Sweden: Leftist parliamentarians and Muslims call for "slaughter of Jews"

Hundreds of protesters in the Swedish city of Malmo were filmed chanting in Arabic about slaughtering Jews and stabbing soldiers...

Isaac Bachman, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, posted on his Facebook account a video taken at the rally showing hundreds chanting “slaughter the Jews, stab soldiers.”...

Remembrance Day

We have privileged lives in Canada and the United States. Yes, there are varying degrees of privilege, but the freedoms we all enjoy before the law are greater than any the world has known before. Even now, most of the rest of the world does not enjoy the rights, the legal protections, the safety that we have. We don't have them by accident. It took thousands of years of advancing ideas to get where we are, and over those thousands of years, it took millions upon millions of lives. Some fighting for oppressors, and ultimately for the most part, victories went to the warriors who fought to protect freedom from those who would take humanity's basic rights away.

Hitler was not defeated by pacifism, Imperial Japan did not change into the democratic nation it is now through rational discourse. It took the lives of thousands upon thousands of brave soldiers to end those tyrannies. We face enormous threats to our liberties today, and there are far too many in our society who would simply let our freedoms erode so as to be thought of as "peaceful." That's happened before, and since the lessons of history are so rarely heeded, it will likely happen again. As always,when the choice becomes irrevocable,  it will come down to men and women in the armed services to be the final line between freedom and slavery. We should remember that and be grateful to them. 

and from Rick McGinnis:

...There are always classes of schoolchildren at the cenotaph. I can't help but wonder what they're thinking, and how much they really know about the wars being remembered. As the son of a veteran, growing up with Rat Patrol and Hogan's Heroes in after school syndication, I'm part of a generation that still felt the shadow of World War Two amplified by the geopolitical hangover of the Cold War. Perhaps these kids are luckier than we were; I don't get the feeling that 9/11 casts the same shadow over their lives. I hope my anxiety about what sometimes seems like either indifference or amnesia is unfounded, but I have a bad feeling about it all...

Can We Start Taking Political Correctness Seriously Now?

...Even if it were the case that political correctness was totally confined to campuses, it would not make the phenomenon unimportant. Colleges have disproportionate influence over intellectual life, and political movements centered on campuses can spread well beyond them (anti-Vietnam began as a bunch of wacky kids, too). But to imagine p.c. as simply a thing college kids do relieves us of taking it seriously as a coherent set of beliefs, which it very much is. Political correctness is a system of thought that denies the legitimacy of political pluralism on issues of race and gender. It manifests itself most prominently in campus settings not because it’s a passing phase, like acne, but because the academy is one of the few bastions of American life where the p.c. left can muster the strength to impose its political hegemony upon others. The phenomenon also exists in other nonacademic left-wing communities, many of them virtual ones centered on social media, and its defenders include professional left-wing intellectuals.

The upsurge of political correctness is not just greasy-kid stuff, and it’s not just a bunch of weird, unfortunate events that somehow keep happening over and over. It’s the expression of a political culture with consistent norms, and philosophical premises that happen to be incompatible with liberalism. The reason every Marxist government in the history of the world turned massively repressive is not because they all had the misfortune of being hijacked by murderous thugs. It’s that the ideology itself prioritizes class justice over individual rights and makes no allowance for legitimate disagreement...

The perfect metaphor for what the Trudeau government will do to Canada

The Liberals find a problem they can’t blame on Harper, and approve dumping 8 billion litres of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence, despite opposition from the US and a 90,000-name petition opposing the plan... 

Ash and the Necronomicon are back!

Check out the interview with Sam Raimi & Bruce Campbell 

Meet Wendy Carlos: The trans godmother of electronic music

The wonderful Wendy Carlos is not only one of the great musicians of the last century, but one of its greatest musical and technological innovators:



In 1968, Wendy Carlos took a Moog synthesizer, an unknown instrument at the time, and electronically reconstructed Johann Sebastian Bach's six "Brandenburg Concertos" into the first ever platinum-selling classical album, "Switched on Bach." The album became the most influential "electronic" classical recording of all time, smashing the borders between classical and synthesized music. It won her three Grammys and sent a message to the world that a synthesizer was a musical instrument, rather than just an obscure machine used by professors in labs to make weird robot sounds...

