The American caliph 118
We quote Paul Sperry’s article at Investor’s Business Daily, titled Can America Survive Obama’s Pro-Muslim Bias?:
In a new NPR interview, President Obama complains that “strains in the Republican party suggest that somehow I’m different, I’m Muslim, I’m disloyal to the country, which unfortunately is pretty far out there”.
Is it?
While there’s no evidence to suggest Obama is a practicing Muslim, there is plenty to suggest he is disloyal. He not only shares Muslim hatred for America and Israel, but actually sympathizes with the endless anti-Western grievances lodged by Muslim terrorists.
The reason the president won’t engage this enemy is because he sides with it, not because he can’t see it or understand it. It is not a matter of incompetence. It is a matter of bias.
If this sounds like betrayal, that is because it is.
Here is a bill of indictment:
Count 1:In 1995, in his first memoir, Obama shares the “rage” of his Kenyan Muslim grandfather who he claims was tortured by British colonizers, while exalting his Muslim-convert brother Roy, who swore off “the poisoning influences of European culture,” as “the person who made me proudest of all”.
Count 2:In 2004, in a little-noticed preface to his re-released memoir, the newly elected senator implied that America was punished for past wrongs on 9/11, writing that “history returned with a vengeance” on that terrible day.
Count 3:In 2006, in his second memoir, Obama vowed that he “will stand with” Arab and Pakistani Muslims to protect “their sense of security” should their community be implicated in another terror attack on America.
Count 4:In 2009, Obama in his first foreign speech apologized to world Muslims for the War on Terror, inviting banned Muslim Brotherhood leaders to sit on the front row of his Cairo address, while declaring “Islam is not part of the problem” and demanding that Israel give Palestinians “a state of their own”.
Count 5:That same year, Obama stopped cold a major investigation of terror-supporting Muslim Brotherhood front groups and mosques following the successful prosecution of Brotherhood charities by U.S. attorneys.
Count 6:Then he ordered the FBI and Homeland Security to delete “jihad” from counterterrorism manuals and fire all trainers who linked terrorism to Islam.
Count 7:Obama vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison and bring 9/11 terrorists to America, where they would enjoy full rights, including habeas corpus, in civilian courts.
Count 8:As Obama kicked off a two-day summit on combating generic “violent extremism”, he argued that Muslim terrorists have “legitimate grievances” that must be addressed.
Count 9:He also asserted that “the Muslim world has suffered historical grievances”, and blamed the rash of global terrorism in part on “a history of colonialism” in the Mideast, Africa and South Asia.
Count 10:At the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama told Christians to get off their “high horse” about Muslim terrorism and “remember the terrible deeds in the name of Christ” committed by Crusaders 1,000 years ago.
Count 11: He credited Muslims with “building the very fabric of our nation” and “the core of our democracy”.
Count 12:The president boycotted January’s world march against terrorism in Paris following the slaughter of anti-Islamist cartoonists by two French Algerians, in a shocking move that would have made Obama’s late hero, Algerian mujahedeen Frantz Fanon, proud.
Count 13:Obama agreed to release five Taliban commanders for a POW who he knew was a deserter and who may turn out to be a traitor.
Count 14: Obama removed sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program, despite overwhelming evidence by Israeli and U.S. intelligence showing that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons to wipe our closest and most trusted Mideast ally off the map.
Count 15:Obama broke his promise to 9/11 families to release the 28 pages documenting Saudi Arabian and other foreign Muslim sponsorship of the 9/11 attacks.
Count 16: The president insists on calling ISIS “ISIL” — which stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — because it includes “Palestine”, a slap at Israel.
Count 17: Despite his entire security team warning that such Muslim immigrants cannot be screened for terrorist ties and evidence that ISIS has infiltrated their ranks, Obama stubbornly insists on bringing another 10,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S.
Count 18: In the heat of the San Bernardino attacks, as bodies were being removed from the scene, Obama called a high-level security meeting to keep a lid on the Muslim connection.
Count 19: In his prime-time terrorism speech, the president spent half his time warning Americans not to blame Muslims.
Count 20: Obama insists on emptying Gitmo of terrorist prisoners, even after one of his earlier releases re-emerged as a leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
Count 21: The Obama regime has invited members of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood front groups to serve in the Homeland Security and State departments, and meet regularly with the attorney general, as well as the president and his security advisors in the White House.
Obama is hellbent on shuttering the detention camp and is queuing up for release another 17 dangerous al-Qaida terrorists, earlier classified as “forever detainees” due to the high threat they pose to America.
