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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Protests</title>
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		<title>Trouble in Berkeley, Missouri</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/trouble-in-berkeley-missouri/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=trouble-in-berkeley-missouri</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/trouble-in-berkeley-missouri/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Dec 2014 05:27:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Berkeley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[surveillance camera]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248132</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Protestors fight police after another shooting. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/berkeley12.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248135" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/berkeley12-450x253.jpg" alt="berkeley12" width="244" height="137" /></a>Another seemingly justified police shooting near Ferguson, MO briefly followed a sadly predictable script. In nearby Berkeley, a white police officer, aged 34, fired three shots, killing black American Antonio Martin, aged 18. The officer was responding to a report of stealing at a Mobil on the Run gas station. Martin allegedly pulled a 9mm handgun on the six-year veteran, who stumbled backwards as he fired, striking Martin once. &#8220;He will carry the weight of this for the rest of his life, certainly for the rest of his career,&#8221; said St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, referring to the unidentified officer. &#8220;There are no winners here.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there were plenty of losers. Despite the efforts of Mayor Theodore Hoskins, who <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/missouri-police-officer-shoots-dead-man-who-pulled-gun-1419412121?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories">explained</a> the shooting had been captured on a surveillance camera and a weapon was recovered on the scene, between 200 and 300 protesters <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/berkeley-officer-fatally-shoots-teenager/article_d45db16a-7422-5307-b81d-b45dbdc896ba.html">gathered</a> there and began fighting with police officers. One of three explosive devices (possible fireworks) tossed near gas pumps sent one officer to the hospital with injuries to his leg, while another sustained facial lacerations as a result of bricks thrown at the officers by the mob. Several police cars were also damaged by rocks protesters brought to the area. Four people were arrested for assault.</p>
<p>Belmar said he understood why a crowd would gather, but he noted that &#8220;to come there armed with explosive devices is certainly something that is not safe for our community, is not safe for our businesses and is certainly not safe for our officers.” He also addressed questions from the crowd as to why the officer couldn’t have used pepper spray or a Taser to subdue the victim. He characterized that response as “unreasonable.” &#8220;We had somebody who was pointing a gun at a police officer,” he explained. &#8220;With not a lot of time, I would imagine that most of us would feel like we were in imminent danger of losing our lives at that point. And I think the officer responded with what he thought was commensurate force at the time.”</p>
<p>&#8220;I understand the emotions and I understand these young people are looking for something, but I think we have to understand the context of what happens down there with these kinds of situations,” he added.</p>
<p>The incident occurred at approximately 11:15 p.m. Tuesday night.  The officer encountered two men at the parking lot in the 6800 block of North Hanley Road and began talking to them. Belmar said one of the men approached the drivers side of the police vehicle. According to the police officer&#8217;s attorney, Brian Millikan, the other man kept wandering away despite the officer’s commands to remain close by.</p>
<p>One of the two men &#8220;produced a pistol with his arm straight out, pointing it straight at the officer kind of from across the hood,&#8221; Belmar said, further noting the police officer had a flashlight in his left hand and was near his driver’s side door while the armed man stood near the headlights on the passenger side of the vehicle. The officer proceeded to get his handgun &#8220;and fired what we think is three shots,” Belmar said. One struck Martin, one struck a tire on the police car, and the third shot remains unaccounted for.</p>
<p>After the shooting the officer was placed on administrative leave. Belmar <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/12/24/protesters-near-ferguson-injure-cops-with-bricks-explosives-after-officer-kills-armed-18-yr-old/">revealed</a> the suspect’s “defaced” 9 mm gun “had five rounds in the chamber and one round in the magazine.” He further revealed Martin had a criminal record that included three assault charges, as well as charges for armed robbery, armed criminal action and  multiple unlawful uses of a weapon.</p>
<p>Millikan recounted further details provided to him by the officer hours after the shooting &#8220;The other guy was doing the talking, and as the cop starts talking, the suspect starts walking away again,&#8221; Millikan said. &#8220;At that point, the cop says, &#8216;Hey, come back here,&#8217; and he turns around, pulls a gun from his left pant pocket. He&#8217;s trying to process all of this, and the suspect raises it, points it at him. The cop pulls his weapon and starts backpedaling and fired three or four shots. It happened that quickly. He doesn&#8217;t understand why the suspect&#8217;s gun didn&#8217;t fire. I&#8217;m not sure if he tried to pull the trigger and it jammed,” he added.</p>
<p>Millikan who further characterized the behavior of the two suspects as “bizarre” speculated that his client might have been set up for an ambush because the suspects remained at the scene after store employees called 911. &#8220;Their behavior is certainly bizarre, and it wouldn&#8217;t surprise me at all, in the environment we are in, that&#8217;s for sure,” he contended.</p>
<p>Belmar noted the officer dropped his flashlight when he stumbled while backpedaling, with Mayor Hoskins characterizing that as a blessing in disguise that may have saved the officer’s life. The officer had been given a body camera at the beginning of his shift, but wasn’t wearing it. Belmar said the officer was doing something else when it was handed out and simply forgot to put it on. The police car’s dashboard camera was also inoperative at the time because the car&#8217;s emergency lights were not on, Belmar explained.</p>
<p>All three men were relieved the incident was captured by surveillance cameras. Only the part prior to the shooting has been released so far. &#8220;The video goes on; there’s no reason for the family of this young man to have to see the rest of the video,” Belmar said, adding the department would be distributing more video from the scene, including footage of the officer retreating, to provide transparency.</p>
<p>According to Belmar, the officer was involved in a similar incident in 2011 or 2012, during which he and a suspect struggled for the officer’s gun. To prevent the suspect from using it, the officer purposefully dropped the magazine out of the weapon and fired the chambered round into the floor.</p>
<p>Martin’s family, who couldn’t be located initially, finally emerged. And while his mother admitted he had problems, it &#8220;doesn&#8217;t make any sense for them to kill my son like this,&#8221; Toni Martin-Green <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/24/372903198/son-s-death-doesn-t-make-any-sense-say-antonio-martin-s-parents">contended</a>.</p>
<p>Belmar expressed condolence for both families. &#8220;These are nothing but tragedies,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This is a family right now that, regardless of the decisions that this individual made, are without a family member this Christmas season. This is also a tragedy for the police officer. He will carry the weight of this for the rest of his life, certainly for the rest of his career. This really underscores the task that our police officers across the nation have to deal with day in and day out as they answer these calls in our community,&#8221; he added.</p>
<p>Belmar also praised Berkeley Police Chief Frank McCall for helping to calm the protests that dissipated by 3 a.m., noting he had ordered his commanders to “let this emotion vent. Let this happen.” Hoskins was also adamant, &#8220;You can&#8217;t compare this to Ferguson or the Garner case in New York,” he said emphasizing the videotape showed Martin pointing a gun at the officer. Nonetheless, he promised an investigation would be conducted in addition to the one by the St. Louis County Police.</p>
<p>The Mayor also illuminated the racial breakdown of the department. Out of 31 officers, 17 or 18 are African-American, and approximately 75 percent of the command staff are black, along with the the mayor, police chief and other city officials. The community itself is just over 9,000 residents, 80 percent of whom are black American.</p>
<p>Hoskins made one stumble. &#8220;At this point, our review indicates that the police did not initiate this, like Ferguson,” he stated. Considering the Ferguson grand jury&#8217;s findings, that statement is disingenuous at best, and self-serving at worst. However, the Mayor did stand strong when his press conference was interrupted by black Baptist minister Jason Keith Coleman, who characterized the shooting as another act of aggression by “trigger happy” police officers. &#8220;Everybody don&#8217;t die the same,&#8221; Hoskins snapped back. &#8220;Some people die because they initiate it, and at this point, our review suggests police did not initiate it.”</p>
<p>Earlier that evening Belmar addressed equally spurious assertions, noting that he had &#8220;already seen through social media that this officer stopped (Martin), questioned him, frisked him and then killed him in cold blood — well, that&#8217;s not what you&#8217;re going to see when you see the video.”</p>
<p>Considering what has, and continues to transpire in New York and other hotspots around the nation, one might be forgiven for wondering whether it matters. Despite the successful efforts of local officials, a leftist agenda, replete with false narratives, continues to widen the divide between police and the communities they serve. It is driven by those for whom police officers will forever be “ trigger happy,” irrespective of evidence, because a divided America, along with the eternal victimization of black Americans, is the only thing that separates the racial arsonists from the irrelevance they so richly deserve. That includes our feckless president, who chooses to remain on the golf course in Hawaii while Vice President Joe Biden has been <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/joe-biden-attend-funeral-slain-nypd-officer-rafael-ramos-n274016">dispatched</a> to attend the one of the two funerals of the two <em>minority</em> officers slain in New York City.</p>
<p>President Obama could have sent a powerful message with his attendance. Instead, he sends an equally powerful message with his absence. There is no political mileage to be gained by standing with police officers, even as his ideological fellow travelers stand against them, all of their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. Like his execrable Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama prefers the company of uber race-baiter Al Sharpton. It is this trio of men, along with New York’s equally feckless Mayor, Bill de Blasio, who have cultivated the &#8220;us against them”mentality they see as a vehicle for the &#8220;fundamental transformation&#8221; of America.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Berkeley, MO may prove that such a transformation is far from inevitable. We are a far better nation than the American left would have us believe, and the bet here is most Americans are finally beginning to realize it, one in their face, over the top, cop-bashing—and killing—moment after another.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>American Tragedies and American Dreams</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/danusha-v-goska/american-tragedies-and-american-dreams/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=american-tragedies-and-american-dreams</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/danusha-v-goska/american-tragedies-and-american-dreams/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Dec 2014 05:10:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Danusha V. Goska]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[african americans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Garner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247892</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Michael Brown and Eric Garner verdicts and the future of African-American youth.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Garner.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247905" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Garner-450x300.jpg" alt="Garner" width="257" height="171" /></a>Decades ago, I taught at a community college. The bunch of us treated our shared office as if it were the neighborhood bar. We&#8217;d hang out for hours. That beat going home to our cheap apartments or our parents&#8217; basements and watching TV, which was all we could afford on the pittance adjunct professors are paid. James was a jazz musician. Mo&#8217;s nose was always to the grindstone. Patrick was enthralling. I wish I had had a video camera recording our every conversation. His words glittered.</p>
<p>Melvyn was only a teenager. He was a new kind of person – a computer nerd – on the cusp of a revolution that would enrich many. Education was just beginning heavy reliance on computers. We profs were luddites. We would fumble with the computers – accidentally unplug them with our feet – and squeal that this was a sign of the end times. Young Melvyn to the rescue. Melvyn had a bouncy step, a perpetual smile, and a know-it-all air: that combination of goofy youthfulness and superior impatience exhibited by a hundred other computer geeks on a hundred other campuses. Melvyn&#8217;s hours seemed to be pre-dawn through midnight. Young Melvyn was the computer demigod.</p>
<p>Now, decades later, James is near retirement as the president of a better community college. Mo is still plugging away, at a higher-paying university. Patrick, brilliant Patrick, never landed the tenure-track, Ivy League position that could match his outsize intellect. He drank. He was homeless. He died.</p>