The Intolerance of Student Activism

Professor Nicholas Christakis lives at Yale, where he presides over one of its undergraduate colleges. His wife Erika, a lecturer in early childhood education, shares that duty. They reside among students and are responsible for shaping residential life. And before Halloween, some students complained to them that Yale administrators were offering heavy-handed advice on what Halloween costumes to avoid.

Erika Christakis reflected on the frustrations of the students, drew on her scholarship and career experience, and composed an email inviting the community to think about the controversy through an intellectual lens that few if any had considered. Her message was a model of relevant, thoughtful, civil engagement.

For her trouble, a faction of students are now trying to get the couple removed from their residential positions, which is to say, censured and ousted from their home on campus. Hundreds of Yale students are attacking them, some with hateful insults, shouted epithets, and a campaign of public shaming. In doing so, they have shown an illiberal streak that flows from flaws in their well-intentioned ideology...

Watching SpongeBob can save lives - teen performs Heimlich maneuver on choking classmate after he ‘learned it on SpongeBob’

A Staten Island teenager saw a classmate in trouble and leapt into action using a lesson he learned from watching “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Brandon Williams, 13, a seventh-grader who lives in Great Kills, said he learned the Heimlich maneuver from watching his favorite Nickelodeon show and instantly knew what to do when Jessica Pellegrino began gagging on a piece of apple last month.

“Squidward was choking on a clarinet,” Brandon said, referring to SpongeBob’s misery-loving pal in the fictional Bikini Bottom...

Men's Rights Discussion

I've written before that I don't find the Men's Rights movement particularly compelling. There are some issues that specifically address men and boys and they absolutely do deserve to be addressed as such, but I don't think that needs to be framed in the context of a "rights movement."

However, the fascist-like effort on campuses to shut down their right to free speech is a far more troubling phenomenon. Universities fund campus groups that promote Marxist totalitarians who actually call for violent revolution, and discriminatory, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel groups. Yet a group that wants to discuss the high suicide rate among males and offer a different perspective on contemporary feminism is too "offensive" to be allowed free speech.

This CBC News panel is an example of some of the different views on the subject, notable among it is Adam Goldenberg's asinine outlook, which essentially is that, 'I don't like your opinion, therefore you shouldn't be allowed the same free speech on campuses as groups I do like."

Artificial intelligence: ‘Homo sapiens will be split into a handful of gods and the rest of us’

...try relaxing with a new report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch which looks at the likely effects of a robot revolution.

But you might not end up reassured. Though it promises robot carers for an ageing population, it also forecasts huge numbers of jobs being wiped out: up to 35% of all workers in the UK and 47% of those in the US, including white-collar jobs, seeing their livelihoods taken away by machines.

Haven’t we heard all this before, though? From the luddites of the 19th century to print unions protesting in the 1980s about computers, there have always been people fearful about the march of mechanisation. And yet we keep on creating new job categories.

However, there are still concerns that the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) – which is able to make logical inferences about its surroundings and experience – married to ever-improving robotics, will wipe away entire swaths of work and radically reshape society.

“The poster child for automation is agriculture,” says Calum Chace, author ofSurviving AI and the novel Pandora’s Brain. “In 1900, 40% of the US labour force worked in agriculture. By 1960, the figure was a few per cent. And yet people had jobs; the nature of the jobs had changed.

“But then again, there were 21 million horses in the US in 1900. By 1960, there were just three million. The difference was that humans have cognitive skills – we could learn to do new things. But that might not always be the case as machines get smarter and smarter.”

What if we’re the horses to AI’s humans?...

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens - Japanese Trailer

The Japanese trailer has some scenes so far unseen in the English language version:

Why Palestinians Do Not Want Cameras on the Temple Mount

• The Palestinian Authority (PA) will continue to work against having cameras in the hope of preventing the world from seeing what is really happening at the site and undermining Jordan's "custodianship" over Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem.
• Another reason the Palestinians oppose King Abdullah's idea is their fear that cameras would expose that Palestinians have been smuggling stones, firebombs and pipe bombs into the Al-Aqsa Mosque for the past two years.
• The cameras are also likely to refute the claim that Jews are "violently invading" Al-Aqsa Mosque and holding prayers on the Temple Mount. The cameras will show that Jews do not enter Al-Aqsa Mosque, as Palestinians have been claiming. Needless to say, no Jewish visitors have been caught trying to smuggle weapons into the holy site.
• It remains to be seen how Secretary Kerry, who brokered the camera deal between Israel and Jordan, will react to the latest Palestinian Authority escalation of tensions. If Kerry fails to pressure the PA to stop its incitement and attempts to exclude the Jordanians from playing any positive role, the current wave of knife attacks against Jews will continue.

