Blowing and sucking at the same time: CNN implies collusion between Russia and the Trump Administration while admitting there is no proof of it

Whether you like it or not, Trump actually has a strategy for dealing with Islamic terrorism and Obama didn't.

Niall Ferguson in The Boston Globe:

...Unlike his predecessor, Trump is not afraid to call this problem by its real name. Departing from his script, he called for “honestly confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamists and Islamic terror of all kinds.” Tut-tut, grumbled The New York Times, he wasn’t supposed to say “Islamic” but “Islamist.” Oh yes he was.

“A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and extremists,” Trump told his audience of leaders from Muslim-majority countries. “Drive. Them. Out.” For all his flaws, he has this right. For decades, Saudi Arabia has been the principal source of funding for the export of Sunni fundamentalism. Leaning on the Saudis is therefore an essential first step. Obviously, there has to be some quid pro quo if the House of Saud really is going to turn off the cash. But that, as Trump’s speech made clear, is going to be US-led action to check Iran’s regional and nuclear ambitions. For hostility to Iran is the one thing that unites the Sunni states represented in Riyadh with Trump’s Jewish hosts in Jerusalem.

This strategy will not be easy to execute. It will not bring back the 22 people Salman Abedi killed last Monday. But at least it is a strategy. And the fact that the president of the United States no longer spouts politically correct newspeak about “countering violent extremism” gives me a glimmer of hope...

Pissed-off artist adds statue of urinating dog next to ‘Fearless Girl’

...City sculptor Alex Gardega — seething over the “Fearless Girl” statue being placed across from Wall Street’s “Charging Bull” — has decided to retaliate with a work of his own.

Gardega created a statue of a small dog, titled “Pissing Pug,” and his sloppily crafted pooch takes direct aim at “Fearless Girl” — or, at least, at her left leg.

“This is corporate nonsense,” Gardega told The Post of “Fearless Girl,” saying it was put opposite artist Arturo Di Modica’s famed bull as a publicity stunt by a Boston-based financial firm.

“It has nothing to do with feminism, and it is disrespect to the artist that made the bull,” he said. “That bull had integrity.”

The Upper West Side artist sniffed that he even made his dog particularly poorly just to stick it to “Fearless Girl” even more.

“I decided to build this dog and make it crappy to downgrade the statue, exactly how the girl is a downgrade on the bull,” said Gardega...

Update HERE 

With any luck, this'll just keep getting more absurd, ending like this...

What will Ontario's government do about the overt anti-Semitism at Ryerson University?

Programs in Ontario universities, outside of those withing the pure sciences, have become immersed in a depraved, neo-Marxist ideology that is infused with overt antisemitism. Social Work, which is supposed to be a field that supports people in need is one of the worst examples.

At The University of Toronto, a professor named Rupaleem Bhuyan, who espoused antisemitism and facilitated a reprehensible "Jew count" in her class, was rewarded with career advancement while her critics were driven out of the Social Work Department.

Now at Ryerson University, a Social Work Placement Coordinator has determined that denying the Jewish people a right to national self-determination is one of the "values" of Social Work. Ryerson has decided that denying rights to Jews that they would accord to people of other religions is the new "Social Justice."

The vacuous depravity of Social Sciences in Ontario's schools needs to come to an end now.

More HERE

All Ryerson social work grad Rebecca Katzman wanted was to do her third-year placement at one of two respected Toronto Jewish organizations with a track record of addressing social justice issues.

The 22-year-old, who will graduate with her Bachelor of Social Work degree on June 8, said her desire to be placed at either the Prosserman Jewish Community Centre (JCC) or the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was “sparked” by a combination of actions at Ryerson — among them the anti-Semitism she experienced on campus.

However, she wasn’t prepared in the slightest for what happened with her third-year placement coordinator in the faculty of social work, Heather Bain.

After making it clear to Bain about her preferred placement, Katzman said the field coordinator advised her in an e-mail in late August of 2015 she did not follow up with the JCC or UJA because their values appeared to be “in opposition” to the values of the School of Social Work.

Bain listed those values as the advancement of anti-oppression; anti-racism; anti-colonialism and decolonization; feminism; anti-capitalism; Queer and trans liberation struggles; issues in disability and madness (cct); among others (many of which are not listed on the school’s own website.)

“My understanding is both agencies have a strong anti-Palestinian lean,” Bain continued, suggesting that if Katzman agreed to bring a “critical awareness” (of Palestinian solidarity movements) to either agency she might reconsider.

While the two agencies where Katzman wanted to be placed are known to be pro-Israel, she said their websites do not indicate any anti-Palestinian policies in the slightest.

Katzman, who waited until she was ready to graduate to tell her story for fear of retaliation from the faculty, said she was devastated by Bain’s e-mail.

“I felt targeted as a Jewish student,” she said, noting she’s coming forward because she wants the university to investigate as well as a public apology.

When she challenged Bain about her contentions, the field placement officer responded on Aug. 25, 2015 that she consulted with Jewish colleagues who are part of “Jews Against Israeli Apartheid movements” before making her decision not to pursue those placements...

