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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; ban</title>
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		<title>Max Blumenthal, Rejected by German Radicals</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/max-blumenthal-rejected-by-german-radicals/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=max-blumenthal-rejected-by-german-radicals</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Nov 2014 05:33:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[germany]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[max blumenthal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Parliament]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[But embraced by the left-wing establishment. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/MaxBlumenthal.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245276" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/MaxBlumenthal.jpg" alt="MaxBlumenthal" width="303" height="202" /></a>The Norwegians had their Quislings, and the Jews now have their Max Blumenthal. Blumenthal, a fringe gonzo journalist, Goebbels-like propagandist and BDS activist, who once worked for a pro-Hezbollah daily, represents today’s new face of anti-Semitism and is arguably one of the most reprehensible figures of the radical left.</p>
<p>Blumenthal routinely spews forth the anti-Semitic canard that compares Israelis to Nazis, referring to them as “Judeo-Nazis.” Recently, he compared the Jewish State to ISIS calling it “JSIL” – or the “Jewish State of Israel and the Levant.” Blumenthal’s views are so extreme that he is often cited approvingly by <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2014/04/antisemite-max-blumenthal-incites-murder-of-three"><span style="color: #0433ff;">neo-Nazi groups</span></a> as well as depraved murderers.</p>
<p>His vitriol and depravity know no bounds and earned him a spot in the Simon Wiesenthal <a href="http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7B54d385e6-f1b9-4e9f-8e94-890c3e6dd277%7D/TOP-TEN-2013.PDF"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Top 10</span></a> list of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel slurs, placing him in the company of such lovely bottom feeders as Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Khamenei and Turkey’s grand Islamic narcissist, Recip Erdogan.</p>
<p>Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are warped ideologies that go hand-in-hand and so it’s unsurprising that Blumenthal has expressed rabidly anti-America views as well. Among some of his more zany <a href="http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/occupation-%E2%80%9Coccupy%E2%80%9D-israelification-american-domestic-security"><span style="color: #0433ff;">conspiracy theories</span></a> is that American law enforcement is “schooled in Israeli killing methods” and law enforcement personnel are trained in Israeli methods of torture. These risible allegations were first published by Blumenthal for the Hezbollah mouthpiece <em>Al-Akhbar</em>, where Blumenthal worked as a staff writer, but were quickly discredited as arrant nonsense when it was revealed that Blumenthal simply <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/did-israel-train-american-interrogators-in-torture-updated/249630/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">invented fictitious quotes</span></a> to support his fabrications.</p>
<p>Recently, Blumenthal’s antics caught the attention of Germany’s main opposition party, Die Linke<i> </i>(“The Left”), a radical leftist party considered the successor to the former ruling Communist Party in East Germany. Two party members with anti-Israel affiliations, Inge Höger and Annette Groth, invited Blumenthal to speak at a party seminar at the German parliament on November 10, just a day after the anniversary of the <a href="http://www.dw.de/november-9-a-fateful-day-for-germany/a-15515692"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Kristallnacht</i> outrage</span></a>. But as it turns out, Blumenthal’s odious views proved too extreme even for the Communists who scrubbed his appearance.</p>
<p>As expected, the narcissistic and paranoid Blumenthal blamed his repudiation on the vast Zionist network stretching from Sheldon Adelson to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. And as expected, Blumenthal and another one of his Brown Shirt associates entered the parliament building where they harassed and bullied Die Linke’s party leader, Gregor Gysi. Blumenthal’s antics earned him an immediate and deserved <a href="http://www.dw.de/israel-critics-visit-to-bundestag-turns-ugly-for-gysi/a-18059221"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lifetime ban</span></a> from the German federal parliament building.</p>
<p>It is rather ironic and strange that while German Communists have enough commonsense to recognize Blumenthal as nothing more than a purveyor of anti-Semitism, elements within the American Left and more disturbingly, within the highest levels of the Democratic Party, continue to entertain his views and provide him with a platform.</p>
<p>Despite his overt anti-Semitism, Blumenthal’s articles are still featured in the leftist blog Mondoweiss. Moreover, the New America Foundation (NAF), a Washington think tank headed by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former high-level Obama-administration official, provided Blumenthal with a <a href="http://www.brandeiscenter.com/images/uploads/articleuploads/marquardt-Bigman_research_paper.pdf"><span style="color: #0433ff;">platform</span></a> to peddle his book, <i>Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel</i>, a screed widely recognized as anti-Semitic (one prominent leftist writer noted that it could have made the <a href="http://forward.com/articles/186557/max-blumenthals-goliath-is-anti-israel-book-that-m/?p=all"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club</span></a>) and adopted by the world’s most virulent and notorious anti-Semites. It should be noted that the NAF receives funding from organizations like the Ford Foundation and the State Department. While Mondoweiss is recognized as a fringe partisan blog that routinely features guttural gibberish, the NAF is viewed as a prestigious think tank and its actions with respect to the promotion of Blumenthal’s book served to bolster world-wide anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>Just as troubling is Hillary Clinton’s association with Sidney Blumenthal, Max Blumenthal’s father as well as his defender. Sidney Blumenthal advised Clinton during her 2008 campaign and was <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/08/Dershowitz-Warns-Clintons-Blumenthal-s-a-Problem-for-2016"><span style="color: #0433ff;">rumored</span></a> to have nearly landed a job in the State Department following her appointment as Secretary of State. Sidney is also a <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/clinton-adviser-sid-blumenthals-new-cause-his-sons-anti-isra"><span style="color: #0433ff;">passionate defender</span></a> of his son’s anti-Semitic book, attacking with single-minded purpose those critics who found its repulsive contents to be beyond the pale.</p>
<p>Critics of those who warned about Barack Obama’s close associations with the likes of <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/the_saidkhalidiobama_connectio.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Rashid Khalidi</span></a>, Bill Ayers, Edward Said and Jeremiah Wright were dismissed as being paranoid. Jeffrey Goldberg went so far as to call those sounding the alarm “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2008/10/dear-jews-stop-the-obama-paranoia/8913/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">rumor-mongering, fever-headed Jewish conspiracists</span></a>.” Well, we now know that those rumor mongering conspiracists were <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ditching-israel-embracing-iran_817766.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">spot-on</span></a> in their analysis and, if anything, underestimated Obama’s disdain for America’s closest ally in the Middle East and one of its closest in the world.</p>
<p>Sidney Blumenthal has failed to disassociate himself from the views expressed by his son in his anti-Semitic screed but continues to maintain close relations with Clinton. Another high-level Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, has <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2556"><span style="color: #0433ff;">confirmed connections</span></a> to the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Those who warned us about Obama’s past radical ties and the negative influence they had on him were scorned and ridiculed but were ultimately proven right. Hopefully, the American electorate, deemed to be <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/13/pelosi-cited-obamacare-architect-in-push-for-law-now-claims-hasnt-heard-him/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">shallow and stupid</span></a> by the current administration, has learned its lesson and understands the ramifications of the old adage, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”</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>What Would Obama Do If Ebola Came from Israel?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/what-would-obama-do-if-ebola-came-from-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-would-obama-do-if-ebola-came-from-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:10:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[air]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ebola]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flight]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[plane]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242412</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Flight bans and double standards. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/la-fi-emirates-flights-ebola-20140804.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242413" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/la-fi-emirates-flights-ebola-20140804-450x300.jpg" alt="APphoto_Mideast Emirates Dubai Ebola" width="299" height="199" /></a>Pretend Ebola was emanating from Israel – can anyone doubt <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/obama-has-no-right-to-punish-israel/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">President Obama</span></a> would immediately ban all travelers from America? A few months ago, Israeli airports were shut down at the recommendation of the Obama Administration – hence rewarding terrorists.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Friday there is no consideration of a travel ban right now against Ebola – and there are currently no Ebola travel restrictions. With the first diagnosed case of Ebola in the United States there are still open borders to America.  The President, who remains so concerned about <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/all-of-jerusalem-belongs-to-the-state-of-israel/">Jews building homes in Jerusalem</a>,</span> continues to ignore bombs being built in Iran, and a deadly disease emanating from Africa.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">For an administration that has failed miserably on all international affairs, some thoughts to ponder:</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“We should stop accepting flights from countries that are Ebola stricken,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. “Even countries in Africa have cut back on or stopped accepting flights from countries with Ebola outbreaks.” Jindal further asked, “How exactly would stopping the entry of people potentially carrying the Ebola virus be counterproductive? This seems to be an obvious step to protect public health in the United States.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Obama administration, however, appears to be indifferent to the public&#8217;s concerns. <a href="http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-case-for-panic/">Matthew Continetti</a> notes, “Over the last few years the divergence between what the government promises and what it delivers, between what it says is happening or will happen and what actually is happening and does happen, between what it determines to be important and what the public wishes to be important—this gap has become abysmal, unavoidable, inescapable.” On the Ebola threat in particular, instead of sharing in the public&#8217;s worry, the government suggests that &#8220;recommending precautions that the administration says are unnecessary (regarding a disease with a mortality rate of over 50%) is grounds for some to accuse critics of trying to spread hysteria,” as <a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/10/05/are-administration-critics-panicking-over-ebola/">Rick Moran </a>observes.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“This could get beyond our control &#8230; Can you imagine if a whole ship full of our soldiers catch Ebola?” Sen. Rand Paul remarked. He later noted, “A wide open, porous border is not only a danger for national security purposes, it is also a danger for a world-wide pandemic.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Sen. Ted Cruz said it is imperative that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) take every precaution to prevent the spread of Ebola before the holiday season. He noted that several African countries—in addition to British Airways, Emirates Airlines, and Kenya Airways—have restricted, suspended, or banned flights to Ebola-stricken nations.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Cruz noted, “It is imperative that the FAA take every available precaution in preventing additional cases from arriving in the United States.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“Keeping the American people safe must be our nation’s top priority, and the White House should immediately ban travel from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to contain the spread of Ebola,” North Carolina GOP Senate candidate Thom Tillis stated.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One wonders what can be relied upon from this administration.</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>Iran&#8217;s Crackdown on Women</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/irans-crackdown-on-women/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=irans-crackdown-on-women</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2014 04:05:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Contraception]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[And the media's silence. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/iranian-women-dk.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/iranian-women-dk.jpg" alt="IRAN-WOMEN-DEMO" width="317" height="234" /></a>Recently, Majlis (Iranian parliament), which is dominated by hardliners<span style="color: #0433ff;">, has voted</span> to ban vasectomies, permanent kinds of contraception, and impose restriction on women&#8217;s fertility. In addition, the bill bans advertisements aimed at promoting birth control. Any doctor, or woman, who violates the ban will be punished and prosecuted according to the new Islamist bill.</p>
<p>Since its establishment, the Islamic Republic has significantly exercised “biopower” (a term coined by the historian Michel Foucault) in order to control the population and particularly subjugate women to achieve the regime&#8217;s Islamist, religious, ideological, political, and economic objectives. According to <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;ved=0CCwQFjAB&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2F78.158.56.101%2Farchive%2Flaw%2Ffiles%2Fdownloads%2F325%2F2088.126d6dc4.Paliwala.doc&amp;ei=mkn6U9jdPKmBiwL00oCACw&amp;usg=AFQjCNHWIwknXVcMp1VNXxjjcj1rTg3_QQ&amp;sig2=1hxq_883R0sReEaMcq1MEA&amp;bvm=bv.73612305,d.cGE"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Foucault</span></a>, biopower is defined in <i>The History of Sexuality as</i> &#8220;an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations.&#8221;</p>
<p>Under the new Islamist state, the Ayatollahs and ruling clerics utilized methods in order to control and exercise power over women to gradually take away their capacity to act in social affairs particularly by regulating their day to day activities, monitoring all their actions, as well as by having authority over their bodies.</p>
<p>For example, dress codes including (scarves, chador, etc) were imposed on women. Women could not wear what they desired out of the home. Women were encouraged to cover their bodies and dress more conservatively. And those who did not comply were laid off from work, fined, lashed, arrested, imprisoned, and attacked.</p>
<p>In addition, women’s bodies were predominantly defined by the Islamic Republic as a platform for satisfying their spouses. Women were banned from playing several sports.  Instead, being a housewife and submissive was encouraged. The control of women’s bodies and their day-to-day activities were used as a formidable venue to subjugate, dehumanize, and sway women’s capacity in life.</p>
<p>On the other hand, what are the underlying reasons for the new restriction on women’s fertility under the Islamic law of Iran?</p>
<p>The fundamental reasons are political, ideological and religion-driven. The whole process of passing a bill to impose restriction on women&#8217;s fertility began by one man’s plan: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  The Supreme Leader has the final say as well as the power to delineate general policies for the entire country after consultation with the Nation&#8217;s Exigency Council, according to <a href="http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/government/constitution-8.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">article 110</span></a> of the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>The Supreme Leader decided that he wanted the population of his country to increase from 75 million people to 150 million. Khamenei’s new doctrine was read out to the nationwide conference in the city of Qum, <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iran-supreme-leader-ayatollah-khamenei-population-family-519685"><span style="color: #0433ff;">pointing out</span></a> that “I believe that our country is not a country of 75 million people, our country [could be] a country of 150 million people&#8230; and even more… a young image is an essential and important issue for the country, and the countries which have faced aging population have overcome the issue in a difficult way. &#8221;</p>
<p>The message added, “We always wonder how life is going to be if we have four or five children; we should also think that if we have four or five children and if they are able to find jobs they will contribute to the development of the country.”  In addition, the Supreme Leader introduced a <a href="http://farsi.khamenei.ir/news-content?id=26440"><span style="color: #0433ff;">14-point plan</span></a> to increase the population.</p>
<p>The Iranian regime carried out the same policy in the 1980s, encouraging larger families and more children during the Iran-Iraq war. Iran’s population reached its peak during that time.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the new Islamist bill is aimed at pushing women in the Islamic Republic to be housewives and take traditional roles as mothers rather than participate in public political and social affairs. Currently, large numbers of Iranian women are highly educated and seeking more public functions in the society.</p>
<p>Across the country, billboards that promote less children have been replaced by <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/08/11/3469707/iran-birth-control-policy/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">mottos</span></a> such as “A single blossom is not spring” and “More children, better lives.” The Supreme Leader states rhetorically that doubling the number of the population will &#8220;<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/iranian-parliament-bans-vasectomies-bid-boost-birth-rate-124757397.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">strengthen national identity</span></a>&#8221; as well as counter &#8220;undesirable aspects of Western lifestyles.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nevertheless, politically speaking, the population of a country can be regarded as a defining character for the political strength of that government. The new bill will purportedly double the population of Shia Muslims, providing further manpower for the Islamic Republic and strengthening its political influence, national security.  The Iranian regime will be able to have mandatory military service and hire a considerable amount of young people in its army and militia groups such as Basij by offering them incentives such as educational fellowships, loans, etc.  From the Ayatollahs and ruling political figures in the Islamic Republic, this move will ensure their hold on power in the future.</p>