MORE HERE

Plus see also: Terrorism as a Palestinian cultural and religious pillar

The unjust stigmatization of vulvas in society continues

Last Thursday, students at Scripps College hosted an event at The Motley Coffeehouse called “Project Vulva” to initiate dialogue about the alleged stigmatization of vulvas in society.

“Why is it that, generally, society is so comfortable with the image of the penis and vulvas are considered taboo?” states Project Vulva’s Facebook page. “In middle school people would scribble penis pictures on the desks in the classroom. There is always that kid who passes out at the party and someone draws a dick on his face.”

Project Vulva’s organizers described the event as “an educational and interactive art show displaying your friends [sic] depictions when we asked them, ‘Can you draw a vulva?’ We will also have cupcakes that you can decorate like vulvas. Supplies are limited!” The event’s stated goal was “to create an open dialouge [sic] educating people about the vulva in order to confront society’s stigmas and stereotypes, and make people more comfortable with the many varying images and types of cis and non-cis vulvas.”

However, the event faced harsh backlash from online from commenters who found it offensive to the trans community.

One commenter, who felt that Project Vulva’s claim that penises are not stigmatized was untrue, wrote that, “[s]ociety is not comfortable with the image of a penis on a woman...

Ted Cruz Is Right: The Muslim Brotherhood Is a Terrorist Organization

The Muslim Brotherhood youth in Egypt reject any form of violence.” So said Rachid Ghannouchi, who — you’ll no doubt be stunned to hear — heads up the Muslim Brotherhood’s Tunisian branch, Ennahda. 

Naturally, Ghannouchi gave his Egyptian confederates a clean bill of health while speaking as an invited guest of the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington. He is a master of the Brotherhood game, consulted by the State Department and a bipartisan Beltway clerisy ever on the hunt for that elusive “moderate Islamist.” He is an Islamic supremacist who knows he can worm his way into Washington’s heart by whispering sweet nothings about “democracy,” “pluralism,” and their seamless compatibility with sharia — Islam’s authoritarian, discriminatory, and brutally punitive legal code and societal framework.

It is nonsense, but Ghannouchi knows it is precisely the nonsense our government wants to hear. We don’t want to know about the Brotherhood, but man oh man do the Brothers ever go to school on us. Ghannouchi understands that if he chants “democracy” and “non-violence” enough times, there will be no inconvenient mention of his support of Hamas — the terrorist organization that is the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. No one will bring up his 2009 call for the opening of a “third jihadist front” against Israel. No one will quote his proclamations such as “I bring glad tidings that the Arab region will get rid of the germ of Israel” or “There are no civilians in Israel. Men, women and children, they are all reserves soldiers and can therefore be killed” — or that the United States government is “the great Satan.” Not a word will be uttered about his close alliance with Brotherhood eminence Yousef al-Qaradawi, the influential sharia jurist who calls for suicide bombings against the Jewish state and terrorist attacks against American soldiers in Iraq. 

This week, finally, Ted Cruz decided enough is enough. The Texas senator and Republican presidential hopeful has proposed a bill to force the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as what it actually is: a terrorist organization...

Jordanian cleric changes mind - after declaring it's not ok to kill Jews and facing backlash, now says it's a Muslim obligation to kill Jews

In this video, Jordanian cleric Hassan al-Halabi says that murdering Jews is wrong. Interestingly, he also states that the reason that Jews don't go around murdering Muslims is because of Jewish wickedness and heresy, so they can then say, "We are better than the Muslims who kill us unprovoked. We don't do that."  Yeah, that's the only reason I don't go on a daily murder spree. So I can boast how much better I am than these guys. This type of mindset actually is considered normal thinking in some Islamic countries.



But what apparently isn't considered normal in Islamic countries is not being in favor of killing as many Jews as possible whenever the opportunity presents itself. Poor Sheikh al-Halabi faced a huge backlash and was called a bleeding-heart pussy for suggesting you shouldn't knife an elderly Jewish woman to death if you get a chance, so he had to reclarify his position. Remember, according to Canada's new government, this is not a barbaric cultural practice, because to say that would be offensive.

