Student 'forced to leave' university after saying extremist Islamic groups kill LGBTI people

A bisexual male student at the University of Texas–San Antonio said during an informal conversation outside class that he was uncomfortable with Islam because people still receive the death penalty for being gay in 10 Muslim-majority countries.

For expressing this thought, the student—Alfred MacDonald, who no longer attends the school—was instructed to meet with the chair of the philosophy department, Eve Browning. Prof. Browning told MacDonald in no uncertain terms that he had committed the crime of "offending" someone, and she warned him that his habit of saying what he thinks could bring down the entire program. She threatened to call the Behavior Intervention Team and refer MacDonald to counseling. She did everything but send him to Room 101.

Unfortunately for Browning, MacDonald secretly recorded their conversation. The transcript, first publicized by Gay Star News, is incredible...

See also:   Universities can’t have it both ways on free speech

Jonathan Kay: The American mind continues to close

On December 10, 1982, a then-obscure academic from the American Midwest took to the pages of National Review magazine with a lengthy indictment of America’s intellectual class. Though this was the height of the Reagan Revolution — a heady time for the Review’s conservative editors and readers — the author had nothing to say about tax cuts or defence policy. Instead, he peppered his argument with references to Socrates and Nietzsche. A typical applause line was: “The Bible and Plutarch have ceased to be a part of the soul’s furniture.”  

Yet the piece hit a nerve. And in time, it grew into a bestselling book that made the author — Indianapolis-born philosopher and classicist Allan David Bloom — an academic celebrity.

Much of Bloom’s success no doubt was owed to his book’s inspired title, The Closing of the American Mind. But the timing was perfect, too, arriving on shelves in the fall of 1987, when political correctness was just becoming an acute force for censorship. I was a college student at the time. And reading Bloom’s book helped convince me that, no, it wasn’t just me: something really was wrong with the way my generation was being educated and politically programmed.  

Bloom was especially repelled by relativism, which he described as “the consciousness that one loves one’s own way because it is one’s own, not because it is good.” Though he was hardly the first postwar critic to abhor the fragmenting of cultural life and the marginalisation of the Western canon, Bloom went deeper with his analysis, showing how the emerging obsession with identity politics (as we now call it) left students glum and aimless — brimming with grievances, while lacking the sense of common purpose that once animated higher learning... 

Dershowitz: "The Democrats have dug themselves into a hole"

.@AlanDersh: "There never should have been a special council appointed. There should have been an independent bipartisan commission." pic.twitter.com/Hjo0FEYtE5

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 29, 2017

Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege

A math education professor at the University of Illinois argued in a newly published book that algebraic and geometry skills perpetuate “unearned privilege” among whites.

Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, made the claim in a new anthology for math teachers, arguing that teachers must be aware of the “politics that mathematics brings” in society. 

“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,” Gutierrez argued.

Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans."

Math also helps actively perpetuate white privilege too, since the way our economy places a premium on math skills gives math a form of “unearned privilege” for math professors, who are disproportionately white.

“Are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?” she asks, further wondering why math professors get more research grants than “social studies or English” professors...

General Kelly explains what happens after a US soldier is killed in service

Russian payoffs and bribery directed to Clinton Foundation while Hillary was Secretary of State

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.

Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.

They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.

The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later...

The United States Serves Up Kurdistan to Iran on a Silver Platter

On Monday of this week, what had been feared transpired: Paramilitary units supported by elements of the Iraqi army attacked in the vicinity of Kirkuk.

Baghdad’s putatively federal army put into action the threats of the country’s leaders and, at the risk of ruining any chance of future coexistence with the Kurds, responded to the peaceful referendum of Sept. 25 with a dumbfounding and vengeful act of force.

Not long ago, it was Saddam Hussein operating with gas and deportations. And then on Monday Saddam’s Shiite successors, answering to Tehran, sent tanks, artillery, and Katyusha rockets into the oil fields that are the lifeblood of Kurdistan. Today they are doing the same in the Sinjar mountains, in the southern city of Jalawla, and in the Bashiqa area on the Plain of Nineveh, which the Kurds only just reclaimed from ISIS.