Undoing Insularity: A Small Study of Gender Sociology’s Big Problem

The following is the abstract of an academic paper by Professor Charlotta Stern of Stockholm University in which she identifies Gender Studies as a system which is oblivious to facts and instead relies on its own religious-like "Sacred Beliefs" which have no basis in science or reality:

Abstract 

In my experience as a sociologist, I see many ways in which gender sociology tends to insulate itself from challenges to its own sacred beliefs and sacred causes. The sacred beliefs are to the effect that the biological differences between the sexes are minor and that the cultural differences between the genders have little basis in biological differences. The scholarly findings that challenge the sacred beliefs come from anthropology, developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology, the neurosciences, genetics, biology, and many other fields. For many decades now researchers have amassed findings of differences in competitiveness, aggression, sexual interest, risk behavior, and many other traits, and differences in brain physiology and neuroimaging, by many different methods and approaches. I investigated a sample of top cited gender sociology papers to test my impression, and indeed the findings illustrate extreme insularity. It saddens me to see students and scholars fall into insular communities of highly dubious sacred beliefs and causes. I propose that gender sociologists strive to undo insularity.

You can read the whole paper HERE

Robert Lantos: Calling Out The Jew-Hatred Of The So-Called "Progressive" Left

...Since its inception, the UN Human Rights Council has adopted 135 country-specific resolutions. Of those, 68 condemn Israel. The following is a list of some of the enlightened democracies that are current or past members of the UN Human Rights Commission: Sudan, Congo, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China, Russia. It is with these champions of human rights that today’s left aligns itself: authoritarian regimes, which persecute the LGBTQ community, are intolerant of women’s rights, of freedom of the press and of freedom of expression. 

The so-called progressives who denounce Israel are unfazed by the jailing of dissenters in Iran, oblivious to the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia, blind to the incarceration and torture of gay men in Qatar, accepting of widespread female genital mutilation and unperturbed by the persecution of Christians in several Islamic countries. Their single fixation is on the Jewish state, a country whose laws treat all citizens equally, regardless of gender or religion and guarantee them education, healthcare and civil liberties. A country where freedom of expression is sacred.

It is time to stop kidding ourselves and to call all those with such selective social conscience the anti-Semites we all know they are. Hitler and the Nazis were vanquished but Jew hatred was not. It has found renewed vigour in an unholy partnership between the jihadists and the proverbial useful idiots, who hide under the progressive mantle...

Silence U: Is the University Killing Free Speech and Open Debate?

A Century and a Half Before There Were Mods and Rockers, There Were Dandies and Fops

Beau Brummell: This Charming Man
Starring James Purefoy

WHY SALMAN ABEDI GREW TO HATE US - A British Libyan on the poison of Islamism

Salman Abedi was a British Libyan. So am I. His parents were given refuge in the UK, and so were mine. His grandparents and great grandparents were saved from German and Italian fascists by the sacrifice of British soldiers, as were mine. Details are now emerging that suggest Abedi fought in the Libyan revolution alongside his father. If true, then he will have depended for his life upon the actions of British, French and American airforces.

Abedi was not disenfranchised. He was not rejected by British society. He was taught to reject and hate it, despite everything it gave him and his family. His older sister has reportedly said that Abedi was looking for ‘revenge’ for the ‘ill-treatment’ of Muslims in the UK and Syria. This is the circular logic of the Islamist victimhood narrative that almost every Muslim growing up in the UK will have been exposed to at one time or another. Western governments, and therefore Western societies, are to blame for all instances of intervention in Muslim majority countries, and are equally culpable should they fail to intervene.

Manchester and Birmingham are home to some of the most militant Islamists in the UK. They mingle and operate throughout local Muslim communities with relative impunity, and maintain networks up and down the M1 motorway to London. They also have a significant presence online with which they extend their influence globally. At the level of propaganda, at least, they’re not an underground movement. They are out in the open.

While living safely under Britain’s rule of law, they nonetheless view British society as beneath contempt. They don’t want to be part of it, and they teach people like Salman Abedi that it’s a mortal sin for them to want to be part of it. Anything that happens to a Muslim anywhere in the world, once passed through the Islamist victimhood filter, becomes an anti-Muslim act for which the guilty must be punished. And so it seems that Abedi’s actions were the result of this solipsistic staple of Islamist indoctrination...

The Gender Obsessed West Sets Itself Up for the Rise of Islam

Welcome to the progressive "next frontier of 'liberation'", where the most urgent question in Western democracies is "genderism".

North Carolina was subjected to a year of being boycotted, until it withdrew its transgender bathroom law. Last month, the National Union of Teachers in Great Britain asked the government to teach children as young as two new transgender theories. New York recently presented the first "trans-doll". American universities are wracked with hysteria over the correct use of neutral pronouns. Even National Geographic, instead of writing about lions and elephants, started covering the "Gender Revolution". One of the first announcements of Emmanuel Macron, as the French President-elect, was that he would appoint officials from a "gender equal" list.

