the State of Texas.  When I was growing up in Michigan everybody said well Texas is going to progress, inevitably. They will get big labor unions and so forth.  They&#8217;ll have business corporations that will cooperate with the unions.  They&#8217;ll get big government.  They&#8217;ll have an income tax, they&#8217;ll be like us in Michigan and so forth – census date.  In 1970, Michigan had nine million people.  In 2010, 40 years later, Michigan had ten million people.  A little bit of growth over 40 years, not spectacular.  In 1970 Texas had 11 million people.  Just a little bit bigger than Michigan.  In 2010 Texas had 25 million people.  Explain that Professor Krugman.  You got cold winters in Michigan, but you sure got hot summers in Texas and you actually have some cold winters there too.  Anybody that&#8217;s moving to Texas for the weather is deluded.  So let me just make three major points here that have been to some extent inspired or amplified by what I&#8217;ve been hearing, listening and talking to people with about at the Restoration Weekend.</p>
<p>The first is about the macro economy in which I do not consider myself to be an expert by any means.  I do know that there was a congressman from New York that said if you tax something you get less of it; if you subsidize something you get more of it.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Would that be Jack Kemp?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Yeah and Jack had the right idea.  Obviously we want to get the macro economy growing again.  Some conservatives are saying okay we&#8217;ll just reduce rates on the high end like Reagan did and that will be fine.  I think we need something more than that.  For one thing, tax rates are not as high as when Reagan entered office.  There&#8217;s less to be cut, but I think we&#8217;ve got to do something else.  We&#8217;ve got to lower some tax rates.  We&#8217;ve got to get rid of some of the really hostile and anti-growth regulatory things and the crazed religion of the Radical Greens.  I think we also have to try to do something about family formation.  If we want to unleash human capital &#8212; and Steve has written about this recently.  I don&#8217;t know if his former colleagues at the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> editorial board are a little miffed at you, but one of the things that I think is holding us back to some extent, although it&#8217;s difficult to quantify, is family formation or the lack thereof.  All the sociological studies show that children raised in two-parent families do better by all sorts of metrics from crime to economic growth and productivity.  No, I don&#8217;t want to say anything negative about single parents and so forth.  But almost 50 years ago Pat Moynihan wrote his family report and he said that we&#8217;ve got a real crisis because 25 percent of black children are born out of wedlock.  The figure today is 70 percent.  The figure for all children is 40.  That is higher form of magnitude than what Moynihan was looking at justifiably, presciently, with alarm back in 1965, so what can we do.  The Tax Code doesn&#8217;t automatically shape behavior.  I think there are ways society can send signals.  When you look back in history people like us like to talk about declines of morals.  There are also increases in moral behavior that occur in various ways.  The United States in 1820 was a nation of drunks.  Basically alcohol consumption was cut by about two-thirds over the next 40 or 50 years.  That was an advance in human capital among other things.</p>
<p>We had senators like Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, others talking about child tax credit increase, other things to send money and signals to people to try to encourage family formation, to encourage two-parent families to give kids the advantage.  I think that there are a lot of other ways that we can think about this in terms of economics; but that&#8217;s one way to send a signal, that&#8217;s one way to give what Cass Sunstein calls a &#8220;nudge,&#8221; which in this case I think is useful.  So I think that we ought to be thinking about that and those of you who are active, and many of you are, in the voluntary sector, those of you who create organizations who work and organizations to try to foster better behavior, I think this is something many of you probably already are thinking about: how do we strengthen that kind of behavior because there&#8217;s a lot of human capital over the last generation that could have been created and wasn&#8217;t created.  That&#8217;s a problem.  We&#8217;d like to do better in the next generation, and how are we going to do this?</p>
<p>The second point I want to make is in another sense about the new generation and that&#8217;s taking a look at the election data, and this one was kind of fun to take a look at.  I was always a little dismayed at reading the number on President Romney, is to take a lot at two groups that we&#8217;ve been told are going to be a larger part of the electorate in years hence, and they are, and that we were told were going to be part of an inevitable during natural and permanent Democratic Party majority in America – the Hispanics and the Millennials.  If you made straight line extrapolations from the 2008 exit pole you might very well have thought that.  Both those groups, Hispanics, a term invented by a census bureaucrat circa 1970; Millennials, people born after 1980 or the 18 to 29 year-old-age group among voters, voted approximately two to one for Barack Obama in 2008.  They will be a larger part of the electorate.  My move to amend the Constitution to raise the voting age to 35 is barred &#8212; and permanently barring from the vote anyone born after 1980, our chances for that solution has been missed.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>I wouldn&#8217;t be able to vote.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>There you go, okay, sorry about that.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>No it&#8217;s all right, it&#8217;s all right.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>I&#8217;ll listen to your recommendation and start voting.  Those things having failed, those groups were going to go by, and you have writers like <i>National Journal&#8217;s </i>Ron Brownstein, who is a very talented guy, talking in addition about the non-white majority – divides electorate into whites and non-whites and says there will be a non-white majority.  Well let&#8217;s see how that&#8217;s working out.  Let&#8217;s start off with the Millennials.  In 2008 they voted 66/32 to Barack Obama.  Expressing that vote as a democratic margin as percentage of the total electorate.  Take the democratic popular vote margin among Millennials as a percentage of the total electorate. It&#8217;s 7 percent of the total electorate.  Barack Obama&#8217;s margin among the total electorate that year, 7 percent.  Essentially all of this popular vote margin came from them.  What has happened in years since.  Well the Millennials down there in their parents&#8217; basements have not been doing so well.  They were told that there was hope and change – that Obama was a with-it sort of person and he was cool and the other people weren&#8217;t and so forth.  In 2012 the Obama margin among Millennials goes down to 60 to 38.  That&#8217;s actually the biggest decline arithmetically among any age group so there is some decline.</p>
<p>It brings to mind the fact of the baby boomer, the fate of the baby boom generation politically, which I guess I&#8217;m part.  I&#8217;d like to say that the good news is that the baby boom generation is going to die out.  The bad news is I&#8217;m going to die about the same time.  The baby boom generation was 50/50 in the Nixon/McGovern race when the rest of the country was 63/36 for Nixon.  In 2012, 40 years later the baby boom generation voted for Mitt Romney, so people are affected by the changes and the things they see in their life as well as by some of the conservatizing forces perhaps of growing older, perhaps wiser, but in any case, the initial vote is not destiny.  Where were the Millennials in this election?  Take a look at the Exit Poll, the national vote for House of Representatives, it was 54/43 Democratic.  Express that as a percentage of the total electorate, Democratic margin as a percentage of the total electorate is 1.5 percent, 7 percent in 2008, 1.5 percent.  Millennial turnout will be higher in the general election than it was in the off-year election, so 1.5 percent translates to about 2 percent general election terms.  That&#8217;s a handicap for republicans.  They&#8217;ve got to carry their age groups by a larger margin in order to win, they did so, winning 52/45 House popular vote overall in this year in 2014 as well as 2010.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s happened to the Millennials in large part it&#8217;s a lot of human capital that&#8217;s not being achieved, that&#8217;s not finding an outlet.  I think one of the things I have felt is that there is a misfit between the Millennial generation and the way that they want to customize their own world.  Set up their own Facebook page and all this stuff, iPod list, that&#8217;s pretty antique now.  The tension between that and the centralized command and control policies of the Obama Administration. Those are policies that were initially crafted by people in an industrial age – 40,000 people worked at the Ford Rouge Plant.  You had a huge union local, it had 60,000 members.  You had a corporation that was one of the largest in the world.  The building was built in 1916 to 1918 at a cost of $1 billion which was actually a lot of money then.  I went around the Ford Rouge Plant in a car this summer – it&#8217;s 5.0 miles to drive around the perimeter of that place.  That is an artifact of the Industrial Age.  So individuals are small cogs in large machines, that&#8217;s what you do, big government, the centralized experts Jonathan Gruber will take care of you, you&#8217;re too stupid to take care of yourself, that&#8217;s the Industrial Age policies.  That&#8217;s a bad fit with this generation.  We&#8217;re not in an industrial age, we are in an information age.  The Ford Rouge Plant is a symbol of the Industrial Era, this is a symbol of the Information age.  It&#8217;s got more data in here than the Ford Rouge Plant ever processed and these policies aren&#8217;t working for them.  I think they&#8217;re waking up to that.  White Millennials are a significant Republican margin of this election.  The black under 30 voters.  Actually male blacks under 30 actually are moving towards Republicans more than their elders.  So I think that there&#8217;s some hope there. They are looking for something.</p>
<p>The Republicans have an opportunity, they sure don&#8217;t have a mandate. But they&#8217;ve got an opportunity for getting in touch with these people for policies that will enable them to find work, to earn success in ways that maximize their own special talents – their own individual interests.  The contribution that that individual uniquely can make to society.  The other side&#8217;s programs don&#8217;t give you any access to society.  The other side&#8217;s program don&#8217;t give you any access to that – you&#8217;re just a cog in a large machine.  These programs &#8212; I think conservatives can come up with a couple of programs that allow human capital to flourish in ways that are particular to the individual.  I think there&#8217;s an opportunity there.</p>