<p>The last anyone had heard of Melvyn, he was in jail. He had been stealing computers. Melvyn was the one member of our group who was born at the right place and the right time to parlay his freakish natural gifts into the best-paying job and the cushiest future. He destroyed all that with stupid, unprofitable, recklessness.</p>
<p>Melvyn was black. The scuttlebutt was that Melvyn had felt uncomfortable being the computer demigod of an academic setting, accepted by whites. Stealing computers restored his sense that he was authentic. He was in solid with his homies. He was sticking it to the man. The man who liked, trusted, and relied on him.</p>
<p>James is just as black as Melvyn. Mo is an immigrant with the kind of facial hair seen on many an FBI wanted poster, a foreign accent and a name that sets off alarms – Mohammed. James and Mo were able to build comfortable lives in America. Melvyn could not. But then neither could Patrick, a tall, handsome, heterosexual, Irish-American.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about American tragedies and American Dreams in the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner grand jury verdicts. I&#8217;ve also been thinking about my current young students&#8217; futures.</p>
<p>I walk to work through Paterson, NJ, a post-industrial, high-crime, majority-minority city. My commute helped change me from someone who once voted communist to someone who now shocks herself every time she pulls the lever for a Republican.</p>
<p>As I walk, I pass healthy African American men in the prime of life who spend their days smoking joints and gossiping on streets littered with trash that no one but the rain ever removes. The day of the Trayvon Martin verdict, I was stopped by police cars, flashing lights, and yellow tape. I actually hoped for civil unrest. Something to show that Paterson still had a pulse. In fact one of Paterson&#8217;s former silk mills, a three-story brick structure, had completely collapsed. The bricks that sprawled chaotically, good only for blocking traffic, once surrounded industry founded by Alexander Hamilton and workers that gave Paterson an international reputation as &#8220;Silk City.&#8221;</p>
<p>There are facts, and there are stories. Impersonal forces like gravity, chemical bonds and time create facts. Humans create stories. Facts are objective. Stories are subjective.</p>
<p>It is a fact that police kill a disproportionate number of black males. What is the story one builds around those facts? For me, the pressing question is: what story is most likely to condemn my students to jail terms alternating with de facto incarceration on garbage-strewn street corners? What story will empower my students to become like James, an African American college president?</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the story Della Kurzer-Zlotnick is telling. In December, 2014, Kurzer-Zlotnick, an Oberlin student, posted a letter to her professor on her Facebook page. In her letter, Kurzer-Zlotnick asked that her final examination in statistics be delayed.</p>
<p>&#8220;Students of color, particularly Black students, have suffered significant trauma,&#8221; she wrote, &#8220;due to the Grand Jury decisions&#8221; and thus they &#8220;are not at all in a place to take their final exams right now.&#8221; &#8220;Black students&#8221; are &#8220;struggling and feel traumatized because of the recent and day-to-day acts of racism in this country. Black students and other students of color have to focus on their survival.&#8221; Kurzer-Zlotnick herself identifies as &#8220;a white, middle-class person&#8221; who has &#8220;to [sic] privilege of being able to step away from these events and put enough energy into schoolwork and finals to assure that I will pass my classes.&#8221; But, she says, &#8220;Just because the murders of Eric Garner and Michael Brown do not seem to threaten the survival or safety of white people does not mean that they are not severely affecting students on our campus.&#8221; Those students, she reports, &#8220;are tired, they are hurting beyond belief.&#8221;</p>
<p>Kurzer-Zlotnick describes herself thus,</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m 18. My biggest passion is social justice and community organizing…At my synagogue, Shir Tikvah. I had the social action position when I was 15, and I didn&#8217;t really know what that meant – I just knew I cared about social change and progress.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>According to Forbes, the total annual cost for a student to attend Oberlin is $62,000. Five percent of Oberlin&#8217;s student body is black. Thirteen percent of the overall American population is black.</p>
<p>Is Kurzer-Zlotnick&#8217;s letter telling a true story? Are African Americans so burdened by murderous police that they can&#8217;t function, and do they need rich, white liberals, who publicly admit to their own cluelessness, and who live in white enclaves, to make excuses for them and to lower standards for them? And is this the route to a better tomorrow for all?</p>
<p>Here are some more facts, and a different story told by a different teller. One of my students, Terry, is an African American. Terry had a difficult semester, too. Terry was traumatized by life events too personal and too crushing to recount here, but please imagine the worst. Terry never asked for special treatment; in fact Terry never initiated disclosure. I noticed that Terry was depressed and I asked why. Terry never missed a class. Terry produced work so far superior to that of others that I asked to display it as an exemplary model.</p>
<p>And here is yet another story. After the Michael Brown and Eric Garner grand jury verdicts were announced, a concerned friend emailed me. &#8220;Be careful,&#8221; he warned. &#8220;They are predicting black rage.&#8221;</p>
<p>In the days subsequent to the Brown and Garner verdicts, my black neighbors are saying to me what they usually say. &#8220;Good morning … nice weather … my kid is giving me a hard time … my dog wants to go for a walk.&#8221; Al Sharpton called for protests in Paterson. I saw no protests in Paterson.</p>
<p>Other news is claiming our attention in Paterson in December, 2014. There are, of course, the usual drive-by shootings, heroin busts, and deadly fires. But lately we&#8217;ve learned that in the entire city, only nineteen students scored high enough on the SAT to be deemed &#8220;college ready.&#8221; This while sixty-six employees in Paterson schools earn at least $125,000 annually. Paterson teacher Lee McNutly went public to allege that his school was nothing but a chaotic &#8220;indoor street corner&#8221; where teachers were coerced into falsifying records in order to ensure six-figure bonuses to administrators. Paterson school #20 displayed a large sign for a week that contained multiple misspellings, in spite of parental complaints. All these local stories demanded more attention than alleged &#8220;black rage&#8221; over the Garner verdict.</p>
<p>And yet Jesse Jackson insists that it is inevitable that black people &#8220;explode&#8221; in riots. In late November, 2014, after riots in Ferguson, Missouri, CNN&#8217;s Don Lemon interviewed Jesse Jackson. Lemon, who is black, said that &#8220;Lawlessness and violence should not have happened and there should be no excuses made for it.&#8221; &#8220;If people need jobs,&#8221; Lemon asked, &#8220;why would you burn down a store where you could possibly get work? What does one have to do with the other? What does lawlessness have to do with lack of jobs?&#8221;</p>
<p>Jackson responded. &#8220;There is a body of people who after a long train of abuses simply explode…Pain can lead to irrational conclusions. To be locked out of police departments, fire departments, contracts and schools. Those factors matter.&#8221;</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s another story. A youtube poster calling herself Honestly Speaking posted a video entitled &#8220;The Mike Brown Fiasco&#8221; on December 2, 2014. Two weeks later, it had over a million views and seven thousand up votes. Honestly Speaking looks into the camera and shouts. She shouts that Mike Brown was a &#8220;disrespectful&#8221; thief, &#8220;asshole&#8221; and someone who &#8220;don&#8217;t contribute nothing to society&#8221; &#8220;who started the trail that lead him to his death. Just because he is black does not change the fact that he committed a crime.&#8221; She denounces protests as &#8220;bleeding heart bullshit.&#8221; Honestly Speaking is a black woman.</p>
<p>I am a former leftist and I know how facts are spun. &#8220;Truth is that which serves the party.&#8221; Ideologues will insist that black people like James, who became a community college president, are statistical anomalies, that black people like Don Lemon who push back against Jesse Jackson are sellouts or self-hating blacks, &#8220;house niggers&#8221; or Uncle Toms. Ideologues will insist that my black neighbors who did not riot after the Eric Garner verdict suffer from &#8220;false consciousness.&#8221; Ideologues will insist that African American students like Terry who do well within existing institutions are pawns whom The Man allows to succeed at the expense of their oppressed brethren – it&#8217;s all a conspiracy. In this spinning of Terry&#8217;s story, Terry&#8217;s success only delays the inevitable and necessary revolution. Ideologues reserve their most toxic vitriol for outspoken and admired black women like youtube poster Honestly Speaking. She&#8217;s already responded in a youtube video to being called a &#8220;race traitor.&#8221;</p>
<p>The left claims women and minorities. When women and minorities resist the left&#8217;s lure, we receive the harshest punishment. Witness what the left does to Sarah Palin, Deneen Borelli, or even Juan Williams.</p>
<p>Here are some facts. My coworkers describe hiring committees that decide that only African American candidates will be considered, even though that policy is not stated in the job description. Whites will apply, but will not be considered. My students and coworkers, who often are members of minority groups themselves, gossip angrily of others, including family members, who slack or claim preferential treatment because of their skin color. Maureen describes to me her volunteer work as a mentor for African American interns at a Fortune Five Hundred company. It maddens her that these interns need to be trained in basics like arriving on time, dress and comportment. I see monies, positions, programs, scholarships, that have been designated for African Americans, go begging, because they lack appropriate applicants. I see extended hands that reach out to emptiness. I see highways to success with no traffic on them. I see, in short, many Melvyns.</p>
<p>The past is prelude. We&#8217;ve seen these riots before. Jesse Jackson excuses them; implies that they are the way that African Americans can get jobs they would not otherwise get. Is that true?</p>
<p>The National Bureau of Economic Research is the largest economics research association in the United States. It is notable for the number of its research associates who are also winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics. The NBER published two papers in 2004, &#8220;The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots: Evidence from Property Values&#8221; and &#8220;The Labor Market Effects of the 1960s Riots.&#8221; These papers indicate that the race riots of the 1960s &#8220;had economically significant negative effects on blacks&#8217; income and employment.&#8221; It&#8217;s not just that cities affected by riots, like Newark, became dysfunctional and welfare-dependent ghost towns in the immediate aftermath of rioting. These riots had longer term, insidious, and all but invisible impact. Before the riots, the difference between what white workers earned and what black workers earned was becoming smaller. Black workers began to earn more. The narrowing of the gap between black workers&#8217; wages and white workers&#8217; wages accelerated during the 1940s – <em>before </em>the Civil Rights Movement. The riots reversed this trend. Researchers concluded that the black workers who suffered the greatest economic blows in the 1970s and beyond lived in cities where rioting was most severe. Riots were also found to depress the value of black-owned property. Rioting hurt black income and black assets.</p>
<p>Yes, white supremacy still exists. That&#8217;s a fact. What do we do with that fact? What story do we tell? What story will help my students and my city?</p>
<p>There are lots of statistics that could be used in any number of ways. It is a fact that if a woman was overweight in high school, she is statistically likely to earn less than her slender peers for her entire working life, even if she loses weight. It is a fact – one that many leftists would like to bury – that children who grow up in the same home with their biological mother and biological father do better on a slew of life measures, from incarceration rates to lifetime earnings. It is a fact that poor, white Christians are significantly underrepresented on the campuses of elite universities among both students and faculty. It is a fact that recent immigrants from Africa, who are themselves mostly black, are a &#8220;model minority&#8221; with above-average incomes and education.</p>
<p>What do we do with these statistics? How do we cherry pick among them to weave a story that justifies a riot or encourages a young person to plug away at a secure but unglamorous job?</p>
<p>Jesse Jackson insists that suffering people must explode. But not all suffering people do explode, and not all those who explode are suffering. Terry suffered and did not explode – Terry excelled. Della Kurzer-Zlotnick acknowledges that she is a rich white girl, and yet she is exploding – and urging others to join her.</p>
<p>I would like to assign reading to these activists, specifically Shelby Steele&#8217;s book &#8220;White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.&#8221;</p>
<p>Shelby Steele is a black man born in 1946; he knew, and suffered under, Jim Crow. In spite of this, he accomplished much. He lived to see his former white, liberal allies insist that he owed them his &#8220;gratitude&#8221; because their bleeding hearts, not his hard work, were responsible for his success. In response to their condescension, he says, he felt a murderous rage even more intense than that he had felt under Jim Crow. Steele says that the bleeding heart narrative erased his achievements.</p>