Of course, this disaster would not have occurred had the Kurds not been tragically divided. We know today that Baghdad’s quick victory is largely due to what President Masoud Barzani, in a statement released Oct. 17, called the “treason” of several commanders loyal to the PUK, the party founded by Barzani’s old rival, former President Talabani. The Iraqi-Iranian coalition was able to take advantage of these dissensions, using the commanders close to Talabani as Trojan horses to gain entry to Kirkuk and other targets. Be that as it may, the main issue—and the real scandal—lies in the fact that the central government of the pseudo-state of Iraq, whose sovereignty consists of little more than vague and hollow rhetoric, have used force to crush the country’s Kurdish citizens.

And now, scandal mounts around the fact that Kurdistan’s “friends,” the countries that for two years running relied on it to keep the Islamic State at bay and then to defeat it, the people who swore by the Peshmerga, by its heroes and by its dead, have, as I write these lines, responded with nothing more than deafening silence, appearing willing to abandon to their fate the men and women who fought so valiantly for them...

Tarek Fatah: Who are Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman?

...Boyle’s description of himself as a “pilgrim” was missed by many journalists, who apparently don’t know most Muslim places of pilgrimage are in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and India. And not in the valleys of Wardaq where Boyle says he went with a sense of mission — to help people, "to fix things”, as he told the CBC’s Susan Ormiston.

When Armiston gently asked Boyle why he wanted to go to Afghanistan with a pregnant wife, he portrayed his decision not as an error of judgment, but as an act of sacrifice, to do “things that nobody else is doing, so I think I have to do it.”

What things? He didn’t elaborate.

The fact Afghanistan’s Wardaq province has been a Taliban- dominated area from the time the jihadis came to power seems to have had no bearing on Boyle’s and Coleman’s decision to move there.

Coleman, at least in the media, has demonstrated a characteristic we would expect of a Muslim woman living under Taliban rule. She has let her husband do the talking for her, although she did change out of her black burqa into a stylized Egyptian hijab...

Kids' Lit Novel About “Mob Mentalities” Punished After Online Backlash

When Laura Moriarty decided she wanted to write a dystopian novel about a future America in which Muslims are forcefully corralled into detention centers, she was aware that she should tread carefully. Her protagonist is a white teenager, but one of her main characters, Sadaf, is a Muslim American immigrant from Iran, so Moriarty began by diving into Iranian books and films. Moriarty explained via email that she asked two Iranian immigrant friends to read an early draft and see if Sadaf seemed authentic to them, and whether the language and accent fit with their memories and experiences. A friend of Pakistani and American descent who is a practicing Muslim gave additional feedback. Moriarty asked a senior colleague at the University of Kansas, Giselle Anatol, who writes about Young Adult fiction and has been critical of racist narratives in literature, to read the book with a particular eye toward avoiding another narrative about a “white savior.” And after American Heart was purchased by Harper, the publisher provided several formal “sensitivity reads,” in which a member of a minority group is charged with spotting potentially problematic depictions in a manuscript.


None of this, as it turns out, was enough to protect American Heart from becoming the subject of the latest skirmish in the increasingly contentious battle over representation and diversity in the world of YA literature. American Heart won’t be published until January, but it has already attracted the ire of the fierce group of online YA readers that journalist Kat Rosenfield has referred to as “culture cops.” To them, it was an irredeemable problem that Moriarty’s novel, which was inspired in part by Huckleberry Finn, centers on a white teenager who gradually—too gradually—comes to terms with the racism around her. On Goodreads, the book’s top “community review,” posted in September, begins, “fuck your white savior narratives”; other early commenters on Goodreads accused Moriarty of “profiting off people’s pain” and said “a white writer should not have tackled this story, and neither should a white character be the center of it.”...

Apple’s diversity VP forced to apologize for saying something truthful

Apple’s VP of inclusion and diversity, Denise Young Smith, made an appearance this week at the One Young World Summit in Colombia and caught fire for some of the statements she made. According to TechCrunch, however, the Apple executive has apologized to employees for her choice of words…

At the event this week, Smith was explaining how Apple focuses on diversity and commented that there could be 12 white blue-eyed blonde men in a room who are still diverse:  

“Diversity is the human experience,” the Apple executive said. “I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.”

“There can be 12 white blue-eyed blonde men in a room and they are going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation,” Smith remarked...