<p>Hispanics – Brownstein likes to lump together all &#8220;non-whites.&#8221;  I think this is misleading.  Hispanics and Asians, the people that fall into these categories, do not share the history experiences and heritages of Black Americans, which are, as many Black Americans will tell you, they are unique and they are absolutely correct in saying that.  They&#8217;re not behaving that way.  When Asians come to this country these days they don&#8217;t see separate drinking fountains marked off for them and they aren&#8217;t prevented from voting and in fact, what we&#8217;ve got is very different numbers.  If you look at the Hispanics, they go 67/31 Obama, 2008, 71/27 Obama, 2012.  They don&#8217;t like the self-deportation comment of Mitt Romney and so forth.  This election they&#8217;re moving in the other direction.  You look at the Exit Poll. It&#8217;s 62/36 for Democratic candidates for the House nationally.  But this aggregated by state.  One of the things you see, about 40 percent of Hispanics live in California, New York and New Jersey.  They were voting over 70 percent on average for the Democratic Party.  They are increasing Democratic margins that would exist if there were not a single Hispanic in any of those states.  If you are looking at the rest of the country, you&#8217;re seeing a different pattern.  In Rick Perry&#8217;s Texas, John Cornyn carried Hispanics 49/48, Greg Abbott got 44 percent here in Florida, Rick Scott got 38.  In Kansas and in Georgia, states with growing Hispanic percentages that some Democrats think are going to carry those states for them, Hispanics voted for the Republican, Nathan Deal, David Purdue, Pat Roberts.</p>
<p>My observation is that Hispanics are voting more like their white neighbors than their black neighbors and depending on the state they&#8217;re in.  I think that once again here are people that are looking for opportunity.  Here are people that are disproportionately in their younger years.  Here is human capital; potential human capital that is being under-utilized in this economy and these individuals are not being given an opening under this Administration&#8217;s policies so I think that once again there is significant opportunities and the idea that this is a totally non-white 90/10 democratic majority is simply factually wrong.  I could add that the Asian numbers show a flip from 73/26 Obama 2012 to 50/49 Republican.  I&#8217;m not sure that&#8217;s good data.  Sorry folks we&#8217;d love to believe it but I think that you&#8217;ve got small and potentially unrepresentative samples, but I think it&#8217;s an interesting mix and some of you are in situations like that.</p>
<p>Let me move on to my third topic that I want to talk about and that is one that I know evokes controversy or strong feelings in this room and that is immigration.  I think again there is a potential to unleash and enhance human capital in the United States, which we are in danger of missing, which people on the other side of the political fence are in danger of missing, and I think we have a set of immigration laws that have built on a system, that is built on a series of laws, 1924, passed 90 years ago, 1965, passed 49 years ago.  We inadvertently got a system that prefers extended family reunification of mostly low-skill people to admission of high skill people.  We&#8217;ve got a system now which we&#8217;ve got to lobby for declaring legalization of illegals, primarily low-skilled, and there&#8217;s an effective lobby for that.  There&#8217;s an effective lobby for increasing the number of H1BVs, as they tend to tie high-skilled people to a particular firm.  Microsoft wants you to work.  Apple wants you to work.</p>
<p>I think we should take this opportunity, the fact that it&#8217;s obvious that we need to change our immigration laws, to take a new approach and not just do patch work.  I&#8217;m not going to get into arguments here about what we do about seasonal farm workers, that&#8217;s a collateral issue.  I think that one of the things we&#8217;ve seen now, unlike 2006 and 2007, which is when the sort of design of the bill that passed the Senate in 2013 was formulated.  That&#8217;s a period when most of us thought we were going to have an unending surge of migration, especially low-skill migration from Latin America and some of us thought the best thing we can do is regularize it through some legalization.  We thought also that our high tech system was going on fine, we didn&#8217;t have any problems there and we thought that we had plenty of demand for low skill workers because the economy was growing.  Well, the surge in that migration from Mexico to the United States from 2007 to 2012 was zero, we don&#8217;t have that problem, and I think the argument is stronger today in my opinion than it was then, that says that legalization measures incentivize illegal immigration, which wouldn&#8217;t otherwise occur.  I think prior to 2007 it was going to occur anyway.  I think now we saw with the influx of Central Americans in the Rio Grande that there is an argument that undercuts the argument for legalization or at least suggests caution.</p>
<p>What I think is most important is to encourage high-skill immigration.  Steve and I disagree, I don&#8217;t think we need a lot of low-skill people right now, new people.  He thinks we always do.  I think we always need high skilled people in this country and I think if you want to maximize human capital in the United States or in the world, we want high-skilled people in this country, as many as we can get.  We&#8217;ve got a system where we admit a grudging amount of them, tied to particular firms.  I think we might do better if we let in high-skilled people, people who can demonstrate that they have high skills and abilities and let them see what they can do in something that we have here despite the effects of the current Administration, which is called the free enterprise system, a free economy and work their way up there.  I see as a model of the systems of our Anglosphere cousins Canada and Australia.  Canada and Australia have high-skill immigration.  They have point systems.  I had a chance to talk here with Senator Sessions and I said to him, let&#8217;s look at how Canada and Australia do this.  Can something like this be adapted to the United States?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Canadians and Australians don&#8217;t want us to do this.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Well, a Canadian diplomat in Washington said to me please, please do not adopt our Canadian immigration system.  We want these high-skilled people in Vancouver and Calgary and Toronto and Montreal.  We don&#8217;t want them going to the United States.  We want them in Canada and Australia wants them in Australia.  I have a lot of affection for Canada or Australia but I say let&#8217;s give them a fight.  I think that we should try to restructure this so that instead of extended family reunification of low-skill people we move towards high skilled people that have demonstrated their abilities and so forth in this country.</p>
<p>As I look back over the three things I&#8217;m talking about, let&#8217;s liberate the economy from high taxes, but also incentivize family behavior that we&#8217;re not sure we can fully influence but at least move people towards behavior that tends to maximize human capital.  Present opportunities to growing groups of the electorate like Hispanics and Millennials so to maximize their human capital and to exchange our immigration system and not just tinker with band aids and stuff on the 90-year-old legislation and the 49-year-old legislation but actually reframe our immigration law.  Take this opportunity to proclaim that we are a land of the free, home of the brave and we have open arms to people who come here with high skills and want to contribute to the United States and the world through becoming Americans.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>I think that, Michael, microphones are going to be going around in a second.  I&#8217;m going to ask a quick question.  Having just moved out from my parents&#8217; basement, thanks Ally and Paul, and being Hispanic and a Millennial, I&#8217;d like to talk kind of specifically about some of those policies the Republicans just took to Congress, both houses.  If you were in a room advising John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and the leadership in the Republican Party, what would you advise them they should do going out the gate in 2015 and what would you advise them not to do?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Well the first thing, how many of you have been following this issue, this esoteric issue of corporate inversions of companies that are leaving and I say this is actually a real crisis in this country, and I don&#8217;t think a lot of the politicians quite understand what&#8217;s going on here.  If we don&#8217;t fix our corporate tax system &#8212; and most Americans have no idea about the corporate tax system and I don&#8217;t think Barack Obama understands this either.  Our corporate tax, as most of you in this room know, we have the highest statutory corporate tax in the world.  We&#8217;re at 40 percent and it&#8217;s interesting.  If you look over the last 25 years it used to be, Michael, if you go back to 1990 the rest of the world was at about 45 percent.  You know what&#8217;s happened over the last 25 years?  The rest of the world is adopting Reaganonics – Ireland, England, Canada, they are cutting their rates very sharply and so it used to be we were 5 percentage points below the world average.  Today we&#8217;re 15 to 20 percent above the world average.  That doesn&#8217;t work anymore.  I describe this as a Head Start program for every country that we compete with, right?  It&#8217;s true and I would even make the case it is unpatriotic to support a 40 percent corporate tax.  The people who are harmed by this tax are not big, rich Wall Street fat cats who own stock, although it does reduce returns to sharers, but there&#8217;s a lot of really good evidence by some of my friends at the American Enterprise Institute and some of my colleagues at Heritage, that the people that are hurt the most by this high corporate tax when companies leave is American workers.  This affects their wages and affects their job opportunities, so I would make the case by that and if I could do one thing overnight I would say, let&#8217;s just get rid of the corporate income tax, right?  Let&#8217;s just get rid of the corporate income tax and tax it to the shareholders when they earn it as capital gain.</p>