What does it mean that this gender mania is permeating every corner of Western societies and culture? According to Camille Paglia, the contrarian feminist, it is a sign of the decline of Western civilization. In her new book, Free Women, Free Men, she writes:

"Civilizations have gone through recurrent cycles. Extravaganzas of gender experimentation sometimes precede cultural collapse, as they certainly did in Weimar Germany. Now as then, there are forces aligning outside the borders, scattered fanatical hordes where the cult of heroic masculinity still has tremendous force". 

She then asks:

"How has it happened that so many of today's most daring and radical young people now define themselves by sexual identity alone? There has been a collapse of perspective here that will surely have mixed consequences for our art and culture and that may perhaps undermine the ability of Western societies to understand or react to the vehemently contrary beliefs of others who do not wish us well. Transgender phenomena multiply and spread in 'late' phases of culture, as religious, political, and family traditions weaken and civilizations begin to decline"....

Mark Steyn: "Dangerous Woman" Meets Dangerous Man

...Douglas Murray's fine book, The Strange Death of Europe, which lays out, unsparingly, the central illusion of the last half-century - that you could demographically transform the composition of hitherto more or less homogeneous nation states on a scale no stable society has ever attempted, and that there would be no consequences except a more vibrant range of local restaurants. Mrs May declared this morning on the steps of Downing Street that she had held a top-level security meeting, or what they call in Britain a "COBRA", which sounds like something scary enough to do battle with SPECTRE; in that sense, it's a very butch acronym for a bit of bureaucratic furniture labeling (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A). But I'll bet the mood around the table was one of fatalism and resignation, outside a few micro-adjustments to the budget of counter-terrorism agencies and the number of CCTV cameras and the amount of security checks at "sensitive" "high-value" targets like department stores, and theatres, and restaurants and football grounds and pubs and chip shops and...

But the arithmetic is not difficult: Poland and Hungary and Slovakia do not have Islamic terrorism because they have very little Islam. France and Germany and Belgium admit more and more Islam, and thus more and more terrorism. Yet the subject of immigration has been all but entirely absent from the current UK election campaign. Thirty years ago, in the interests of stopping IRA terrorism, the British state was not above preventing the internal movement within its borders of unconvicted, uncharged, unarrested Republican sympathizers seeking to take a ferry from Belfast to Liverpool. Today it declares it can do nothing to prevent the movement of large numbers of the Muslim world from thousands of miles away to the heart of the United Kingdom. It's just a fact of life - like being blown up when you go to a pop concert.

All of us have gotten things wrong since 9/11. But few of us have gotten things as disastrously wrong as May and Merkel and Hollande and an entire generation of European political leaders who insist that remorseless incremental Islamization is both unstoppable and manageable. It is neither - and, for the sake of the dead of last night's carnage and for those of the next one, it is necessary to face that honestly. Theresa May's statement in Downing Street is said by my old friends at The Spectator to be "defiant", but what she is defying is not terrorism but reality. So too for all the exhausted accessories of defiance chic: candles, teddy bears, hashtags, the pitiful passive rote gestures that acknowledge atrocity without addressing it - like the Eloi in H G Wells' Time Machine, too evolved to resist the Morlocks...

Stupid, white western leftists, China laughs at you...

If you look at any thread about Trump, Islam or immigration on a Chinese social media platform these days, it’s impossible to avoid encountering the term baizuo (白左), or literally, the ‘white left’. It first emerged about two years ago, and yet has quickly become one of the most popular derogatory descriptions for Chinese netizens to discredit their opponents in online debates.

So what does ‘white left’ mean in the Chinese context, and what’s behind the rise of its (negative) popularity? It might not be an easy task to define the term, for as a social media buzzword and very often an instrument for ad hominem attack, it could mean different things for different people. A thread on “why well-educated elites in the west are seen as naïve “white left” in China” on Zhihu, a question-and-answer website said to have a high percentage of active users who are professionals and intellectuals, might serve as a starting point.

The question has received more than 400 answers from Zhihu users, which include some of the most representative perceptions of the 'white left'. Although the emphasis varies, baizuo is used generally to describe those who “only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment” and “have no sense of real problems in the real world”; they are hypocritical humanitarians who advocate for peace and equality only to “satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority”; they are “obsessed with political correctness” to the extent that they “tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism”; they believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”; they are the “ignorant and arrogant westerners” who “pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours”...     

Foreign money funnelled through Tides Foundation alleged to have improperly influenced Canada's 2015 election

...The 36-page report entitled: Elections Canada Complaint Regarding Foreign Influence in the 2015 Canadian Election, alleges third parties worked with each other, which may have bypassed election spending limits — all of which appears to be in contravention of the Canada Elections Act.

The Canada Elections Act states that “a third party shall not circumvent, or attempt to circumvent, a limit set out . . . in any manner, including by splitting itself into two or more third parties for the purpose of circumventing the limit or acting in collusion with another third party so that their combined election advertising expenses exceed the limit.”

“Electoral outcomes were influenced,” alleges the report.

The Canada Elections Act also states: “No person who does not reside in Canada shall, during an election period, in any way induce electors to vote or refrain from voting or vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate” unless the person is a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident...

Farewell Roger Moore. We won't see your like again anytime soon.

The suave, wry, wonderful Roger Moore has passed away.