<p>African Americans confronted the Ku Klux Klan. They risked Freedom Rides that ended in beatings and arson. They remained calm as lunch counter patrons poured sugar over their heads. But somehow these same black people are so delicate they need a confused 18-year-old girl to protect them from final examinations in statistics. Kurzer-Zlotnick&#8217;s enthusiasm for &#8220;social justice&#8221; must erase the considerable accomplishment of African American students like Terry, who soldier on in spite of personal hardship, and earn A grades. High achieving blacks become some kind of race traitors or freaks, anomalies who can&#8217;t be acknowledged because their existence threatens the story Kurzer-Zlotnick is telling about white liberal guilt and noblesse oblige.</p>
<p>The harm white liberals do is not limited to their need to erase African American achievement. Kurzer-Zlotnick is a powerful audience. The performance she applauds is explosive black rage. She would probably applaud Melvyn&#8217;s fencing stolen computers.</p>
<p>In 2006, in the <em>New York Times</em>, Harvard scholar Orlando Patterson, a Jamaican-born black man, wrote that one explanation for young black men&#8217;s criminal behavior was the applause antisocial behavior earned black men from white youths. Young black men have the highest self-esteem of all ethnic groups, he says, and that self-esteem is not lowered by what many would assess as failure, for example out-of-wedlock births and poor grades. Not only young whites applaud criminality among black men. Corporate America does so, as well, making millions from hip-hop and ghetto fashions. Young whites, Patterson says, know when to turn off rage chic. The young black males who have been duped into providing this performance may not know when it is time to leave the stage. The whites move on. The blacks are trapped.</p>
<p>I would like to invite Della Kurzer-Zlotnick to walk to work with me through Paterson. I would like her to step over broken glass and past shuttered factories. I would like her, simply, to listen to conversations on buses. My neighbors want their kids to do well, and are proud of them when they do. They work difficult jobs; I see them in nurse&#8217;s aide and McDonald&#8217;s uniforms, day after day, year after year. Injustices of many kinds are a given; that&#8217;s a fact. The key is what story one tells about injustice. It might be exciting for an 18-year-old girl to urge protest on one day when she feels worked up. I would like to invite Kurzer-Zlotnick and others to live in cities like Paterson after the protest is over, to see which approach has long-term, beneficial effects.</p>
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		<title>Venezuelans &#8216;Taking it to the Streets&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/venezuelans-taking-it-to-the-streets/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=venezuelans-taking-it-to-the-streets</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Feb 2014 05:05:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Maduro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sean Penn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Venezuela]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218958</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where is Sean Penn? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/kl.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-219036" alt="kl" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/kl.jpg" width="275" height="183" /></a>&#8220;Venezuela and its revolution will endure under the proven leadership of Vice President Maduro.&#8221; (Sean Penn, March 5, 2013.)</p>
<p>This is to say nothing of the “proven” –and particularly, the <i>enduring&#8211;”</i>leadership” of Maduro’s colonial overlords in Havana, of whom Sean Penn is also extremely fond.</p>
<p><strong>“</strong>I had the <i>privilege</i> to introduce my children to comandante Fidel Castro!” (Sean Penn, arm in arm with “great friend” Hugo Chavez, Caracas Feb. 13, 2012.)</p>
<p>Protests rocked Venezuela this week. Hundreds of Venezuelans were arrested by Cuban-trained police and at least three were shot dead by Cuban-trained paramilitary storm-troopers. As we go to press, Caracas is under a military clampdown with government troops guarding most public buildings and patrolling the streets.</p>
<p>In brief, Venezuelans have had it with the corruption, shortages, censorship, 56% inflation rate, crime and general privations brought on by the late Hugo Chavez’ “Bolivarian Revolution,” especially as implemented by Chavez’ successor Nicholas Maduro, who won last October’s elections&#8211;most non-Hollywood observers believe—by stealing them.</p>
<p>Now Maduro and his cronies are stealing the country blind. It’s all under the guise of something the<i> Chavistas</i> call “21<sup>th</sup> Century Socialism,” mind you. But it still amounts to the government stealing businesses and replacing the owners and managers with vengeful, bumbling and rapacious government hacks. So the results exactly mimic those of old-fogey <i>20<sup>th</sup> c</i>entury socialism. Here’s a nation sitting atop the world’s largest oil reserves and earning $100 BILLION in oil revenues annually—while its citizens can’t find toilet paper in any stores.</p>
<p>But no matter how hard daily life becomes for Venezuelans, no matter how menacingly looms the prospect of national bankruptcy, no matter how drastically oil production drops&#8211;President Maduro keeps shipping 100,000 barrels of oil to Castro’s Cuba <i>daily.</i> Venezuelan subsidies to Cuba last year were estimated to total $10 billion. That’s more than double what the Soviets used to send.</p>
<p>So, as you might imagine, the Castro regime’s interest in the Maduro regime’s “durability” probably exceeds even Sean Penn’s interest. To that end around 50,000 Cubans infest Venezuela. The media (especially those networks and agencies bestowed Havana bureaus) all claim these Cubans are all “doctors and teachers.” Actual Venezuelans know better. In fact the Venezuelan secret police is essentially controlled by KGB-trained Cubans.  Maduro’s very platoon of bodyguards is headed by Cubans. This is the type of “teaching” most valued by such as Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, who the Castro regime took under their wing as far back as the 1990’s. Maduro’s Quisling-esque qualities shone even then.</p>
<p>The thousands of young Venezuelans (mostly college students) who took to Venezuela’s streets this week demanded, essentially, that the Venezuelan government abide by the Venezuelan constitution and end their pathetic subservience to the Castros.</p>
<p>“We are not Cuba!” chanted Venezuelan demonstrators in front of a hotel hosting Cuban baseball players last week, before being arrested. Another dig came from the leader of the Venezuelan opposition party behind most of this week’s protests Leopoldo Lopez. Venezuela’s rubber stamp judiciary recently issued an arrest warrant against him. So the 42 year old Harvard-educated firebrand Tweeted back: “Come on, Maduro.  You don’t have the guts to arrest me. Or are you waiting your orders from Havana?”</p>
<p>In fact as we go to press, Lopez has <i>not</i> been arrested. The order has not come from Maduro’s colonial overlords. The Cuban leadership, let’s not forget, is very keen on the pitfalls of “making martyrs”&#8211; for the opposition, that is. Fidel himself rode to power on the strength of his own martyrdom at Batista’s hands. That this martyrdom was mostly bogus mattered little when such as the New York Times were <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova">spreading the hoax on it’s front-page. </a></p>
<p>Sure, the Venezuelan regime rants and raves about “Yankee Imperialism!” But the Venezuelan people fully recognize their genuine imperial masters. On Canada’s Sun News last week one Frontpage writer went so far as to claim that <a href="http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/violence-in-venezuela/3198550007001">“Maduro can’t even sneak to the toilet with Raul Castro’s permission!”</a></p>
<p>Most Venezuelans blame the Maduro government’s dirty work, including the three dead demonstrators, on paramilitary storm-troopers called <i>“colectivos</i>” (collectives.) “Chavez called them (the <em>colectivos</em>) the armed wing of his Revolution,” revealed Anthony Daquíne ex-security assesor of Venezuela&#8217;s Interior Ministry. &#8220;In essence they are paramilitary groups. The leaders of the collectives have traveled to Cuba for socialist education and military training.&#8221;</p>
<p>Hugo Chavez’ inspirational debt to Ernesto “Che” Guevara is such that he titled his regime&#8217;s socio-economic model, &#8220;Mision Che Guevara.”  So unsurprisingly, many of these Cuban-trained storm-troopers regard Che Guevara with great affection, <a href="http://babalublog.com/2014/02/13/maduros-storm-troopers-quite-fittingly-inspired-by-che-guevara/">even as their inspiration.</a></p>
<p>“Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates! Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service! The very spirit of rebellion is reprehensible!&#8221; raved Che Guevara in a famous speech in 1961.</p>
<p>&#8220;My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any <em>vencido</em> that falls in my hands” raved Ernesto Guevara in a book later known as The Motorcycle Diaries. The Spanish world <em>vencido,</em> by the way, translates into defeated, hence surrendered, hence defenseless.</p>
<p>So, indeed, what could be more fitting than murdering unarmed youngsters while worshiping <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Exposing-Real-Che-Guevara-Idolize/dp/1595230521/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1289600704&amp;sr=1-1-fkmr0">Che Guevara?</a><strong> </strong><b></b></p>
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		<title>Inside the Turkish Protests</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michael-van-der-galien/inside-the-turkish-protests/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=inside-the-turkish-protests</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Jun 2013 04:45:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael van der Galien]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=193856</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Freedom fighters dare to battle for the separation of mosque and state.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/alsancak.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-193874" alt="alsancak" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/alsancak-450x337.jpg" width="252" height="189" /></a>The battle taking place in Turkey touches the very core of the Turkish Republic and its future. The country’s secularists who were in power for decades, but who have for the last ten years taken a backseat, have taken to the streets demanding the separation of mosque and state, while the Islamists led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan aim to Islamize the country faster and more thoroughly than ever before, while cracking down on all possible dissent.</p>
<p>I was able to speak to protesters in two different cities (Izmir and Istanbul) about their aims and the reasons for their sudden protests. At first, international media reported that the protests had started purely because inhabitants of Istanbul wanted to save a park (Gezi Parki). Although that certainly played a role, it was made clear to me from the get-go that the park was simply the last straw: their anger with Erdogan had increased year after year, and lately month after month. Finally, they said, they were fed up. They drew a line in the sand and said, &#8220;No more&#8221; to Erdogan’s authoritarianism and Islamism.<a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/karsiyaka-22.jpg"><img class="alignright  wp-image-193875" alt="karsiyaka 22" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/karsiyaka-22-262x350.jpg" width="168" height="224" /></a></p>
<p>Some of the protesters I spoke to had voted for Erdogan’s AK Parti in 2003. At that moment the country was hit hard by an economic crisis (which eerily reminds me of some other authoritarians who came to power in such difficult times, and who gradually increased their hold on their populace). He pretended to be a liberal democrat, a man who could unite the Turkish people, both conservative Muslims and secularists, and who would take the desperately needed measures the economy required to spring back to life. With him, he said &#8212; and voters believed &#8212; that a new era of universal freedom and economic prosperity was to arrive.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Sadly, things turned out slightly different than these voters had expected, they said. In the last ten years, they told me, Erdogan first strenghtened his hold on the government and all its institutions (including the judicial power and the military), after which he &#8211; at first slowly, later much faster &#8211; started to Islamize the country. In the last few months especially that Islamization had speeded up, with the prime minister saying women should have three children, a ban on the sale of alcohol between 10PM and 6AM, and an attempt to greatly reduce the right of abortion. When the opposition voiced their criticism they were at best ignored and at worst imprisoned (as has happened to hundreds of journalists).</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/women.png"><img class="aligncenter  wp-image-193876" alt="women" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/women.png" width="342" height="197" /></a></p>
<p>“Erdogan is a fascist, it’s that simple,” one of the protesters in Izmir told me. “He has to step down!” Another passionate youth said that “Erdogan has gone too far. Did you know that there’s no image of [Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - the founder of the modern and secular Turkish Republic] in schoolbooks anymore? He wants to remove all traces of Atatürk, who represents Turkish secularism. He wants to replace our laws with the Sharia!”</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/alsancak-2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-193877" alt="alsancak 2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/alsancak-2-262x350.jpg" width="183" height="245" /></a>One of the reasons that I understood the significance and true meaning of these protests early on is that many of the protesters are women. One of them told me that they all fear for their future role in a Turkey governed by the AK Parti. “Do I have to stay at home and raise three children or more? Will he decide that for me? Will I not be able to decide what I want to do and how I want to live my life? Do I need a headscarf eventually?”</p>
<p>Erdogan’s response to these questions and concerns has been brutal. Lawyers, doctors, protesters, Twitter users, Facebook users, journalists (both foreign and domestic) have been arrested this month. By behaving in that manner, the prime minister has, protesters justifiably say, confirmed their suspicions: he is out to Islamize the country and he will not stop until he has achieved that overarching goal.</p>