<p>However, many policies have unintended consequences as well.  This restriction on women might have a backlash. It is questionable whether educated Iranian women will accept going back and being confined in homes as mothers and housewives. Secondly, the increase in population might lead to a larger discontent and disaffected population, which would pose greater risks in the future in case protests against the Iranian regime erupt, as they did in 2009. Controlling a larger dissatisfied population poses more challenges.</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>One Cheer for the Schuette Decision</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/one-cheer-for-the-schuette-decision/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=one-cheer-for-the-schuette-decision</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/one-cheer-for-the-schuette-decision/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Apr 2014 04:56:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Affirmative Action]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Schuette Decision]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Supreme Court]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The devious methods universities use to ignore bans on racial preferences. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/scotusbuilding.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224239" alt="scotusbuilding" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/scotusbuilding-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>Many conservatives are applauding the recent Supreme Court </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Schuette</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> decision upholding the right of the citizens of Michigan to ban racial preferences. As Charles Krauthammer </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376512/let-people-decide-charles-krauthammer">writes</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, the 2003 </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Grutter</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> decision, which like </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Schuette</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> did not ban racial preferences altogether, was correct: “The people should decide. The people responded accordingly. Three years later, they crafted a referendum to abolish race consciousness in government action. It passed overwhelmingly, 58 percent to 42 percent. </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Schuette</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> completes the circle by respecting the constitutionality of that democratic decision.”</span></p>
<p>This approval of <i>Schuette</i>, however, ignores 2 problems. The first is that a state’s ban on racial preferences doesn’t end racial preferences; it just spurs universities to find more creative and subtle ways to take race into account. Second, it leaves in place the duplicitous, ideological, and incoherent doctrine of “diversity” that ever since the 1978 <i>Bakke </i>decision has been the “compelling state interest” justifying taking race or sex into account.</p>
<p>In November of 1996 the voters of California passed Proposition 209, the Civil Rights Initiative, which amended the state constitution to forbid the state from “discriminat[ing] against or grant[ing] preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” Yet despite the clear-cut legal prohibition, race-based preferences and policies live on in California higher education.</p>
<p>Take, for example, the process of hiring faculty in the California State University system. Despite the “end of affirmative action,” every hiring committee still must have an “affirmative action” representative, which after Proposition 209 was renamed the “Equal Employment Opportunity designee.” Despite the name change, the EEO designee performs the same function based on the same assumptions the voters supposedly rejected. The purpose of this representative is not to make sure the most qualified and suitable person is chosen for the position regardless of race, sex, or any factor forbidden by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The EEO designee can be from any department on campus, and so in most cases will not have much awareness of the qualifications required for the position. Yet despite this lack of knowledge, no hire can go forward without the EEO representative’s approving signature at every step of the process, in order to make sure no qualified minority candidate has been unjustly passed over. But by definition the only “qualification” that matters to the EEO designee will be race or sex.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Other race-based procedures in hiring are still in place. All the applicants in the pool are identified by race and sex, and this information is part of the hiring process. When finalists are invited for campus visits, their race and sex, and the race and sex of the hiring committee members, are identified and made part of the process as well. If “preferential treatment” based on race or sex has been presumably outlawed in California, why is this information still being gathered and made part of the hiring process in a state-funded institution? Moreover, informal pressure can be brought to bear by deans and provosts to encourage taking race and sex into account. For example, a position can be approved, or an additional position granted, with the verbal proviso that a minority candidate is the finalist.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Nor has Proposition 209 prevented race from being factored into admission decisions. Any applicant with a Hispanic surname – no matter how privileged, or even if he is a Caucasian from Spain or Latin America – will be assumed to add “diversity” to the campus community and given an advantage over a better qualified white applicant. Universities also can add a proxy for race such as “overcoming challenges or difficulties” or “obstacles overcome,” code for experiencing racism and prejudice, and weight those subjective factors enough to overcome any deficiencies in grades or test scores. This sort of “holistic score” is already in use, and some research indicates that it functions as a substitute for race. Richard Sander’s study of UCLA’s admissions procedures found that a higher percentage of blacks and Latinos are accepted than are whites and Asians with the same “holistic score.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The second, and more pernicious problem, is the idea itself of “diversity,” the conceptual sleight-of-hand that allowed Justice Powell in the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Bakke</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> case to rationalize the continuing use of race in college admissions even as he was compelled to acknowledge that most affirmative action programs at that time were simply naked quota systems in clear violation of the Civil Rights Act. Powell argued that only a “compelling state interest” could justify exceptions to the Civil Rights Act’s ban on discrimination by race, and that “diversity” and its presumed benefits to higher education was indeed such a “state interest.” </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Schuette</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> has left this dubious rationale in place, thus justifying the sort of trickery outlined above. But this “diversity” is a dishonest and incoherent concept, masking an ideologically skewed interpretation of history in which the wicked white man has oppressed and excluded the dark-skinned “other.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Proponents of diversity hide this racialist and ideologically loaded idea by using the old-fashioned bait-and-switch. Diversity, they tell us, is just about acknowledging and respecting the ethnic and cultural differences that make up the wonderful mosaic of American society, and ensuring that the university campus represents and benefits from that diversity. But the call to respect the various cultures comprising American identity is nothing new, and existed long before “diversity” became university dogma. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">At the beginning of this century, for example, the vast influx of immigrants from Slavic countries and the southern Mediterranean sharpened the debate between what was then called “pluralism” and “assimilation.” Nor were melting-pot assimilationists the only point of view heard. Pluralists at that time made the same argument the diversicrats make today, as can be seen in this statement from 1937: “No one culture contains all favorable elements, but each group that makes up the total American population has unique values, and . . . the nation will be richer and finer in its cultural make-up if it, the country, conserves the best that each group has brought.” The writer goes on to argue that “the fundamentals of their heritages be preserved for generations.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">For most of this century, then, there were those who argued against completely assimilating away cultural differences that they recognized contributed to American identity. But if the call to acknowledge and “respect cultural differences” is nothing new, then what really characterizes current “diversity” doctrine? It is the identity-politics melodrama of white Western oppression and intrinsic racism, which explains the various contradictions and incoherent assumptions of diversity as it is actually practiced.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Real diversity is enormous in its variety, encompassing scores of ethnic groups, economic strata, regions, political views, and religions, to name a few, not to mention the various possible combinations of these categories. A poor, Catholic, Mexican-Indian immigrant farm worker from Oaxaca, for example, has a very different identity from that of a middle-class, secularized, suburban 3</span><sup style="line-height: 1.5em;">rd</sup><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">-generation mestizo Mexican-American from Menlo Park. The fact that their surnames are “Hispanic” doesn’t tell us anything about what each can contribute to campus “diversity.” The middle-class Mexican-American will probably have more in common with a middle-class white kid than with the Indian immigrant. Yet in the university, the second “Hispanic” applicant will be courted and presumed to offer more “diversity” than a poor rural white kid who resembles in many respects the Indian farm worker.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Here is the illogic of most universities’ idea of “diversity”: it functions in terms of stereotypical, simplistic race-based categories that ignore all the other ways in which people are diverse, all the other benefits of those particular “diversities” that could enrich the university. Certainly most universities today, dogmatically secular and philosophically materialist as they are, could use the diversity that more religious believers could bring. And given that faculties overwhelmingly comprise progressives and leftists, a concern with genuine diversity would demand active recruitment of conservative students and faculties.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Moreover, of all the various categories of diversity, whether ethnic, economic, political, or religious, most universities are really interested in only a few, those minorities that the Civil Rights industry recognizes: Hispanic, black, and occasionally any Third-World “person of color” (the disproportionate academic success of Asians has banished them from this select group). Less politically connected groups, however, simply don’t count. Armenians were subjected to genocide in Turkey and discriminated against in California for decades, but they’re not considered to be as “diverse” as a black dentist’s son who grew up in the suburbs. Many other ethnic groups, such as Portuguese, Italians, Russians, Sikhs, or Poles, are lumped together into the meaningless category “white” and thus are deemed irrelevant for increasing campus diversity. Finally, economic class doesn’t count when it comes to campus diversity. Poor minority students, and poor white students, for that matter, are underrepresented on university campuses––at the 200 most selective universities, only 5% come from the bottom 25% of the income scale. Indeed, 92% of blacks at elite colleges are from the top 50%.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This brings us to the real basis for institutionalizing diversity: not to give voice to the actual variety of Americans in terms of culture, religion, politics, economic status, or region, and to enrich college campuses with that genuine diversity, but to privilege the anointed victims of white oppression, reinforce progressive ideology, and pressure governments and institutions to make reparations for that history. This ideology in turn serves the race industry and its parent company the Democratic Party, which implements policies that benefit that industry and big government bureaucracies, at the same time creating political clients for both.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“Letting the people choose,” as </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Schuette </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">does, will not prevent universities from using race, or remove the rationale for discrimination that serves the ideology corrupting American universities. And it does not address the Supreme Court’s inconsistent commitment to letting the people choose. The people of California chose traditional marriage when they passed Proposition 8, yet last year the Supreme Court by one vote refused to defend the right of the people to choose by invoking the litigants’ lack of standing (see Anthony Kennedy’s </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-144_8ok0.pdf">dissent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">). Given these problems, one cheer is all the approval the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Schuette</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> decision deserves.</span></p>
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		<title>Michigan and the Backlash Against Race Preferences</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/michigan-and-the-backlash-against-race-preferences/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=michigan-and-the-backlash-against-race-preferences</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Apr 2014 04:56:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Bans on affirmative action deemed constitutional as more states follow suit. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/shutterstock_126388292.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-223965" alt="shutterstock_126388292" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/shutterstock_126388292.jpg" width="320" height="210" /></a>In a 6-2 ruling reached yesterday, the United States Supreme Court </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/us/supreme-court-michigan-affirmative-action-ban.html?_r=0">upheld</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Michigan’s ban on the use of race as a factor for determining college admissions. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested the ban can also be extended to other arenas. &#8220;There is no authority in the federal constitution or in the precedents for the judiciary to set aside Michigan laws that commit to the voters the determination whether racial preferences may be considered in governmental decisions, in particular with respect to school admissions,&#8221; he wrote. Kennedy further clarified the Court’s intent. &#8220;This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved,” he explained. &#8220;It is about who may resolve it.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Michigan voters resolved it in 2006 when </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/supreme-court-upholds-michigan-affirmative-action-ban-n86626">58 percent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of the electorate approved </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.diversity.umich.edu/legal/prop2amend.php">Proposal 2</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. It </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.diversity.umich.edu/legal/prop2faq.php">amended</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the Michigan Constitution to &#8220;ban public institutions from discriminating against or giving preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public education, public employment, or public contracting.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The move was a response to a 2003 Supreme Court ruling in </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-241.ZS.html">Grutter v. Bollinger</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. In a 5-4 decision, the Court upheld the use of race as one of many factors used to determine admission to the University of Michigan (U-M) Law School as a means of ensuring educational diversity. Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O&#8217;Connor </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://chronicle.com/article/Sandra-Day-OConnor-Revisit/63523/">indicated</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that the decision had a likely time limit attached to it. &#8220;We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today,” she contended. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The people of Michigan preferred not to wait that long. Nonetheless, the will of the electorate was thwarted in 2012 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati. In an 8-7 vote, the Court </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/12a0386p-06.pdf">ruled</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that Proposal 2 violated the United States Constitution’s equal protection clause, using the reliably leftist argument that the elimination of racial preferences disproportionately affects those who would have been the beneficiaries of those preferences. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Writing for the majority, Judge R. Guy Cole Jr. proffered that specious argument. “A student seeking to have her family’s alumni connections considered in her application to one of Michigan’s esteemed public universities could do one of four things to have the school adopt a legacy-conscious admissions policy: she could lobby the admissions committee, she could petition the leadership of the university, she could seek to influence the school’s governing board, or, as a measure of last resort, she could initiate a statewide campaign to alter the state’s Constitution. The same cannot be said for a black student seeking the adoption of a constitutionally permissible race-conscious admissions policy. That student could do only one thing to effect change: she could attempt to amend the Michigan Constitution&#8211;a lengthy, expensive and arduous process&#8211;to repeal the consequences of Proposal 2.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The disingenuousness of this reasoning is stark. Both students would have to engage in arduous efforts to get the school to adopt a particular policy, including equal efforts to effect a change in the state constitution. But because a legacy-conscious admissions policy offered additional avenues of </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">possible</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> redress, such alternatives constituted discrimination.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Dissenting Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton said his colleagues got it exactly backward. “A state does not deny equal treatment by mandating it,” he said, further contending  that the ruling “transforms a potential virtue of affirmative action into a vice. If there is one feature of affirmative action programs that favors their constitutionality, it is that they grow out of the democratic process.”  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made her disdain for the democratic process quite clear, insisting that &#8220;without checks, democratically approved legislation can oppress minority groups.” “The Constitution does not protect racial minorities from political defeat,” she continued. “But neither does it give the majority free rein to erect selective barriers against racial minorities.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sotomayor is certainly right that democratically approved legislation </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">can</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> oppress minority groups, but the notion that the elimination of racial </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">preferences</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> constitutes oppression is absurd. And the only &#8220;selective barrier” erected here was the one that put </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">non</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">-minority students in a disadvantaged position with regard to college admissions. One can work hard to achieve better grades and test scores, or participate in any number of activities to enhance one’s chances of being accepted to a college. One can do nothing to alter one’s ethnicity.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In fact the Supreme Court recognized that reality on the same day they ruled on Grutter v. Bollinger.  In </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-516.ZS.html">Gratz v. Bollinger,</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the Court ruled 6-3 that the University of Michigan’s undergraduate policy, whereby “underrepresented” ethnic groups automatically received 20 points towards an admission score in which 100 points </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/legal/gratz/gratsumj.html">guaranteed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> admission (compared to 12 points for a prefect SAT score) was unconstitutional. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://quizlet.com/39391386/constitutional-law-quiz-5-study-guide-flash-cards/">explained</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that &#8220;predetermined point allocations&#8221; awarding 20 points to underrepresented minorities &#8220;ensures that the diversity contributions of applicants cannot be individually assessed,” thereby rendering the law unconstitutional.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.freep.com/article/20140422/NEWS06/304220075/Supreme-Court-upholds-Michigan-s-ban-on-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions">applauded</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> yesterday&#8217;s ruling. “The U.S. Supreme Court made the right call today,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Our state constitution requires equal treatment in college admissions, because it is fundamentally wrong to treat people differently based on the color of their skin. A majority of Michigan voters embraced the ideal of equal treatment in 2006, and today their decision was affirmed.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">George Washington, an attorney for the radical leftist group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), offered the predictable over-the-top response. “This is a terrible ruling,” he contended. &#8220;It gives the white majority the right to deny black and Latinos the right to higher education. It is today’s Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. We will fight it by every means possible. The Supreme Court has made it clear they want to repeal the gains of the Civil Rights movement.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">His sentiments were undoubtedly shared by the Black Student Union. They have condemned the low level of minority enrollment at U-M, and earlier this year they told college officials they had seven days to meet a list of seven demands addressing lack of diversity and inclusion at the University or “physical actions” will be taken on campus. One of those demands included an increase of black student representation on campus from the current 4.6 percent to 10 percent.</span></p>