He was the epitome of the suave English gent, quipping sweatlessly in a bespoke three-piece suit, who enjoyed an acting career spanning eight decades. On Tuesday, Roger Moore’s children announced his death at the age of 89 in Switzerland, saying: “he passed away today ... after a short but brave battle with cancer”.

Moore was best known for playing the third incarnation of James Bond as well as his roles in hit shows The Saint and The Persuaders. He also devoted a lot of his time to humanitarian work, becoming a Unicef goodwill ambassador in 1991.

The actor was born in London in 1927 and, after working as a model in the early 50s, he signed a seven-year contract with MGM. His early movies weren’t particularly memorable, from Interrupted Melody to The King’s Thief, and it was a move to the small screen that brought Moore his first taste of success.

“During my early acting years I was told that to succeed you needed personality, talent and luck in equal measure,” Moore said to the Guardian in 2014. “I contest that. For me it’s been 99% luck. It’s no good being talented and not being in the right place at the right time.”...

From Scott Adams' Blog: Goodbye ISIS, Hello Losers

...Quickly, name one other way you could label/insult the Losers that would be as powerful as the word Loser. You can’t do it with any other name or insult that is also repeatable in polite company.

What kinds of people join the Losers? Mostly young males. And you know what brand young males do not want on them? Right: Losers.

If you call them monsters, they like it. If you call them ISIS or ISIL they put it on a flag and wave it around. If you call them non-Muslim, it just rolls off their backs because they have Korans and stuff. Almost any other “brand” you can imagine is either inert or beneficial to Loser recruitment.

Loser is different. No one joins the Loser movement. Try at home, with your family or friends, to concoct a more effective brand poisoning than Loser. You probably can’t. Remember, your brand has to fit with future confirmation evidence. The Losers on the battlefield will continue to be losing, so the brand is engineered to get stickier over time. Your alternative idea for a brand solution has to have that quality of future confirmation too. Good luck finding a better persuasion brand.

This is not accidental. President Trump does (laugh if you will) have the best words, at least for this sort of thing. He’s proven it over and over. Just ask Jeb, Ted, and HIllary...

New York City's Pride Parade To Welcome Uniformed Toronto Police Banned From Toronto's Disgraceful, Hateful Pride

Toronto police have received an invitation to participate in uniform at New York City’s Pride March amid a controversy over the exclusion of uniformed officers from Toronto’s Pride Parade.

In a  letter sent to Toronto police on Friday, the Gay Officers Action League requested permission for uniformed TPS officers to join uniformed members of the NYPD Marching band and color guard in the June 25 Pride March in New York City.

The New York City event is the same day as Toronto’s own Pride Parade.

“If Toronto officers would like to march proudly as open LGBTQ criminal justice professionals in a march and they feel it’s important to identify both as an officer and a member of the community – we welcome them with open arms,” Gay Officers Action League President Det. Brian Downey told CP24 in an interview Monday.

The controversy over police participation in the Pride Parade began at last year’s parade, when Black Lives Matter –Toronto halted the parade and refused to budge until a list of demands was signed – one of them being the exclusion of uniformed officers from the parade...

President Donald Trump's full speech in Saudi Arabia to Muslim world leaders

See also :  A Trump Doctrine for the Middle East?

Today in Cultural Appropriation - Gay porn studio under fire for using a didgeridoo as a dildo

Quote: 'I'm gonna didgeridoo you in the ass'

A gay porn studio is being called disrespectful after using a didgeridoo as a dildo in a new scene.

Entitled ‘Didgeridoo Me’ (because of course it is), the Men.com scene sees two roommates with one having recently gotten back from Australia.

While they do not go into detail of the frustrations of getting it through customs, his playing wakes his roommate up.

Frustrated, his roommate decides to take out his frustration by penetrating his roommate with the instrument.

The porn company is now being accused or racism, disrespect to the Australian Aboriginal community, and for being culturally offensive...

Venezuela’s collapse and the ‘useful idiots’ of the Canadian left

One political curse from the twentieth century that continues in this one is the praise from self-described progressives for demagogues whose policies can, in advance, be predicted to hurt the poor and destroy their freedoms.

Such “useful idiots,” as Lenin described them, were thick on the ground in the last century. Walter Duranty, a New York Times reporter, covered the Soviet Union in the 1930s and parroted the official line about Stalin’s agricultural “reforms”. Duranty wrote his dispatches just as millions were dying from Stalin’s forced collectivization in Ukraine.

In Canada, the best example of left-wing praise for poverty-creating regimes was Pierre Trudeau. He lauded multiple communist governments—the Soviet Union, Mao’s China’s and Castro’s Cuba—before, during, and after his time as prime minister.

The curse continues. Recall radical praise for the late Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan autocrat who died in 2013 and whose anti-entrepreneur policies and attacks on civil society were obvious from the start. His destructive policies are again relevant given current Venezuelan protests against his successor, Nicola Maduro, and the government-induced poverty and repression which stem from Chavez-era policies aped by Maduro.