Americans should know that if we are attacked again in a major way in his remaining 13 months in office, Obama “will stand with” Muslims over Americans, meaning that he will continue to back off radical mosques, refuse to connect terrorism to Islam and continue to hold open the floodgates to mass Muslim immigration.
This president, who had Pakistani roommates in college, is more concerned about “their sense of security” than non-Muslims threatened by Muslim terrorism like the massacre carried out by the two Pakistani Muslims who attacked San Bernardino.
What if the enemy of the state is actually the head of state?
The bill of indictment, long and bad as it is, is incomplete. It does not, for instance, include Obama’s instruction to NASA to concentrate on reaching out to Muslims rather than to outer space; nor his close friendship with President Erdogan of Turkey; nor his persistent persecution of Israel; nor his long refusal to allow the assassination of Osama bin Laden and his reluctance in finally permitting it; nor – worst of all – his fanatical wooing of Iran, in the course of which he has given the regime everything it has demanded, and swept away every impediment to its becoming a nuclear armed power.
Sperry’s list is more than sufficient, however, to make the case. As we have been saying for years: Yes, the enemy of the state is actually the head of state.
The scofflaw Hillary Clinton 1
It is astonishing that someone who is under criminal investigation by the FBI should be standing as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Astonishing that the Democratic Party is letting her stand and will almost certainly nominate her as its official candidate. Astonishing that it is apparently not even taking the precaution of putting up an alternative plausible candidate. Astonishing that she carries on campaigning as if criminal charges are not hanging over her.
Hillary Clinton is a shameless scofflaw.
Here is a useful review of the charges the FBI could bring against her. (But will Obama’s corrupt “Department of Justice” consent to indict her?)
Judge Andrew Napolitano writes at Fox News Opinion:
While the country has been fixated on Donald Trump’s tormenting his Republican primary opponents and deeply concerned about the government’s efforts to identify any confederates in the San Bernardino, California, killings, a team of federal prosecutors and FBI agents continues to examine Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state in order to determine whether she committed any crimes and, if so, whether there is sufficient evidence to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
What began as an innocent Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, a D.C.-based public advocacy group promoting transparency in the executive branch, has now become a full criminal investigation, with Clinton as the likely target.
The basic facts are well-known, but the revealed nuances are important, as well. When the State Department responded to the Judicial Watch FOIA request by telling Judicial Watch that it had no emails from Clinton, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit. When the State Department made the same representation to the court – as incredible as it seemed at the time – the judge accepted that representation, and the case was dismissed.
Then The New York Times revealed that Clinton used a private email server instead of the government’s server for all of her work-related and personal emails during her four years as secretary of state. After that, the Judicial Watch FOIA case was reinstated, and then the judge in the case demanded of State that it produce Clinton’s emails.
When Judicial Watch expressed frustration to the judge about the pace at which it was getting emails, the judge ordered Clinton, “under penalty of perjury”, to certify that she had surrendered all her governmental emails to the State Department.
Eventually, Clinton did certify to the court that she did surrender all of her governmental emails to the State Department. She did so by sending paper copies of selected emails, because she had wiped clean her server. She acknowledged that she decided which emails were personal and which were selected as governmental and returned the governmental ones to the State Department.
She has denied steadfastly and consistently that she ever sent or received any materials marked “classified” while secretary of state using her private server.
All of her behavior has triggered the FBI investigation because she may have committed serious federal crimes.
For example, it is a crime to steal federal property. What did she steal? By diverting to her own venue the digital metadata that accompany all emails — metadata that, when attached to the work-related emails of a government employee, belong to the government — she stole that data. The metadata do not appear on her paper copies — hence the argument that she stole and destroyed the government-owned metadata.
This is particularly troublesome for her present political ambitions because of a federal statute that disqualifies from public office all who have stolen federal property. (She is probably already barred from public office — though this was not prominently raised when she entered the U.S. Senate or the Department of State — because of the china, silverware and furniture that she and her husband took from the White House in January 2001.)
Clinton may also have committed espionage by failing to secure the government secrets entrusted to her. She did that by diverting those secrets to an unprotected, nongovernmental venue — her own server — and again by emailing those secrets to other unprotected and nongovernmental venues.
The reason she can deny sending or receiving anything marked “classified” is that protected government secrets are not marked “classified”.
So her statement, though technically true, is highly misleading. The governmental designations of protected secrets are “confidential,” “secret” and “top secret” – not “classified”.
State Department investigators have found 999 emails sent or received by Clinton in at least one of those three categories of protected secrets.
Back when Clinton became secretary of state, on her first day in office, she had an hourlong FBI briefing on the proper and lawfully required care of government secrets.