<p>University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman and admissions director Ted Spencer were undoubtedly <a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/04/post_16.html">disappointed</a> as well. Both have denounced the affirmative action ban, contending the school cannot achieve a fully diverse student body as a result. &#8220;It&#8217;s impossible,&#8221; Spencer said in a recent interview, &#8220;to achieve diversity on a regular basis if race cannot be used as one of many factors.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Philip Pucillo, a lecturer at Michigan State University’s law school and a constitutional law scholar, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.freep.com/article/20140422/NEWS06/304220075/Supreme-Court-upholds-Michigan-s-ban-on-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions">cut through</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the self-inflicted hysteria. “The court isn’t saying anything about whether a public university can have a race-related admissions process in this ruling, rather they are saying that there is nothing wrong with the voters of a state saying they can’t have it,” he explained.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Additional parts of Justice Kennedy’s comments clarified exactly that. &#8220;Were the Court to rule that the question addressed by Michigan voters is too sensitive or complex to be within the grasp of the electorate; or that the policies at issue remain too delicate to be resolved save by university officials or faculties, acting at some remove from immediate public scrutiny and control; or that these matters are so arcane that the electorate’s power must be limited because the people cannot prudently exercise that power even after a full debate, that holding would be an unprecedented restriction on the exercise of a fundamental right held not just by one person but by all in common,” he wrote. “It is the right to speak and debate and learn and then, as a matter of political will, to act through a lawful electoral process.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Left-leaning Justice Stephen Breyer made a similar argument. “I continue to believe that the Constitution permits, though it does not require, the use of the kind of race-conscious programs that are now barred by the Michigan Constitution. … But the Constitution foresees the ballot box, not the courts, as the normal instrument for resolving differences and debates about the merits of these programs,” he wrote.</span></p>
<p>The ruling will impact more than just Michigan. In California, <a href="http://www.theaggie.org/2014/04/18/legislation-to-allow-affirmative-action-in-california-colleges-halted/">backlash</a> largely from Asian community groups has forced legislators to shelve a bill that would have allowed race, gender and ethnicity to be considered for admissions in that state’s public universities. Six other states, <a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20140422/NEWS06/304220075/Supreme-Court-upholds-Michigan-s-ban-on-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions">including</a> Florida, Washington, Arizona, Nebraska, Oklahoma and New Hampshire already have bans similar to the one Michigan enacted. More states could follow.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As the number of states departing from race politics orthodoxy grows, and as successful challenges to racial preferences at the high court also increase in number, the left&#8217;s stranglehold on race relations is becoming weaker and weaker. The rejection of race-based decision-making in such areas as employment and admissions has found wider acceptance among the population and in the halls of government; the sentiment is perhaps stronger than it has been in decades. These trends give hope that the era of race hatred and balkanization is approaching its end. </span></p>
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		<title>What is Exceptional About America? &#8212; on The Glazov Gang</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/robert-spencer-and-pamela-geller-banned-from-the-u-k-on-the-glazov-gang/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=robert-spencer-and-pamela-geller-banned-from-the-u-k-on-the-glazov-gang</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Jul 2013 04:00:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov Productions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Glazov Gang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[freedom fighters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pamela Geller]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[robert spencer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UK]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=195005</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What Obama will never say.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/am.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-195704" alt="am" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/am.jpg" width="192" height="136" /></a>This week&#8217;s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by <strong>Ann-Marie Murrell</strong>, the National Director of <a href="http://politichicks.tv/">PolitiChicks.tv</a>, <strong>Nick Adams, </strong><a href="http://www.nickadamsinamerica.com/">Australia&#8217;s de Tocqueville</a> and <strong>Morgan Brittany, </strong>a Conservative TV and Movie star.</p>
<p>The Gang gathered to discuss <em>What is Exceptional About America? </em>The discussion occurred in <strong>Part I</strong> and focused on <em><a href="http://www.nickadamsinamerica.com/">Nick Adams&#8217; romance</a></em> with what he considers to be the greatest country in the world. The dialogue was followed by a spotlight on <em>Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller Banned from the U.K.. </em>The guests wondered why Jihad supporters are welcome in Britain &#8212; and why freedom fighters and truth tellers are not.</p>
<p><strong>Part II</strong> put a spotlight on <em>Obama&#8217;s Brotherhood Odyssey</em>. The discussion shed disturbing light on why Obama is sending U.S. troops to Egypt to prop up the Muslim Brotherhood and to help suffocate the democratic opposition.</p>
<p>See below to watch both parts of the two-part series:</p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Z4UYpXRXrgw" height="325" width="425" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/DtXKoEh7pko" height="325" width="425" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <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">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Britain Bans Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer — Welcomes Che Guevara’s Daughter</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/humberto-fontova/britain-bans-pamela-geller-and-robert-spencer-welcomes-che-guevaras-daughter/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=britain-bans-pamela-geller-and-robert-spencer-welcomes-che-guevaras-daughter</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Jul 2013 04:12:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aleida Guevara]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Che Guevera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pamela Geller]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[robert spencer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=194983</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Opponents of jihad are barred, but not a woman who promotes a murderous human rights abuser. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Aleida-Guevara.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-195068" alt="Aleida-Guevara" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Aleida-Guevara.jpg" width="238" height="183" /></a>After slamming the door on American radio star Michael Savage four years ago the British government now slams it on American authors Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. The British Home Secretary banned Savage for “extremist views and fostering hatred.”</p>
<p>“The UK should never become a stage for inflammatory speakers who promote hate,” is how the British Home office explains its recent barring of Geller and Spencer.</p>
<p>Yet for the past five years (if not longer) Britain has opened her arms to visits by Che Guevara’s daughter, Aleida. Che’s daughter visits Britain to promote, in her own words: “my father’s ideals, his concerns, and his ambitions. I believe that my father is a banner to the world.” Her last visit was in September 2012 where among other “promotions of her father’s ideals” she demonstrated in front of the U.S. embassy.</p>
<p>In an interview with Britain’s <em>The Guardian</em> Aleida Guevara boasted: “I want to be like Che and fight until final victory, then you feel elated. It is preferable to sink in the sea than to betray the glory that once lived!”</p>
<p>And what was this glory? Well, her father was 2<sup>nd</sup> in command of a regime that murdered more Cubans in its first three years in power than Hitler’s murdered Germans during its first six, jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin during the Great Terror, and came the closest of anyone in history to starting a worldwide nuclear war. In the above process of “glory” Aleida’s father helped convert a nation with a higher per-capita income than half of Europe and a huge influx of immigrants into one that repels Haitians and boasts the highest suicide rate in the Hemisphere.</p>
<p>Let’s have a further look at Aleida’s father’s “ideals.” And let’s keep uppermost in mind that what got Geller, Savage and Spencer banned from Britain was their purported “fostering of extremist views and hatred.”</p>
<p>“Hatred is the central element of our struggle!” raved <a href="http://www.hfontova.com/che.html">Che Guevara in his</a> 1966 Message to the Tricontinental Conference in Havana. “Hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him a violent and cold-blooded killing machine…We reject any peaceful approach. Violence is inevitable. To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow… These hyenas [Americans] are fit only for extermination. We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm! The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”</p>
<p>“My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood.” Aleida’s father had raved as early as his &#8220;Motorcycle Diaries&#8221; (though this passage was somehow omitted from Robert Redford’s heartwarming movie), “Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any <i>vencido</i> that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!”</p>
<p><i>Vencido</i>, by the way, translates into English as “defeated” or “surrendered.” And Aleida’s father made good on his boast. The “acrid odor of gunpowder and blood” rarely reached Che Guevara’s nostril from actual combat. It always came from the close-range murder of bound, gagged or blindfolded men (and boys). “The Black Book of Communism,” written by French scholars and published in English by Harvard University Press (neither an outpost of the vast right-wing conspiracy), estimates 16,000 firing squad executions in Cuba by the end of the 1960s, the equivalent, given the relative populations, of over a million executions in the U.S.</p>
<p>Aleida’s father delighted in delivering the coup de grâce to dozens of these victims. When office work (signing execution warrants) tore him away from his beloved execution pits, Che slaked his blood-thirst by having a special window installed in his office so he could watch his busy and beloved firing squads at work, beaming at the spectacle.</p>
<p>Among Aleida Guevara’s father’s favorite pastimes was taunting his murder victims&#8217; families. Che Guevara was famous for driving the mothers of his young murder victims to near suicidal despair. He’d often give the mothers an audience in his office. Then as they pleaded for their sons’ life Che would often grab his telephone and bark the orders to execute her son that very night. Often the mother was privileged to hear the firing squad volley that murdered her son, many of them in their teens.</p>
<p>&#8220;When you saw the beaming look on Che&#8217;s face as the victims were tied to the stake and blasted apart by his firing squads,&#8221; said former Cuban political prisoner Roberto Martin-Perez, to this writer, &#8220;you saw there was something seriously, <i>seriously</i> wrong <a href="http://www.hfontova.com/che.html">with Che Guevara.&#8221;</a></p>
<p>Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, it should be pointed out, were scheduled to speak at a London event condemning the murder of an innocent and defenseless Briton by a murderous ideologue.</p>
<p>Aledia Guevara speaks in London to promote a cowardly murderous ideologue, her father.</p>
<p>But the British government gives no indication that in the process of “promoting her fathers’ ideals” of glory Aleida Guevara presented the slightest offense to Britain’s “standards and values.”</p>
<p>Alas, when Aleida’s father finally found himself up against armed and determined enemies in Bolivia, all his bloodthirsty bluster vanished in a “poof.” “Don’t shoot!” he whimpered to his U.S.-trained Bolivian captors as he dropped his fully loaded weapons. “I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”</p>
<p>His Bolivian captors viewed the matter differently. In fact they adopted a policy that has since become a favorite among Americans who encounter (so-called) endangered species on their property: “Shoot, shovel and shut up.” Justice has never been better served.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Melanie Phillips&#8217; Friendly Fire</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/melanie-philips-friendly-fire/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=melanie-philips-friendly-fire</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/melanie-philips-friendly-fire/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Jun 2013 19:07:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[betray]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Geller]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jihadists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philips]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=194891</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Phillips betrays her allies when the chips are down -- and sends an encouraging message to the enemies of the United Kingdom.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Melanie.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-194893" alt="Melanie" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Melanie-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>Sign the petition asking that we be allowed into the UK <a href="http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/allow-pamela-geller-and-robert-spencer-to-speak-in-uk.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>Here is the second piece today (the first is <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/06/-theresa-mays-ban-on.html" target="_blank">here</a>) from an &#8220;ally&#8221; rushing to our defense while hastening to assure the world that she is not at all like <em>us</em> &#8212; a position that is self-defeating no matter what one may think of <em>us</em>.</p>
<p>&#8220;The British government&#8217;s jihad against free thought,&#8221; by <a href="http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-british-governments-jihad-against-free-thought" target="_blank">Melanie Phillips</a>, June 27:</p>
<blockquote><p>By banning from the country as extremists the American anti-jihadis Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the Home Secretary Teresa May has not only made herself look ridiculous but has sent the enemies of the United Kingdom the message that they have it on the run.</p></blockquote>
<p>Indeed. But here comes the kid-gloves caveat:</p>
<blockquote><p>I do not support the approach taken by either Geller or Spencer to the problem of Islamic extremism. Both have endorsed groups such as the EDL and others which at best do not deal with the thuggish elements in their ranks and at worst are truly racist or xenophobic.</p></blockquote>
<p>Note in the first place that the letter from the Home Office barring me from the UK said nothing at all about the EDL or &#8220;others.&#8221; (What others?) It quoted a statement of mine that Islam has a doctrine mandating warfare against unbelievers &#8212; a statement that is demonstrably true. So Melanie Phillips&#8217; bringing up the EDL here is completely gratuitous, designed to distinguish her work from ours, and to show the British elites that she is not tainted with our taint. (Be sure to see Pamela Geller&#8217;s response <a href="http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/06/with-friends-like-melanie-phillips-who-needs-enemies-articulate-and-useless-phillips-writes-i-do-not-support-the-appro.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)</p>
<p>In fact, the EDL has nothing racist or xenophobic about its platform, and removes such individuals from its ranks when they&#8217;re found. It is only &#8220;thuggish&#8221; in that its members fight back when attacked by Islamic supremacists. Melanie Phillips thinks that the EDL is racist and xenophobic because she has seen a thousand media reports insisting that it is. As someone who has been lied about in the same mainstream media, she ought to be a bit more skeptical of what they report. The people who claim that the EDL are racist and xenophobic are primarily the foes of the counter-jihad movement in general. I&#8217;ve seen how they lie about me; why should I believe them about the EDL? Melanie Phillips has seen how they lie about her; why should <em>she</em> believe them about the EDL?</p>
<p>Her fastidious distinguishing of herself from those among the foes of jihad and Islamic supremacism to which she objects will not win her a pass. Every last foe of jihad gets the same treatment. Phillips&#8217; fundamental error is to think that if she distances herself from the EDL (and those shadowy &#8220;others&#8221;), Pamela Geller, and me, that the Leftists and Islamic supremacists won&#8217;t direct their fury on her, and subject her to the same campaign of smears and defamation to which they have subjected us. But they will. There are plenty of foes of &#8220;Islamic extremism&#8221; who think that if they utter nonsense about &#8220;moderate Islam&#8221; and &#8220;hijacking of religion,&#8221; that they will outflank the politically correct narrative. They don&#8217;t realize that the purveyors of political correctness really are fascist authoritarians &#8212; that is not just Spencer&#8217;s rhetorical flourish. They will give Melanie Phillips no quarter, no matter how much she concedes to them. And the more she does concede to them, the more she plays their game, the more she allows them to set the terms of the debate and define the parameters of the narrative, the more she empowers them, and sends the enemies of the United Kingdom the message that they have it on the run. That&#8217;s the fundamental problem with her friendly fire.</p>
<blockquote><p>The result has been a serious blow to the credibility of these two writers, with particular damage being done to Spencer whose scholarship in itself is scrupulous. It has also split the defence against Islamic extremism, and handed a potent propaganda weapon to those who seek falsely to portray as bigoted extremists all who are engaged in the defence of the west against the Islamic jihad.</p></blockquote>