<p>Much has been written the last few years about a so-called &#8220;Arab Spring.&#8221; Arab peoples were ridding themselves of their dictators to finally embrace democracy. Yes, it was the start of a new Middle Eastern Golden Age. Sadly, that scenario was, as we now know, not to be. The secular dictators of the region have not been replaced by democrats, but by Islamofascists. Egypt, Tunisia, Libya are all lost to the West. They have been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic radicals who not only wish to destroy Israel, but also to enslave and oppress their own people.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/girl-beaten.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-193879" alt="girl beaten" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/girl-beaten.jpg" width="350" height="232" /></a></p>
<p>In Turkey, however, there <i>is</i> a real Spring taking place. The protesters who have taken to the streets for weeks now, and who are attacked, tear gassed and arrested by the police are freedom-loving secularists, who defend their right to live as they see fit, and who demand answers from a prime minister who is increasingly showing his true &#8211; authoritarian and Islamist &#8211; colors.</p>
<p><strong>More photos of the protest in Turkey:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/protesten-izmir-1.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-193880" alt="protesten izmir 1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/protesten-izmir-1-450x184.png" width="450" height="184" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/karsiyaka.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-193881" alt="karsiyaka" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/karsiyaka-450x184.png" width="450" height="184" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/akp-office-izmir.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-193883" alt="akp office izmir" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/akp-office-izmir-450x184.png" width="450" height="184" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/arrest-lawyer.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-193882" alt="arrest lawyer" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/arrest-lawyer-262x350.jpg" width="262" height="350" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/office.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-193884" alt="office" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/office-450x337.jpg" width="450" height="337" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/izmir.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-193885" alt="izmir" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/izmir-450x337.jpg" width="450" height="337" /></a></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 Turkish Summer?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/the-turkish-summer/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-turkish-summer</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 04:58:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Erdogan]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=192108</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An Islamist Prime Minister faces a volcano of protests in the streets. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/turkey-protests.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-192137" alt="turkey-protests" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/turkey-protests-450x300.jpg" width="315" height="210" /></a><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I’ve referred to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan as the <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/crowning-erdogan-new-king-islamists">&#8220;king of the Islamists&#8221;</a> because of his ability to swoon the West, make Israel bend and maintain popularity while implementing Sharia using the doctrine of <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/gradualism-islamist-strategy-victory">&#8220;gradualism.&#8221;</a> He now faces his biggest internal challenge as <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/turkey-explodes-protest-against-erdogan">protests</a> against him enter their fifth day in what one expert <a href="http://rt.com/op-edge/turkey-protest-islam-erdogan-167/">compares</a> to the “eruption of a volcano.”</span></b></p>
<p>The unexpected spark was Erdogan’s plan to redevelop Gezi Park in Taksim Square. <i>Reuters</i> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/02/us-turkey-protests-insight-idUSBRE9510DJ20130602">explains</a> that Taksim honors the secular legacy of Ataturk, while the other squares in the capital reflect upon the days of the Ottoman Empire. When Erdogan planned to transform the park into an Ottoman-theme shopping center with a mosque, apartment complex and model of Ottoman-era barracks, it was seen by secularists as a washing away of Ataturk.</p>
<p>Opponents of Erdogan had been looking for an opportunity, angered over the government’s new restrictions on alcohol sales and advertising, the morning-after pill, the rejection of a gay rights law, and other moves towards Sharia governance. About 100 Turks <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/05/2013525191210116123.html">publicly kissed</a> in a subway station after officials said passengers must “act in accordance with moral rules” regarding public displays of affection.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/turkish_opinion_poll_finds_majorities_slam_erdogan_policies_on_alcohol_syri/">poll</a> found that 35% of Turks consume alcohol, an act that is forbidden in Islam. It did not flatly ask respondents whether they oppose the new restrictions, but 61% felt it was an intervention in personal lives. Interestingly, a 2009 <a href="http://www.dici.org/en/news/turkey-one-turk-in-three-would-not-want-a-christian-neighbor/">poll</a> that found high levels of hostility towards Christians, Jews and atheists also <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/turkish-society-intolerant-others-nationalism.html">found</a> that 54% of Turks don’t want “Sharia supporters” for neighbors.</p>
<p>The protest at Gezi Park began as a small sit-in at the park, with participants planting trees and reading books. It quickly grew as the demonstration took on broader meaning. <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/turkey-explodes-protest-against-erdogan">Tens of thousands joined</a> and protests spread to 67 of Turkey’s 81 provinces.</p>
<p>“We are Mustafa Kemal’s soldiers,” <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/03/turkey-protests-coalition-anger-erdogan">chanted</a> some protesters, referring to Ataturk.</p>
<p>The police’s reaction, by Erdogan’s own admission, was excessive. At least two have died, one at the hands of an unidentified gunman, perhaps a police officer. About 1,700 have been arrested and thousands more injured, <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/young-boy-lost-eye-due-to-plastic-bullet-in-istanbul-academic-claims.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=48159&amp;NewsCatID=341">including</a> a young boy who lost an eye because of a plastic bullet. The Turkish opposition <a href="http://rt.com/news/istanbul-park-protests-police-095/">claims</a> that detainees have been forced into signing testimonies and are being refused access to lawyers.</p>
<p>The protests are bound to get larger in the coming days as they garner international attention. One of the country’s four major unions, the 240,000-strong Public Workers Unions Confederation, is launching a two-day “warning” <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/03/us-turkey-protests-strike-idUSBRE9520J020130603">strike</a> on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Erdogan reacted as Islamists usually do. He claimed that the protestors are extremists allied with terrorists and are part of a foreign conspiracy. He <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/06/03/turkey-erdogan-violence-protest/2385153/">said</a>, “The thing that is called social media is the biggest trouble for society now,” setting the stage for restrictions on the Internet.</p>
<p>Contrary to Erdogan’s insistence that the protesters are part of a fringe group, <i>The Atlantic</i> <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/how-the-protests-will-impact-turkey-at-home-and-abroad/276456/">observes</a> that “all of Turkey was represented: the young and the old, the secular and the religious, the soccer hooligans and the blind, anarchists, communists, nationalists, Kurds, gays, feminists and students.”</p>
<p>Erdogan’s Islamist agenda has become more aggressive as he’s tallied up political victories since coming to power in 2002.</p>
<p>Recently, the Turkish government <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/news/turkey-sentences-another-artist-blasphemy-charges">sentenced writer Sevan Nisanyan to one year in prison</a> for allegedly “denigrating the religious values.” This comes shortly after the <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/news/turkish-pianist-convicted-blasphemy">conviction of pianist Faisal Say</a> for his exercising of free speech. In July, the government <a href="http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/politics/2012/07/13/Turkey-Erdogan-party-wants-limit-press-freedom_7181707.html">suggested</a> limits on free speech for the sake of “public morality,” “public order” and to “prevent pro-war propaganda, discrimination and hate.”</p>
<p>Under Erdogan, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism has skyrocketed. The government is said to have bought 40% of the media and has more <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-criticized-for-lack-of-press-freedom.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nid=39793">imprisoned</a> journalists than any other country. It also has the <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamist-takeover-turkeys-honor-killing-rate-highest-world">highest rate of honor killings</a> and <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/content/turkeys-erdogan-builds-17000-new-mosques-no-new-schools-during-last-10-years">17,000 new mosques have been built.</a> Erdogan has overseen the largest crackdown on the military in the country’s history, protecting himself from being the next example of a Turkish leader overthrown in a coup.</p>
<p>Turkey’s move into the Islamist camp does not only have strategic implications for the West. It has direct affects for America. The Turkish Fehtullah Gulen network is <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/us-islamist-charter-school-under-investigation-part-ii">under FBI investigation.</a> The Turkish government is <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/turkey-courting-native-americans-trojan-horse-bid">building ties with Native American tribes</a>. And, most recently, Erdogan spoke at an event celebrating his government’s construction of a <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/turkey-stakes-claim-america-100-million-mega-mosque">$100 million Ottoman-themed mega-mosque</a> in Maryland.</p>
<p>Yet, President Obama calls Erdogan a “friend.” If you go to the websites of the major Muslim-American organizations, not a word is said; a sharp contrast to their rapid responses to the “offenses” of “Islamophobes” and Western governments, especially Israel.</p>
<p>Just as they were when Muslims challenged the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, these groups are absent. Turkish activists even had to <a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/full-page-ad-for-turkish-democracy-in-action-occupygezi-for-the-world--39">fundraise online</a> to take out a full-page advertisement for their cause in the <i>New York Times</i>. A group like the Council on American-Islamic Relations or the Islamic Society of North America could cut a check for it without skipping a breath.</p>
<p>Dr. Daniel Pipes reacted to the landslide victory of Erdogan’s Islamist party in 2011 with a <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2011/06/turkey-last-free-election">dire warning:</a> “Elections taking place today are likely to be the last fair and free ones in Turkey. With Turkey’s leading Islamist party controlling all three branches of the government and the military sidelined, little will stop it from changing the rules to keep power into the indefinite future.”</p>
<p>We shouldn’t be surprised when an Islamist acts like an Islamist.</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>Topless Jihad</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/topless-jihad/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=topless-jihad</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/topless-jihad/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 04:52:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Femen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[feminists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[topless]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=188750</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Amazon feminists take a bold stance against Islamic oppression.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/top7.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-189014" alt="top7" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/top7.jpg" width="340" height="231" /></a>Recently members of the Ukrainian-based, global feminist group Femen staged protests across Europe calling for “topless jihad.” While American feminists today are satisfied whipping up outrage about Mitt Romney’s binders and Sandra Fluke’s right to bill taxpayers for her birth control, Femen’s Amazonian warriors dive right in to do battle in a real War on Women being openly waged by Muslim misogynists. Topless jihad – it puts a whole new spin on <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/03/radio-free-europeradio-libertys-heather-maher-aids-hamas-linked-cairs-deception-about-jihad.html">#MyJihad</a>.</p>
<p>The protests in Sweden, Italy, Ukraine, Belgium, and France [<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/04/femen-stages-a-topless-jihad/100487/">here are images</a> from the demonstrations; warning – most contain nudity and/or offensive language] were in solidarity with a gutsy young Tunisian activist named Amina Tyler, who recently shocked Islamic sensibilities by posting naked images of herself online, with the words “I own my body; it’s not the source of anyone’s honor” penned on her bare chest.</p>