She signed a statement, under penalty of perjury, acknowledging that she knew the law and that it is the content of emails, not any stamped markings, that makes them secret.
Earlier this week, my Fox News colleagues confirmed the certain presence of top-secret materials among the 999 emails.
Intelligence from foreign sources or about foreign governments is always top-secret, whether designated as such or not. And she knows that.
As well, she may have committed perjury in the FOIA case. When the House Select Committee on Benghazi, in its investigation of her role in the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, gathered emails, it found emails she did not surrender to the State Department.
Last week, the State Department released emails that give the FBI more areas to investigate. These emails may show a pattern of official behavior by Clinton designed to benefit the financial interests of her family’s foundation, her husband and her son-in-law.
Moreover, the FBI knows of a treasure-trove of documents that may demonstrate that the Clinton Foundation skirted the law and illegally raised and spent contributions.
Two months ago, a group of FBI agents sat around a conference table and reviewed the evidence gathered thus far. Each agent was given the opportunity to make or detract from the case for moving forward. At the end of the meeting, it was the consensus of the group to pursue a criminal investigation.
Judge Napolitano cautiously states that “Clinton is the likely target”. Well, it’s not likely to be anyone else!
We wonder impatiently how long it will take. We would be filled with joy – okay, Schadenfreude – if she were to be charged immediately after being nominated the Democratic candidate for the presidency.
The workplace of war 124
The media, including Fox News, and the police, the president, and all Democrats, are having difficulty finding a motive behind the massacre of San Bernardino, carried out yesterday by a Muslim man and a Muslim woman.
Daring commentators go so far as to say that the killing might have been Islamic terrorism, acts of which, they recall, have been carried out from time to time in America and elsewhere; or it might have been workplace violence – which they’d much prefer it to be.
We are happy to come to their aid and resolve the dilemma.
For jihadis, they are the same thing.
Islamic lore has it that the whole non-Muslim world is the Dar-al-Harb, the Place of War. And that whole vast wicked region is their workplace.
So – you see – by killing non-Muslims, Muslims are performing acts of workplace violence in order to terrorize the infidel. And that is not wrong, it is the work they are instructed to do by no less a boss than Allah himself.
We are all aware that workplace violence is an everyday occurrence. It’s as American as apple pie. Why make a fuss about it?
When you should be worrying about global warming.
Brussels reaps what Brussels sowed 289
We hope that Brussels, “under lockdown” in fear of Muslim terrorist attacks, is experiencing maximum inconvenience. That’s the least it deserves.
We quote from an article at Gatestone by Stefan Frank:
The Molenbeek district of Brussels is considered Europe’s “terrorist factory”.
At least three of the perpetrators of the November terrorist attacks in Paris came from there: Ibrahim Abdeslam, Abdelhamid Abaaoud and the remaining fugitive Salah Abdeslam. The list does not stop there. The Viennese daily newspaper Die Presse writes:
Molenbeek made headlines for the first time in 2001: Abdessatar Dahmane, the murderer of the Afghan war hero and horror of the Taliban, Ahmed Schah Massoud, was a regular at the Islamic center at 18 Rue du Manchester, known for its radical views; as well as Hassan El Haski, who was presumed behind the attacks in Casablanca (41 dead in 2003) and Madrid (200 victims in 2004). The weapons that were used in the attacks on the French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 came from Molenbeek. The French jihadist Mehdi Nemouche, who caused a bloodbath in the Brussels Jewish Museum the previous year, lived here. In August 2015, Ayoub El Khazzani started out from here on his attempt to attack a train from Amsterdam to Paris.
The two jihadists killed by Belgian police in January, in Verviers, came from Molenbeek. The terrorist Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked the HyperCacher kosher supermarket in Paris, also spent time in Molenbeek.
The majority of the terrorists who have appeared in Europe in recent times originated from a single neighborhood, six square-kilometers in size — an astounding concentration.
Belgium is, in relation to the size of its population, the greatest European exporter of fighters for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Most of them come from Molenbeek. “Instead of bombing Raqqah,” says the French journalist Eric Zemmour, “France should be bombing Molenbeek.”
More than half the population of Molenbeek is Muslim; a quarter come from Morocco – such as the Paris attackers. “You know, there are more veiled women here in Molenbeek than in Casablanca,” says a resident interviewed by investigative reporter Gilles Gaetner of the French news portal Atlantico. … “When one walks the streets of this Brussels district, with its nearly 96,000 residents, one is overcome by a bizarre impression. Not only would you think you were no longer in the Kingdom of Belgium, but an oppressive atmosphere reigns here.”