<p>If anyone has &#8220;split the defence against Islamic extremism,&#8221; it is those such as Melanie Phillips and The Commentator who are careful to attack foes of &#8220;Islamic extremism&#8221; even while defending them. And the rest of this is outstandingly naive: the foes of freedom were portraying &#8220;all who are engaged in the defence of the west against the Islamic jihad&#8221; as &#8220;bigoted extremists&#8221; long before the EDL existed. What she doesn&#8217;t seem to understand is the game the Left and Islamic supremacists play: they pick a target, defame it, smear it, and demonize it, until finally it is completely marginalized. They demand that freedom fighters denounce and distance themselves from the targeted individual. Melanie Phillips is playing along with this game with alacrity. But no one of any position except their own will ultimately be acceptable them. They will just move on from the EDL to the next target, and demonize it as well, until the remaining foes of jihad denounce and distance themselves from the new target as well. Then they will pick another foe of jihad and do the same thing, until there is no one left. The worst thing foes of jihad could do in the face of this game is play it, and allow some individual or group to be destroyed on the basis of unsubstantiated claims and Leftist propaganda. But Melanie Phillips just keeps playing along.</p>
<blockquote><p>Nevertheless, the decision to ban this duo from Britain is unjustified, oppressive and comes perilously close to lining up the British government alongside those who wish to silence defenders of the west against the jihad, making a total mockery of Britain’s understanding of just who presents a danger to the state.</p></blockquote>
<p>Nevertheless!</p>
<blockquote><p>Neither Geller nor Spencer remotely presents such a danger. They intended to come to Britain to join an EDL rally in Woolwich, in the wake of the barbaric murder there of Drummer Lee Rigby by two Islamists last month.Personally, I believe the EDL is not a respectable platform to join. Whether or not its rally is itself a threat to public order is, however, another issue. As far as is known, it is not being banned. It is only Geller and Spencer who have been banned from the country on the grounds that their presence is ‘not conducive to the public good’. The implication is that they will incite violence or disorder. But all the two of them do is criticise Islam, condemn jihadis and warn against the west’s failure to take seriously their machinations.</p></blockquote>
<p>&#8220;Personally, I believe the EDL is not a respectable platform to join.&#8221; I am reminded of a time when I <em>was</em> in London, several years ago, and witnessed an uncomfortable scene in which a prominent English writer dressed down some EDL members with a cold fury. His accent was posh, theirs were not, and as he upbraided them it became increasingly clear that he was outraged at their insolence &#8212; that these lower class lads would dare to approach him and speak with him as if he were an equal. The impression I got then has been reinforced many times since then: that the foes of jihad in Britain often oppose the EDL for the unspoken reason that it is made up of people from a lower social class, and people of lower social classes simply do not lead acceptable movements. Years ago I knew an Englishman who had emigrated to the U.S., he told me, because Britain was such a class society that there was a certain level beyond which he could not rise, no matter what his accomplishments and abilities. British class distinctions are, I believe, behind much of the sniffing at the EDL, and readiness to accept Leftist/Islamic supremacist propaganda about it on the part of people who would otherwise reject that propaganda.</p>
<p>But I am an American. We don&#8217;t have social classes here. Anyone who works for the freedom of speech and equality of rights of all people, and rejects the genuine thuggishness and authoritarianism of the Left and its Islamic supremacist allies, is A-OK with me.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <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">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
</div>
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		<title>Britain Embraces Jihad Terror</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/britain-bans-freedom-fighters/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=britain-bans-freedom-fighters</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/britain-bans-freedom-fighters/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Jun 2013 04:55:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pamela Geller]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[robert spencer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.K.]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=194663</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Jihad hate preachers welcome; counter-jihadists, no.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/spencer-geller.gif"><img class=" wp-image-194682 alignleft" alt="spencer-geller" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/spencer-geller.gif" width="240" height="187" /></a>Wednesday morning I received an official letter from the British Home Office, notifying me that I would not be allowed to enter the country on the grounds that “your presence here is not conducive to the public good.” My colleague Pamela Geller received a similar letter. We had planned to lay a wreath at a memorial to British soldier Lee Rigby, who was beheaded by Islamic jihadists on a Woolwich street on May 22. But it is not conducive to the public good in Britain to oppose jihad violence and Islamic supremacism.</p>
<p>For that is why the ban came down. The Home Office’s letter to me said:</p>
<p>You are reported to have stated the following:</p>
<blockquote><p>[Islam] is a religion and is a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose for establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society because media and general government unwillingness to face the sources of Islamic terrorism these things remain largely unknown.</p></blockquote>
<p>I said no such thing, of course. I generally speak and write in coherent English. But the point is clear enough. I certainly have pointed out that Islam mandates warfare against unbelievers. This is not really a controversial point to anyone who has studied Islam at all. One man who has done so <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2006/12/did-cair-founder-say-islam-to-rule-america.html">has said</a> that “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”</p>
<p>What venomous Islamophobe said that? Omar Ahmad, cofounder of the “civil rights” organization known as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Another notorious hatemonger explained that “the Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God&#8217;s law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world&#8230;.The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state.” That Islamophobe was Majid Khadduri, an Iraqi scholar of Islamic law of international renown.</p>
<p>Yet another anti-Muslim bigot was Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the faculty of Shari&#8217;ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad. In his 1994 book <i>The Methodology of Ijtihad</i>, he quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: &#8220;Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book&#8230;is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.&#8221; Nyazee concludes: &#8220;This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation&#8221; of non-Muslims.</p>
<p>A Shafi&#8217;i manual of Islamic law endorsed by the most prestigious institution in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, says that the leader of the Muslims &#8220;makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians&#8230;until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax,&#8221; and cites Qur’an 9:29 in support of this idea: &#8220;Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day and who forbid not what Allah and His messenger have forbidden-who do not practice the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book-until they pay the poll tax out of hand and are humbled.&#8221; (<i>&#8216;Umdat al-Salik</i> o9.8)</p>
<p>Oh, the Islamophobia! How did it penetrate even to the hallowed halls of al-Azhar? How did all these Islamic scholars get the hateful idea that Islam teaches warfare and subjugation, which the British Home Secretary knows is an idea not conducive to the public good?</p>
<p>Ultimately, it’s unclear how all these (and many other) venerable authorities on Islam came to misunderstand it in such an Islamophobic way, but in any case, it is a good thing Home Secretary Theresa May is keeping all this Islamophobia and hatred out of Britain. Britons will not be subjected to hateful misrepresentations of Islam like this spectacularly noxious bit of Islamophobia:</p>
<blockquote><p>Devotion to jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls, and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer. Allah said that if a man fights the infidels, the infidels will be unable to prepare to fight.</p></blockquote>
<p>You may be wondering if it was I or Pamela Geller who penned that hate-filled misrepresentation of the beautiful Islamic doctrine of jihad. But in fact, it was neither one of us. It was <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Saudi-clerics-use-social-media-to-spread-hate">Mohammed al-Arefe</a>, a Saudi Muslim cleric who believes that shedding Infidel blood and smashing Infidel skulls is pleasing to his god.</p>
<p>Apparently believing that such violence is an Islamic imperative is just fine with the British Home Office as long as one does so approvingly: Mohammed al-Arefe was <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1106292/preacher-who-backs-wife-beatings-let-into-uk">just last week admitted into Britain</a> without any difficulty. If one believes that such violence is an Islamic imperative but opposes it, however, watch out: that is not conducive to the public good.</p>
<p>Thus Britain has not actually banned the truth about Islam. You <i>can</i> get into Britain if you believe that Islam mandates warfare against unbelievers. You just have to think warfare against unbelievers is a fine thing to pursue.</p>
<p>And thus the foremost lesson arising from the banning of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer is this: the unbelievers in Britain don’t stand a chance.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Seven Reasons Why Women-in-Combat Diversity Will Degrade Tough Training Standards</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/center-for-military-readiness/seven-reasons-why-women-in-combat-diversity-will-degrade-tough-training-standards/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=seven-reasons-why-women-in-combat-diversity-will-degrade-tough-training-standards</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Feb 2013 04:53:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Center for Military Readiness]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[How the feminist assault on the military will make men and women in the field less safe. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/center-for-military-readiness/seven-reasons-why-women-in-combat-diversity-will-degrade-tough-training-standards/women_armor_group/" rel="attachment wp-att-176063"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-176063" title="women_armor_group" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/women_armor_group.jpg" alt="" width="299" height="237" /></a></em><em>Reprinted with permission from the <a href="http://www.cmrlink.org/content/home/36488/seven_reasons_why_women_in_combat_diversity_will_degrade_tough_training_standards">Center for Military Readiness</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>To read David Horowitz&#8217;s article, &#8220;The Feminist Assault on the Military,&#8221; <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/the-feminist-assault-on-the-military/">click here</a>.</em></p>
<p><strong><em>Gen. Dempsey Says He Will Question Standards That Are &#8220;Too High&#8221; </em></strong></p>
<p>The Department of Defense is protesting (too much) that when military women are allowed (actually, ordered) into direct ground combat battalions, they will be held to the same standards men must meet today.  This claim is not compatible with another major social goal of the Defense Department, what former Joint Chiefs Chairman <strong>Adm. Mike Mullen</strong> used to call <a href="http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=24463"><strong>&#8220;diversity as a strategic imperative.&#8221;</strong></a></p>
<p>There are seven major reasons why the <strong>Obama Administration</strong>, including compliant members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are being less than candid about the consequences of policies that lame-duck Defense Secretary <strong>Leon Panetta</strong> ordered on January 24.</p>
<p><strong>1.<em>  Pentagon Feminists Will Not Accept Men&#8217;s High Standards</em></strong></p>
<p>The tipoff came during the January 24 Pentagon news conference conducted by Panetta and<strong> Army</strong> <strong>Gen. Martin Dempsey, </strong>Chairman of<strong> </strong>the<strong> </strong>Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Gen. Dempsey said that if <em>&#8220;a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn&#8217;t make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain&#8230;why is it that high?  Does it really have to be that high?&#8221;  </em>Since the stated goal is &#8220;set women up for success,&#8221; the answer will be &#8220;No.&#8221;</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5NvhD-KbdCo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>It does not matter what Pentagon officials and women-in-combat activists are promising now.  For the following reasons, incremental pressures to assign women to fighting infantry battalions eventually will drive qualification standards <em>down</em>.</p>
<p><strong>2<em>.  &#8220;Critical Mass&#8221; Means Many Women, not the Exceptional Few</em></strong></p>
<p>Speaking the language of social engineers, not combat veterans, Gen. Dempsey admitted the need to introduce a <strong>&#8220;critical mass&#8221;</strong> or <a href="http://cmrlink.org/data/sites/85/CMRDocuments/DempseyLetter.pdf">&#8220;significant cadre&#8221;</a> of women into previously-all-male units.  This phrase, usually interpreted to mean a cohort of <strong>10-15 percent</strong>, cannot be met with a few exceptional women who &#8220;only want a chance.&#8221;</p>
<p>To insert into direct ground combat units even <em>half</em> of the women needed to achieve a &#8220;critical mass,&#8221; commanders will have to incrementally modify the male-oriented program of instruction so that female personnel, including unwilling enlisted servicewomen will &#8220;succeed.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>3.<em>  Group Rights, Not Individual Rights</em></strong></p>
<p>High, uncompromised standards simply are not compatible with recommendations of the Pentagon&#8217;s own <a href="http://www.hsdl.org/?view&amp;did=11390"><strong>Military Leadership Diversity Commission (MLDC), </strong></a>a<strong> </strong>mostly-civilian commission set up by feminists in the Congress and the Pentagon.  In 2011, the MLDC called for elimination of women&#8217;s land combat exemptions in order to achieve non-remedial gender-based <strong>&#8220;diversity metrics&#8221; − </strong>read, <strong>&#8220;quotas.&#8221;</strong>  The Defense Department endorsed the MLDC&#8217;s egalitarian report at a Pentagon news conference on February 9, 2012.</p>
<p>The MLDC report admits that the new &#8220;diversity management&#8221; involves fair treatment, but <strong><em>&#8220;it is not</em> <em>about treating everyone the same.</em></strong><em>  This can be a difficult concept to grasp, especially for leaders who grew up with the EO-inspired mandate to be both color and gender blind.&#8221;</em> (p. 18)</p>
<p>This &#8220;new diversity&#8221; concept is a radical departure from the military&#8217;s honorable tradition of recognizing individual merit − the key to successful racial integration long before the civilian world.  The &#8220;new diversity&#8221; is not about individual rights; it&#8217;s about gender-based group rights that will result in discrimination against deserving, well-qualified men.</p>
<p><strong>4.  <em>Diversity Czar,</em> <em>Career Penalties Will Drive Standards Down</em></strong></p>
<p>The MLDC Report that the Department of Defense <a href="http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4974">endorsed last year </a>recommends that a &#8220;<strong>Chief Diversity Officer (CDO),&#8221;</strong> reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense, be established to monitor accountability for <strong>&#8220;diversity management.&#8221;</strong>  (MLDC Executive Summary, p. xvii)  The new <strong>Diversity Czar</strong> will establish a new feminist power base in the Pentagon that will make career promotions at all levels contingent on &#8220;diversity leadership.&#8221;  We know this because the Defense Department-endorsed Military Leadership Diversity Commission says so:</p>
<p><em>&#8220;To ensure that the diversity effort continues, demonstrated diversity leadership </em><strong><em>must be assessed throughout careers and made, in both DoD and the Senate, a criterion for nomination and confirmation to the 3- and 4-star ranks</em></strong><em>&#8230;.Successful implementation of diversity initiatives requires a deliberate strategy that ties the new diversity vision to desired outcomes via policies and metrics&#8230;.</em><strong><em>military leaders at all levels can be held accountable</em></strong><em> for their performance in diversity management and rewarded for their efforts.&#8221; </em>(MLDC Executive Summary, p. xviii, emphasis added)</p>
<p>Male field commanders and combat trainers will know that the opposite, of course, also will be true.  They will be rewarded for declaring &#8220;success&#8221; for the women-in-land-combat social experiment and penalized for not doing so.</p>
<p>There is no incentive for ensuring that elite training standards for fighting battalions remain high and uncompromised.  No one should expect field commanders to do what members of Congress so far have failed to do.</p>
<p><strong>5.  &#8220;Gender-Free&#8221; Training is Not the Same as &#8220;Gender-Fair&#8221; Training</strong></p>
<p>The same advocates who demand &#8220;equal opportunities&#8221; in combat are the first to demand <em>unequal</em>, gender-normed standards to make it &#8220;fair.&#8221;  <strong>General Robert W. Cone</strong>, who heads the Army&#8217;s <strong>Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) </strong>admitted this in <a href="http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=119105">an interview </a>with the Defense Department&#8217;s house-organ <strong>American Forces Press Service</strong>.</p>
<p>Said Gen. Cone, <em>&#8220;Soldiers &#8212; both men and women &#8212; want fair and meaningful standards to be developed for accepting women into previously restricted specialties.  I think that fairness is very important in a values-based organization like our Army.&#8221; </em></p>
<p><em>Really?  </em>Direct ground combat is not &#8220;fair&#8221; or &#8220;equal.&#8221;  It is not even civilized.  Will America&#8217;s potential enemies in <strong>Iran</strong>, <strong>North Korea</strong>, or <strong>North Africa</strong> treat our soldiers with &#8220;fairness?&#8221;  Most people believe that the purpose of the Army is to defend our nation&#8217;s interests by deterring war or fighting to defeat our enemies if deterrence fails.</p>
<p>Then the TRADOC leader&#8217;s statement rose to new heights of absurdity, reflecting group think that should alarm every member of Congress and pro-defense Americans:</p>
<p><em>&#8220;&#8216;Besides physical ability,&#8217;</em> Cone said, &#8216;Army officials will look at <strong>&#8220;traditional impediments&#8221;</strong> − the attitudes regarding the acceptance of women into previously male-only jobs&#8230;.The Army will take <strong>&#8216;proactive measures to mitigate resistance to women going into these specialties,&#8217;</strong>  the general said.  &#8216;We want the right environment for women,&#8217; he said.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to a January 24 memo issued by Army Chief of Staff <strong>Gen. Raymond Odierno</strong>, the <strong>TRADOC Analysis Center</strong> is leading a study that will examine the institutional and cultural barriers related to the process of gender-integration in previously all-male units, <em>&#8220;in order to develop strategies to overcome these barriers.&#8221;</em>  To advance the Pentagon&#8217;s &#8220;diversity&#8221; agenda, TRADOC&#8217;s analysis likely will target tough training standards, and men who support them, as &#8220;barriers&#8221; to progress in the <strong>New Gender Order.</strong></p>