<p>The head of Tunisia’s Orwellian-titled Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice responded to this provocation as you might expect from a violent totalitarian, calling for Tyler to be stoned to death lest her obscene actions lead to an epidemic of Muslim women casting off not just their burqas and blouses but their oppression as well.</p>
<p>Her family wasn’t especially supportive either. According to <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/topless-jihad-why-femen-is-right/275471/"><i>The Atlantic</i></a>, They kidnapped her, beat her, and held her in captivity for three weeks, during which time she was drugged, subjected to an amateur virginity test, forced to read the Quran, and taken on involuntary visits to imams. Her aunt posted a video online in which she called Amina “mentally ill,” “unbalanced,” and “psychopathic” for her “shameful act” which had injured her father’s “pride as a man.” A week after the topless jihad, Amina managed to escape and is now hiding somewhere in Tunisia.</p>
<p>The courageous response of Western feminist organizations? A search of the National Organization for Women’s website for a statement about Tyler from the preeminent feminist group turned up zero results.  So it was left to her sisters at Femen to lead the pushback with small but riotous demonstrations in which shouting young women ran amuck in public wearing little else but grammatically awkward slogans like “Bare breast against Islamism,” “There will be millions Amina’s,” “Arab women against Islamism,” “No Sharia,” “F*** Islamism,” and the most common, “F*** your morals.” Femen activists even burned a Salafist flag in front of the Great Mosque of Paris. If only Western feminists had half their bold determination to stand against totalitarianism.</p>
<p>Make no mistake, Femen is not your mother’s feminism, all political correctness and academic pontification. They aren’t even your grandmother’s bra-burning feminism. <a href="http://femen.org/en/about">Here</a> is their own description, imperfect English and all:</p>
<blockquote><p>FEMEN is the name of the scandal famous organization of topless women activists, who defend with their breast sexual and social equality in the world. Activists of FEMEN are morally and physically fit soldiers, who every day make civil actions of the high degree of difficulty and provocativity.</p>
<p>FEMEN is the new Amazons, capable to undermine the foundations of the patriarchal world by their intellect, sex, agility, make disorder, bring neurosis and panic to the men&#8217;s world…</p>
<p>FEMEN is a hot boobs, a cool head and clean hands. Be FEMEN means to mobilize every cell of your body on a relentless struggle against centuries of slavery of women!</p>
<p>FEMEN is an ideology of SEXTREMISM… of the women&#8217;s sexual protest presented by extreme topless campaigns of direct action… serving to protect women&#8217;s rights, democracy watchdogs attacking patriarchy, in all its forms: the dictatorship, the church, the sex industry.</p></blockquote>
<p>They don’t limit their protests to Islam. Like their partners-in-spirit Pussy Riot, the Russian punk rock group, Femen activists have targeted Christians too by disrupting the Pope’s sermon in St. Peter&#8217;s Square, attacking the Orthodox “Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia,” and cutting down a crucifix in Kiev.</p>
<p>But attacking Christians is easy and even culturally acceptable, as genocidal Muslims and Western leftists well know. Where Femen really excels, displays impressive balls, and deserves serious respect, is in their fearlessness toward Islamic fundamentalism – a fearlessness lacking in emasculated Western authorities.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/topless-jihad-why-femen-is-right/275471/">The aforementioned piece</a> in <i>The Atlantic</i>, which was surprisingly supportive of Femen’s confrontation of Islam, reported on a recent <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/topless-jihad-why-femen-is-right/275471/">debate</a> between Femen leader Inna Shevchenko and Arab-American Muslim blogger Laila Alawa, who claimed to be a feminist, about women, Islam, and the hijab. Shevchenko stunned her opponent and the moderator by noting that the only reason Femen was discussing Islam at all is the “blood, fear, and dead women’s bodies” to which it has led. Even Alawa did not deny it. Femen&#8217;s problem with Muslim headscarves, Shevchenko said, centered on whether wearing them was voluntary:</p>
<blockquote><p>It symbolizes blood and all the crimes that are based on your religion, even if you don&#8217;t support them&#8230; If you’re a feminist, if you’re for liberation, then be brave [enough] to say that we are against that and take off your scarf until the moment that your scarf will not be a symbol of crime.</p></blockquote>
<p>The moderator accused her of insensitivity and Alawa, rocked on her heels, tried to defend her choice. Shevchenko urged Alawa to take off the headscarf “until the moment when it will not be a symbol of the death of your sisters.” Imagine an American “feminist” taking such a bold stance in the media. “We demand human rights for all women, for Arab women and American women,” Shevchenko told the <i>Atlantic</i> writer a few days after the debate. “The idea of a Muslim feminist is oxymoronic.”</p>
<p>Femen’s in-your-face campaign in defense of Amina is in stark, positive contrast with the West’s usual timid and hypocritical acquiescence of the abuse of women under Islamic oppression. This is how human rights are won and preserved – not by tolerance and “dialogue,” but by fighting for them.</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>Egypt Melting Down. State of Emergency Declared and Rape Gangs Go On Rampage</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/egypt-melting-down-state-of-emergency-declared-and-rape-gangs-go-on-rampage/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=egypt-melting-down-state-of-emergency-declared-and-rape-gangs-go-on-rampage</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/egypt-melting-down-state-of-emergency-declared-and-rape-gangs-go-on-rampage/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jan 2013 01:42:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=175170</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Some say the violence serves the Muslim Brotherhood's purposes. Others say the Muslim Brotherhood regime is about to fall.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Things are getting very ugly in Egypt. It&#8217;s not so much a new violence as it is the lingering chaos unleashed by Tahrir Square and exploited by various factions. Western governments and domestic voters backed Morsi in the hopes that he would provide stability, but after the authorities temporarily lost control of Port Said and Morsi unilaterally declared a State of Emergency in three cities, in violation of his own constitution, stability is nowhere to be found.</p>
<p>With 44 dead, as of now, the Egyptian pound imploding and Morsi looking increasingly unable and unwilling to fix the economic problems that caused the Jan 25 Revolution, Egypt may be headed for another revolution.</p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NI27YiGM0nw?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" width="540" height="360"></iframe></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>The end of state as an arbiter &amp; the transfer of power to whomever has an organized population that can commit violent acts. Check. <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23MBPlan">#MBPlan</a></p>
<p>— السيد مانكي (@Sandmonkey) <a href="https://twitter.com/Sandmonkey/status/295630257040539648">January 27, 2013</a></p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>That is part of what&#8217;s going on. Whether it&#8217;s soccer clubs or Salafi militias, Egypt is melting down away from a state and into a state of violence. The assertion of force backed by international aid counts for more than the rule of law.</p>
<p>Egypt appears to have developed its own Black Bloc anarchist members who dress in black and engage in armed confrontations. There appears to however be some debate over whether the members are legitimate or regime provocateurs.</p>
<p>Either way it&#8217;s a sign that protest is becoming a way of life. Jan 25 sanctified the protester and transformed organized protest into a more significant political force than the voting booth. And that means unrest is just one triggering event away,</p>
<p>Some say the violence serves the Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s purposes. Others say the Muslim Brotherhood regime is about to fall.</p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3o97T_SIOxw?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" width="540" height="360"></iframe></p>
<p>The chaos include the usual rioting and police shootings. And as usual, sexual assaults, that appear to be less about rape and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/27/tahrir-square-sexual-assaults-reported">more about inflicting horror and shock on the protesters</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;It happens very quickly,&#8221; said one victim, a protester who was assaulted on a street leading to the square, and who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. &#8220;Suddenly there were six men on one side of me, and six on the other, and they just started scratching me all the way down my skin. It&#8217;s not just sexual assault. It&#8217;s like they actually want to hurt you.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>That appears to be in line with earlier reports suggesting that the sexual assaults are initiated by paid rape gangs targeting female protesters.</p>
<p>The tactics of the defenders <a href="http://www.facebook.com/notes/op-anti-sexual-harassmentassault-%D9%82%D9%88%D8%A9-%D8%B6%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%AD%D8%B1%D8%B4%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B9%D8%AA%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D9%86%D8%B3%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B9%D9%8A/testimony-from-an-assaulted-opantish-member-january-25th-2013-code-taeng/200432453433988">are often as crude as</a> those of the attackers, in the absence of any meaningful law enforcement.</p>
<blockquote><p>My team were ready and we prepared ourselves to get our designated area but we never made it there because as soon as we stepped out of the building, we saw a large group of men assaulting a girl. Our rescue team moved in immediately. They formed a large empty space around the girl by using flamethrowers, machetes and other weapons that they were using to drive away the crowd. Anyone who tried to get to the girl was deterred by the rescue team who would swing their flamethrowers and weapons to force the men back. The captain then started yelling out &#8216;SAFETY&#8217; &#8220;SAFETY&#8221;.</p></blockquote>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wER5QWmxbew?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" width="540" height="360"></iframe></p>
<p>But there does not appear to be any safety in Egypt tonight.</p>
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		<title>Man Banned From D.C. For Protesting Obama Inauguration</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/man-banned-from-d-c-for-protesting-obama-inauguration/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=man-banned-from-d-c-for-protesting-obama-inauguration</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:10:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=174819</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I'd like to imagine that if George Bush had declared a protester, Cindy Sheehan perhaps?, as persona non grata in our nation's capital it just might have made the evening news.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/man-banned-from-d-c-for-protesting-obama-inauguration/attachment/158782756/" rel="attachment wp-att-174820"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-174820" title="158782756" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/158782756.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="241" /></a></p>
<p>Obama Inc. has chosen to go after the Second Amendment, why not the first as well? It&#8217;s open fire season on the Bill of Rights.</p>
<p>Rives Miller Grogan, an anti-abortion protester, climbed a tree to protest during the inauguration of Obama 2.0. And the police didn&#8217;t <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/police-charge-tree-climbing-protester-from-inauguration/2013/01/22/663477e8-64cb-11e2-b84d-21c7b65985ee_story.html">have much luck getting him down</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Police said that they tried to talk Grogan out of the tree before Monday’s ceremony began, and then turned to the fire department for a ladder. The fire department’s truck couldn’t fit through the security barricades, and Grogan climbed higher when police brought their own ladder.</p>
<p>Officer Shennell S. Antrobus, a U.S. Capitol Police spokesman, said officials decided to leave Grogan in the tree until after the swearing in to avoid disruptions. Police said he came down on his own after five hours.</p></blockquote>
<p>So naturally he&#8217;s been charged with doing a bunch of things that he didn&#8217;t do. And <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/the-blotter-for-jan.-24/article/2519532#.UQFUQqJEGIA">he was barred from Washington D.C</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The California man who climbed a 40-foot tree and screamed anti-abortion slogans during President Obama&#8217;s inauguration ceremony reportedly has been banned from the nation&#8217;s capital.</p>
<p>According to WTOP, a D.C. Superior Court judge told 47-year-old Rives Miller Grogan that he was no longer allowed in the District except to return for his next hearing on Feb. 25.</p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s one way to keep someone from protesting in D.C. Ban him from the entire city. And <a href="http://wyblog.us/blog/news/dissident-banished-whos-next.html">an important point to be made here</a> is that&#8230;</p>
<blockquote><p>Who wants to bet me that Mr. Grogan would be in the same boat if he&#8217;d been agitating for gay &#8220;marriage.&#8221; Or gun control?</p>
<p>I recall a high school history teacher describing a Soviet practice that declared dissidents &#8220;Minus 1&#8243;, meaning they couldn&#8217;t enter the city of Moscow. Or &#8220;Minus 10&#8243;, which banished them from the 10 largest cities in Stalin&#8217;s Workers&#8217; Paradise. &#8220;Minus 50&#8243; effectively gave you a one-way ticket to Siberia.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s Amerika has it&#8217;s first &#8220;Minus 1&#8243; dissident.</p>
<p>I&#8217;d like to imagine that if George Bush had declared a protester, Cindy Sheehan perhaps?, as persona non grata in our nation&#8217;s capital it just might have made the evening news.</p></blockquote>