Foreign reporters are only now discovering Molenbeek. …
[Brussels is] a city in fear. Much of the responsibility for this apparently rests with Philippe Moureaux, member of the Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste), who was mayor of Molenbeek from 1992 until 2012. Confronted with the complaints of his citizens, he regularly denied the unsustainable conditions in his town: “It makes me angry when people pick out tiny details and lie about them,” he said in the quoted report. Molenbeek is “not the Bronx; the problems with criminality only concern a small number of streets,” said Moureaux.
Then Moureaux showed his true colors: “Molenbeek is a symbol that certain people want to destroy. But only over my dead body.” Certain people? Does the mayor actually believe in a conspiracy against his district of misery? One does not have to search for long to realize that Moureaux, on whose initiative Belgium passed an “anti-racism law” in 1981, is an anti-Semite … He downplays and supports the violence of young Muslims – also against Jews.
There was heavy rioting in 2009 during Ramadan in Molenbeek. Muslim youths set up barricades made of burning tires, set cars ablaze, threw rocks at firefighters who came to put out fires and, equipped with rocks and crowbars, looted stores. … The police received the following order: “Do not provoke them, do not search them, do not intervene, even if dozens of them come together, do not issue warnings for harassment, not even if they throw rocks at you.”
Jewish shop-owners were also harassed other than at Ramadan. In 2008, the Flemish magazine Dag Allemaal reported on “youths” yelling, “The Jews are our worst enemies,” in the streets of Molenbeek. There used be many stores run by Jews on the Rue du Prado and the Chaussée de Grand in Molenbeek, but in 2008, with the exception of one furniture store, they suddenly disappeared. And nobody seemed bothered by this, especially not Mayor Moureaux.
None of the Jews wanted to speak with the Dag Allemaal reporter, out of fear of reprisals. The one exception was a man whom the paper referred to as “René.” René ran a barbershop for over 30 years in the Chaussée de Gand. Then came a series of acts of violence. It began with graffiti on his shop’s windows: “Sale youpin” (“dirty Jew”) and other anti-Semitic slogans. Later on, six Muslim youths stormed into his shop, destroyed the furnishings and punched René in the face. He called the police. An hour later, the youths returned in order to “punish” him; they broke all the mirrors. For more than 35 years, René had built up a large and loyal customer base, but after this attack, most people were afraid to visit his shop. He had no other choice but to close it.
How did Moureaux react? By accusing Belgian Jews of wanting to deny Muslims the “right to diversity”. …
This “right to diversity” was not granted to citizens by Moureaux during Ramadan. In a press release with the title, “Ramadan regulations for everyone”, Moureaux appealed to citizens in August 2011 to stop driving into the center of Molenbeek in the afternoon during the month of Ramadan, because Muslims are doing their shopping there.
In January 2015, after the massacre of the staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the murder of four Jews in Paris’s HyperCacher supermarket, the now-retired mayor gave an interview to Maghreb TV, a channel broadcast via the internet, the target audience for which is North Africans in Belgium. After he made an appeal not to hold all Muslims responsible for the actions of a few terrorists, it got wild:
Many have an interest in dividing us. … Unfortunately, these people can be found everywhere. There is a contagion of the problems of the Middle East, in the Near East, the Israeli-Palestinian problem, which leads to some having an interest in provoking local disagreements, like a reflex to what happens over there. … It will be said that it is coming from both sides. But it is obvious that they are trying to create hatred for Arabs here in the West, in order to justify the policies of the state of Israel, policies that appear unacceptable to me.
It is supposed to be Israel’s fault when the Arabs of Belgium – and especially those of Molenbeek – have a bad reputation? This type of anti-Semitic resentment is unfortunately not only typical for Moureaux, but for his entire party. In March 2013, the Socialists of Molenbeek issued an invitation to an event titled: “What if we freely and calmly spoke about Zionism?” On the invitation flyer was an anti-Semitic caricature, drawn in the style of Der Stürmer, by the Arabic neo-Nazi Zéon. After loud protests, the Socialists cancelled the event – on the grounds that the aspired-to “calm” discussion was unfortunately no longer possible. …
Welcome to Molenbeek. The jurist Etienne Dujardin recently wrote in the news portal Levif.be that the conditions in Islamist terror districts such as Molenbeek, Verviers or Saint Denis also had something to do with the deliberate efforts of some politicians, who find welcome campaign workers in radical Islamic circles:
Parties have been practicing a form of cronyism based on elections; they all used the same radical mosques as mouthpieces for their election campaigns. Some saw them as a massive pool of easily available votes.