<p>But if we can&#8217;t do that there is a mandate in my opinion, there is a necessity we get that corporate tax rate down to 20 to 25 percent because if we do not do this and if we do not act quickly &#8212; you&#8217;ve seen what&#8217;s happened in the last nine months.  Think about the companies.  Burger King. Burger King is leaving the United States.  Walgreen&#8217;s wants to leave.  Pfizer wants to leave.  I could name four or five other major Fortune 100 companies that are essentially renouncing their United States citizenship and leaving the United States and as you said, going to Canada, going to Ireland.  In Ireland the highest corporate tax rate is 4½ percent.  That means you can change your location from, say, New York to Dublin, and you can cut your corporate income tax by two-thirds.  Companies have a charge to maximize their return to their shareholders so that would be the number one thing – get rid of the corporate income tax and then number two, let&#8217;s just blow up the whole income tax and start over with a flat tax.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>I agree with both of those things and I think you know that, but how to Republicans send that credibly to Obama when he spent his entire Presidency demonizing corporations and saying they&#8217;re the Devil.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Let me just make one quick comment about this.  I believe one of the biggest, one of the turning points in this election &#8212; and correct me if I&#8217;m wrong you guys because you know politics better than I do.  That imbecilic comment that Hillary Clinton made seven days before the next.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>When she was giving her Elizabeth Warren imitation?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Exactly.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>No there is going to be a very spirited competition if those two run against each other because we don&#8217;t know who&#8217;s going to carry Salem.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>My only point in bringing that up is I do believe Brian that the big problem with the Democrats today, the Democrats today are anti-business, right?  They are anti-business.  My old boss Dick Army, you know Dick Army was the House Majority Leader, he used to say, and he said it so perfectly, liberals love jobs and they hate employers.  Liberals love jobs and they have employers.  You can&#8217;t have one without the other.  This is where I think it gets to your point about Millennials saying, wait a minute, the Democrats said they were going to create all these jobs.  When is the last time?  Just a thought I want to put in your head.  When is the last time this President in the last six years said anything good about business?  When has he said, he is the same President who said two years ago, &#8220;you didn&#8217;t build that,&#8221; so that anti-business sentiment is the ruination of the Democratic Party in my opinion.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Well, Steve starts off right with the populist to appeal and cut the corporate income tax.  You&#8217;re absolutely right on the arguments intellectually and I think there is a political avenue to do this and an openness to do this.  There is a lot of low-hanging fruit off there – the Keystone XL Pipeline, vote on a bunch of things where you&#8217;re going to get, by the way, a bunch of Democrats, 31 House Democrats voted for the Keystone Pipeline last week and so forth, that it&#8217;s a 70 percent issue.  You&#8217;ve got a bunch of 70 percent issues, but I guess I would just reiterate my thinking on the immigration thing.  I really think that we have an opportunity to change the trajectory of incoming immigration and so forth in the world in the years ahead.  I wrote this book, <i>Shaping Our Nation:  How Surges in Migration Transformed American Politics</i> and it&#8217;s about internal migrations and it&#8217;s about immigration migrations.  We&#8217;ve had these unexpected surges of migration.  Nobody in 1965 was predicting huge migration from Latin America.  We actually imposed a limit of something like 60,000 Mexicans a year in the &#8217;65 Act, did you know that?  It didn&#8217;t turn out to be very effective because of family reunification provisions and because of illegal immigration.  Migration from Mexico was ten times that approximately between 1982 and 2007 and then it stops and that&#8217;s a historic pattern too.  You get these surges that last one or two generations, they stop.  I want the next surges to be high-skilled people from around the world.</p>
<p>One of the statistics that I saw recently and perhaps appropriate of last night&#8217;s meeting was that the percentage of people in the United States &#8212; like some of President Reagan&#8217;s statistics this may be wrong, so I want to be fact checked on this.  The data was that of people born in Africa, that doesn&#8217;t include the President, people born in African in the United States today is something like 47 percent of them have college degrees and moving on to their accounting degree and getting that and we see that in Washington, DC.  Michelle Obama, that Minnesota gets the Somalians, we&#8217;ve got the Ethiopians and it&#8217;s better for our metro area.  But anyway, that&#8217;s an interesting data point.  Let&#8217;s get the high-skilled people across the world because it&#8217;s better for our country and a more prosperous, more creative America is better for the world.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>You know Michael I was in &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>It&#8217;s better for people all over the world because they in many ways have often been free riders on advances made in the United States and the people of the United States who make advances, who have economic success are also major supporters, not only through taxes and foreign aid but much more importantly through voluntary activities that have helped people around the world.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>I was just going to say, I got in a taxi in Washington, DC about two weeks ago and the driver was an Ethiopian and he kept staring at me, and he kept looking back at me, he had this big smile on his face, &#8220;You&#8217;re on Fox News, aren&#8217;t you.  I watch Fox News every day.&#8221;  I&#8217;m like these are our kind of people.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>All right let&#8217;s go to some questions from the audience.  We have a microphone in the back.</p>
<p><strong>Rep. Michele Bachmann: </strong>Thanks.  You guys are so brilliant and I want to thank you and I just want to see me too to Steve.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Michele you are irreplaceable in the United States Congress.  We love you.  You are awesome!  We need you to run against Mark Dayton for Governor of Minnesota.</p>
<p><strong><strong>Rep. Michele Bachmann</strong>: </strong>No I just want to say how much I love and underscore exactly what you said – in my former life I was a federal tax litigation attorney, before I came to the U.S. Congress and I think again this is a plus-up area where Republicans can go on offense in the next two years against Hillary Clinton or whoever the nominee is, because this is a job creations tax.  That&#8217;s what the Corporate Tax Code is, it&#8217;s a tax on job creation and we need to frame it in such a way so that people know that what we want to do is get rid of these job killing taxes and have job creation taxes and I&#8217;ll give you one perfect example based upon inversions.  Two weeks before the 2012 Election I sat down with all of the medical device industry in Minnesota from the baby startups all the way to the King Daddy which was Medtronic and all of them could be predictive.  They saw that this could very well go the way of Barack Obama and the way of the medical device tax and so they&#8217;d been out looking in Europe and other countries to see where they could move their industries, and they were very frank.  They said if we don&#8217;t take this election in 2012, we&#8217;re out of here because we&#8217;ve got better places to go for industry and so Medtronic is one of those companies that announced an inversion and then the Treasury Department came back and was basically going to cancel all those inversions but it&#8217;s human nature.  People go where they can make the income so I think this is a target rich environment for us to go on offense and I think we&#8217;ll get Millennials.  I think that we should compete for every bit of space for every voter because it&#8217;s about every voter, their job.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Let me make a broader point because I think that what you said is so important.  Tell me if you think I&#8217;m wrong about this, Michele, but I think Republicans have an incredible opportunity right now with the old Reagan blue collar industrial union workers; because think about that.  Put it like this, Michael.  How can Tom Steyer coexist in a party with unionized blue collar workers? Tom Steyer is trying to deindustrialize America.  He wants to destroy the jobs of pipe fitters, welders, electricians – he wants to destroy the jobs of Teamsters.  Your and my party, Michele, you&#8217;re the person to do this.  We ought to be going into these union halls, I&#8217;m serious, and we should be saying, we&#8217;re the ones who are trying to save your jobs.  It&#8217;s these wacko Green Environmentalists who are trying to destroy your jobs, right?  That should be our message.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>A question from Senator Sessions.</p>
<p><strong>Sen. Jeff Sessions: </strong>Thank you, just briefly.  I recall having met with a Canadian who runs their system of immigration.  They are very happy with it. They are very pleased.  At a hearing two years ago in the Judiciary Committee, the Microsoft representative and group pushing for high-tech visas praised the Canadian system.  I said, well, Mr. Microsoft, I&#8217;ll adopt the Canadian system today.  Do you agree to that?  What do you think his answer was?  He had this rueful smile, and the reason was they made a deal.  They got their deal on the big bill.  La Raza and the businesses who want lower-skill workers and the political groups that want family reunification.  They made a partnership so that the package itself was unacceptable, in my opinion, so I guess I would say if we can break this bunch from their unholy comprehensive alliance and focus on the Canadian-type system, which gives points if you &#8212; millions of people speak English in the world.  If you&#8217;ve got two people to apply to American, why not choose the one who already speaks English?  Have we got two young people in Honduras and one has two years of college and one is a high school dropout, why not let the scholar get in?</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve got data to show that people with two years of education who come to America almost always succeed.  Data shows that people who come to American without a high school degree, without language skills, almost always remain in poverty for generations.  So I guess, Michael, I think you&#8217;re on the right track.  I also am dubious about some of the things they say.  Microsoft just laid off 18,000.  Facebook, Mr. Zuckerberg, they only have 7,000 people.  This is not a big job industry.  If you travel the state like I do, and go in to business after business, it&#8217;s incredible the amount of robotics we&#8217;ve got.  We&#8217;re going to have more widgets made with fewer people every year for the next 30 years.  So we&#8217;ve got to think about how our people can be able to take the few jobs that exist out there, and we want to have their pay go up and not down.  So anyway, I&#8217;ve gone too long.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>I think that this is a great example, Senator, that we are in an area where we need good policy instead of good lobbying.  There&#8217;s a lobby for H1Bs because they stay with my company and you got indentured servitude or something like it.  But high skill hasn&#8217;t got a lobby.  It has got to find one.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Why don&#8217;t we get a question over here and let&#8217;s walk to this side of the room too so there are a couple of questions over here.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Yeah, one thing you haven&#8217;t mentioned and please address it, is the toll on human beings of the Green Agenda.  The world and our country came into fruition on oil, on energy.  Nothing works, no one gets a better life without the energy to propel it.  If you look at the Green Agenda, as a matter of fact I live in Austin.  We have a little tabloid that&#8217;s called <i>The Austin Chronical.</i>  Yeah you laugh, but it&#8217;s amazingly effective.  They had some smartly groomed black kids calling green the new black, displayed on the cover of last&#8217;s week&#8217;s <em>Chronical</em>.  This is a lie.  It&#8217;s all a lie.  If you take away the energy, Africa stops.  They have no chance of ever getting out from under the chains of and if you look at China, what has propelled them forward at break neck speed?  Energy, energy, energy and they take that all away and would you please address that because that&#8217;s one of the human tolls of the Green Agenda.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>So I just got back my, it&#8217;s a great point.  I just got back from Zimbabwe.  My niece is a Peace Corps volunteer in this little village really out in the middle of nowhere.  When you were talking I was thinking about this because this village, they are incredibly great people.  I just fell in love with these people but you know, they&#8217;re living almost literally like it&#8217;s the 16<sup>th</sup> Century and you know what they don&#8217;t have in this town?  Electricity, electricity. You can&#8217;t do anything if you don&#8217;t have electric power, and for our government, for Barack Obama to run around the world telling these countries they should use fossil fuels, use less fossil fuels, that&#8217;s immoral, right?  He&#8217;s basically saying he wants to keep these countries poor and that&#8217;s a message we need to get through to people.</p>