<p>General Cone, who leads TRADOC, is the guy who is supposed to determine whether women can and should be assigned to infantry, armor, artillery, and Special Operations Forces like the ones who fought to the death on battlefields from <strong>Pointe du Hoc</strong> to <strong>Mogadishu</strong> to the liberation of <strong>Baghdad</strong> and <strong>Fallujah</strong>.  His statement assigning priority to gender integration indicates that he is likely to devalue and discriminate against direct ground combat soldiers like those who fought those battles, and who may be harboring attitudes that  might be construed as &#8220;resistance&#8221; to the &#8220;diversity&#8221; agenda.</p>
<p><strong>6.  <em>Unannounced Lowered Standards will Be &#8220;Equal&#8221; But Not the Same</em></strong></p>
<p>The mandate to achieve &#8220;diversity metrics&#8221; and a &#8220;critical mass&#8221; of women in combat <em>guarantees </em>that standards will be changed, modified, or gender-normed, eventually making ground combat training &#8220;equal&#8221; but less demanding for men.  We have already seen how this will work by examining what the Marine Corps did with one of several phases in their research project regarding women in direct ground combat.</p>
<p>As reported in the recently released 42-page <a href="http://cmrlink.org/data/sites/85/CMRDocuments/CMR%20Special%20Report%20-%20January2013.pdf">CMR Special Report, titled <em>Defense Department &#8220;Diversity&#8221; Push for Women in Land Combat</em></a>,<strong> </strong>requirements in the<strong> Women in Service Restrictions Review (WISRR) </strong>that the<strong> Marine Corps </strong>initiated in April 2012 were quietly changed and made less demanding without notice.  (pp. 15-17)</p>
<p>In <a href="http://dacowits.defense.gov/Reports/2011/Documents/DACOWITS%20September%202011%20Committee%20Meeting/16%20USMC%20WISR%20DACOWITS%20Brief.pdf">a presentation </a>before the <strong>Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) </strong>in September 2011, a representative of the Marine Corps presented slides indicating that as part of the Marines WISRR, male and female volunteers would be asked to perform six &#8220;common tasks&#8221; to test physical strength and stamina.</p>
<p>But when the actual tests got underway in 2012, as part of the &#8220;<strong>USMC Assignment of Women to Ground Combat Research Plan,&#8221;</strong> six tests were reduced to three.  The toughest ones were quietly taken out, and the remaining three were made less demanding.  All male and female volunteers who participated went through the same training exercises − but they were not the same as originally planned.</p>
<p>The original presentation to the DACOWITS in September 2011 promised that &#8220;[r]esearch must be deliberate, <strong>transparent</strong>, and conducted in a manner that will be responsive to senior leadership and <strong><em>external requests for information on short notice</em></strong>.&#8221;  (Slide #9, emphasis added)  The Marines have nevertheless denied formal requests for documents and information related to the &#8220;common tasks&#8221; tests.</p>
<p>The only change that might explain this was the February 9, 2012, Pentagon news conference in which Defense Department officials endorsed recommendations of the Military Leadership Diversity Commission.</p>
<p>In September 2012 the Marines conducted a test of two female officers who volunteered for training on the exceptionally tough 13-week <strong>Infantry Officer Course (IOC)</strong> at <strong>Quantico</strong>, VA.  Standards were maintained and the women washed out, along with 25% of the men.  The experiment did not work out, but the two female officers deserve respect for trying.  More than 90 volunteers are needed to gather sufficient data on the IOC, but none have stepped forward.  [Update: Two more female officers will try the IOC in March.]</p>
<p>The next Commandant will be selected under criteria set by the Diversity Commission and the Obama Administration.  Since that general will be required to support MLDC priorities, it is likely that quiet changes will be made in the IOC program of instruction so that a sufficient number of women can pass the course.</p>
<p>Standards will be &#8220;equal,&#8221; but not the same as they are now.  The same thing will happen in Army <strong>Ranger</strong> training, which Gen. Odierno has said he wants to make co-ed.</p>
<p><strong>7.  <em>Compromised Standards Will Increase Resentment and Harassment Problems</em></strong></p>
<p>When Pentagon officials start competing with each other to please feminists, the media, and diversity fanatics, pure nonsense often is passed off as enlightened wisdom.  Witness General Dempsey&#8217;s <a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/jan/26/us-women-in-combat-dempsey/">astonishing claim</a> that women&#8217;s exemptions from direct ground combat, which the majority of women in enlisted ranks want, somehow have contributed to problems of sexual assault in the military.</p>
<p>This is a peculiar throwback to false arguments made in the Navy&#8217;s post-<strong>Tailhook</strong> scandal period, when the remedy for alcohol-fueled misconduct by male and female aviators partying at a Las Vegas convention was thought to be gender-integration in naval aviation.</p>
<p>Twenty-two years later, that theory is being put to the test.  Women are as close to the fight as they can be, but rates of sexual assault and abuse are soaring with no end in sight.  According to a chapter in a recent <a href="http://www.army.mil/article/72086/"><strong>Army &#8220;Gold Book&#8221;</strong></a> report, titled <strong>&#8220;Sex Crime Trends,&#8221;</strong> violent attacks and rapes in the ranks have nearly doubled since 2006, rising from <strong>663</strong> in 2006 to <strong>1,313</strong> in 2011.  Even worse, the Army reported that violent sex crime was growing at an average rate of <strong>14.6 percent</strong> per year, and the rate was accelerating. (p. 122)</p>
<p>Resentment aggravates hostility, which often is expressed with violence that is always wrong and disruptive to everyone serving in close-knit battalions.  The 1992 <strong>Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces</strong>, noting testimony from Air Force <strong>SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape)</strong> trainers charged to prepare potential prisoners of war, expressed concern about the de-sensitizing effect of policies condoning violence against women, as long as it happens at the hands of the enemy.</p>
<p>The commission also received survey results indicating that a significant cohort of men, called &#8220;egalitarian sexists&#8221; or &#8220;hostile proponents,&#8221; were in favor of co-ed combat because it would expose women&#8217;s weaknesses and punish them.  Years later, our military may be experiencing a cultural shift that already has degraded certain standards of civilization, summarized by the commission with a simple statement: <em>&#8220;Good men respect and defend women.&#8221;</em> (Commission Report, p. 61)</p>
<p>In training programs today, men routinely are given permission, and sometimes orders, to treat women with roughness.  Young men taught by their parents to &#8220;never hit a girl&#8221; are disadvantaged by this cultural dissonance, which may be impervious to other programs intended to reduce sexual assaults and abuse of women.</p>
<p>Nothing causes resentment like the awareness of double standards imposed in pursuit of &#8220;equality&#8221; and non-remedial &#8220;diversity&#8221; that overrides respect for individual merit.  At the &#8220;tip of the spear,&#8221; this resentment will vitiate team cohesion, a critically-important cultural factor that depends not on social relationships, but on mutual dependence for <em>survival </em>in the close fight.</p>
<p>As CMR has reported in a Special Report titled <a href="http://cmrlink.org/data/sites/85/CMRDocuments/CMRPolicyAnalysisApril2012A.pdf"><strong>&#8220;Chilling Trend of Sexual Assaults in the Military,&#8221;</strong></a> human relationship problems ranging across the spectrum from assault to inappropriate romantic affairs are having a destructive effect on morale and readiness.</p>
<p>Given what is known about human relationships in war, it is far more likely that sexual assaults will <em>increase</em> when chronic problems evident in all other communities are extended into direct ground combat battalions.  The cause will not be women &#8212; it will be poor judgment and flawed leadership among White House and Pentagon officials who are putting gender politics above the best interests of national security and the troops they lead.</p>
<p><strong><em>What Is at Stake</em></strong></p>
<p>All &#8220;tip of the spear&#8221; fighting forces − <strong>infantry, armor, Special Operations Forces, artillery, and Navy SEALs </strong>− execute missions that go beyond the experience of being &#8220;in harm&#8217;s way&#8221; in a war zone.  All are trained to close with and attack the enemy with deliberate offensive action under fire.  Given this definition of direct ground combat, it is not accurate to say that women have been &#8220;in combat&#8221; on the same basis as men.</p>
<p>Combat effectiveness in war cannot be taken for granted.  Nor can it withstand relentless pressures to lower standards in order to meet &#8220;diversity metrics.&#8221;  It is not right to impose on elite combat units the weight of social complications that will result in more casualties, more deaths, and even failed missions due to higher injury rates, and issues of non-deployability and  <a href="http://cmrlink.org/data/sites/85/CMRDocuments/CMR%20Special%20Report%20-%20January2013.pdf">sexual misconduct</a> that have gotten worse in all other military communities.</p>
<p>Most military women do not want this, and they are not to blame for the folly of policy makers such as Secretary Panetta and the Army&#8217;s top leaders.  All are following orders from our irresponsible Commander in Chief, who is trying to cut Congress and the American people out of the decision-making process.</p>
<p>Under <strong>Article 1, Section 8</strong> of the <strong>U.S. Constitution</strong>, members of Congress − not the President, the Defense Secretary or even the Joint Chiefs of Staff − have the responsibility to make policy for the military.  Congress should fulfill this responsibility by exercising diligent oversight, to include a full and public review of all research data gathered in the past year.</p>
<p>It is long-past time for Congress to intervene − the readiness and effectiveness of our fighting forces, and national security, are at great risk.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Diversity Cult&#8217;s Attack on the Military</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/the-diversity-cults-attack-on-the-military/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-diversity-cults-attack-on-the-military</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jan 2013 04:55:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=174878</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Center for Military Readiness reveals the destructive agenda behind putting women in combat.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/the-diversity-cults-attack-on-the-military/soldier_carrying_soldier/" rel="attachment wp-att-174887"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-174887" title="soldier_carrying_soldier" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/soldier_carrying_soldier.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="222" /></a>Center for Military Readiness (CMR) president Elaine Donnelly continues to challenge outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta&#8217;s elimination of the ban<strong> </strong>against women<strong> </strong>serving in combat. A 42-page <a href="http://cmrlink.org/data/sites/85/CMRDocuments/CMR%20Special%20Report%20-%20January2013.pdf">report</a>, &#8220;Defense Department &#8216;Diversity&#8217; Push for Women In Land Combat&#8221; is a no-holds-barred assessment of the pitfalls that attend women serving in combat units. In a memo released Monday, Donnelly reveals why the report is necessary. &#8220;Secretary Panetta is making this move on his way out the door, cutting Congress, and the American people out of the decision-making process…Congress…should schedule long-overdue hearings that examine the full consequences of imposing gender-based &#8216;diversity metrics&#8217; on infantry battalions,&#8221; it reads.</p>
<p>The report begins by revealing the Obama administration began accelerating the effort to increase military &#8220;diversity&#8221; in February 2012, when a Defense Department report officially repealed the &#8220;collocation&#8221; rule that had been circumvented without authorization since 2004. In other words, despite a 1994 <a href="http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=67130">ban</a> on women operating in locations near combat units, the rule was being routinely ignored&#8211;for diversity&#8217;s sake.</p>
<p>As the Pentagon continued to move forward with its plan, it began following the recommendations made by the Military Leadership Diversity Commission (MLDC), a committee established by Congress comprised of military and civilian diversity &#8220;experts.&#8221; In 2011, they released a <a href="https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&amp;did=11390">report</a>, &#8220;From Representation to Inclusion: Diversity Leadership for the 21st Century Military,&#8221; that sought to explain the rationale behind the push for greater diversity. &#8220;The Commission found that top military leaders are representative neither of the population they serve nor of the forces they lead. The extent to which racial/ethnic minorities and women are underrepresented varies across the Services, but the Commission found, on average, low racial/ethnic minority and female representation among senior military officers,&#8221; it stated.</p>
<p>Regarding women, this outlook reveals why the Pentagon feels it has become necessary to allow women to go into combat. The CMR report explains. &#8220;Since ground combat experience often (but not always) improves chances of promotion to general officer and senior enlisted ranks, the MLDC is recommending that female officers and enlisted personnel be ordered (not allowed) to serve in &#8216;tip of the spear&#8217; units involved in direct ground combat.&#8221; Thus, the MLDC &#8220;has recommended that women be assigned to infantry units at the battalion level, primarily to promote career opportunities and promotions for a few female officers to three- and four-star rank.&#8221;</p>
<p>As CMR&#8217;s report rightly notes, this turns the entire purpose of what the military is supposed to be about on its head. Diversity is not being pursued to improve military readiness as much as it is being pursued to improve the career chances of what amounts to a handful of women in the higher echelons of the military command structure. As a result, the military is prepared to embrace the circular reasoning of &#8220;diversity metrics&#8221; designed to obscure the genuine differences that exist between men and women, in order to reach predetermined outcomes that allow more women to be assigned to combat units. This in turn enhances their prospects for career advancement, which will undoubtedly be used as rationale to promote the idea that no real differences exist between the sexes.</p>
<p>Thus we get the essence of radical feminism, the idea that man and women are equal in every respect, even if it means &#8220;fudging&#8221; some realities to get there. As the CMR&#8217;s report reveals, that&#8217;s exactly what the Pentagon has done, noting that physical capability tests measuring common skills &#8220;have been scaled back from six to three and adjusted to reduce physical demands and improve women&#8217;s achievement scores.&#8221;</p>
<p>The CMR report goes on to outline many drawbacks of women in combat, but the most significant aspect of it concerns a test conducted by the Marines to evaluate whether women could meet the same physical capabilities expected of men. They intended to collect data from 90 women as part of the evaluation process, but only two volunteered to be part of the grueling Infantry Officer Course at Quantico, Va. Both women failed to pass it. Speaking to Front Page, Donnelly reveals that several sources have given her information about the other aspects of the test. Yet she notes that the results of the test have not been released to the public, despite what Leon Panetta said yesterday when he officially <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/24/women-combat-change-panetta/1861995/">announced</a> the lifting of the ban:</p>
<p>Women have shown great courage and sacrifice on and off the battlefield, contributed in unprecedented ways to the military&#8217;s mission and proven their ability to serve in an expanding number of roles,&#8221; Panetta said at a Pentagon news conference. &#8220;The department&#8217;s goal in rescinding the rule is to ensure that the mission is met with the best-qualified and most capable people, regardless of gender.</p>
<p>&#8220;If the tests conducted by the Marines confirm what Panetta said, then why haven&#8217;t they been released?&#8221; wonders Donnelly. &#8220;And if they don&#8217;t, then what is he doing?&#8221; Both questions deserve an answer, yet one suspects that the Obama administration has already provided it. Leon Panetta is a lame duck on his way out. As a result, the likelihood of him having to explain anything&#8211;including his role in the Benghazi debacle which this latest action pushes even further below the media radar&#8211;is virtually nil. Furthermore, putting women in combat has obscured the far bigger issue: this president&#8217;s appetite for naked power grabs is getting out of hand.</p>
<p>Elaine Donnelly reinforces that argument along with her own contentions in a statement released recently:</p>
<blockquote><p>Following orders from President Barack Obama, lame-duck Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has recklessly announced unilateral nullification of direct ground combat exemptions that are important to the majority of military women who serve in the enlisted ranks. Secretary Panetta has excluded Congress and the American people from the decision-making process, and imposed a radical &#8216;diversity&#8217; agenda on our military without disclosing the data and results of extensive research on the subject of women in land combat that the Marine Corps conducted last year. Congress should insist on seeing data gathered during the Marines&#8217; research, and conduct immediate oversight hearings before harmful policies imposed by the outgoing Secretary of Defense become <em>de facto</em> law.</p></blockquote>
<p>Thanks to the Left&#8217;s slanderous &#8220;war on women&#8221; campaign, which has paralyzed rational debate on such matters, don&#8217;t count on a single member of Congress rising to the occasion.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama Ignores Deadly Risks to Women in Combat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obama-ignores-deadly-risks-to-women-in-combat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-ignores-deadly-risks-to-women-in-combat</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Jan 2013 04:45:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=174718</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Gender radicalism's attack on the military claims another victory. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obama-ignores-deadly-risks-to-women-in-combat/iraq-war-1/" rel="attachment wp-att-174729"><img class=" wp-image-174729 alignleft" title="Iraq War 1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Iraq-War-1.jpg" alt="" width="267" height="177" /></a>It didn&#8217;t take long for the Obama administration to advance a pernicious piece of its promised radical agenda. Two days after the president laid out his far-left vision during the inauguration, senior defense officials <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/23/panetta-opens-combat-roles-to-women/">announced</a> that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta will lift the military&#8217;s ban on women serving in combat. The move overturns a 1994 provision that prohibited them from being assigned to ground combat units. Panetta has given the various service branches until 2016 to come up with exemptions, and/or make any arguments about what roles should still reman closed to women. Thus, another bit of gender radicalism has been shoved down the nation&#8217;s throat through executive fiat &#8212; and this one is sure to have deadly consequences.</p>
<p>It is precisely those deadly consequences &#8212; especially for servicewomen &#8212; that are irrelevant to feminists and their enablers, who have long pushed the idea that men and women are essentially interchangeable. Nothing could be further from the truth, and combat is where those differences could produce deadly results. Ground combat is arguably the most <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2012/02/14/failing-culture-puts-women-in-combat/">physically grueling</a> activity in which one can be engaged, and despite what the feminists would like Americans to believe about equality, science says otherwise: men have <a href="http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/men-vs-women-upper-body-strength.htm">almost twice</a> the upper-body strength as women.</p>