To wit: In 2004, Linda McQuaig glowed in her picture with and praise for Chavez. Arguing he redirected “vast sums of national wealth to the swollen ranks of Venezuela’s poor” McQuaig mourned his passing in 2013. She called it a “sad milestone.” Likewise, Naomi Klein wrote of how Chavez left behind “the most democratic country in the Western hemisphere.”   One current Alberta NDP MLA, Rod Loyola, pre-politics, praised Chavez. And in 2013, Loyola was listed by the Marxist Leninist Daily as the media contact for an Edmonton “tribute to Chavez”...

The Penis Is A Social Construct - Peter Boghossian pulls a Sokal Hoax on the Academic Farce That Is Gender Studies

It’s been 21 years since physicist Alan Sokal submitted a bogus paper to a special “Science Wars” issue of the cultural studies journal Social Text. His paper, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity“, maintained that quantum gravity was a social construct, using many bizarre quotes from postmodern scholars to make its case. Almost immediately after the paper was published, Sokal revealed it was a hoax in an article in Lingua Franca.

The “Sokal Affair” inspired a lot of debate, as well as accusations that Sokal himself was unethical in submitting the paper, but I thought it made its point superbly: much of the social sciences and “culture studies” in academia is intellectually vacuous—a repository for dumb ideas couched in bad prose.

Now we have another hoax: a piece on the “conceptual penis” published in the journal Cogent Social Sciences, self described as “a multidisciplinary open access journal offering high quality peer review across the social sciences: from law to sociology, politics to geography, and sport to communication studies. Connect your research with a global audience for maximum readership and impact.”

Here’s the article;(though it will probably be removed very quickly!). The paper has, however, been archived, and you can find it here.

MORE...

Andrew Lawton: Is cultural appropriation an act of theft or artistic literary exploration?

Two Canadian magazine editors have resigned and a television producer has been reassigned after defending the right of authors and other artists to take inspiration from cultures different than their own.

The phenomenon in question is called cultural appropriation: Inherent in the name is the implication that the act is theft, rather than a literary exploration of a world beyond the writer’s own.

Toronto painter Amanda PL was quite open about her work taking inspiration in both style and subject matter from an Anishnaabe artist. She was honouring that artist, not plagiarizing. But that didn’t stop the Visions Gallery from cancelling the event, capitulating to the mob of people accusing the artist of racism and colonialism.

And then came Hal Niedzviecki, the editor of Write — the magazine of the Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) — who contended that authors should be not only be allowed, but encouraged, to craft characters across the spectrum of cultures.

“In my opinion, anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities,” he said in the editor’s note, for which TWUC has since apologized.

The union apologized for the hurt caused by the piece, and rather ironically said the magazine aims to be “sincerely encouraging to all voices.” Except in apologizing for Niedzviecki’s piece, the union is in effect saying not all voices are welcome...

New ‘Social Justice’ Math Class Teaches Kids That Math Is Evil, Dehumanizing

Millions of K-12 students across the country believe that mathematics is a sadistic discipline—(I should know, I was one of them)—but a new "social justice" training module aims to persuade teachers that maybe the kids are on to something.

The course was designed by Teach for America and is offered through EdX, according to Campus Reform. It presupposes that math could be made more interesting for students if it was infused with socially relevant themes. That's not a terrible assumption—maybe young people would like math better if it was being taught in a language they understood. (If Olivia eats 10 pieces of avocado toast every day, how long will it be until she can afford to move out of her parent's house? That sort of thing.)

But Teach for America thinks that language is "social justice," and has designed a course that makes some startling claims about math.

"In western mathematics, our ways of knowing include formalized reasoning or proof, decontextualization, and algorithmic thinking, leaving little room for those having non-western mathematical skills and thinking processes," the training course claims.

It continues:

"Mathematical ethics recognizes that, for centuries, mathematics has been used as a dehumanizing tool… mathematics formulae also differentiate between the classifications of a war or a genocide and have been used to trick indigenous peoples out of land and property."...

Maxime Bernier: Two Threats to Freedom of Speech: M-103 and C-16

Although they were presented by their supporters as measures to protect minorities from discrimination, a motion and a bill being debated in Parliament could seriously threaten free speech in our country. Having received many requests to clarify my position on these two issues, here are my reasons to oppose them... 

The Obama Administration Spied on US Citizens to Push Through Its Iran Deal

The accusation that the Obama administration used information gleaned from classified foreign surveillance to smear and blackmail its political opponents at home has gained new traction in recent days, after reports that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice may have been rifling through classified transcripts for over a year that could have included information about Donald Trump and his associates. While using resources that are supposed to keep Americans safe from terrorism for other purposes may be a dereliction of duty, it is no more of a crime than spending all day on Twitter instead of doing your job. The crime here would be if she leaked the names of U.S. citizens to reporters. In the end, the seriousness of the accusation against Rice and other former administration officials who will be caught up in the “unmasking” scandal will rise or fall based on whether or not Donald Trump was actively engaged in a conspiracy to turn over the keys of the White House to the Kremlin. For true believers in the Trump-Kremlin conspiracy theories, the Obama “spying and lying” scandal isn’t a scandal at all; just public officials taking prudent steps to guard against an imminent threat to the republic.

But what if Donald Trump wasn’t the first or only target of an Obama White House campaign of spying and illegal leaks directed at domestic political opponents?