<p>Just one other quick little story: we lost our electricity last summer when we had a big storm in Northern Virginia and I wrote a piece in the <i>Wall Street Journal, </i>and it got a huge response, and I just said what happened when the Morris electricity went out.  I have three kids, two teenagers who I don&#8217;t like very much and then I have an 11 year old but my teenagers when the electricity went out, they thought the first few hours were really cool. We had a fire and we had candles and so on and I&#8217;ve got to tell you.  After the first day, because we were without electricity for 72 hours, my kids were like screaming how do people live without electricity, my God they didn&#8217;t have any screen, they didn&#8217;t have cell phones.  The point is if we let the Green Agenda go forward as these people want to do, we&#8217;re going to have rolling brownouts and blackouts in this country.  If you want to see the American people get angry, it&#8217;s going to be when that happens.  If you turn out the lights, people get pretty upset.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Good morning, two quick points.  I find myself not surprised that once again I agree with Senator Sessions.  Good morning Senator.  Alan Greenspan testified before Chuck Shumer on April 30, 2009.  It&#8217;s just two sentences, I want to read this because I think we have too many high-tech workers from foreign countries competing with American high-tech workers which disincentivizes kids from going into those fields.  This is from Greenspan&#8217;s testimony.  &#8220;Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled with lower wage premiums of the skilled over the lesser skilled.  Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition.  Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism and in the process&#8221; &#8212; this word amazes me &#8212; &#8220;we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at non-competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals.  Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income and equality.&#8221;  We need to get more American kids into those high tech industries, item number one.  Item number two, if you go to the UN web site you will find that they predict the two fastest ways of increasing remittances flowing from the U.S. to the Third World, sustainability, green, and in that comprehensive reform. We need to understand that our laws were based on the concept of protecting American lives and American jobs, first and foremost.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Michael, what are your thoughts.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;m so concerned about protecting high-skill people from competition.  I think high skills are not are zero sum game.  Andrew Carnegie did not suffer because John D. Rockefeller was successful in business.  You got one immigrant and the other is the son of a confidence man.  You can make an argument I think particularly at the stage of employment that we have now.  Steve would not agree with it, but that low-skill employment is the zero sum game for the people and you let in more low-skills from other countries you drive down wages of low skill people in this country.  I think there&#8217;s something at least marginally to that.  High skill people are going to create and do things that you central planners didn&#8217;t think up.  They&#8217;re going to actually figure out new things and Andrew Carnegie figured out new things, the poor boy from Scotland.  So I&#8217;m for letting a lot of competition bloom with high-skilled people and I don&#8217;t think they ever crowd each other out.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Here&#8217;s why that&#8217;s completely wrong to say that our high-skilled workers or immigrants are taking jobs from American high-skilled workers.  There&#8217;s a very simple reason why that&#8217;s completely wrong.  It&#8217;s because 36 percent of the businesses in Silicon Valley that hire American high-tech workers were founded by immigrants.  So if the immigrants didn&#8217;t come here a lot of those businesses wouldn&#8217;t exist in the first place.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>What we&#8217;ve seen with a lot of Hispanic voters &#8212; the one seriously contested Senate race was a state with above national average Hispanic percentage, was in Colorado and in Colorado the Democrats, partly through an effort of very rich people putting together a pretty smart political operation that&#8217;s won the major offices there, they imposed a gentry liberal, my friend Joe Cochran&#8217;s phrase, a gentry liberal program: gun control.  Hispanic voters recalled one of the state senators that voted for it in Pueblo County, 42 percent Hispanic county.  They were going to have an anti-fracking referendum.  They decided to take that off the ballot because it was polling so badly they were going to get licked 80/20 or something like that.  Abortion absolutism, Senator Mark Udall became known by the liberal media as Mark Uterus, ran half his ads, the NARAL pro-choice ad said that there would be no contraceptives available in Colorado if Cory Gardner was elected to the U.S. senate.  We now have a chance to fact check that prediction since Gardner was elected and we&#8217;ll see if there are any condoms available in Colorado.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Along with their marijuana.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Well I&#8217;m not going to go there.  They are rejecting that agenda.  The question is do Republicans have an agenda that can go forward and that can help them maximize their human capital.  Help them achieve their dreams.  Help them earn success.  I think we&#8217;ve been trying up in the platform, a lot of you in the audience are working at this sort of thing.  Can&#8217;t give you a fast formula but I think there are Republicans working on it.  I think that we&#8217;ve got to get going and the other low hanging fruit.  What Michele mentioned, the medical devices tax.  We have these wonderful industries that produce things like prosthetics that enable wounded veterans to live full lives in a way that wouldn&#8217;t have ever been possible before and what does this crowd do? They want to tax it.  I think that there are a lot of opportunities here.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Well Michael let me just give you one, Hispanics are an obvious one but let me just put up one thought about black Americans.  Anybody in this room from Illinois?  A few.  What a great race, Bruce Rauner won one of the most important races in the country this year, and what&#8217;s interesting about Bruce Rauner, this is a near billionaire hedge fund manager.  They tried to run their own Mitt Romney campaign against him.  Here&#8217;s what interesting about Bruce Rauner.  I think every Republican in the country should take a page out of his book.  You know what he did?  Bruce Rauner spent a lot of his time going into black churches, black neighborhoods, black schools and he had a couple of messages.  One of the things he said, which every Republican should do when we&#8217;re talking to black audiences.  What have the Democrats done for you?  Really, what have the Democrats done for black American?  Nothing.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>No, I&#8217;m from Detroit and I&#8217;ve seen what happens.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Yeah, right, exactly.  That was his point and what Bruce Rauner said is you elect me Governor of this State – I&#8217;m going to clean up your neighborhoods, I&#8217;m going to give you school choice, I&#8217;m going to clean up your schools, I&#8217;m going to give you jobs and you know what?  Bruce Ronner got 20 percent of the black vote in Illinois, so we can win a bigger percentage of black Americans with a message of economic growth.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Well, and here&#8217;s an Hispanic message.  California and Texas, we&#8217;ve been looking at the number of jobs.  Both of those states in the 2010 census were about 36 percent Hispanic.  Texas Hispanics get better test scores than California Hispanics.  Texas is non-union, non-ed run schools do a better job than California&#8217;s Teacher Union runs schools, okay?  Texas Hispanics make more money than California Hispanics.  Texas Hispanics have lower unemployment than California Hispanics.  We have a test case on whose policies help Hispanic people in American and I think also there&#8217;s a spirit of, well there&#8217;s a spirit of enterprise.  There&#8217;s also a cultural spirit.  When you go to Texas the people in Texas look at somebody that&#8217;s got stereotypical Latino features, they say that&#8217;s a Texan.  When rich Californians see somebody with that figure they hand them the keys to the car because they assume it&#8217;s a valet parking attendant.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>So the message here, folks, is we have to make America look more like Texas and less like New York and California.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Except for the weather, except for the weather.  Thank you all very much for taking the time to listen to us and let&#8217;s give one more round of applause to our great panel.</p>
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		<title>Only Muslim Schoolchildren Lives Matter?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/only-muslim-schoolchildren-lives-matter/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=only-muslim-schoolchildren-lives-matter</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:45:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The world heard about the Peshawar school attack, but many attacks on Christian schools go unreported by MSM.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/4973928-3x2-700x467.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248284" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/4973928-3x2-700x467-450x300.jpg" alt="4973928-3x2-700x467" width="321" height="214" /></a>Earlier we looked at “<a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/how-western-media-enable-islamic-terrorism/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">how Western mainstream media enable Islamic terrorism</span></a>,” specifically by employing an arsenal of semantic games, key phrases, convenient omissions, and moral relativism to portray such violence as a product of anything and everything—political and historical grievances, “Islamophobia,” individual insanity, poverty and ignorance, territorial disputes—not Islam.</p>