Text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement

  TPP Preamble

  2. National Treatment and Market Access for Goods Chapter

  3. Rules of Origin and Origin Procedures Chapter

  4. Textiles and Apparel Chapter by Pam Heaven

Palestinians as victims, not of injustice, but of self-inflicted misfortune

This 1961 article by the great, famous journalist Martha Gellhorn illustrates how many things have not changed in over 50 years:

..."Please bear with me and help me," said I. "I am a simple American, and I am trying to understand how the Arab mind works, and I am finding it very difficult. I want to put some things in order; if I have everything wrong, you will correct me. In 1947, the United Nations recommended the Partition of Palestine. I have seen the Partition map and studied it. I cannot tell, but it does not look to me as if the Arabs were being cheated of their share of good land. The idea was that this division would work, if both Jews and Arabs accepted it and lived under an Economic Union. And, of course, the Arab countries around the borders would have to be peaceful and cooperative or else nothing would work at all. The Jews accepted this Partition plan; I suppose because they felt they had to. They were outnumbered about two to one inside the country, and there were the neighboring Arab states with five regular armies and forty million or more citizens, not feeling friendly. Are we agreed so far?"

"It is right."

"The Arab governments and the Palestinian Arabs rejected Partition absolutely. You wanted the whole country. There is no secret about this. The statements of the Arab representatives, in the UN are on record. The Arab governments never hid the fact that they started the war against Israel. But you, the Palestinian Arabs, agreed to this, you wanted it. And you thought, it seems to me very reasonably, that you would win and win quickly. It hardly seemed a gamble; it seemed a sure bet. You took the gamble and you lost. I can understand why you have all been searching for explanations of that defeat ever since, because it does seem incredible. I don't happen to accept your explanations, but that is beside the point. The point is that you lost."

"Yes." It was too astonishing; at long last, East and West were in accord on the meaning of words.

"Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want Partition. So, in fact you say, let us forget that war we started, and the defeat, and, after all, we think Partition is a good, sensible idea. Please answer me this, which is what I must, know. If the position were reversed, if the Jews had started the war and lost it, if you had won the war, would you now accept Partition? Would you give up part of the country and allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine -who had fled from the war--to come back?"

"Certainly not," he said, without an instant's hesitation. "But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea."

He had given me the missing clue. The fancy word we use nowadays is "empathy"--entering into the emotions of others. I had appreciated and admired individual refugees but realized I had felt no blanket empathy for the Palestinian refugees, and finally I knew why--owing to this nice, gray-haired schoolteacher. It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent. They cannot have wished for a victorious rewarding war, blame everyone else for their defeat, and remain guiltless. Some of them may be unfortunate human beings, and civilization would collapse (as it notoriously did in Nazi Germany) if most people did not naturally move to help their hurt fellow men. But a profound difference exists between victims of misfortune (there, but for the grace of God, go I) and victims of injustice...

Iran's Grand Poobah wants Americans to think "Death to America" is just a figure of speech

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — The slogan "Death to America" is not aimed at the American people, but rather American policies, Iran's supreme leader said in comments reported on his official website Tuesday.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei discussed the slogan while meeting with Iranian students ahead of the anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. Militant students stormed the compound and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

The two countries have had no diplomatic relations since then. However, current President Hassan Rouhani has made efforts to improve relations, including a landmark nuclear agreement reached with world powers this past summer.

Khamenei says the "aim of the slogan is not death to American people. The slogan means death to U.S. policies and arrogance." The slogan has "strong support" In Iran, he said...

The difference between liberals and leftists

...the damage has been done to the broader campus culture. Speech zones, which limit the amount of discourse, are combined with speech codes, which strike at the content of discourse. Arguably, the latter are more dangerous because they advance the notion that one has a right to be unoffended. This is the mentality that actually encourages young people to proactively suppress speech they find offensive.

And we are beginning to see the effects. Michael Bloomberg, himself no political conservative, noted this trend in a commencement speech at Harvard University. Speaking specifically about the trend towards silencing commencement speakers, he said, “In each case, liberals silenced a voice of individuals they deemed politically objectionable.”

Bloomberg almost got that one right. The people doing the silencing were not liberals. They were illiberal leftists. As Kirsten Powers points out in The Silencing, there is a big difference between the two. Liberalism presupposes tolerance of opposing views. In contrast, the illiberal leftist seeks to destroy dialogue. As Powers puts it, these illiberal leftists seek monologue on their side, and silence on the other side...

Bill Maher discusses Justin Trudeau's intellectual vacuity and moral idiocy