In a December 29, 2015 article, The Wall Street Journal described how the Obama administration had conducted surveillance on Israeli officials to understand how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, like Ambassador Ron Dermer, intended to fight the Iran Deal. The Journal reported that the targeting “also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups.”

Despite this reporting, it seemed inconceivable at the time that—given myriad legal, ethical, political, and historical concerns, as well as strict National Security Agency protocols that protect the identity of American names caught in intercepts—the Obama White House would have actually spied on American citizens...

From Scott Adams' blog: The Slow-Motion Assassination of President Trump

I saw this quote on CNN.com today: “The episode is the latest woe for Trump, whose administration is engulfed in a series of scandals linked to Russia.”

A “series of scandals linked to Russia”? Would it be equally accurate to characterize it as a series of stories manufactured by the media, none of which have been confirmed to be a big deal?

Today’s headline news is that an alleged Comey memo indicates President Trump tried to obstruct justice in the Flynn investigation by saying to Comey in a private meeting, “I hope you can let this go.”

Key word = hope

How did the New York Times characterize Trump’s expression of hope?

Do you see Trump asking Comey to end the Flynn investigation in the quote “I hope you can let this go”?

All I see in that sentence is “duh.” Obviously Trump HOPED his friend and advisor Flynn would be okay. Did it need to be said? Was there some confusion on this point with Comey? Did Comey enter the meeting thinking maybe President Trump wanted to see his friend and advisor Flynn get eaten by the system?

I’m no lawyer, but I can’t see any judge or jury in the United States prosecuting someone for expressing a hope that the future turns out well for his friend.

Watch the headlines and pundits today transmogrify “hope” into “asked Flynn to end the investigation.”

That isn’t news.

That is an assassination...

The rise of the “Re-Leavers” mean the pro-Brexit electorate is 68%

In the eleven months since the EU referendum, it has become a common theme that we are now a nation divided – 52/48. However, while it is true that most people still think they voted the right way last June, when it comes to the composition of the Brexit tribes in the general election, it is not a simple as “Leave” and “Remain”.

There is a third group who change the dynamics of EU-related arguments – the “Re-Leavers.” These are people who voted to Remain in the EU and many still think that leaving was the wrong decision, but crucially now believe the government has a duty to carry out the will of the British people.

When taking this into account, we can split the country into three groups instead of two: The Hard Leavers who want out of the EU (45%); the Hard Remainers who still want to try to stop Brexit (22%); and the Re-Leavers (23%). The other 9% don’t know.

This group means that when discussing Brexit and its implications in the campaign the electorate is not two pools of voters split almost down the middle 52/48. Instead, it is instead one massive lake made up of Leave and Re-Leave voters and one much smaller Remain pond...  

There's no such thing as Trump Derangement Syndrome... nope, not at all...

And here's yesterday's special Mother's Day message from Hollywood's Joss Wheedon:

Today I gratefully give my mother the gift of having been dead for 25 years and not having to see what a tub of fuckery our country's become

— Joss Whedon (@joss) May 14, 2017

The racism of the Social Justice Wankers war on so-called Cultural Appropriation

Humanity has advanced by cultures interacting with each other, learning from each other and using, or appropriating if you will, cultural elements that appeal from one culture to others.

Have some groups been and are still the victims of racism? Absolutely. But cultural genocide entails eradicating and censoring the cultural expression of a group of people, not by expanding it through use in mainstream culture.

Claiming that particular ethnic groups have an exclusive right to a human development is inherently racist, and through the exclusivity of denying anyone to so-called "Cultural Appropriation," the hypocritical mobs of Social Justice Wankers are demonstrating their usual stupid racism.



I understand that my buddy Jon Kay just resigned his post as Editor-In-Chief of The Walrus Magazine as a result of the backlash about this.

This address to Canada's Senate by Gad Saad is transphobic systemic violence!

Here is Gad Saad's and Theryn Meyer's' full testimony to the Senate committee. If you have the time, it's well worth watching:

DePaul University forbids ‘Gay Lives Matter’ posters as students protest gay reporter’s talk on radical Islam

Here's the call for protests of my talk tonight at @DePaulU "Dictatorships and Radical Islam: Enemies of LGBTQ Rights." Notice missing word? pic.twitter.com/zgesx9zSuJ

— Jamie Kirchick (@jkirchick) May 10, 2017

DePaul University has prohibited the campus group Turning Point USA from displaying posters with the slogan “Gay Lives Matter” to advertise a presentation Wednesday by a gay reporter on radical Islam’s discrimination against the LGBTQ community.

The decision to reject the posters was made as some students at the school protest the event, titled “Dictatorships and Radical Islam: The Enemies of Gay Rights” and to be given by journalist and foreign correspondent James Kirchick.

Kirchick has worked for numerous publications, foreign and domestic, and is considered a leading voice on American gay politics and international gay rights.

But DePaul Students for Justice in Palestine has indicated on Facebook that its members intend to protest the event. Students leading the charge against his talk appear to have left out any mention of the fact that Kirchick is gay as they sound the alarm on social media...