<p>Another strategy that recently came to the fore consists of highlighting Islamic terror attacks that target other Muslims.  The logic here is clear:  How “Islamic” can such Islamic groups be if they attack and kill fellow Muslims?  In other words, whatever the motivation, it surely cannot be Islam, since those being killed are themselves Muslims.  This suggests that the terrorists themselves cannot be true Muslims since Muslims are generally forbidden by Islam to kill other Muslims (caveats exist).</p>
<p>A recent example of this is the December 16 Taliban attack on an army public school in Peshawar, where 145 people were killed, the majority being schoolchildren age 18 and under.   This incident was reported all over the mainstream media, and rightfully so.</p>
<p>Yet this begs the question: why do similar attacks, when directed at non-Muslims—especially Christians—rarely if ever get the same sort of media coverage?</p>
<p>For example, in <a href="https://barnabasfund.org/US/News/Archives/47-youngsters-killed-at-Christian-school-in-Nigeria-while-Christians-in-Mubi-forced-to-flee-after-Boko-Haram-renames-it-City-of-Islam.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Nigeria</span></a> on November 10,</p>
<blockquote><p>A suicide bomb attack in a Christian secondary school in the town of Potiskum in Yobe state, north-eastern <a href="https://barnabasfund.org/US/Our-work/Our-current-projects/BF-Project-Countries/Nigeria.html?"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Nigeria</span></a>, has killed at least 47 people on Monday as the students gathered for morning assembly. Boko Haram is thought to be behind the blast, having carried out several attacks on schools giving a Western-style education. Translated from Hausa, Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden” of which this latest school attack is a stark reminder.</p></blockquote>
<p>Earlier in the year in Nigeria “Boko Haram claimed the lives of <a href="http://www.romereports.com/pg155924-nearly-60-students-at-christian-school-killed-in-boko-haram-attack-in-nigeria-en"><span style="color: #0433ff;">59 students</span></a> at a Christian school &#8230;  Some 50 men ambushed the school, then beat and shot staff and students. Once finished, they set fire to the buildings, with many students still inside. It&#8217;s the fourth attack of its kind since May of last year.”</p>
<p>On October 1 in Syria, at least 41 Alawite children—all under 12—were <a href="https://docs.zoho.com/writer/ropen.do?rid=b6wwv3c5aa80706194262ab5ce81131ace25c#bookmark=http://www.fides.org/en/news/36468-ASIA_SYRIA_Massacre_of_children_in_Homs_three_Christians_kidnapped_in_the_province_of_Hassake"><span style="color: #0433ff;">killed</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The massacre was one of the most severe in terms of children who died since the beginning of the conflict in Syria. According to official Syrian sources, a car bomb and a suicide bomber caused two explosions when the children came out of school, in the suburb of Akrameh inhabited mainly by Alawites, with the targeted intention to cause the highest number possible of deaths among children of the same religious community to which the Assad family belong.</p></blockquote>
<p>Here is the testimony of an eyewitness to another Islamic attack on a Christian school in Syria, where 12 people—mostly children—were <a href="http://www.charismanews.com/world/43540-god-is-here-but-i-am-getting-so-tired-syrian-christian-mother-mourns-killing-of-children-from-bombings"><span style="color: #0433ff;">killed</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>I want to tell you about Tuesday. It was a terrible day. We cried and prayed all day. Tuesday they were bombing Bab Touma, the old city of Damascus. A lot of Christians live there. There is also a Christian school—a private one. We know a lot of people in that school. Some children from our area also go to school there. When those kids went to school on Tuesday, gathered at the square like they always do, a mortar fell in their midst. Some friends passed by the school and saw that parents and teachers were carrying their wounded children out of the school, dripping with blood. They saw them running to the hospitals in panic. For me, as a mother and a teacher, I can hardly bear to imagine what these people must be going through right now.  Twelve people lost their lives in that school, most of them children from the elementary school. Many more of them have lost arms and legs or have other injuries.</p></blockquote>
<p>As for Islamic attacks on Christian schools that do not lead to casualties, these are quite common.  Thus, on November 5 in Bangladesh, hundreds of Muslims, some armed with knives and machetes, attacked a Christian school.  <a href="https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2014/11/article_3500298.html/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">They</span></a> torched its library, burned Bibles and hymnals, and committed other wanton acts of violence.  According to a source, “A wave of panic swept through the school and traumatized everyone. Many students became sick in the following days.”  The reason for this particular attack?  <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/islamists-project-islams-worst-traits-onto-christians/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Muslim projection</span></a>: a rumor started that the Christian school was converting Muslim students to Christianity.</p>
<p>How many of those Western people who could not help but hear about the Peshawar attack—considering its widespread coverage—also heard about these Islamic attacks on schools some of which also took large numbers of children lives?  Not very many, I would wager.</p>
<p>The reason, again, is obvious: reporting Muslims killing Muslims does not contradict the mainstream media’s narrative but ostensibly enforces it.  For—so the simple logic goes—Muslims who kill fellow Muslims cannot be “real” Muslims to start with, and must in fact be, as Western politicians habitually characterize them, mere “criminals.”</p>
<p>Thus, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan issued a <a href="http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?adbid=545215646309416960&amp;adbpl=tw&amp;adbpr=66369181&amp;cid=social_20141217_37458137&amp;id=123838"><span style="color: #0433ff;">statement</span></a> condemning the Peshawar attack, adding, “The barbaric actions of the Taliban illustrate their lack of value for human life and lack of respect for the Islamic faith. These attacks only prove their selfish desire for power and willingness to murder to reach their self-serving goals.”</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is more difficult for the media to dissemble the motives of Muslims who intentionally target and kill “the other”—outnumbered and defenseless “infidel” minorities—simply because <i>they are</i> “the other.”</p>
<p>Whether small numbers or large—whether <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/islam-built-on-the-blood-of-christian-martyrs/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">four children decapitated for refusing to renounce Christ</span></a> or whether <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/largest-massacre-of-christians-in-syria-ignored/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the largest massacre of Christians in Syria</span></a>—Muslim persecution of Christians will rarely if ever get MSM coverage, for it <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/why-christian-persecution-is-islams-achilles-heel/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">throws a wrench</span></a> in the media’s narrative that Islamic violence is a product of anything and everything but <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/the-ultimate-source-of-islamic-hate-for-infidels/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Islamic hate for non-Muslims</span></a>.</p>
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		<title>Russian Nativity Play: A Tale of Two Josephs</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/oleg-atbashian/russian-nativity-play-a-tale-of-two-josephs/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=russian-nativity-play-a-tale-of-two-josephs</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:40:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Oleg Atbashian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christmas play]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joseph]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nativity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stalin]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What happens to a Christmas play when Joseph Stalin is more known than the biblical Joseph.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Joseph.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248319" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Joseph-293x350.jpg" alt="Joseph" width="221" height="264" /></a>This &#8220;life imitates the People&#8217;s Cube&#8221; moment comes from St. Petersburg, Russia. What seems to be a spoof is a legitimate story via <a href="http://ria.ru/society/20141225/1040186712.html">RIA Novosti</a>, a Russian news agency. As a historical footnote, Nativity plays are a new concept in Russia, where Joseph Stalin is more known than the biblical Joseph, which occasionally causes Freudian slips like this one.</p>
<p>A St. Petersburg student mistakenly showed up dressed as Joseph Stalin to the Christmas play where he was supposed to play the biblical character of Joseph.</p>
<p>&#8220;Yesterday, my 12-year-old son participated in a school play. He told us ahead of time that he got the role of Joseph Stalin who is talking to some woman. It wasn&#8217;t a big surprise to us, as he has played parts in school plays before, and once he was even a watermelon,&#8221; wrote the student&#8217;s father Fyodor Gavrichenko on his <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10205116943470500&amp;set=a.1318879219340.47466.1451565715&amp;type=1&amp;fref=nf">Facebook page</a>.</p>
<p>Gavrichenko said the whole family worked on making the costume &#8211; especially the grandmother, who sewed trouser stripes to the pants, found some old army boots, made a generalissimo mustache and a red folder with a big star.</p>
<p>They didn&#8217;t realize the mistake until the last moment because the play was in German as part of the boy&#8217;s foreign language class, and no one understood what the son&#8217;s lines meant. Apparently, the boy hadn&#8217;t been paying attention in class either. Instead of bringing the costume to school before the play, he showed the teacher its picture on his cell phone. The teacher thought it was a joke and said that the costume &#8220;rocks.&#8221;</p>
<p>The family sensed trouble when they saw their son&#8217;s classmate dressed as Magi. &#8220;Who are you?&#8221; asked the Magi. &#8220;I&#8217;m Mary&#8217;s husband… Joseph Stalin,&#8221; said the boy. His confidence shaken, the classmate went to the teacher: &#8220;Our Joseph turns out to be Stalin… Is that a good thing?&#8221; &#8220;What?&#8221; asked the teacher, as he pulled the curtain revealing the Nativity scene with Joseph and Mary. It was too late to change.</p>
<p>The plot thickened before the drama began. According to the father, Stalin&#8217;s outfit was a smash. The boy&#8217;s lines were accompanied by fits of hysterical laughter through the tears from other parents, some of whom reportedly fell off their chairs.</p>
<p>Those who can read the original Facebook post in Russian will notice that the father knows as little about the Nativity story as his son, confusing characters and their roles in the story. This is rather a norm in Russia, where erstwhile official atheism is only now being replaced by the official Orthodox Church. This St. Petersburg father couldn&#8217;t tell the shepherds from angels even if his son&#8217;s play weren&#8217;t in German. But at least he&#8217;s trying.</p>