<p>This is a critically relevant consideration. According to a 2009 <a href="http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2009/October/Pages/Soldiers%E2%80%99BackpacksNotLikelytoGetAnyLighter.aspx">article</a> in National Defense Magazine, a soldier on a three-day mission in Afghanistan carries approximately 130 pounds of gear, and efforts to lighten that load have not succeeded. This is primarily due to the reality that the essentials of food, water, and ammunition cannot be replaced with lighter items. Other equipment, such as sensors, tripods, cold weather clothing, boots, sleeping bags, flashlights, and protective eyewear, have all been made lighter. But the fact remains that the average soldier is expected to carry enormous amounts of weight, simply to better ensure his chances for survival. Furthermore, a soldier must carry that weight even during periods of intense fighting. The overwhelming majority of women are not capable of meeting such standards.</p>
<p>What is the Pentagon likely to do? In New York City, when most female applicants to the Fire Department were unable to meet the strength requirements, feminists <a href="http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&amp;id=5216&amp;news_iv_ctrl=1021">filed</a> a successful lawsuit, altering the standards so that a number of otherwise unqualified women could pass the test. Thus it is likely the Pentagon will pursue a similar strategy of &#8220;gender-norming&#8221; for the entire service that is <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/womens-work/">already part </a>of the Army Physical Fitness Test. That test requires proficiency in push-ups, sit-ups and a two-mile run. For sit-ups both genders have the same requirements. For push-ups and the run, the grading scale for women is easier.</p>
<p>Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, illuminates the folly of pursuing such double standards. &#8220;Revised &#8216;warrior training&#8217; programs sound impressive, but gender-normed standards emasculate the concept by assuring &#8216;success&#8217; for average female trainees,&#8221; she <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/213314/armys-gender-war/elaine-donnelly">wrote</a> in 2005, when the Army began a <em>surreptitious </em>program of putting women in smaller, direct ground-combat units. Donnelly then added the critically proper perspective to the mix. &#8220;Soldiers know that there is no gender-norming on the battlefield,&#8221; she explains.</p>
<p>There is also nothing that will eliminate the natural differences between men and women that play out in a number of other ways. Few things are more important for enduring the rigors of combat than morale and combat unit cohesion. It is ludicrous to believe that mixed units will be immune to the potentially de-stabilizing effects of sexual attraction. And as night follows day, sexual attraction leads to pregnancy. In 2009, Major General Anthony Cucolo, running military operations in Northern Iraq, was forced to deal with the serious downside of that reality. As a result, he <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1237333/Serving-U-S-troops-face-prison-fall-pregnant-active.html">initiated</a> a policy under which troops who got pregnant&#8211;and the men who got them pregnant&#8211;faced a court martial and  possible jail time. Cucolo issued the directive because he was losing too many women with critical skills. &#8220;I&#8217;ve got a mission to do, I&#8217;m given a finite number of soldiers with which to do it and I need every one of them,&#8221; he contended.</p>
<p>Yet consensual sex is only part of the problem. A military report released in January 2012 <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2012/0119/Pentagon-report-Sexual-assault-in-the-military-up-dramatically">revealed</a> a stunning 64 percent increase in violent sex crimes within the U.S. Army since 2006. The most frequent sex crimes for 2011 included &#8220;rape, sexual assault, and forcible sodomy.&#8221; The report further noted that while only 14 percent of the Army is comprised of women, they represent 95 percent of all sex crime victims.</p>
<p>It stretches the bounds of credulity to believe that sexual tension, regardless of the legitimate or illegitimate motivation behind it, would be <em>lessened</em> under front line, life-threatening combat conditions. Nor is it inconceivable to think that close personal relationships of a sexual nature would make some soldiers take the kind of unnecessary risks to save a lover that might not only endanger themselves, but their entire unit.</p>
<p>There is another reality that feminists and their enablers fail to acknowledge. As it currently stands, there is little appetite demonstrated by women themselves for serving in combat units. Army Research Institute (ARI) surveys taken from 1993-2001 <a href="http://www.cmrlink.org/content/women-in-combat/page-8/34470/enlisted_women_opposed_to_combat_assignments">revealed</a> that the majority of military women were strongly <em>opposed</em> to combat assignments&#8211;so much so that the ARI dropped the question from its survey the following year. Less than a month ago, a <em>Huffington Post</em> article regarding interviews with &#8220;a dozen female soldiers and Marines&#8221; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/05/women-in-military_n_2415748.html">revealed</a> that they had &#8220;little interest in the toughest fighting jobs,&#8221; contending &#8220;they&#8217;d be unable to do them.&#8221; When the Marines asked women to go through their infantry training course last year, only two women volunteered. Both of them failed to get through it. No one volunteered for the next one. Army Sgt. Cherry Sweat, who did a tour in Iraq installing communications equipment, reveals a sentiment that most military women apparently share. &#8220;The job I want to do in the military does not include combat arms,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I enjoy supporting the soldiers. The choice to join combat arms should be a personal decision, not a required one,&#8221; she added.</p>
<p>Lory Manning of Women&#8217;s Research and Education Institute thinks women&#8217;s interest in assuming combat roles will be higher than anticipated. &#8220;If you asked someone in 1985 about going to sea, she would have been thinking: `Girls don&#8217;t do that and so I don&#8217;t want to do that,&#8217;&#8221; Manning contended. &#8220;But when push came to shove, they did it, they loved it.&#8221; That is a ridiculous comparison. Going to sea is hardly the same as front-line combat. Moreover, when &#8220;push comes to shove,&#8221; it is highly doubtful that there is more than a microscopic number of soldiers who &#8220;love&#8221; being in the mortal danger that combat engenders.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, such realities are no match for those who champion diversity. Putting women in combat units &#8220;reflects the reality of 21st century military operations,&#8221; <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2013/01/23/panetta-opens-combat-roles-to-women">said</a> Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), in announcing his support for the program. No doubt he and others see it as the next logical step following last year&#8217;s announcement, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-to-ease-restrictions-on-women-in-some-combat-roles/2012/02/09/gIQAwnL41Q_story.html">opening</a> 14,000 combat-related positions to female soldiers. At that time, the Pentagon still insisted on keeping women out of direct combat roles, even as they noted they were committed to lifting such barriers eventually. At the time, they claimed that making such sweeping changes would be difficult in time of war. Another factor was the lifting of the &#8220;don&#8217;t ask, don&#8217;t tell&#8221; policy allowing gays to serve openly. Allowing women to serve on the front lines at the same time was considered one big social change too many.</p>
<p>No longer. The new policy expands the number of military jobs available to women from last year&#8217;s 14,000 to more than 230,000 positions. Part of the impetus for the change may have been two lawsuits filed last year challenging the combat ban, but according to a senior military official familiar with the discussions by the Joint Chiefs, the ultimate conclusion was that this is the time to &#8220;maximize women&#8217;s service in the military.&#8221;</p>
<p>Writing for the <em>Washington Post</em> three days ago, Elaine Donnelly <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/21/measuring-risks-for-women-in-combat/">reiterated</a> her position that putting women in combat is a terrible idea, presciently noting that &#8220;even the if the results of the Marines’ research do not support unrealistic theories of feminists who consider land combat to be just another career opportunity, administration officials might press their egalitarian agenda anyway.&#8221; She further noted that the &#8220;Pentagon-endorsed Military Leadership Diversity Commission (MLDC) has called for an end to women’s land combat exemptions, based on a new definition of &#8216;diversity.&#8217;”</p>
<p>That egalitarian agenda, like so many other progressive agendas, may produce an unintended consequence. The 1981 Rostker v. Goldberg Supreme Court case <a href="http://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/constitutional-law/constitutional-law-keyed-to-chemerinsky/equal-protection/rostker-v-goldberg/">exempted</a> women from being part of the nation&#8217;s Selective Service System. America no longer drafts civilians into the military, but as Donnelly notes, the elimination of such combat exemptions will involve civilian women registering with Selective Service. She then makes a recommendation, not only anathema to the Obama administration, but one that only three days later was ultimately ignored. &#8220;Congress, which represents the American people, should not be shut out of this decision-making process,&#8221; she wrote. If the draft is re-instated, one wonders how the American public will take to having their daughters every bit as vulnerable as their sons to forcible conscription. A rising tide of Islamist terror in the Middle East and now in Africa could provide the answer.</p>
<p>Once again, elections have consequences. Barack Obama has made it clear that part of his progressive agenda includes forcing gender radicalism down America&#8217;s throat, absent any input from Congress. Once, the United States military was all about projecting lethal power around the globe to protect America&#8217;s interests. Now, it is all about promoting diversity, inclusion and equality of outcome, irrespective of military readiness and cohesion. For progressives, who have elevated political correctness above all else&#8211;national security included&#8211;such radical egalitarianism is cause for celebration. For Donnelly and countless other Americans, it is anything but. &#8220;No one’s injured son should have to die on the streets of a future Fallujah because the only soldier near enough to carry him to safety was a five-foot-two 110-pound woman,&#8221; she contends.</p>
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		<title>Doing the Research the NY Times Won&#8217;t Do</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ann-coulter/doing-the-research-the-ny-times-wont-do/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=doing-the-research-the-ny-times-wont-do</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 04:30:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=172930</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When it comes to the truth about guns and violence prevention, bad journalism can be deadly. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ann-coulter/doing-the-research-the-ny-times-wont-do/new-york-times-5/" rel="attachment wp-att-172936"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-172936" title="new-york-times" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/new-york-times1-450x327.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="196" /></a>In Sunday&#8217;s New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal claimed, as the title of her article put it, &#8220;More Guns = More Killing.&#8221; She based this on evidence that would never be permitted in any other context at the Times: (1) anecdotal observations; and (2) bald assertions of an activist, blandly repeated with absolutely no independent fact-checking by the Times.</p>
<p>There is an academic, peer-reviewed, long-term study of the effect of various public policies on public, multiple shootings in all 50 states over a 20-year period performed by renowned economists at the University of Chicago and Yale, William Landes and John Lott. It concluded that the only policy to reduce the incidence of, and casualties from, mass shootings are concealed-carry laws. The Times will never mention this study.</p>
<p>Instead, Rosenthal&#8217;s column proclaimed that armed guards do not reduce crime because: &#8220;I recently visited some Latin American countries &#8230; where guards with guns grace every office lobby, storefront, ATM, restaurant and gas station. It has not made those countries safer or saner.&#8221;</p>
<p>So there you have it: The cock crowed, then the sun came up. Therefore, the cock&#8217;s crowing caused the sun to come up. Rosenthal went to Harvard Medical School.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a tip: High-crime areas are often bristling with bulletproof glass, heavy-duty locks, gated windows and armed guards. The bulletproof glass doesn&#8217;t cause the crime; it&#8217;s a response to crime. On Rosenthal&#8217;s logic, hospitals kill people because more people die in hospitals than outside of them.</p>
<p>(In any event, the Lott-Landes study didn&#8217;t recommend armed guards, but armed citizens.)</p>
<p>Rosenthal also produces a demonstrably false statistic about Australia&#8217;s gun laws, as if it&#8217;s a fact that has been carefully vetted by the Newspaper of Record, throwing in the true source only at the tail-end of the paragraph:</p>
<p>&#8220;After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. &#8230; Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent &#8230;,&#8221; <strong><em>said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation.&#8221;</em></strong></p>
<p>&#8220;Ms. Peters&#8221; is Rebecca Peters, a George Soros-funded, Australian anti-gun activist so extreme that she had to resign from the International Action Network on Small Arms so as not to discredit the U.N.-recognized organization &#8212; which isn&#8217;t easy to further discredit.</p>
<p>Could the Times&#8217; public editor weigh in on whether unsubstantiated quotes from radical activists are now considered full and complete evidence at the Times?</p>
<p>It would be as if the Times headlined an article, &#8220;Abortion Increases Risk of Breast Cancer&#8221; with the sole support being a quote from Operation Rescue&#8217;s Randall Terry. (Except Terry would have evidence.)</p>
<p>Whether or not the homicide rate went up or down in Australia as a result of strict gun control laws imposed in 1997 is a fact that could have been checked by Times researchers. But they didn&#8217;t, because facts wouldn&#8217;t have given them the answer they wanted.</p>
<p>Needless to say, the effect of Australia&#8217;s gun ban has been extensively researched by Australian academics. As numerous studies have shown: After the gun ban, gun homicides in Australia did not decline any more than they were expected to without a gun ban.</p>
<p>Thus, for example, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, the homicide rate has been in steady decline from 1969 to the present, with only one marked uptick in 1998-99 &#8212; right after the gun ban was enacted.</p>
<p>The showstopper for anti-gun activists like Ms. Rosenthal and Ms. Peters is the fact that suicides by firearm seemed to decrease more than expected after the 1997 gun ban.</p>
<p>But so did suicides by other means. Something other than the gun ban must have caused people to stop guzzling poison and jumping off bridges. (Some speculate that it&#8217;s the availability of anti-depressants like Prozac.)</p>
<p>Curiously &#8212; and not mentioned by Rosenthal &#8212; the number of accidental firearms deaths skyrocketed after Australia&#8217;s 1997 gun ban, although the law included stringent gun training requirements.</p>
<p>It turns out, until the coroner has certified a death as a &#8220;suicide,&#8221; it&#8217;s classified as &#8220;unintentional.&#8221; So either mandatory gun training has led to more accidents, or a lot of suicides are ending up in the &#8220;accident&#8221; column.</p>
<p>Most pinheadedly, especially for a graduate of the Harvard Medical School, Rosenthal says: &#8220;Before (the gun ban), Australia had averaged one mass shooting a year. (Since then,) there have been no mass killings.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mass murder is a rare enough crime that any statistician will tell you discerning trends is impossible. In this country, the FBI doesn&#8217;t even track mass murder as a specific crime category.</p>
<p>After Truman Capote&#8217;s &#8220;In Cold Blood&#8221; killers slaughtered the entire Clutter family in Holcomb, Kan., the murder rate in that quiet farming town went up 400 percent in a single year! Was it Holcomb&#8217;s big showing at the 4-H club competition that year?</p>
<p>Totally unbeknownst to Elisabeth Rosenthal, Australian academics have already examined the mass murder rate by firearm by comparing Australia to a control country: New Zealand. (Do they teach &#8220;control groups&#8221; at Harvard?)</p>
<p>New Zealand is strikingly similar to Australia. Both are isolated island nations, demographically and socioeconomically similar. Their mass murder rate before Australia&#8217;s gun ban was nearly identical: From 1980 to 1996, Australia&#8217;s mass murder rate was 0.0042 incidents per 100,000 people and New Zealand&#8217;s was 0.0050 incidents per 100,000 people.</p>
<p>The principal difference is that, post-1997, New Zealand remained armed to the teeth &#8212; including with guns that were suddenly banned in Australia.</p>
<p>While it&#8217;s true that Australia has had no more mass shootings since its gun ban, neither has New Zealand, despite continuing to be massively armed.</p>
<p>The only thing Australia&#8217;s strict gun control laws has clearly accomplished is increasing the amount of violent crime committed with guns immediately after the ban took effect. Of course, Times reporters don&#8217;t have to worry about violent muggings, rapes and robberies because they live in doorman buildings.</p>
<p>For those who can&#8217;t afford fancy doorman buildings, bad journalism kills.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Leftist Infomercials for Gun Control</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-cohen/leftist-infomercials-for-gun-control/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=leftist-infomercials-for-gun-control</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-cohen/leftist-infomercials-for-gun-control/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Dec 2012 04:35:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Cohen]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[ban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[facts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hysteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170912</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When hysteria cancels reason. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-cohen/leftist-infomercials-for-gun-control/info/" rel="attachment wp-att-170914"><img class=" wp-image-170914 alignleft" title="info" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/info-450x248.jpg" alt="" width="221" height="122" /></a>Much like the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the recent tragedy in Newtown brought out the worst in <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/another-thought-criminal-banished-by-the-daily-kos/">liberals</a>. CNN, ostensibly a news network, became a 24-hour infomercial for gun control. Democrats demanded we pass new gun control as soon as possible, our president insisted that we have to do something and we can’t sit on our hands just because the problem is<a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/politics/2012/12/video_president_obamas_speech_at_newtown_conn_prayer_vigil.html"> complicated</a>. Of course the president and Democrats have one thing in mind: gun control, specifically a new and improved assault weapons <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec12/feinstein_12-17.html">ban</a>. Before we rush to change the law in order to please the drama queens in the media, we ought to look at the facts.</p>
<p>The first question we should ask ourselves is: do assault rifles and high capacity magazines represent a public safety problem? Do they increase the number of people killed each year? In 2004, the assault weapons ban <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban">expired</a>, since then the number of people killed each year in homicides decreased <a href="http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm">by 1,536</a> (from 2004 to 2011). In that same time period the population increased by roughly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States">twenty million</a>, and the AR-15 became America’s best-selling <a href="http://www.nrapublications.org/index.php/12717/the-ar-15-and-the-second-amendment-no-respect/">firearm</a><strong>.</strong> The increased availability of high capacity magazines and firearms has not increased the rate of murder, according to the data. Furthermore, assault rifles are not commonly used in the commission of crimes. In 2005 only three percent of all homicides were committed with rifles, including <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20100412084914/http:/www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_07.html">assault rifles</a>. Prior to the 1994 assault weapons ban studies repeatedly demonstrated that assault weapons, a much broader category including many handguns, were comparatively uncommon in <a href="http://gunowners.org/fs9403.htm">crime</a>.</p>