Andrew Klavan Discusses Hollywood Politics

Incidentally, Andrew wrote the screenplay for the fantastic Michael Caine movie, A Shock To The System, which is one of my all-time favorites and, I'm sure coincidentally, is almost never seen on TV anymore.

America's decision to arm Syria's Kurds is long overdue

When it comes to renunciation of Jihadism and expressions of women's rights, the Kurds have few rivals in the Muslim world. They are the most progressive and pro-western Muslim ethnic group in the middle east. A people without a country of their own, they are oppressed in every Muslim state where they live. They have been victims of gassing by Sadaam Hussein, cultural genocide by the Turks, and ongoing brutality in Iran, all three of which fear the establishment of a Kurdish homeland.

George H.W. Bush made a slew of promises to the Kurds during the first Gulf war, upon which he reneged. George W. Bush did a little better, by establishing a semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq following the second Gulf War, but that still fell short of the security of genuine Kurdish self-determination.

The Kurds are on the front lines in the fight against the Islamic State, whose fundamentalist, vicious interpretation of Islam is at complete odds with Kurdish liberalism.

It should have been a no-brainer for America to provide arms to the Kurds to allow them to defend themselves and establish a bridgehead for the moderate Islam that western leaders frequently talk about but is virtually nonexistent in the Levant among mainstream Sunni and Shia. Pressure from NATO member Turkey and cowardice in the Obama administration kept the Kurds under-armed as they bravely fought back incursions by ISIS.

However, finally, the US has a president who is unwilling to kow-tow to pressure from Islamist authoritarians, like Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan, and the American arming of Syria's Kurds is in the works.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, in Syria, by both ISIS and the Iranian-backed forces of the dictator Bashar al-Assad, and millions of refugees fled that country, creating a domino-effect of destabilization in other countries. That chaos was made possible in large measure by Obama's inaction. In the last few weeks, Donald Trump has made good on the Syrian 'red-line' drawn, and then scurried away from by Barack Obama, and now is providing Syria's Kurds with the means to defend themselves.

Whatever complaints Trump's opponents have of him, his actions in Syria will save lives that were written off by the previous administration and will alleviate the refugee crisis his opponents claim to care about so deeply.

Matthew Lau: Here’s the truth about Ontario’s dismal economic performance that Wynne’s Liberals hope you don’t notice

The Ontario Liberals must surely be joking. Kathleen Wynne, for example, wrote last week in the Huffington Post that by “every measure, our economy is outperforming the competition.” A day earlier, her finance minister, Charles Sousa, said much the same in his budget speech. He concluded by saying that it was “time to look back on what we have achieved together. We have so much to be proud of.”

Since he insists, let us look back on the Ontario Liberals’ economic achievements, of which they are so proud. Wynne and Sousa point to Ontario’s 2.7-per-cent GDP growth last year as proof that Ontario’s economy is “growing and leading.” But was that growth driven by smart economic policy, or by other factors like Toronto’s hot housing market?

Here’s a clue. If Liberal central planning is the recipe for prosperity, perhaps Wynne should explain why inflation-adjusted GDP per capita growth in Ontario from when the Liberals were elected in 2003 to 2015 was a paltry 6.9 per cent (or 0.56 per cent a year, on average). That’s barely half the rate of growth of 13.0 per cent that was seen in the rest of Canada...

Blade Runner 2049 - The Official Trailer

It's got Harrison Ford back and the sequel is produced by the original Blade Runner's director Ridley Scott:

Somehow, it's Donald Trump's fault that Montana Fishburne was arrested for drunk driving

Her bare behind, public urination and a Donald Trump rant: Montana Fishburne, the troubled daughter of the actor who played the self-possessed leader of the rebels in “The Matrix,” gave I-95 motorists an eyeful and state troopers an earful when she was arrested March 11 on a DUI charge, according to a video of the incident released by the Florida Highway Patrol...

Ireland is determined to prove itself as stupid and backward as an Islamic republic

Police in Ireland are investigating a complaint of blasphemy regarding comments made by Stephen Fry on a television programme shown on Ireland’s state broadcaster, RTÉ.

Gardaí (police) in Dublin have contacted the man who reported the allegation following a broadcast in February 2015, and a full investigation is due to be carried out, the Irish Independent reported.

Under Ireland’s Defamation Act 2009 a person who publishes or utters blasphemous material “shall be guilty of an offence”. A conviction can lead to a fine of up to €25,000.

While being interviewed on The Meaning of Life TV programme, Fry was asked what he would say to God if he had a chance.

“I’d say ‘Bone cancer in children, what’s that about?’ How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault,” Fry replied. “It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”...

Trump Joins Saudi Arabia, Arab Leaders for Potential Anti-Iran Alliance

President Donald Trump is answering critics who call him “anti-Islamic” by making his first trip overseas to Saudi Arabia, to meet with Arab leaders to talk about fighting the so-called Islamic State.

“It lays to rest the notion that America is anti-Muslim,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters Thursday, saying it would “change the conversation with regards to America’s relationship with the Islamic world.”

After Riyadh, Trump will travel to Israel and the Vatican—a tour meant to unite the world’s great religions against radicalism and to put a marker down for restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, senior administration officials told reporters Thursday.