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		<title>Mahmoud Abbas: Failing the Palestinians and Peace</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/mahmoud-abbas-failing-the-palestinians-and-peace/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mahmoud-abbas-failing-the-palestinians-and-peace</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:35:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[abbas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[process]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Palestinian president takes an even more drastic totalitarian turn. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Mahmoud-Abbas-AP.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248291" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Mahmoud-Abbas-AP-450x324.jpg" alt="Mahmoud Abbas" width="296" height="213" /></a>Mahmoud Abbas, (aka Abu Mazen) has been a failure as the Palestinian “Rais.” He failed to lead the Palestinian Authority (PA) toward peace with Israel, and he mismanaged the alleged goal to achieve statehood for the Palestinians. Instead of facing the tough issues and making compromises required in negotiating peace and statehood with the Israelis, Abbas chose an alliance with the Gaza controlled terrorist group Hamas. Following Abbas’ pact with Hamas last April, Israel broke off peace negotiations with the Palestinians, just days before the talks brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry were scheduled to expire.</p>
<p>Abbas isn’t only confusing Israelis, Americans, and is his Europeans patrons, he is perplexing his own Palestinian consituents. Following last summer’s Gaza War between Hamas and Israel, Abbas threatened to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) and saught to indict Israel on war crimes. PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki met with the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC last August to explore ways of joining the court by PA President Abbas signing the Rome Statute.  When, however, the U.S. Congress threatened to cut off all funding to Palestine if Abbas filed war crimes charges against Israel, Abbas backed off. At the same time though, Israel’s Prime Minister threatened to counter-sue, alleging that the rockets fired by Hamas terrorists into Israeli civilian areas constituted “<a href="http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/09/hamas-quietly-admits-it-fired-rockets-from-civilian-areas/380149/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">double war</span></a>” crimes.</p>
<p>The Israeli Law Center called Shurat-HaDin, led by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner submitted a complaint against Mahmoud Abbas in the ICC for “war crimes.” The complaint claims that Abbas may be tried for his responsibility in the missile attacks targeting Israeli cities, executed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which Abbas heads. It charges that Fatah, also led by Abbas, was responsible for several missile attacks on Israeli cities. Darshn-Leitner pointed out that Fatah leader Abbas may be tried by the ICC. Abbas is a citizen of Jordan and Jordan is a member-state of the ICC. The ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed by a citizen of a member state. Darshan-Leitner added, the organization “will not allow Fatah to carry out rocket attacks on Israeli population centers, while <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Shurat-Hadin-files-war-crimes-complaint-against-Abbas-with-ICC-381312"><span style="color: #0433ff;">hypocritically</span></a> advocating Palestinian membership in the ICC. Abbas falsely believes that alleged crimes against Arabs are the only ones that should be prosecuted.”</p>
<p>A week ago, Abbas threatened again. This time he fingered the security co-ordination with Israel following the death of Ziad Abu Ein, 55, PA Minister without Portfolio. He promptly backtracked. On November 29, 2014, Abbas declared  that if the United Nations Security Council rejects the Palestinian statehood resolution, he will seek membership in the ICC. He said, “We will seek Palestinian membership in international organizations, including the International Criminal Court in the Hague. We will also <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.629102"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reassess</span></a> our ties with Israel, including ending the security cooperation between us.”</p>
<p>Abbas’ latest gambit is a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution that would force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria (West Bank) within two-years. According to press reports, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry requested to postpone the Palestinian initiative at the UNSC until after the Israeli elections, (March 17, 2015) but the Palestinians refused. PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki intimated to reporters that there was disagreement between the Americans and Palestinians on how the elections in Israel would or wouldn’t advance the PA UNSC resolution. Kerry believed that a UNSC vote before the elections would impact adversely on the winners. In other words, a vote before the elections would strengthen Netanyahu and the Right in Israel. Maliki argued that a vote before January, 2015 would be rather positive.</p>
<p>At a closed meeting last week with 28 EU ambassadors, John Kerry revealed that he was asked by former Israeli president Shimon Peres and Tzipi Livni to prevent the Palestinian initiative at the UNSC because it will help “<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.632816"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Netanyahu and Bennett</span></a> (Jewish Home Party chairman) in the upcoming elections.” Maliki posited that Kerry himself has not abided by his pledge not to intervene in the Israeli elections.</p>
<p>Also last week in London, Secretary of State Kerry met with Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, and according to a PA senior official, Kerry posed a number of U.S. principles that should be included in the Palestinian UNSC resolution. Kerry supposedly refused the two year time period demand by the PA for Israeli withdrawal. The resolution as Kerry suggested should include recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, as well as U.S. opposition to declare Jerusalem as a joint capital for Palestine and Israel. Erekat rejected the U.S. proposals. Kerry declared afterward that the U.S. does not accept the Jordanian (presenting the Palestinian resolution)  and French resolutions. He warned that if the Palestinians insist on presenting the resolutions, the U.S. would use its veto power. Erekat rejected Kerry’s ideas, and insisted that the resolutions would be submitted. As of December 25, 2014, Abbas rejected an Arab League request to delay the submission of the Palestinian statehood until January when five new members who support the Palestinian cause will join the Security Council.</p>
<p>Abbas’ gambits notwithstanding, the increased authoritarianism of Abu Mazen is reflected in a recent survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. It indicates that 66% of Palestinians are afraid to criticise Abu Mazen and the PA, and 80% consider the PA institutions to be corrupt and infected with nepotism. Last summer, according to the survey, support for Abbas (Abu Mazen) declined to 35% from 50%. “There is no doubt about the fact that <a href="http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/659/827.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">outlawing</span></a> freedoms and rights, especially of professional unions, is a factor in Abbas’ decline in popularity,” said Dr. Khalil Shikaki, one of the survey takers<span style="color: #323333;">. </span></p>
<p>PA security agents inspect what is written in the social media, and threaten those who criticize Abbas. Abu Mazen critics point out that after a decade in power he is controlling all systems of government to such an extent as to minimize all resistance. Perceived political rivals such as Mohammad Dahlan, who once served as Abu Mazen’s assistant, and Salam Fayyad, the former Prime Minister of the PA, are vilified by Abbas. Following the Palestinian Unity government formation, headed by Rami Hamdallah last May, elections were to follow. But, once again, internal squabbling prevented it, and added to it was Abbas’ fear of a Hamas victory.</p>
<p>Abu Mazen’s strategy for the establishment of a Palestinian state has reached a cul-de-sac.  None of his gambits proved successful. His rivalry with Hamas is bitter and ongoing, despite the alliance he forged at the expense of negotiations with Israel. And, like his predecessor Yasser Arafat, he balks at the idea of ‘ending the conflict’ with Israel. He knows full well that this might be a death sentence for him, targeting him for assassination. It is for this reason that Abbas and the PA are unlikely to forgo the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees to Israel. Israel for its part, cannot accept such a demographic suicide. This is why Abbas would rather avoid negotiations with Israel and bypass it by going to the UNSC. It is also the ostensible reason why peace with Israel cannot be achieved, and as a result, the Palestinian people continue to suffer political and economic deprivation. Abbas has not been the solution to the Palestinian problems; rather, he has been responsible for failing them.</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>Arab Israeli Politician Praises Terrorism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/arab-israeli-politician-praises-terrorism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=arab-israeli-politician-praises-terrorism</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:30:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hanin Zoabi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Knesset]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248287</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Hamas representative in the Israeli Knesset.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/w2-haneenzoabi-061614.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248288" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/w2-haneenzoabi-061614.jpg" alt="w2-haneenzoabi-061614" width="346" height="280" /></a>In yet another story which the world&#8217;s mainstream media will ignore, an Israeli Arab Knesset member complained to the police about a right-wing Likud Knesset member, <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nQWtVow1Lw">Danny Danon</a>,</span> making a video condemning her. <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWKoFle57L8">Watch the video here</a></span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.truthrevolt.org/commentary/torossian-treason-israeli-knesset">The Arab MK, Hanin Zoabi</a>,</span> openly opposes the State of Israel, supports Hamas, and a few months ago published an article on Hamas&#8217;s website encouraging an Islamist uprising against the Jewish state, encouraging Arab countries to help stoke a &#8220;popular uprising&#8221; against Israel, halt security coordination with the Palestinian Authority (PA) police in Judea and Samaria, and lay siege to the region. She put the word &#8220;Israel&#8221; in quotation marks throughout the article, and said: [. . .] we must besiege &#8216;Israel&#8217; instead of negotiating with it.&#8221;  Zoabi has said Israel has “no right to a normal life” and Israel should &#8220;thank her&#8221; for allowing Jews to live in the Jewish State.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Recently, she defended the kidnapping of three Israeli teens, stating that the abduction was a &#8220;legitimate&#8221; way to &#8220;fight the occupation.