<p>When considering what to do about mass shootings, we first need to consider the scope of the problem. Mass shootings, while tragic, make up a tiny portion of our overall homicide rate. According to Mother Jones, there have been 62 mass shootings since <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map">1981</a>. By my rough calculations in that same time period about 600,000 people were <a href="http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm">murdered</a>. To make a direct comparison: in the last year for which we have complete data, 14,612 people died of <a href="http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm">homicide</a>, of those 21 died in mass shootings. More relevant than how a new assault weapons ban will impact mass shootings is how it will impact everyday crime and the overall murder rate, and the statistics clearly demonstrate that it will not lower it.</p>
<p><strong></strong>Finally, some commentators have embarrassed themselves by engaging in fact free speculation about mental illness, while presenting no evidence that tighter civil commitment laws would have stopped these tragedies. Just as it makes no sense to make mass shootings the driving concern behind gun laws, it makes no sense to make them the major consideration behind civil commitment laws. Mentally ill mass shooters represent a tiny portion of people with mental illness. It would be insane to change the way we treat millions of people based on the actions of probably less than a hundred.</p>
<p>Rational debate about civil commitment and gun laws is one thing; media-driven hysteria is another. The politicians, and the media, pushing for a new assault weapons ban prefer hysteria to reason. That’s why they talk about passing something now, while the tragedy is fresh in the public’s mind. Even if you agree with gun control in principal (as some conservatives do), you should want a discussion driven by reason and laws shaped by facts.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Anti-Gun Lunatics Take Over the Asylum</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/anti-gun-lunatics-have-taken-over-the-asylum/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=anti-gun-lunatics-have-taken-over-the-asylum</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Dec 2012 04:59:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[assault weapons]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170132</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama offers bread and circuses to the anti-Second Amendment mob -- while ignoring the deadly damage caused by the ACLU.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/anti-gun-lunatics-have-taken-over-the-asylum/1355722466804-cached/" rel="attachment wp-att-170134"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-170134" title="1355722466804.cached" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/1355722466804.cached.jpg" alt="" width="266" height="200" /></a>Instead of undoing reckless policies that have allowed dangerous mentally ill people to roam free, President Obama is using the bloody Newtown massacre to target Americans&#8217; fundamental right to self-defense.</p>
<p>Determined not to let the senseless murder of at least 20 young schoolchildren and six adults by a madman last Friday in Connecticut go to waste, the nation&#8217;s Demagogue-in-Chief is taking aim at the Second Amendment by urging a reinstatement of the useless federal Assault Weapons Ban.</p>
<p>The Assault Weapons Ban, enacted during the Clinton era, prohibited civilian use of specific semi-automatic firearms that politicians arbitrarily deemed &#8220;assault weapons&#8221; for superficial reasons largely unrelated to how they operate. As Daniel Greenfield wisely <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/an-assault-rifle-ban-would-still-not-cover-the-rifle-lanza-used/" target="_blank">put it</a>, an assault rifle &#8220;is some sort of mysterious weapon forged in the fires of hell solely for the purpose of murdering people.&#8221; The ban, which had no measurable impact on crime, expired in 2004 and attempts to revive the nebulous law have failed so far.</p>
<p>The rifle that the reportedly mentally ill perpetrator, Adam Lanza, primarily relied on was a .223-caliber Bushmaster M4 carbine, which was apparently allowed under the federal ban and under Connecticut’s own assault weapon ban.</p>
<p>White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in addition to banning assault weapons Obama supports a proposal to close the misleadingly named &#8220;gun show loophole,&#8221; which allows people to conduct private secondary-market gun transactions without submitting to background checks. Crime expert John Lott, author of  the groundbreaking book, &#8220;More Guns, Less Crime,&#8221; told radio host Mark Levin last night that such private trades are almost nonexistent, amounting to just seven-tenths of one percent of all gun transactions nationwide.</p>
<p>Obama is &#8220;interested in looking at&#8221; restricting high-capacity ammunition clips, Carney said, along with social and mental health issues associated with gun-related violence.</p>
<p>Of course sharp-witted cynics might reply that left-wingers consider any desire to own a gun to be prima facie proof of mental illness.</p>
<p>Leftists across the fruited plain have gone apoplectic in light of last week&#8217;s multiple murders. TV talking heads Piers Morgan, Soledad O&#8217;Brien, and Martin Bashir have been particularly obnoxious, cutting off and shouting down guests who defend Second Amendment rights.</p>
<p>In recent days any principled defense of the Second Amendment has raised howls of indignation from affective, sheltered so-called progressives who wouldn&#8217;t know the difference between a Glock and a glockenspiel. Even more than usual, reasonable debate is not possible with leftists who mere days ago were cheering labor union violence aimed at preventing Michigan from becoming a &#8220;right to work&#8221; state.</p>
<p>Those on the Left seem completely unaware that, with the backing of groups like the ever-litigious American Civil Liberties Union screaming about the so-called rights of disturbed individuals, they helped to lay the foundation for future waves of mass shootings in America.</p>
<p>As Clayton Cramer <a href="http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/madness-deinstitutionalization-murder">writes</a>, mass murders had been relatively rare in the United States until the 1980s. Although it was &#8220;fashionable to blame gun availability for this dramatic increase &#8230; guns did not become more available&#8221; before multiple-victim shootings started to become increasingly common.</p>
<p>&#8220;At least half of these mass murderers (as well as many other murderers) have histories of mental illness,&#8221; says Cramer.</p>
<p>&#8220;Many have already come to the attention of the criminal justice or mental health systems before they become headlines. In the early 1980s, there were about two million chronically mentally ill people in the United States, with 93 percent living outside mental hospitals. The largest diagnosis for the chronically mentally ill is schizophrenia, which afflicts about 1 percent of the population, or about 1.5 percent of adult Americans.&#8221;</p>
<p>But in the late 1950s, egged on by newfangled theories, the nation began deinstitutionalizing psychiatric patients, moving them from long-term wards in state mental hospitals to community-based mental health facilities. Often patients refused to take prescribed medications and became homeless.</p>
<p>Back in the 1960s the strange behavior reportedly exhibited by Lanza probably would have warranted an involuntary stay at a mental hospital. But after deinstitutionalization, such psychiatric patients were left at liberty, fending for themselves in society, until they killed someone, Cramer writes.</p>
<p>&#8220;There is a clear statistical relationship between deinstitutionalization and murder rates,&#8221; he writes. &#8220;Violent crime rates rose dramatically in the 1960s, most worrisomely in the murder rate.&#8221;</p>
<p>But even if Americans didn&#8217;t live in an era of &#8220;deinstitutionalization&#8221; today, Lanza probably would have been able to pull off his killing spree.</p>
<p>If a <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/18/fear-being-committed-may-have-caused-connecticut-madman-to-snap/">new report</a> from Fox News is accurate, a critical social safeguard that might have protected society from the shooter failed. Lanza &#8220;may have snapped because his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility,&#8221; according to Fox.</p>
<blockquote><p>Adam Lanza, 20, targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims&#8217; families worship.</p>
<p>“From what I&#8217;ve been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed,&#8221; Flashman told FoxNews.com.</p>
<p>&#8220;Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off.”</p>
<p>A senior law enforcement official involved in the investigation confirmed that Lanza&#8217;s anger at his mother over plans for “his future mental health treatment” is being looked at as a possible motive for the deadly shooting.</p></blockquote>
<p>If Lanza&#8217;s mother was indeed trying to do the right thing by getting her son psychiatric help, her efforts failed when he shot her to death. Presumably no one and no law could have stopped Lanza before he opened fire at the schoolhouse.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, some left-wingers are now claiming that President Obama is a friend of the Second Amendment and that all he wants to do is to impose some supposedly reasonable restrictions in order to save lives.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t believe it.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s recap what Obama actually believes, as opposed to his official actions as president.</p>
<p>Obama has a well-documented history of anti-gun fanaticism.</p>
<p>During his time teaching at the University of Chicago, he <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tUJaUY2OiY">told</a> then-colleague John Lott point-blank: &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe people should be able to own guns.&#8221;</p>
<p>As a candidate for the Illinois State Senate in 1996, Obama <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/225448/obamas-aim/david-freddoso#">promised</a> to ban &#8220;the manufacture, sale &amp; possession of handguns.”</p>
<p>While running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama spoke in favor of heavy-handed (and no doubt unconstitutional) federal legislation to block citizens nationwide from receiving concealed-carry permits. “National legislation will prevent other states’ flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents,” he said.</p>
<p>Obama supported the District of Columbia&#8217;s draconian near-total ban on handgun ownership that was struck down in the Supreme Court&#8217;s landmark 2008 ruling in D.C. v. Heller.</p>
<p>On the presidential campaign trail Obama all but labeled gun owners as crazies. He revealed his contempt toward average gun-owning Americans, infamously describing small-town Pennsylvanians as people who bitterly cling to their guns and religion.</p>
<p>As Obama&#8217;s defenders delight in pointing out, gun policy has become less restrictive at the national level during his administration, albeit ever so slightly. Obama signed legislation allowing guns to be stowed in luggage on Amtrak trains and to be carried concealed on some federal parkland.</p>
<p>Of course this doesn&#8217;t prove Obama in his heart supports the Second Amendment. Rather, it shows that even statist demagogues can have the good sense to pick their battles carefully in a country with a long, proud history of firearms ownership dating back hundreds of years.</p>
<p>But with Obama now safely ensconced in the White House for another four years, there is no reason for him to hold back.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Sound of Silence in Mali</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/faith-j-h-mcdonnell/the-sound-of-silence-in-mali/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-sound-of-silence-in-mali</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Nov 2012 04:20:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Faith J. H. McDonnell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A bloody Islamist quest to kill music in the West African country.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/faith-j-h-mcdonnell/the-sound-of-silence-in-mali/tinariwen-600x300/" rel="attachment wp-att-163436"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-163436" title="Tinariwen-600x300" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Tinariwen-600x300.gif" alt="" width="315" height="237" /></a>Sharia enforcers bring ugly, angry noises: Cries of “<em>Allahu Akbar” </em>as a <a href="http://thenationonlineng.net/new/news/suicide-bomber-kills-eight-in-kaduna-church/">church</a> is attacked. Slashes of swords and blood-gargling death. The throb of Antonovs circling in the sky. The delicate <em>swoosh</em> of a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/in-a-sudanese-field-cluster-bomb-evidence-proves-just-how-deadly-this-war-has-become-7782501.html">cluster bomb</a> before impact and release of deadly shrapnel and ball bearings. They leave in their wake the sounds of their victims: Cries of anguish. Wails of desolation and grief.</p>
<p>But Sharia enforcers also bring ugly and angry silence: The silence of freedom suppressed. The deadly pall of dreams extinguished. The sealed lips of unwilling submission and of death. And, in the recently overtaken West African nation of Mali, Sharia has brought an unexpected silence. It has stopped the music that is the lifeblood and identity of the country.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/23/mali-militants-declare-war-music">October 23</a> <em>Guardian </em>article about the actions of <a href="http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/news/blog/?2503">the jihadists that have invaded northern Mali</a> begins with a truckload of militants driving to the northern Mali desert town of Kidal, home of members of “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/arts/music/20highline.html?_r=0">Tinariwen</a>,” a Grammy award-winning band. In a country <a href="http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/view/page.basic/country/content.country/mali_7/en_US">famous for its contributions to West African culture</a>, the Islamists had come to implement a ban on all Western music.</p>
<p>To Islamists, “Western” appears to include traditional African music. There is an unbreachable gap between Islam and the culture of individual nations &#8212; even majority-Muslim countries. Islamists always attempt to wipe out anything that gives ethnic and cultural identity apart from Islam to those they seek to conquer. (Apologists in America always refer to “America’s relationship with Islam,” as if the global Islamic Caliphate has already been recognized, and individual nations – and even continents – have been subsumed within it.)</p>
<p>Arriving at the home of one of the musicians, the Islamists used threats and destruction to get their point across, according to Andy Morgan, the writer of the <em>Guardian </em>article<em>. </em>The musician was not home, but Morgan relates that they warned the musician’s sister that if he ever “shows his face” in town, they will “cut off all the fingers that he uses to play his guitar with.” Then the Islamist militants removed all of his guitars, amplifiers, speakers, microphones, and a drum kit from the house, doused them with gasoline, and burned them. Morgan sums it up, “In northern Mali, religious war has been declared on music.”</p>
<p>Arab “Spring,&#8221; the downfall of common-or-garden tyrants and the ascendancy of Islamic terrorists, is on the move in Africa. Islamists have been emboldened by the Obama administration’s narrative of moral equivalence. Jihadists have been able to commandeer, bully, destroy, and murder with impunity in places such as Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. Three armed Islamic groups now control the northern Malian cities of Timbuktu, Kidal and Gao and have put them under the heavy burden of Sharia.</p>
<p>Some Western foreign policy elites argue that the rise of Islamism is all about money and power, not about religion. They say that the actions of Islamist jihadists are rooted in their <a href="http://www.theird.org/page.aspx?pid=2365">victimization, poverty, and marginalization</a> (nothing that a few billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars can’t assuage!). But even the Left-leaning <em>Guardian</em> reveals that “many of the mujahideen who have zoned in on the conflict from all over the Muslim world are fired by an unquestionable religious zeal.” This is similar to the Nigerian jihadists, Boko Haram. Although the State Department denies that Boko Haram is religiously motivated, the jihadist group’s leader, Imam Abubakar Shekau, has declared openly that Islam is the motivation. He <a href="http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/boko-haram-chides-jonathan-over-dialogue/108034/">said</a> in a YouTube video, “I am not against anyone, but if Allah asks me to kill someone, I will kill him and I will enjoy killing him like I am killing a chicken.”</p>
<p>There is no jihadist Bach-equivalent, writing <em>Soli Deo Gloria</em> at the top of stirring musical masterpieces. Islamist “religious zeal” leads to lack of music appreciation and the quenching of creativity. All Western music was officially banned in northern Mali in an August 22 decree issued “by a heavily bearded Islamist spokesman in the city of Gao” Morgan reports. The decree referred to such music as “the music of Satan.” It informed the Malian people that “Qur&#8217;anic verses must take its place.”</p>
<p>“Sharia demands it,&#8221; the decree states of the silencing of the music. And Sharia demands much more in Islamist-occupied northern Mali. Morgan calls the implementation of Sharia there “horrifically literal” and “gratuitous,” but implementation of Sharia <em>is</em> horrifically literal. People are not figuratively lashed &#8212; not even in<a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/muslim-gets-40-lashes-for-drinking-alcohol-in-australia/"> Australia</a>. Their actual hands are cut off. Real stones assault their bodies. And Sharia implementation is not &#8220;gratuitous.&#8221; It is by the book. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney and author, Andrew C. McCarthy, also took issue with the <em>Guardian</em>’s assumptions. He <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/331635/ideology-problem-timbuktu-not-al-qaedas-making-it-classical-islam-andrew-c-mccarthy">explained</a> that “there’s nothing ‘gratuitous’ about applying (Sharia) as it is written.” “What we wishfully call ‘radicalism’ is in fact the Islamic mainstream,” says McCarthy in <a href="http://mappingsharia.com/?p=420">another article</a>.</p>
<p>The ban on music and the broader effects of Islamic jihad are devastating to Mali in many ways. The famous kora (a harp/lute like instrument made from a calabash) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PKdK_68r0A">player</a> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Toumani-Diabate/9367807876?sk=info">Toumani Diabate</a> explains to Morgan that the material well-being of Mali springs from music in the way that the prosperity of other nations springs from their mineral resources. “Culture is our petrol,” he says. “Music is our mineral wealth. There isn&#8217;t a single major music prize in the world today that hasn&#8217;t been won by a Malian artist.”</p>
<p>Even more important than the financial blessing that talented, creative music and musicians have provided for Mali, is that they find their identity in music. The Islamists are trying to erase the ethnicity and culture of the Malian people groups. Morgan quotes another famous West African musician, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_4vKTCrTMg&amp;feature=related">Cheik Tidiane Seck</a>, who says that “music regulates the life of every Malian . . . From the cradle to the grave.” Describing life under the Islamic invaders, one well-known Touareg musician from Kidal says in the <em>Guardian </em>article: &#8220;There&#8217;s a lack of joy. No one is dancing. There are no parties. Everybody&#8217;s under this kind of spell. It&#8217;s strange.&#8221;</p>
<p>Some Malians are defying the Islamists. Morgan tells of Manny Ansar, the director of an annual <a href="http://www.festivalinthedesert.org/">musical festival</a> that takes place in the desert near Timbuktu and Kidal. Now, La Maison, the hotel where Bono stayed when he attended the most recent festival this past January, is the headquarters of the Islamic tribunal. But Ansar is going to take the now-banned festival on the road. He is sponsoring a <a href="http://www.festival-au-desert.org/">Festival in the Desert in Exile</a>, Morgan reports. It is his “way of fighting back.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ansar is not alone. Malian rap/hip-hop artist <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZOyJRPv1DY">Amkoulle</a>l denounces Islamism and military rule, declaring, “I don’t give a **** what they say! We won&#8217;t let them get away with it. We don&#8217;t need them to teach us how to be Muslims. We&#8217;re a secular tolerant country, where everyone declares their religion according to their feeling. And in any case, they know that a Mali without music is an impossibility.&#8221; Amkoullel has organized a coalition of rappers, activists, and other friends of freedom called Plus Jamais Ça to pressure the international community to counter the Islamist takeover. According to the <em>Guardian</em>, he has received three death threats.</p>