The trip indicates that Trump is re-aligning the White House with Saudi Arabia’s and Israel’s anti-Iran position, while the Obama administration had sought to stay more neutral in order to deliver the Iranian nuclear deal. It’s also a signal that Trump is returning to the Bush-era reliance on Sunni Arab strongmen to quell a roiling Middle East, and it’s an in-your-face rejection of critics who called him anti-Islamic.

Senior administration officials said Saudi Arabia has invited leaders who “who share the values and the ideas and the visions… President Trump shares,” to discuss how to step up the fight against the so-called Islamic State, come up with a “war plan” to fight extremism, and most of all, to plot how to counter Iran’s influence throughout the region...

See also:

Pentagon eyes Iran-North Korea military connection

As Bret Stephens predicted, heads are exploding about his column questioning absolute faith in Climate Change models

Bret Stephens, formerly of the Wall St. Journal, has written his first column for The New York Times.

It is indeed making heads of the usual suspects in the media and political left explode:

Would the NYT give a column to someone who used it to argue that the Earth is flat? Then why give a platform for climate denial?

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) May 3, 2017

My column: "climate-change agnosticism" is a feel-good, meaningless cop-out of a phrase. https://t.co/bkQobZxIyB

— Denise Balkissoon (@balkissoon) May 3, 2017

..Anyone who has read the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change knows that, while the modest (0.85 degrees Celsius, or about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the earth since 1880 is indisputable, as is the human influence on that warming, much else that passes as accepted fact is really a matter of probabilities. That’s especially true of the sophisticated but fallible models and simulations by which scientists attempt to peer into the climate future. To say this isn’t to deny science. It’s to acknowledge it honestly.

By now I can almost hear the heads exploding. They shouldn’t, because there’s another lesson here — this one for anyone who wants to advance the cause of good climate policy. As Revkin wisely noted, hyperbole about climate “not only didn’t fit the science at the time but could even be counterproductive if the hope was to engage a distracted public.”

Let me put it another way. Claiming total certainty about the science traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong. Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions. Censoriously asserting one’s moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts...

Tarek Fatah: Why don’t anti-fascists fight Islamofascism?

...Today, a new fascism is in the air, one that also speaks of rule over the planet, not just for 1,000 years, but until the end times.

But like the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain in the 1930s, the West and its citizenry again seem unconcerned or unaware of the catastrophe that may unfold.

Even in the 1930s, when the Spanish Republic stood up to the Hitler-backed fascists of Francisco Franco, the UK and US refused to help the elected government in Madrid, leaving it to left-wing activists from around the world to join the war on the side of the Republic.

These included Canadian volunteers of the Mackenzie-Papineau Brigade (popularly known as the Mac Paps).

Today’s fascists have an additional advantage over the Franco-Mussolini-Hitler types.

They are Islamofascists, who not only seek authoritarian supremacy, but claim to possess a divinely ordained doctrine to justify annihilating democracy, liberty, freedom of expression and the equality of men and women.

I am not just referring to ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Shabab in Somalia or Boko Haram in Nigeria. These are the fringes of Islamofascism.

The two main players are in Pakistan, created by Britain and armed by America, and the authoritarian dictatorship of Turkey, that is still sustained by NATO.

Unlike the years leading up to the last Great War against fascism, this time the left in the West has deviated from its historic role and is today an ally of the Islamists...

It turns out that Black Lives Matter is protesting in the wrong countries

Jordan and India named the world's least tolerant countries

U.S., Britain, Canada and South America are among the least racist

Britain is one of the most racially tolerant countries on the planet, a survey claims.

The global social attitudes study claims that the most racially intolerant populations are all in the developing world, with Jordan and India in the top five.

By contrast, the study of 80 countries over three decades found Western countries were most accepting of other cultures with Britain, the U.S., Canada and Australia more tolerant than anywhere else...

Munk Debate: 'Be it resolved the liberal international order is over’

This will only be available for a short time, so watch while you can - Niall Ferguson debates Fareed Zakaria

The Exhaustion of American Liberalism

White guilt gave us a mock politics based on the pretense of moral authority.

Shelby Steele is one of the great intellects of our time. 

To understand much of contemporary social culture, read his recent piece in The Wall Street Journal.

... White guilt is not actual guilt. Surely most whites are not assailed in the night by feelings of responsibility for America’s historical mistreatment of minorities. Moreover, all the actual guilt in the world would never be enough to support the hegemonic power that the mere pretense of guilt has exercised in American life for the last half-century.

White guilt is not angst over injustices suffered by others; it is the terror of being stigmatized with America’s old bigotries—racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia. To be stigmatized as a fellow traveler with any of these bigotries is to be utterly stripped of moral authority and made into a pariah. The terror of this, of having “no name in the street” as the Bible puts it, pressures whites to act guiltily even when they feel no actual guilt. White guilt is a mock guilt, a pretense of real guilt, a shallow etiquette of empathy, pity and regret.

It is also the heart and soul of contemporary liberalism. This liberalism is the politics given to us by white guilt, and it shares white guilt’s central corruption. It is not real liberalism, in the classic sense. It is a mock liberalism. Freedom is not its raison d’être; moral authority is...