&#8221; She has met Hamas officials, calls the Jewish State a racist notion, and has walked out of the Knesset during the singing of the national anthem.  This woman has made statements claiming that the <a href="http://www.truthrevolt.org/israel-revolt/torossian-pray-israel-defense-forces"><span style="color: #0066cc;">Israel Defense Forces</span></a> are a greater danger than the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons, and denied that Palestinians kidnapping Israeli civilians are terrorists.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">However, she complained that Danon was committing incitement for releasing a video where he is depicted as a sheriff who locks her up for supporting terrorists.  Zoabi complains about incitement?  As Danon rightfully said in response, &#8220;A person who serves as the Hamas representative in the Israeli Knesset should be sitting in jail and not preaching on the subject of incitement and freedom of expression.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Imagine a member of Congress praising Al-Qaeda? Absurd.  Yet, worldwide Israel is spoken of terribly.  The emperor has no clothes.</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>Frontpage&#8217;s 2014 Person of the Year: The American Police Officer</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/frontpages-2014-person-of-the-year-the-american-police-officer-1-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=frontpages-2014-person-of-the-year-the-american-police-officer-1-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Dec 2014 05:59:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[de blasio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nypd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[person of the year]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248229</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The soldier of civilization fighting to keep it alive.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/nypd2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248045" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/nypd2-450x300.jpg" alt="nypd2" width="306" height="204" /></a>As we sit here in our homes with our families and loved ones around us, tens of thousands of children wonder if their parents will come home tonight.</p>
<p>Their fathers and mothers aren’t stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan. They’re on duty in places like Englewood in Chicago where there are <a href="http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/community/englewood">2 violent crimes for every 1,000</a> people in one month, Columbus Square in St. Louis or Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York City where two police officers were just murdered.</p>
<p>The men and women of law enforcement are on the front lines of the war at home. From the mugger on the block to the terrorist on the hijacked plane, they are the first ones there.</p>
<p>41 law enforcement officers were shot and killed in 2014. That’s in line with the number of Americans killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan. There’s a reason that Chicago has been nicknamed Chiraq. Some parts of the country are a war zone and after the latest shooting of two police officers in New York City, a statement circulating among cops states that the NYPD has become a “wartime police department.”</p>
<p>The war at home has been going on for a long time and by some accounts has claimed the lives of 20,000 law enforcement officers. Since 2001, more than 700 officers have been killed by gunfire. During the Gulf War, more officers were killed on the streets of American cities than in combat against Saddam.</p>
<p>Even as the murders of NYPD cops Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu fill the news, <a href="http://www.odmp.org/officer/22311-police-officer-charles-kondek">Officer Charlie Kondek has been shot</a> while pursuing a suspect in Tarpon Springs, Florida.</p>
<p>Officer Kondek had been a former member of the NYPD. He leaves behind five children. His killer, Marco Antonio Parilla Jr, had been repeatedly arrested for the possession and sale of cocaine before being released just this August. Officer Kondek and his children paid the ultimate price for his release.</p>
<p>All three police officers were casualties in the war against human evil that never ends. It’s an even dirtier and more unglamorous war than Iraq or Afghanistan. And police officers are hated in a way that it’s still socially unacceptable to hate soldiers. Ramos and Liu were the latest casualties of that hatred.</p>
<p>The police officer is the handyman of the welfare state. His job is to put his life on the line to plug the social leaks that the sociologists, consultants and social planners who made this mess had not foreseen. It’s his job to be there for a domestic violence complaint in a Florida motel at two in the morning or a failure of multiculturalism between two warring gangs in Oakland. He goes to places that the politicians don’t like to think about and deals with issues that the welfare state created and walked away from.</p>
<p>Progressives don’t believe in evil. It’s the beat cop who has to believe in it and clean it up.</p>
<p>The planners and politicians who allocate funds for new housing projects don’t have to patrol them at night. They don’t have to walk down a narrow concrete block hallway lined with dirty doors any of which can open at any minute with a gun behind it. The drug sentencing reformers have never had to carry a deranged screaming figure through the rusting doors of an emergency room. They have never had to get their soft shoes dirty walking through puddles of blood in an alleyway.</p>
<p>When liberalism fails, it’s the cop who gets the call. And when he does get the call, it’s the liberals who will be the first to call for his head.</p>
<p>It’s not enough that the cop has to clean up for the welfare state. He also has to be its scapegoat.</p>
<p>The chants of “Black lives matter” aren’t aimed at the gangs and drug dealers who rack up an astronomical number of black deaths; it’s aimed at the cops who put their lives on the line saving black lives. It’s the very people whose messes they clean up who hate them the most.</p>
<p>The police officer has come to embody America, abroad and at home, the nation that risks its lives to free peoples only to be despised for it, the nation that extends every benefit and privilege to its own criminals only to be shot and stabbed, raped and robbed for its endless generosity.</p>
<p>The American police officer was never supposed to be venturing into neighborhoods where no one speaks English and the locals see him as a member of an occupying army or patrolling in communities where gang members number in the thousands and could take down the entire local police force.</p>
<p>He was never supposed to be a social worker, a mediator, a medic and the commander of an invading army negotiating truces and treaties with the local tribes. And yet he is expected to be all these things and more. Every time he goes out he knows that he may face a choice between his life and his career.</p>
<p>If cops seem touchy, isolated or out of control it’s because they have been left hanging by a system that uses them to dam up the breakdown of a society without ever acknowledging that this is their job. Many urban police officers operate in environments where crime is not an aberration, but the norm. Like the American soldier, the police officer is better trained and more effective than ever before, but like the soldier he is also haunted by the sense that his work and his sacrifices are futile and unappreciated.</p>
<p>The police officer isn’t spending years in Iraq or Afghanistan; he’s spending decades in Chiraq. When his time ends, there will be no victory parades. Just the knowledge that he tried to make a difference and that unlike many brother officers, at least he made it to retirement.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.youcaring.com/memorial-fundraiser/remembering-daryl-pierson/228970">Officer Daryl Pierson was shot</a> and killed leaving behind a wife and two young children. Pierson had been an experienced officer. His killer, Thomas Johnson III, had been paroled after serving three years for an attempted armed robbery.</p>
<p>Officer Justin Winebrenner tried to get Kenan Ivery to leave a bar. Ivery drew a gun and shot and killed him. Officer Winebrenner was a second generation police officer. He left behind a 4-year-old daughter.</p>
<p>Officer Perry Renn responded to shots being fired and encountered Major Davis Jr. who was carrying a semi-automatic rifle. Davis Jr. had an extensive criminal record. He fired killing Officer Renn who had survived twenty-two years on the force.</p>
<p>Patrolman Jeffery Westerfield responded to a fight between Carl Le&#8217;Ellis Blount Jr. and his girlfriend. He never even got a chance to draw his gun or leave his squad car before Blount shot him in the head.</p>
<p>Deputy Sheriff Allen Bares was off duty when he saw a gold Lexus crash into a ditch. He approached the vehicle and was shot and killed. The two men inside, Quintylan Richard and Baylon Taylor, stole his truck and took off.</p>
<p>The police officers in all these cases were white. Their killers were black. But the police officers in many of these cases were trying to protect black people and black communities.</p>
<p>The killings all took place in a matter of months in 2014. And their numbers will only continue to grow.</p>
<p>While the wars abroad expand or contract, this is the war that will go on. Its soldiers will serve their tours of duty for decades on the streets of our own cities without having anywhere else to go home to. And when their time is up, they will never receive the thanks that they deserve because most of us will never understand the difference that they made.</p>
<p>When the left took over, it was the police officer who kept everything from going under in our major cities. It was not the politician or the planner, the sociologist or the social worker who kept the crime and chaos from sweeping everything away. It was the man in blue who did what had to be done.</p>
<p>Under Obama, when the criminal is king and the progressive planners are changing the country in ways unprecedented since the seventies, it’s still the lonely figure in the squad car that does his duty and holds the line in a thousand dark and dirty neighborhoods where gunshots and screams sound in the night. The American police officer has become the soldier of civilization fighting to keep it alive.</p>
<p>And somewhere a family wonders if their father or mother will come home tonight.</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 Cuban Archipelago</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/the-cuban-archipelago/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-cuban-archipelago</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Dec 2014 05:17:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[oppression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tyranny]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248186</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A reflection on the suffering of the Cuban people under a vicious communist tyranny.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/cubaprison.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248187" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/cubaprison-450x296.jpg" alt="cubaprison" width="307" height="202" /></a><strong class="alignleft  wp-image-248187"><br />
</strong></p>
<p><em>Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl.</em></p>
<p>—Che Guevara, <em>Motorcycle Diaries</em></p>