President Trump Delivers Remarks on the Iran Strategy

President Trump declares the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization and imposes sanctions against it. Something which should have been done decades ago, but which previous presidents lacked the spine to do.

Toronto school board declares war on 'chief' and all sense

If there were any doubt, there is no more: Canada is the stupidest country ever.

The evidence, already all around, is now irrefutable.

The Toronto District School Board, in its efforts to remain ahead of the Ontario government curve on all gender-cultural-political sensitivities, is not only contenting itself with following Education Minister Mitzie Hunter’s directive of early this year to review all potentially indigenous-offensive team names and mascots, but also has declared war on the word “chief.”

“I can confirm that the title ‘chief’ is being phased out in various departments at the TDSB,” board spokesman Ryan Bird told Postmedia in an email Tuesday.

“It’s part of the ongoing work that the school board does through the TDSB’s Aboriginal Education Centre with regards to Truth and Reconciliation (Commission, or the TRC, which produced its massive final report in 2015).”...

Hypocritical Palestinians want self-determination for themselves but want to deny self-determination for the Kurdish people

A recent report in Al Arabiya revealed that PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat is opposed to Kurdish self-determination because it will encourage other countries to separate from the Arab states: “Kurdish independence would be a poisoned sword against the Arabs.”   Erekat also stated that he is disturbed that both Kurds and Israelis enjoy a covert relationship.

An op-ed that was published in the Kurdistan Tribune pointed out that the international community and Muslim world frequently champion the Palestinian cause but fail to support the Kurds, even though both groups are Muslim and stateless.  The article noted that this remains the case even though the Kurds are the largest ethnic group without a nation that has been struggling for statehood since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and has been fighting against the radical Islamists, while the Palestinians have only been seeking a state since 1948 and are not dedicated to fighting against the radical Islamists...

Liberals left reeling by clear, rational criticisms of M-103

With Parliament’s passage in late March of Motion 103, which condemned “Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination,” the Canadian Heritage Committee was tasked with a study to determine “what Canadians have to say” on the motion. Now underway, formal hearings are revealing what polls have already made clear: many Canadians find M-103 disturbing.

They dislike it because it singles out one religion for special consideration and because they don’t believe Canada is a systemically hateful nation. But they particularly fear its implications, as the principals behind M-103 — proposer MP Iqra Khalid, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Heritage Minister Melanie Joly, and Muslim community spokespeople — keep balking when called on to define “Islamophobia.”...

Law society's new policy compels speech

Every lawyer gets emails from the Law Society: reminders to file reports, pay fees, or use assistance programs to cut back on the booze. But a recent message almost made me choke on my sandwich. “New obligations for 2017” was its subject line, “Actions you need to take.” All lawyers, it said, must prepare and submit a personal “Statement of Principles” attesting that we value and promote equality, diversity and inclusion. According to the advisory, “The intention of the statement of principles is to demonstrate a personal valuing of equality, diversity, and inclusion with respect to the employment of others, or in professional dealings with other licensees or any other person.”

My first instinct was to check my passport. Was I still in Canada, or had someone whisked me away to North Korea, where people must say what officials want to hear? Forced speech is the most egregious violation of freedom of expression, protected by section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In free countries, law governs actions rather than expressions of beliefs...

Almost a year after the election, the media's Trump Derangement Syndrome hasn't subsided

My kids didn’t have school the day after Donald Trump won the presidential election and eventually, near noon, they came into my room to see what was wrong with me. Perhaps they’d come to me at their father’s prompting. Perhaps they’d heard me weeping. They’d never seen me this way before. Inconsolable.

“Hillary didn’t lose!” I insisted, as they sat on the bed around me, even as Hillary’s voice drifted into the room — her concession speech, on the radio downstairs, my husband shouting up, “Honey, you should come listen to this!”

I would not listen. I would never listen. The sound of Hillary Clinton conceding to Donald Trump is what compelled me to rise at last, if only to shut my bedroom door.

“It can’t be true,” I said to my kids, back in my bed encampment. “It can’t be. It can’t!”

“I know,” said my daughter with real sorrow in her voice. 

“Is Trump going to ruin our lives?” asked my son, with real worry...