<p>Not all protests are created equal. Nor are the civil rights of all people equal.</p>
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		<title>Putin vs. the Punks</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/jlaksin/putin-vs-the-punks/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putin-vs-the-punks</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/jlaksin/putin-vs-the-punks/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jul 2012 04:23:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[punk rock]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pussy riot]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138259</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An all-female punk band languishes in Russia's prison system for criticizing the thugocrat in charge. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/pussyriot.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-138261" title="pussyriot" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/pussyriot-300x252.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="252" /></a>The past year has seen an inspired stirring of political opposition in Russia, as thousands of young and middle-class Russians have poured out onto the streets to protest the country&#8217;s regressive slide into authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin. For sheer novelty and provocation, however, no protest action quite matched the spectacle that took place this past February, when the members of all-female punk rock band Pussy Riot commandeered the altar of Moscow’s main cathedral and, clad in multicolored balaclava masks, proceeded to belt out a protest song titled “Virgin Mary, Redeem Us of Putin.” (A YouTube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALS92big4TY">video</a> of the impromptu performance shows security guards vainly trying to corral the air-kicking punk rockers while puzzled parishioners look on.)</p>
<p>An increasingly rare piece of political blasphemy, the song assailed the Russian Orthodox Church for its uncomfortably close ties to the Russian president. That subservience was exemplified by the Church patriarch’s devout assessment prior to the presidential election this spring that Putin’s democracy-trampling 12-year rule represented nothing less than a &#8220;<a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/02/08/uk-russia-putin-religion-idUKTRE81722Y20120208">miracle of God</a>.” In mocking the Church, Pussy Riot’s lyrics proclaimed that the “<a href="http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/30/punk-continues-to-be-punker-outside-the">head of the KGB is their chief saint</a>.”</p>
<p>The church was not amused, the Russian <a href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/russian-riot-grrrls-jailed-for-punk-prayer/">government even less so</a>. After their performance, the three members of Pussy Riot were arrested and charged with “hooliganism.” That was in March. Since then, they have been held without trial in extended custody. Last Friday, their detention was extended by another six months until next January. If the band members are found guilty, they could be imprisoned for seven years.</p>
<p>While the government response is undoubtedly excessive, it also seems calculated. The message seems to be that such limited license as the government was prepared to extend to opposition and protest views has now been <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/world/europe/russias-prosecution-of-punk-band-signals-a-shift.html">totally revoked</a>. Plainly discomfited by this winter’s mass anti-government protests, the powers that be have decided that enough is enough. Thus, Putin marked his swearing-in ceremony in Moscow this May with a citywide <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jlaksin/putin-is-back-with-a-vengeance/">crackdown on demonstrators</a> in which some 400 were arrested. Some reports suggested that young demonstrators were issued military draft notices in reprisal. The trumped-up prosecution of Pussy Riot is only the latest sign that the government is taking a zero-tolerance approach to political dissent.</p>
<p>On the legal front, too, there is a burgeoning government effort to outlaw opposition. Last month, the Russian legislature, dominated by Putin’s United Russia party, passed a law that would impose <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/world/europe/putin-signs-law-with-harsh-fines-for-protesters-in-russia.html">ruinous fines</a> of up to $9,300 for those who participate in unsanctioned demonstrations and double that for protest organizers. Since few Russians could afford to pay such penalties, and since the government is not eager to sanction opposition protests, the law amounted to a de facto ban on opposition protests and demonstrations.</p>
<p>And the government was just getting started. Last week it passed a raft of new and <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21559362?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/if_you_can_t_suppress_them_squeeze_them">vaguely worded laws</a> whose overall effect would be to undermine criticism of the government officials. Among the laws was one criminalizing libel that included a <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/07/16/russia-criminal-libel-law-blow-free-expression">special provision</a> for libel &#8220;against judges, jurors, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials,&#8221; &#8212; in short, those responsible for upholding the country&#8217;s corrupt security state. Another law would create a <a href="http://www.cpj.org/internet/2012/07/internet-bill-highlights-russias-divergence-on-hum.php">blacklist of websites</a> that all Russian Internet search engines would have to block. The government claimed that such a blacklist was intended to protect children from harmful content, but given the virtually limitless discretion to decide which websites qualify as harmful it is easy to see how the notoriously censorship-prone Russian authorities could use the law to quash disfavored speech. Each of the laws, in short, is ripe for abuse, and that seems to be the point: Having concluded that it can&#8217;t suppress all opposition openly, the government wants to force critics into silence.</p>
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		<title>Putin Back with a Vengeance</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/jlaksin/putin-is-back-with-a-vengeance/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putin-is-back-with-a-vengeance</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 May 2012 04:55:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[police crackdown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vladimir Putin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=131287</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Russian autocrat begins his third term with a new crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/putin-.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-131289" title="putin" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/putin--300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>There was something grimly fitting about Vladimir Putin’s swearing-in ceremony this Monday for a new six-year term. While Russia’s president-elect paid tribute to “democracy” and civil society, baton-wielding riot police <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577389581884057806.html">pummeled protestors</a> and rounded up opposition activists on Moscow’s streets.</p>
<p>The rift between rhetoric and reality aptly sums up the legacy of Putin’s rule, which has seen a rapid erosion of democratic government and the rule of law in Russia. Putin’s third term promises more of the same. Even before Putin’s inauguration ceremony began on Monday, Russian police beat up and arrested over <a href="http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/07/11573329-400-protesters-arrested-hours-before-vladimir-putins-return-to-russian-presidency?lite">400 people</a> taking part in anti-government demonstrations. Some of the younger demonstrators were reportedly handed military draft notices upon their arrest.</p>
<p>Police continued the crackdown on Monday, arresting hundreds and clearing the main thoroughfares completely so that Putin’s motorcade could proceed. One Russian blogger posted images of totally <a href="http://makhk.livejournal.com/628857.html">deserted streets</a>, with the sarcastic caption: &#8220;Joyous crowds of Muscovites greet the new cleanly elected president!&#8221; Dissent is alive and well in Russia, as the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/05/06/russia-protest.html">20,000-strong weekend demonstrations</a> suggest, but Putin’s idea of democracy means that those who disagree with the government are neither heard nor seen.</p>
<p>Emptied streets cannot hide the fact that Putin’s new term has not been welcomed, particularly in major urban hubs like Moscow. The prospect of Putin resuming the office that he never really surrendered has proved a galvanizing force in Russia over the past year, awaking a previously dormant middle class, and sparking the <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/05/russia%E2%80%99s-democratic-winter/">largest street protests</a> in Russia since the dying days of the Soviet Union. Not powerful enough to prevent Putin’s reelection – largely a formality in Russia’s fraud-plagued elections – the protests have revealed what the state-run media has long managed to suppress: widespread distrust of the political system and popular contempt for Putin.</p>
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		<title>The Power of the New KGB</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/the-power-of-the-new-kgb/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-power-of-the-new-kgb</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:15:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bukosvky]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FSB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KGB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=117782</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An exclusive interview with one of the most respected figures in the Russian dissident movement, Vladimir Bukovsky.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/fsb.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-117787" title="fsb" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/fsb.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="387" /></a></p>
<p><strong>[This interview, conducted by Danila Galperovich, is reprinted from <a href="http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/24437884.html">svobodanews.ru</a>. It has been translated for Frontpagemag.com by Yelena Glazova].</strong></p>
<p>One of the best known and most respected figures in the Russian dissident movement, Vladimir Bukovsky, spoke to Radio Liberty about the principles and methods employed by the KGB operatives in their work with free thinkers.  Which of those methods will be used in the very near future to control the latest wave of the protests that continue to transfix Russia?</p>
<p>Vladimir Bukovsky has always been a keen observer of the manner in which the KGB gradually regained its strength after initially losing power in 1991.  KGB representatives now occupy the highest echelons of the power structure in Russia.  What will happen in the near future? What should be expected by the participants of the protests?</p>
<p>This interview was conducted in England, in Vladimir Bukovsky’s home in Cambridge.  The first part appeared in print on the 30<sup>th </sup>of December, Bukovsky’s birthday (he has turned 69). The interview’s second part will be published on January 4-5.  As we present to our readers the translation of the interview, we congratulate Vladimir most warmly on his birthday.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/buk.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-117797" title="buk" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/buk.jpg" alt="" width="279" height="181" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Galperovich: </strong>The young people who came to the meeting at Bolotnaya Square are approximately 20-25 years of age, and they are managers, businessmen, artists; the frequenters and users of Facebook.  They do not really understand the phenomenon of the KGB because the KGB did not exist as a visible phenomenon during their life time.  Nonetheless, this young generation will be dealing with the KGB-trained operatives, all placed in key positions in the country.  What should these young people know about their opponents? What should they expect? What awareness is central for these young people in their battle?</p>
<p><strong>Bukovsky: </strong>Let me emphasize first of all that the KGB operatives have lost much of their qualitative acumen and sharpness in the last twenty years.  In my time, the Central Committee of the Communist Party supervised the activities of the KGB, and without the Central Committee’s permission, the KGB was not able even to conduct searches.  This stern control from above made their behavior precise and honed their actions; the Central Committee could always punish KGB operatives when, for instance, they committed errors or acted willfully and without permission. Thus, the KGB was very disciplined, highly professional. And although these operatives were at the height of their game, we were still able to score many victories in their very game, in their very field, so to speak.  All in all, they no longer compared well with Stalin’s NKVD.<strong></strong></p>
<p>Since my time, however, they have fallen much lower.  I frequently gasp in astonishment – their level is that of the most inapt provincial militia; they are not the KGB of old. They cannot even blow up the buildings in their capital city without exposing themselves and leaving traces. Comrade Stalin would have shot them all.  When, for instance, they killed Zelimkhan Yandarbiev in Qatar and got caught immediately after – this appeared almost unreal. Why do they choose to act while being observed by cameras? How do they use traceable telephone lines and then travel to some diplomat’s country house? In our time this would be unimaginable. The former operatives were of a much higher qualification.</p>
<p>But this reality also has a horrifying aspect – these people commit murders with no real thought or planning and with full abandonment.  In the Soviet period, in order to commit murder, one had to make a plan, observe the target for a considerable period of time, submit the plan to the Central Committee and then wait for the approval. This would take time.  This is why the KGB did not like [to commit] many murders; one had to work long and hard preparing murders and engage in much bureaucracy.  It was much easier to arrest the person and send him to prison and then to the Gulag.  But today – to kill is easier than to arrest, for to arrest is to invite publicity, to initiate glasnost, to attracts lawyers – and even the press (no matter how weak or inferior). The operatives do not want this noise. Arrests to them have dangerous consequences.</p>