<p>Another award-winning Malian musician, Rokia Traore, says that although she is a Muslim, “Sharia is not my thing.” She says that if she could not go on stage and perform, she would cease to exist. Without music, she tells Morgan, Mali will &#8220;cease to exist.” Traore and Mali’s other musicians and freedom-lovers – mostly Muslims – are fighting against the implementation of Sharia in their country. They see Sharia for what it is – a hegemony that is crushing the life and erasing the cultural identity of this West African nation.</p>
<p>That, of course, is the intention of Sharia. American useful idiots of the Islamists promote the <a href="http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=25141&amp;lan=en&amp;sid=1&amp;sp=0%20">idea</a> that Sharia is compatible with American democratic principles. And some are gullible enough to believe, as <a href="http://thewarofideas.net/">Dr. Walid Phares</a> has said, that <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4081">jihad is a benign spiritual tradition like yoga</a>. But perhaps the gagging of Mali’s musicians by Sharia will open some eyes &#8212; at least those of music lovers &#8212; to the truth.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Iran’s Escalating Assault on Women</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/iran%e2%80%99s-escalating-assault-on-women/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran%25e2%2580%2599s-escalating-assault-on-women</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/iran%e2%80%99s-escalating-assault-on-women/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 04:30:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[adultery]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=143507</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Much more than just a university ban against women. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/iranuniversityban-640x434.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-143588" title="iranuniversityban-640x434" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/iranuniversityban-640x434.gif" alt="" width="375" height="254" /></a>While America’s college feminists lament the bitter struggles they face in getting someone to pay for their birth control, an all-too real war on college women is being waged as Iranian women are <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534116,00.html">banned</a> by the Islamist regime from study at Iran’s colleges and universities.</p>
<p>Among the nearly 80 fields of study apparently deemed inappropriate by the Iranian government for feminine academic pursuit include nuclear physics, engineering, computer science, chemistry business management, education and English.</p>
<p>While one of the purported reasons cited by Iranian authorities for the decision was a lack of employer demand for women graduates, evidenced by an unemployment rate for women under 30 at 28 percent, Iranian Science Minister Kamran Daneshjoo <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9487761/Anger-as-Iran-bans-women-from-universities.html">claimed</a> the main factor to be a need to find a greater “balance” in gender enrollment.</p>
<p>Specifically, Iran has the highest ratio of female to male undergraduates in the world, with women representing 65 percent of Iranian undergraduates and about 70 percent of its science graduates, academic success which has led to an increased willingness of families to seek higher education for their daughters.</p>
<p>Now, however, in the eyes of Iran’s theocratic regime the gender collegiate imbalance has grown far too lopsided and dangerous, especially among Iranian mullahs who have become openly distressed about the rising social effects of higher educational achievement for women.</p>
<p>While those concerns include declining birth and marriage rates, the far more problematic issue is the danger liberated and educated women pose to Iran’s Islamic and highly misogynistic regime, one with a long and brutal track record of oppression and subjugation of women.</p>
<p>In fact, a 2006 United Nations <a href="http://www.ecoi.net/file_upload/227_tmpphpI5UbnU.pdf">report</a> found that “violence against women in the Islamic Republic of Iran is ingrained,” violence and hatred which finds its expression in a number of distressingly harsh ways.</p>
<p>For example, Iranian girls can be legally forced to marry at the age of 13, with efforts currently underway to lower that threshold to nine; women without the right to divorce their husbands; polygamy which is legal and encouraged by the government; a penal code punishment of stoning for women who commit adultery; and enforced Islamic dress codes, violations which are punished by jail and lashings.</p>
<p>Yet, for many Iranian men, loathing of women can also include a correspondingly equal fear, one evidenced in one of Ayatollah Khomeini’s last <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/item_SYpJU5LnKvgcVhnobRoGQN;jsessionid=CD64D8E01CBEE11993A034C1D3FB31A1">sermons</a>, which dealt with the “three threats” confronting Islam: America, Jews, and women.</p>
<p>One of those feminine menaces apparently includes a woman’s ability to generate catastrophic geological events through inappropriate attire, as determined by one Iranian cleric, Hojjat ol-eslam Kazem Sediqi, who <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282363858858700.html">said</a> a 2003 earthquake that killed 30,000 was because “Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.”</p>
<p>That view was echoed by leaders in the Iranian government, such as Sadeg Mahsooli, Iran’s then-Minister of Welfare and Social Security, who chimed in: “We cannot invent a system that prevents earthquakes, but God has created this system and that is to avoid sins, to pray, to seek forgiveness, pay alms and self-sacrifice.”</p>
<p>So, given all that, it’s not surprising then that the Islamist regime is now clamping down on the collegiate opportunities being afforded Iranian women, especially since political dissent in Iran since its 1979 revolution has been mostly generated in universities, thus making them incubators of subversion, with feminist student groups regarded as the most mutinous.</p>
<p>In fact, Iranian Noble Laureate Shirin Ebadi maintains the new educational restrictions on women are designed specifically to undermine Iran’s feminist movement, a movement which has been gaining strength since the first election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Iranian presidency in 2005.</p>
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		<title>The Manhattan Gun Control Lobby</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/the-manhattan-gun-control-lobby/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-manhattan-gun-control-lobby</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/the-manhattan-gun-control-lobby/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jul 2012 04:35:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Flynn]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138700</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the metropolitan island is out of step with America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/120726122441-navarrette-bloomberg-guns-story-top.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138709" title="120726122441-navarrette-bloomberg-guns-story-top" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/120726122441-navarrette-bloomberg-guns-story-top.gif" alt="" width="375" height="252" /></a>In Colorado, gun-permit applications spiked 44 percent in the wake of last Friday’s shooting at an Aurora cineplex. The public response to multiple victim public shootings isn’t gun control. It is more guns.</p>
<p>Colorado’s reaction to the <em>Dark Knight Rises</em> tragedy confuses Gothamites, who have been drawing the opposite lesson from the shooting that claimed twelve lives. Mayor Michael Bloomberg told CNN’s Piers Morgan, “I don’t understand why police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say, ‘We’re going to go on strike. We’re not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe.’” Morgan, a Brit who broadcasts out of the Big Apple, had days earlier treated <em>More Guns, Less Crime</em> author John Lott the way Robert Blake had recently treated the host: rudely. Morgan has spent the week lecturing a country where guns outnumber adults about the idiocy of private gun ownership. Last month, Morgan’s ratings reached a primetime low for CNN’s history.</p>
<p>There is the parochialism of cosmopolitans at work here, in which New Yorkers mistake the opinions prevailing among their neighbors as prevailing opinion. But when Manhattanites venture from their island, they discover the presence of woods where people hunt and the absence of a policeman on every corner where most people live. People so drenched in their gunless milieu can’t understand why anyone would want or need a firearm.</p>
<p><em>The New York Times</em> counseled in an editorial, “The most appropriate response now to the shootings early Friday in Aurora, Colo., is also the simplest: sympathy for the victims, for the injured and for their families.” The editors then discarded their own advice by sermonizing against an “out-of-control gun market” and “too readily available” semi-automatic rifles. The bodies hadn’t even been cleared from the theater and the <em>Times</em> had already politicized the tragedy.</p>
<p>The newspaper of record has over the last week released a torrent of op-eds, editorials, blog posts, and news articles advocating government restrictions on private gun ownership. In a news article this week, the <em>Times</em> cited an “extensive review of the scholarly literature by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center” that maintains that the proliferation of guns proliferates murder.  “There is unanimous evidence that higher homicide rates lead to people getting more guns,” countered Florida State’s Gary Kleck. This is precisely what happened in Colorado.</p>
<p>The paper featured a debate between gun control supporter David Brooks and gun control supporter Gail Collins. “There are some parts of the gun control debate that are definitely open to, um, debate,” Collins conceded. “There are parts that aren’t, like the need to ban assault weapons.” Alas, as Nicolas Kristof pointed out Thursday in the <em>Times</em>, 53 percent of Americans oppose an assault-weapons ban, a position that Collins doesn’t even regard as worthy of discussion. And Brooks offered an “amen” to Collins’ intolerance, adding: “I’d support a ban on assault weapons. I’d support all the background checks you can imagine. I’d support a national registry.” Collins concluded by affirming “the importance of a civil debate.” The <em>Times</em> and its deferential debaters don’t seem grasp that allowing people who disagree into the discussion is a prerequisite of “civil debate.”</p>
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		<title>The Day the Bake Sale Died</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/the-day-the-bake-sale-died/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-day-the-bake-sale-died</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/the-day-the-bake-sale-died/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 May 2012 04:45:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bake sale]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=131617</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Protecting Americans from themselves.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/bake_sale.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-131666" title="bake_sale" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/bake_sale.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>Several weeks ago, the Obama State Department essentially declared the war on terror over. “People who once might have gone into al Qaeda see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism,” an unnamed State Department official said. Meanwhile, President Obama was preparing to fly to Afghanistan to declare that we had beaten back the Taliban – and, simultaneously, to declare that we were in negotiations with the supposedly defanged Taliban.</p>
<p>This stunt was followed by the Obama administration’s attempted legitimization of one of the top Egyptian presidential candidates, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, as a moderate. The <em>Los Angeles Times</em> went so far as to label Fotouh a “dynamic pragmatist.” Dynamic may not have been the right word – it’s too similar to dynamite, which is apparently Fotouh’s political method of choice. In 2004, he said, “I would personally hope to have a chance to bear arms to confront the US occupation in Iraq.” But happy days are here again on the Nile!</p>
<p>This, in the opinion of the Obama administration, is all charming multiculturalism. When the Egyptian parliament discusses bills allowing men to have sex with their dead wives, that’s just a lifestyle choice. When Chinese smugglers traffic pills filled with powdered human baby flesh, and when the Chinese government beats the wife of a dissident to force him to abandon the US embassy, that’s simply a disagreement about the meaning of freedom. And we can all agree to disagree, can’t we?</p>
<p>It’s time to stop worrying about the rest of the world, says the Obama administration. It’s time to start worrying about the real threat: us. This week, President Obama promised that the time had come to refocus from external enemies to the real battles that need fighting here at home. “After more than a decade of war,” he said in his weekly address, “it is time to focus on nation building here at home.”</p>
<p>This was one of Obama’s favorite themes during the 2008 campaign – the notion that Americans required fundamental change. It’s why Michelle assured Americans that “before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.”</p>
<p>We are, in short, a dangerous bunch. And we require government to fix our brokenness.</p>
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		<title>More Than Bluster</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-klein/more-than-bluster/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=more-than-bluster</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 04:03:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61216</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[North Korea ups the ante. Will the world's democracies fold? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/kim-jong-420x0.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61232" title="kim-jong-420x0" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/kim-jong-420x0.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="255" /></a></p>
<p>Tensions are rising in the Korean Peninsula, following confirmation by international investigators that North Korea torpedoed a South Korean ship in March, killing 46 sailors which were South Korea’s worst military fatalities since the Korean War ended in 1953.</p>
<p>South Korean President Lee Myung-bak vowed to cut off nearly all trade with North Korea and to deny North Korean merchant ships permission to use South Korean sea lanes. South Korea also plans to broadcast propaganda messages into the North and to drop leaflets by air.</p>
<p>The United States is planning joint military exercises with South Korea in a show of resolve.</p>
<p>China does not want to do anything that might further inflame the situation, while its friends in North Korea are talking about going to war.</p>
<p>As for the United Nations, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters at his monthly press conference at UN headquarters in New York that the evidence laid out in the report of the international investigators &#8220;is overwhelming and deeply troubling.&#8221;  Ban Ki-moon expressed his grave concerns, not only on behalf of the United Nations but also personally as a South Korean citizen. “I have a very strong attachment and even a sense of responsibility,” he told reporters.  “Now, serving as Secretary-General, this is most troubling for me to see what is happening in the Korean Peninsula &#8211; that’s my motherland.”</p>
<p>The Secretary General said that the Security Council will be conferring on what “appropriate” measures to take against the rogue regime. What that means is anyone’s guess, since China will most likely use its veto power to make sure that North Korea gets no more than another slap on the wrist following the ineffective sanctions imposed after North Korea’s missile and nuclear arms testing.</p>
<p>China’s solicitude for North Korea should not be surprising, considering that China has been North Korea’s largest trading partner and supplier of assistance (through subsidized trade and direct transfers).  Moreover, as pointed out by the Congressional Research Service, “Beijing values North Korea as a buffer between the democratic South Korea and the U.S. forces stationed there, as a rationale to divert U.S. and Japanese resources in the Asia Pacific toward dealing with Pyongyang and less focused on the growing military might of China.”</p>
<p>For its part, the United Nations itself is still throwing North Korea a lifeline, so to speak. Irrespective of its government’s aggressive actions, humanitarian aid to North Korea will continue, promised Ban Ki-moon.  He emphasized the needs of the malnourished children, calling them “the leaders of our future generations.”</p>
<p>After his formal news conference was over, I approached the Secretary General and asked him what level of confidence he had that the humanitarian aid would actually reach the people in North Korea who needed it.  I reminded him how previous aid projects to help the people sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme had failed.</p>
<p>All that Ban Ki-moon could say in response was that “We have to try.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it is a doomed effort. The North Korean regime has a habit of raiding the UN piggybank.  For example, it convinced the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to provide hard currency payments without any safeguards. Those funds ended up lining the dictator Kim Jong-Il&#8217;s pocket. At least $20 million was transferred from the UNDP directly to the North Korean regime for so-called development projects. The UNDP enabled North Korea to use UN-affiliated accounts to launder money and to import dual-use technology.  As a consequence of this scandal, the UNDP had shut down its North Korea operations, but has since decided to resume them.</p>
<p>The terrible malnutrition that Ban Ki-moon laments is a direct result of the regime’s cruel neglect and mismanagement.  It lets its people suffer from severe food shortages and a near-total breakdown in the public health system while it squanders money on nuclear arms and missiles.  The UN’s World Health Organization has managed to get some limited rations delivered to less than a third of the neediest people. While the World Health Organization claims it has international staff monitoring distribution of food aid, reports have surfaced that people getting food are giving it back to the government.</p>
<p>As long as this closed regime stays in power, there is little the United Nations can do to really break through and reach the imprisoned population with humanitarian aid, even with the best of intentions. The aid will be squandered by Kim Jong-Il and his henchmen, as they have done before with development assistance.  The UN is simply enabling the government to continue to survive.</p>
<p>The back of this regime must be broken by strangling its economy and quarantining entry and exit of ships to and from North Korean ports suspected of carrying nuclear or other military equipment and materials.  There is no other way to save its people.</p>
<p>Article Seven of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines various categories of acts that constitute crimes against humanity including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of population, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery or enforced prostitution, persecution and enforced disappearance of persons. North Korea is guilty of virtually all of these horrendous crimes against its own people, yet nothing is being done to hold its leaders to account.</p>
<p>Even if the International Criminal Court should take some action against the North Korean regime, it will mean nothing.  Kim Jong-Il need only look at what is happening with Sudan’s Omar Hassan al-Bashir as an example. The Court issued a warrant for al-Bashir’s arrest more than a year ago on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Not only is al-Bashir still free, but he will be serving yet another term as president.  Two top UN officials in Sudan are even planning to attend his inauguration ceremony.</p>
<p>Decisive action against North Korea, beyond what the United Nations is capable of doing, is needed immediately.  Will the world’s democracies finally have the courage it takes to put this aggressive dictatorship in its place once and for all? So far, it does not look promising.</p>
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