<p>President Obama’s <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-bailout-for-communist-dictators/" target="_blank">recent move</a> to cozy up to Communist Cuba is a crucially  important moment not just diplomatically, but as a moral one in regards to human rights, dignity and justice. As we witness a Radical-in-Chief throwing <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-bailout-for-communist-dictators/">an economic lifeline</a> to a barbaric tyranny, it is our duty and obligation to shine a light on the dark tragedy of the Cuban Gulag &#8212; and to reflect on the unspeakable suffering that Cubans have endured under Castro&#8217;s fascistic regime.</p>
<p>Until July 26, 2008, Fidel Castro had ruled Cuba with an iron grip for nearly five decades. On that July date in 2008, he stood to the side because of health problems and made his brother, Raul, de facto ruler. Raul officially replaced his brother as dictator on February 24, 2008; the regime has remained just as totalitarian as before and can, for obvious reasons, continue to be regarded and labelled as “Fidel Castro’s” regime.</p>
<p>Having seized power on January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro followed the tradition of Vladimir Lenin and immediately turned his country into a slave camp. Ever since, Cuba has distinguished itself as one of the most monstrous human-rights abusers in the world.</p>
<p>Half a million human beings have passed through Cuba’s Gulag. Since Cuba’s total population is only around eleven million, that gives Castro’s despotism the highest political incarceration rate per capita on earth. There have been more than fifteen thousand executions by firing squad. Torture has been institutionalized; myriad human-rights organizations have documented the regime’s use of electric shock, dark coffin-sized isolation cells, and beatings to punish “anti-socialist elements.” The Castro regime’s barbarity is best epitomized by the Camilo Cienfuegos plan, the program of horrors followed in the forced-labor camp on the Isle of Pines. Forced to work almost naked, prisoners were made to cut grass with their teeth and to sit in latrine trenches for long periods of time. Torture is routine.[i]</p>
<p>The horrifying experience of Armando Valladares, a Cuban poet who endured twenty-two years of torture and imprisonment for merely raising the issue of freedom, is a testament to the regime’s barbarity. Valladares’s memoir, <em>Against All Hope</em>, serves as Cuba’s version of Solzhenitsyn’s <em>Gulag Archipelago. </em>Valladares recounts how prisoners were beaten with bayonets, electric cables, and truncheons. He tells how he and other prisoners were forced to take “baths” in human feces and urine.[ii]</p>
<p>Typical of the horror in Castro’s Gulag was the experience of Roberto López Chávez, one of Valladares’s prison friends. When López went on a hunger strike to protest the abuses in the prison, the guards withheld water from him until he became delirious, twisting on the floor and begging for something to drink. The guards then urinated in his mouth. He died the next day.[iii]</p>
<p>Since Castro’s death cult, like other leftist ideologies, believes that human blood purifies the earth—and since manifestations of grief affirm the reality of <em>the individual</em>, and thus are anathema to the totality—mourning for the departed became taboo. Thus, just like Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia,[iv] so too Castro’s Cuba warned family members of murdered dissidents not to cry at their funerals.[v]</p>
<p>The Castro regime also has a long, grotesque record of torturing and murdering Americans. During the Vietnam War, Castro sent some of his henchmen to run the “Cuban Program” at the Cu Loc POW camp in Hanoi, which became known as “the Zoo.” Its primary objective was to determine how much physical and psychological agony a human being could withstand. The Cubans selected American POWs as their guinea pigs. A Cuban nicknamed “Fidel,” the main torturer at the Zoo, initiated his own personal reign of terror.[vi]</p>
<p>The ordeal of Lt. Col. Earl Cobeil, an F-105 pilot, illustrates the Nazi-like nature of the experiment. Among Fidel’s torture techniques were beatings and whippings over every part of his victim’s body, without remission.[vii] Former POW John Hubbell describes the scene as Fidel forced Cobeil into the cell of fellow POW Col. Jack Bomar:</p>
<blockquote><p> The man [Cobeil] could barely walk; he shuffled slowly, painfully. His clothes were torn to shreds. He was bleeding everywhere, terribly swollen, and a dirty, yellowish black and purple from head to toe. The man’s head was down; he made no attempt to look at anyone. . . . He stood unmoving, his head down. Fidel smashed a fist into the man’s face, driving him against the wall. Then he was brought to the center of the room and made to get down onto his knees. Screaming in rage, Fidel took a length of black rubber hose from a guard and lashed it as hard as he could into the man’s face. The prisoner did not react; he did not cry out or even blink an eye. His failure to react seemed to fuel Fidel’s rage and again he whipped the rubber hose across the man’s face. . . . Again and again and again, a dozen times, Fidel smashed the man’s face with the hose. Not once did the fearsome abuse elicit the slightest response from the prisoner. . . . His body was ripped and torn everywhere; hell cuffs appeared almost to have severed the wrists, strap marks still wound around the arms all the way to the shoulders, slivers of bamboo were embedded in the bloodied shins and there were what appeared to be tread marks from the hose across the chest, back, and legs.[viii]</p></blockquote>
<p>Earl Cobeil died as a result of Fidel’s torture.</p>
<p>Maj. James Kasler was another of Fidel’s victims, although he survived the treatment:</p>
<blockquote><p> He [Fidel] deprived Kasler of water, wired his thumbs together, and flogged him until his “buttocks, lower back, and legs hung in shreds.” During one barbaric stretch he turned Cedric [another torturer] loose for three days with a rubber whip. . . . the PW [POW] was in a semi-coma and bleeding profusely with a ruptured eardrum, fractured rib, his face swollen and teeth broken so that he could not open his mouth, and his leg re-injured from attackers repeatedly kicking it.[ix]</p></blockquote>
<p>The reign of terror against American POWs in Vietnam was just a reflection of Castro’s treatment of his own people. In addition to physical hardships even for those who don’t wind up in prison or labor camp, Cuba&#8217;s police state has denied Cubans any freedom at all. Cubans do not have the right to travel out of their country. They do not have the right of free association or the right to form political parties, independent unions, or religious or cultural organizations. The regime has outlawed free expression; it has consistently censored publications, radio, television, and film. There is a Committee for the Defense of the Cuban Revolution (CDR) for every single city block and every agricultural production unit. The CDR’s purpose is to monitor the affairs of every family and to report anything suspicious. A Cuban’s entire life is spent under the surveillance of his CDR, which controls everything from his food rations to his employment to his use of free time. A vicious racism against blacks accompanies this repression. In pre-Castro Cuba, blacks enjoyed upward social mobility and served in many government positions. In Castro’s Cuba, the jail population is 80 percent black, while the government hierarchy is 100 percent white.[x]</p>
<p>Cuban Communism follows Lenin’s and Stalin’s idea of “equality,” wherein members of the <em>nomenklatura</em> live like millionaires while ordinary Cubans live in utter poverty. The shelves in the stores are empty, and food is tightly rationed for the average citizen. Teachers and doctors drive taxis or work as waiters to support their families. Under the system of tourist apartheid, ordinary Cubans are not allowed inside the hotels designated for tourists and party functionaries. There are, of course, police inside every such hotel to arrest any unauthorized Cuban citizen who dares to enter.</p>
<p>The $5-billion-a-year Soviet subsidy that just barely kept the Cuban economy afloat during the Cold War is long gone. And notwithstanding the $110 billion that the Soviets pumped in over the decades, Cuba has become one of the poorest nations in the world. Its sugar, tobacco, and cattle industries were all major sources of exports in the pre-Castro era. Castro destroyed them all.[xi] Because of his belief in “socialism or death,” Cuba is now a beggar nation. Even Haitian refugees avoid Cuba.</p>
<p>Denied the right to vote under Castro, Cubans have voted with their feet. Pre-Castro Cuba had the highest per-capita immigration rate in the Western hemisphere. Under Castro, approximately two million Cuban citizens (out of eleven million) have escaped their country. Many have done so by floating on rafts or inner tubes in shark-infested waters. An estimated fifty thousand to eighty-seven thousand have lost their lives.[xii]</p>
<p>Not content to trust the sharks, Castro has sent helicopters to drop sandbags onto the rafts of would-be escapees, or just to gun them all down. Epitomizing this barbarity was the Tugboat Massacre of July 13, 1994, in which Castro ordered Cuban patrol boats to kill forty-one unarmed Cuban civilians—ten of them children—who were using an old wooden tugboat in their attempt to flee Cuba.[xiii]</p>
<p>These are the heart-breaking stories, and only a few among many, of the Cuban people who have suffered excruciating pain and agony under an evil tyranny that now, as it stands on its last legs, is having <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-bailout-for-communist-dictators/">its life extended</a> by an American president.</p>
<p>It is food for thought.</p>
<p><strong>Notes:</strong></p>
<p>[i] For one of the best accounts of the brutality of the Castro regime, see Pascal Fontaine, “Cuba: Interminable Totalitarianism in the Tropics,” in Courtois et al., <em>The Black Book of Communism</em>, pp. 647–665.</p>
<p>[ii] Armando Valladares, <em>Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag</em>, trans. Andrew Hurley (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), p. 137.</p>
<p>[iii] Ibid., p. 379.</p>
<p>[iv] For China’s case, see chapter 7 of my book, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/product-description/1935071602">United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror</a></em>; for Cambodia’s, see John Perazzo, “Left-Wing Monster: Pol Pot,” <em>FrontPageMag.com</em>, August 8, 2005.</p>
<p>[v] Valladares, <em>Against All Hope</em>, p. 378.</p>
<p>[vi] Stuart I. Rochester and Frederick Kiley, chapter 19, “The Zoo, 1967–1969: The Cuban Program and Other Atrocities,” in <em>Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia 1961–1973</em> (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999).</p>
<p>[vii] Humberto Fontova, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fidel-Hollywoods-Favorite-Humberto-Fontova/dp/0895260433/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419483023&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=humberto+fontova+fidel"><em>Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant</em></a>, (Regnery, 2005). pp. 141–142.</p>
<p>[viii] Rochester and Kiley, <em>Honor Bound</em>, p. 400.</p>
<p>[ix] Ibid., p. 404.</p>
<p>[x] Fontova, <em>Fidel</em>, p. 88.</p>
<p>[xi] Ibid., pp. 14–15 and 49.</p>
<p>[xii] Ibid., pp. 8 and 56–57.</p>
<p>[xiii] Ibid., pp. 157–163.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><strong>To get the whole story on why leftists venerate Castro&#8217;s tyranny, order Jamie Glazov&#8217;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/product-description/1935071602">United in Hate: The Left&#8217;s Romance With Tyranny and Terror</a>:</strong></p>
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