<p>Sasha Litvinenko was the first person who explained this new reality to me. He told me that KGB operatives plan murders while snacking in their cafeteria. Here is his story: “I am sitting quietly, eating my soup.  A fellow from an adjacent department joins me and asks whether I have reliable criminal contacts. I say that I do. Then he explains: &#8216;We need to take away that German.&#8217;  &#8216;What do you mean&#8217; I ask, &#8216;<em>take away</em>?&#8217;  And he says, &#8216;It would be good for you too; 30 thousand is your take.&#8217;&#8221; This is how they conduct their business now, and this is how they solve their problems.  This needs to be understood.  If you compare our time with the contemporary scene, this pattern points to a major, startling difference. And at the same time these operatives constantly commit the most stupid errors. In the Soviet Union, there was the “wise” Central Committee of the Party, which the KGB hated for the Committee’s power, for its control; the operatives rejoiced when they were finally free from that control, but now they make errors. Nothing really works as it should.</p>
<p><strong>Galperovich: </strong>Can they kill the participants of the protest movement whom they consider most dangerous?<strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>Bukovsky:</strong> In our time it was difficult, but now…I began by discussing the difference between the Soviet KGB and the KGB of today (I prefer to call FSB by its old name).  But I need also to point to some fundamental similarities that remain in place no matter what.  The first thing the new protesters should remember is that it is futile to make any agreements with the KGB. All the Western politicians (with the exception of Ronald Reagan) make here a basic error.  Western politicians simply do not grasp the fact that among the species of Homosapiens there exists this very special type.  You cannot make agreements with the representatives of this type because it is not in their plans to make agreements. Their task is to make you their agent.  You are either an agent (potential or actual) or an enemy; nothing else exists.  You may think that you are conducting yourself in a civilized manner when you find some compromises, but for them, any compromise is a sign of weakness, and it means that you should be pressed and pushed further.   So one must remember – the quicker one sees through them, the less one is their victim.</p>
<p>I can tell you a story. Well, it has some non-standard language, but I will try to smooth the rough edges.</p>
<p>In our camp I met an old teacher from Zakarpattia Oblast of Southwestern Ukraine. He was an erudite, knew five languages, was an extraordinary man.  But all of a sudden our supervisor begins to punish him and send him to solitary confinement for 15 days, and repeats this again and again.  In the camps among the prisoners there was this multi-ethnic committee – or so it was called. People of different nationalities – Armenians, Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Lithuanians – gathered to discuss the situation in the zone.  And here emerges the new problem: how to help our intelligent teacher. I (instead of keeping my mouth shut) say, &#8220;The supervisor is trying to make him a stool pigeon, and our teacher is not able to send them all to hell. One should use the foulest arsenal of four-letter words as soon as possible. They do not understand any other language.&#8221;</p>
<p>Well, any initiative is punishable. The committee decided that I should explain to the teacher the situation as soon as he finished his new term in solitary confinement.</p>
<p>When the teacher came out from his solitary cell, I explained the situation to him and tried to teach him how to swear.  To use Russian “mat” (swearing language) in full measure &#8212; according to the system of Stanislavsky.  But the teacher’s lips refused to move. He simply could not say it. He knew five languages, but he could not swear. Three hours I was instructing him. Finally he learned; he grasped the situation in full depth. Next time the supervisor sent him to the solitary confinement for 15 days, the teacher swore hard and dirty, and when he finished his fifteen days, they no longer touched him.</p>
<p>This is a story – a Gulag parable, in fact.  It shows that with the KGB one cannot behave in any other manner. They do not understand subtlety; their heads work differently. They have been trained only one way. And if you cannot send them off with the foulest four letter words, you will bind yourself to a great woe.</p>
<p><strong>Galperovich: </strong>Well, now these operatives face a mass protest. There have been no mass protests in Russia since the end of the 1980s. What will the KGB do now?</p>
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		<title>Occupy Wall Street Out!</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/jlaksin/occupy-wall-street-out/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=occupy-wall-street-out</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Oct 2011 04:15:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Capitalist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oakland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[occupy wall street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[zuccotti park]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=110252</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Frustrated cities try to evict the mob. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/5609398.bin_.jpeg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-110255" title="5609398.bin" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/5609398.bin_-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a></p>
<p>After weeks of raucous protests and fawning media coverage, the Occupy Wall Street movement finally has worn out its welcome.</p>
<p>Since it kicked off in New York last month, OWS has styled itself as a populist campaign. In its own mythology, it represents the voiceless “99 percent” against the ostensibly rich and greedy Wall Street executives in the top “1 percent.” Considering that the top 1 percent already bear the largest share of the country’s tax burden, this class warfare-driven charge never quite stuck. But now the OWS protestors have a bigger problem. As the protests have dragged on, turning city parks and plazas across the country into open sewers and crime havens, the everyday people the protestors claim to champion are turning against them.</p>
<p>The latest demonstration of the movement’s plummeting popularity comes from Oakland. City officials were initially supportive of the OWS campaign, with mayor Jean Quan, a Democrat, justifying the protestors’ misbehavior on the grounds that “democracy can be messy.” But having watched the protestors turn the plaza surrounding Oakland’s City Hall into a garbage-filled trouble spot – complete with fire hazards, public urination, rats, vandalism and other criminal activity – the mayor decided that it was time to clean up the mess.</p>
<p>Oakland police did just that this week. Following repeated warnings to the protestors to pack up because they were illegally camping in the plaza – warnings many of them chose to ignore – the police moved to clear out the site, arresting some 85 protestors in the process. Undeterred, a mob of 1,000 protestors armed with rocks and bottles tried to reoccupy the plaza by force, prompting clashes with riot police. When the tear gas cleared, the protestors seemed to have been successfully evicted.</p>
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		<title>Occupy Wall Street Goes Global</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/arnold-ahlert/occupy-wall-street-goes-global/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=occupy-wall-street-goes-global</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:17:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Occupy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OWS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wall Street]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The seamy underside of the Occupy Wall Street movement.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/protest5.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-109039" title="protest5" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/protest5.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="267" /></a></p>
<p>The Occupy movement went global on Saturday. Rallies were held in more than <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/occupy-wall-street-protests-go-global/2011/10/15/gIQAp7kimL_story.html?hpid=z1" target="_blank">900 cities around the world</a>, with  violence breaking out most notably in Rome, where 100 people were  injured and police were forced to use tear gas and water cannons to  break up a mob that burned cars and smashed the windows of shops and  banks. 175 protesters were <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-occupy-chicago-protesters-relocate-to-grant-park-20111015,0,3664663.story" target="_blank">arrested</a> in Chicago, when they attempted to set up camp in Congress Plaza, and 92 were <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/world/occupy-wall-street-protests-worldwide.html?hp" target="_blank">arrested</a> in New York. Another 8 were <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/10/16/bloomberg_articlesLT5XOG6K50XT.DTL" target="_blank">arrested</a> in  London. In Hong Kong, Derrick Benig, a 22-year-old art student, expressed what is rapidly becoming the over-arching theme of these  demonstrations. &#8220;I want to tear down capitalism,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Mr.  Benig is hardly alone, but the number of really dubious actors  expressing support for such an idea is growing. On Sunday, the American  Nazi Party released a <a href="http://whitehonor.com/white-power/the-occupy-wall-street-movement/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1a09fd;">statement</span></a> decrying  the &#8220;judeo-capitalist banksters who swindled the American taxpayers out  of A TRILLION dollars in the &#8216;bailout&#8217; scam AND continue to oppress the  White Working Class&#8221; even as they urged their members to &#8220;utilize and  support every movement of dissent against this evil American empire.&#8221;</p>
<p>Not to be outdone, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) also <a href="http://www.cpusa.org/solidarity-with-occupy-wall-street-teleconference-oct-11/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1a09fd;">expressed</span></a> solidarity  with the demonstrations, which they characterized as the &#8220;the newest  wrinkle in the all-people’s upsurge against the banks and corporations&#8221;  and which they hoped would lead to &#8220;more advanced programmatic ideas  like nationalizing the banks and socialism.&#8221; Iran&#8217;s supreme leader,  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65740.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1a09fd;">convinced</span></a> the  protests will destroy capitalism and bring about the downfall of  Western civilization. “The one percent  launched the wars in Iraq and  Afghanistan, but the remaining 99 percent have to suffer the deaths and  pay for it,” he said. On their <a href="http://15october.net/" target="_blank">website</a>,  the organizers of the demonstrations, United For #GlobalChange, contend  that people are &#8220;rising up to claim their rights and demand a true  democracy.&#8221;</p>
<p>There is another name for true democracy. It&#8217;s called mob rule. And it is mobs in locations such as New York&#8217;s Zuccotti Park, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/16/occupy-london-protest-second-day?newsfeed=true" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1a09fd;">outside</span></a><span style="color: #1a09fd;"> </span>of St. Paul&#8217;s Cathedral in London, <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/10/15/the-occupy-movement-comes-to-toronto/" target="_blank">in</a> Toronto’s St. James Park, <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_19123051" target="_blank">at</a> Hennepin County Government Center plaza in Minneapolis, and <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/occupy-atlanta-occupies-steps-1201395.html" target="_blank">at</a> Woodruff  Park in Atlanta, along with several other cities, that have announced  their intentions of setting up semi-permanent campsites &#8220;for as long as  it takes.&#8221; They intend to do so irrespective of municipal laws, sanitary  conditions, or simple respect for non-demonstrators who live or work  nearby.</p>
<p>Thus,  what are currently being championed as non-violent demonstrations are  setting themselves up for the inevitable confrontations which must  eventually take place when municipal politicians are forced to confront  the reality that no group of protesters can engage in civil  disobedience, or flout the law, indefinitely. Politicians must also deal  with the reality the providing sanitation and safety is currently  costing cities such as New York and Boston <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1014/Cities-fret-over-democracy-s-costs-as-Occupy-Wall-Street-stretches-on" target="_blank">millions of dollars of overtime costs</a>.</p>
<p>These  overtime costs are eating holes in municipal budgets right now, even  before any escalation of activity or confrontations take place. “I don’t  think it’s the activists’ intention to break the public treasury here,  but that’s what’s happening,” said Boston City Council President Stephen  Murphy. “We’re concerned about making the city’s streets, playgrounds,  and parks clean and safe, but each of those may wind up taking less  because of these protests.” Harvard Law professor Richard Fallon notes  that incurring such costs are political, not constitutional  decisions. “Cities have an obligation to make a space available to  engage in speech and protest activities, but nothing more,” he contends.</p>
<p>Cities also have obligations to non-demonstrators which many are currently ignoring. With respect to businesses, NRO, for example, publicized a sad <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/NROVideos%23p/u/10/ZxaUgI0Ascw" target="_blank">video</a> of  a working class New York man, ostensibly an immigrant, who has been unable to work for two weeks because of the  mobs. Some business owners near Zuccotti Park have not only experienced  a downturn, but have been forced to deal with the inevitable <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/04/occupy-wall-street-poses-challenge-to-main-street_n_993306.html" target="_blank">unruliness</a> as  well.</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve had a lot of damage from the protesters,&#8221; said Stacey  Tzortzatos, owner of Panini &amp; Co. Breads. &#8220;I&#8217;ve had to put a $200  lock on my bathroom because they come in here and try to bathe. The sink  fell down to the ground, cracked open, pulled the plumbing out of the  wall and caused a flood. It&#8217;s a no-win situation. If I open the restroom  for one, 30 people line up outside, disrupting my business.&#8221; In Boston,  downtown campers forced the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/notes/laura-ingraham/occupy-bostons-war-on-small-business/10150336026056395" target="_blank">cancellation</a> of  the “Greenway Mobile Food Fest” on Saturday, keeping twelve mobile food  truck vendors, hardly members of the one-percent club, from earning a  living.</p>
<p>Neighborhood residents have also been  adversely affected. “It’s been three weeks now,” said Heather Amato, 35,  a psychologist who lives in the Wall Street area. Amato said she had to  shield her child from women dancing topless at Zuccotti Park. “Enough  is enough,” she added. Melissa Coley, spokeswoman for Brookfield Office  Properties, which owns the park, released a statement noting that  sanitation conditions had reached “unacceptable levels.” Resident Karen  McMann, 33, was equally exasperated. “I do believe in the right to  protest,” she said. “But in other cities, the financial district is  separate. Here, this is a neighborhood they’re coming into. They’re  disrupting a lot of people’s lives.”</p>
<p>As of now,  disruption for disruption&#8217;s sake seems to be the primary motivating force  behind the movement. Michelle Nickerson, assistant professor of history  at Loyola University, <a href="http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20111016/NEWS02/710169901" target="_blank">says</a> the  lack of a unifying goal doesn&#8217;t mean the protesters should be dismissed  out of hand. &#8220;It takes time for activists to find each other, for them  to identify common grievances and goals, even to identify their  political opponents and how to attack the problem,&#8221; she contended.</p>
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		<title>Iran takes fight to opposition online &#8211; Times Online</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/iran-takes-fight-to-opposition-online-times-online/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-takes-fight-to-opposition-online-times-online</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:24:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=50445</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Iran’s clerical rulers, who succeeded in suppressing widespread demonstrations last week by blanketing Tehran with security, are escalating a cyberwar to combat the increasingly powerful role of the internet in mobilising their opponents. Visitors to the website of the main challenger in last June’s disputed presidential election were greeted by an image of the Iranian [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Iran’s clerical rulers, who succeeded in suppressing widespread demonstrations last week by blanketing Tehran with security, are escalating a cyberwar to combat the increasingly powerful role of the internet in mobilising their opponents.</p>
<p>Visitors to the website of the main challenger in last June’s disputed presidential election were greeted by an image of the Iranian flag and an AK-47 assault rifle. “Stop being agents for those who are safely in the US and are using you,” they were told.</p>
<p>Another prominent opposition site was sabotaged, the internet was slowed down and threats were made to close Google’s Gmail system and set up Iran’s own national email service, a move that would allow government surveillance of the net.</p>
<p>A group calling itself the Iran Cyber Army has claimed responsibility for hacking into both opposition sites. This is the outfit that brought down Twitter for several hours last December when huge antigovernment protests were shaking the regime.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article7026358.ece">Iran takes fight to opposition online &#8211; Times Online</a>.</p>
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		<title>Bomb kills Iran nuclear physicist tied to Mousavi &#8211; AP</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/bomb-kills-iran-nuclear-physicist-tied-to-mousavi-ap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bomb-kills-iran-nuclear-physicist-tied-to-mousavi-ap</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:23:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=45752</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[TEHRAN, Iran – A nuclear physics professor who publicly backed Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the disputed June presidential election was killed Tuesday when a bomb-rigged motorcycle blew up outside his home. The blast, apparently set off by a remote trigger, left a puzzling mix of clues about why a 50-year-old researcher with [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>TEHRAN, Iran – A nuclear physics professor who publicly backed Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the disputed June presidential election was killed Tuesday when a bomb-rigged motorcycle blew up outside his home.</p>
<p>The blast, apparently set off by a remote trigger, left a puzzling mix of clues about why a 50-year-old researcher with no prominent political voice, no published work with military relevance and no declared links to Iran&#8217;s nuclear program would be targeted.</p>
<p>State media identified the victim as Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a professor at Tehran University, which has been at the center of recent protests by student opposition supporters. Before the election, pro-reform Web sites published Ali Mohammadi&#8217;s name among a list of 240 Tehran University teachers who supported Mousavi.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100112/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran">Bomb kills Iran nuclear physicist tied to Mousavi &#8211; Yahoo! News</a>.</p>
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		<title>Iran’s growing desperation &#8211; The Economist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/iran%e2%80%99s-growing-desperation-the-economist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran%25e2%2580%2599s-growing-desperation-the-economist</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:48:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=44218</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[WHAT more can Iran’s ruthless rulers do to squash their opponents? Since nationwide protests broke out last June over the disputed results of presidential elections, the official winner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has pulled few punches. His security apparatus has beaten and arrested thousands, tried scores of dissidents in kangaroo courts, hounded others into exile, throttled the [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>WHAT more can Iran’s ruthless rulers do to squash their opponents? Since nationwide protests broke out last June over the disputed results of presidential elections, the official winner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has pulled few punches. His security apparatus has beaten and arrested thousands, tried scores of dissidents in kangaroo courts, hounded others into exile, throttled the press and jammed the airwaves. But the massive and violent demonstrations that engulfed the capital, Tehran, and other cities on December 26th and 27th suggested that repression only deepens and broadens the opposition.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast-africa/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15172247&amp;source=features_box2">Iran’s increasing turmoil: Growing desperation | The Economist</a>.</p>
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		<title>Iran Lashes Out at West Over Protests &#8211; NYTimes.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/iran-lashes-out-at-west-over-protests-nytimes-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-lashes-out-at-west-over-protests-nytimes-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:07:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=44013</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Iranian authorities continued arresting hundreds of opposition members and accused the United States and Britain on Tuesday of orchestrating the violent demonstrations that rocked the capital and other cities on Sunday. via Iran Lashes Out at West Over Protests &#8211; NYTimes.com.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Iranian authorities continued arresting hundreds of opposition members and accused the United States and Britain on Tuesday of orchestrating the violent demonstrations that rocked the capital and other cities on Sunday.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/world/middleeast/30iran.html?_r=1&amp;hp">Iran Lashes Out at West Over Protests &#8211; NYTimes.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>Aides to Iran’s Opposition Leaders Said to Be Arrested &#8211; NYTimes.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/aides-to-iran%e2%80%99s-opposition-leaders-said-to-be-arrested-nytimes-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=aides-to-iran%25e2%2580%2599s-opposition-leaders-said-to-be-arrested-nytimes-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:21:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=43827</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A number of opposition figures were arrested Monday in the wake of violent nationwide protests a day earlier, Web sites reported, including three top aides to the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi and the leader of a banned political group, Ibrahim Yazdi. via Aides to Iran’s Opposition Leaders Said to Be Arrested &#8211; NYTimes.com.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A number of opposition figures were arrested Monday in the wake of violent nationwide protests a day earlier, Web sites reported, including three top aides to the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi and the leader of a banned political group, Ibrahim Yazdi.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/world/middleeast/29iran.html?hp">Aides to Iran’s Opposition Leaders Said to Be Arrested &#8211; NYTimes.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>The Peoples&#8217; Revolt in Iran &#8211; WSJ.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/the-peoples-revolt-in-iran-wsj-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-peoples-revolt-in-iran-wsj-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:27:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42818</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The foundation stones of Iran&#8217;s Islamic Republic were shaken again yesterday, showing that the largest antigovernment movement in its 30 years may be one of the biggest stories of next year as well. Now imagine the possibilities if the Obama Administration began to support Iran&#8217;s democrats.The perseverance of the so-called Green Movement is something to [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The foundation stones of Iran&#8217;s Islamic Republic were shaken again yesterday, showing that the largest antigovernment movement in its 30 years may be one of the biggest stories of next year as well. Now imagine the possibilities if the Obama Administration began to support Iran&#8217;s democrats.The perseverance of the so-called Green Movement is something to behold. Millions of Iranians mobilized against the outcome of June&#8217;s fraudulent presidential election, and their protests were violently repressed. But the cause has only grown in scope, with the aim of many becoming nothing less than the death of a hated system.Yesterday offered a glimpse into the regime&#8217;s crisis of legitimacy. As in the waning days of the Shah in the late 1970s, Iranians merely need an excuse to show what they think of their rulers. The funeral of a leading Shiite cleric who&#8217;d inspired and guided the opposition brought out tens to hundreds of thousands to Iran&#8217;s religious capital of Qom. Media coverage is severely restricted, but the demonstration&#8217;s size was impossible to deny.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704304504574610103365849572.html">The Peoples&#8217; Revolt in Iran &#8211; WSJ.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>Protests mark funeral of dissident Iranian cleric &#8211; AP</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/protests-mark-funeral-of-dissident-iranian-cleric-ap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=protests-mark-funeral-of-dissident-iranian-cleric-ap</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:58:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ali Montazeri]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[ayatollah hossein ali montazeri]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42704</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Huge crowds of Iranians turned out for the funeral of leading dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in the holy Shi&#8217;ite city of Qom on Monday and some chanted anti-government slogans, websites reported.Montazeri, who died late on Saturday aged 87, was viewed as the spiritual patron of a pro-reform opposition movement that blossomed after [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Huge crowds of Iranians turned out for the funeral of leading dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in the holy Shi&#8217;ite city of Qom on Monday and some chanted anti-government slogans, websites reported.Montazeri, who died late on Saturday aged 87, was viewed as the spiritual patron of a pro-reform opposition movement that blossomed after a disputed presidential election in June and has proved resilient despite repeated efforts to suppress it.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091221/ts_nm/us_iran;_ylt=At8tdaNGqJVSokXXsH9a9uWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTM4dGNkOGZvBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMDkxMjIxL3VzX2lyYW4EY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMxMQRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDcHJvdGVzdHNtYXJr">Protests mark funeral of dissident Iranian cleric &#8211; Yahoo! News</a>.</p>
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