And that is how it seems Mayor Moureaux observed that he could personally profit from the transformation of Molenbeek into a bastion of jihad. As he himself lives in a wealthy district, he was able to reject with great arrogance citizens who complained about excessive crime. He won elections by catering to radical Islam. … Behind the anti-Israel agitation of Moureaux lay a corrupt mayor, who only cared for his office and his income; who, as he himself said, was “addicted to power”. That his town was transforming into a hell of criminality, anti-Semitism and Sharia, he either did not care about or actually welcomed. … This is how Molenbeek became, during the term in office of just one man, what it is today.
Atheists who do as Christians do 462
Atheists of the Left – “Humanists” some call themselves – often reveal with unconscious irony how close Leftism is to Christianity: the same moral myopia, hubris, and sentimentality.
In order to enjoy the cheap emotional satisfaction of feeling they are “good people”, they go in for this sort of thing.
We quote from the Friendly Atheist at Patheos:
After the Daily Caller News Foundation posted a map of supposed “radical mosques” in the U.S., it wasn’t long before threats were made against them.
But in a wonderful gesture on Monday, the Humanists of the Palouse reached out to the Muslims, sending them a letter of concern and offering whatever help they could:
To our Muslim friends in the Moscow/Pullman area,
Recently, we have been made aware of threats to our community, centered on the Pullman Islamic Center and it and many other Mosques being mis-reported as “radical”. In today’s climate, these threats should not be taken lightly, and we certainly do not. We fully support your right to practice religion free from harm and harassment.
We recognize your members as valued residents of the Palouse. The Humanists of the Palouse want you to know that we will always defend religious freedom and cultural diversity, and threats against these are threats against our very way of life. We stand with you, and offer our support.
If you feel threatened, please do not hesitate to contact us. We would be happy to accompany anyone who feels that their safety is at risk (e.g. grocery shopping, on a walk around town, or just for someone to talk to). If we can advocate for you in any way, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us, and know that you have friends and allies amongst The Humanists of the Palouse.
The Center’s Board of Trustees soon issued this heartfelt response:
The entire Board of Trustees of the Pullman Islamic Association joins me in thanking you and the Humanists of the Palouse generally for this powerful statement affirming civil rights in this country. We are especially moved that a humanist group so completely supports the local Muslim group, since Islam is the most disrespected group in this country. We have noticed that the correct way to define and appreciate humanist groups in general and yours in particular is as lovers and defenders of civil rights, individual and group democratic dignities and freedom of thought, not as haters of religion. Your group’s neighborly defense of freedom of religion in the Palouse demonstrates your focus on freedom and social justice. We are impressed by and thankful for your firm support and offer of assistance and solidarity.
One of our Board of Trustees members is meeting with an FBI agent today, which demonstrates that the federal police are taking this threat seriously. Given this sobering reality of threatened arson and violence your support will always be appreciated by the leaders and membership of the Pullman Islamic Association. We hope we will not need to ask for your offered assistance, but if we do need or want such support, we will indeed reach out to Humanists of the Palouse.
That’s how you do it, friends.
You can disagree on theological issues, but I’d hope local atheist groups around the country would be willing to reach out to Muslims who are actually being persecuted by overzealous conservatives eager to shut them down.
If they lose their religious freedoms, we all do.
Can they possibly not know that sharia law – inseparable from the ideology of Islam – condemns apostasy, which is what atheism is deemed to be? And prescribes death as the punishment for atheists? (Atheist men; women not always.) In some Islamic lands they are imprisoned rather than executed. But all risk their lives, and such freedom as anyone has in a Muslim majority country.
These are reports of atheists, apostates, free thinkers who have been sentenced to prison, and/or flogging, and/or death in Islamic countries recently – the crime of atheism often being euphemized into something else in court. And some who have been killed by their Muslim compatriots.
1. From the Economist, on Alexander Aan in Indonesia:
A MOB attacked Alexander Aan even before an Indonesian court in June jailed him for two and a half years for “inciting religious hatred”.
His crime was to write “God does not exist” on a Facebook group he had founded for atheists in Minang, a province of the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Like most non-believers in Islamic regions, he was brought up as a Muslim. And like many who profess godlessness openly, he has been punished. …
Sharia law, which covers only Muslims unless incorporated into national law, assumes people are born into their parents’ religion. Thus ex-Muslim atheists are guilty of apostasy—a hudud crime against God, like adultery and drinking alcohol. Potential sanctions can be severe: eight states, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Sudan have the death penalty on their statute books for such offences. …
Most atheists are prosecuted for blasphemy or for inciting hatred. (Atheists born to non-Muslim families are not considered apostates, but they can still be prosecuted for other crimes against religion.) Even in places where laws are lenient, religious authorities and social attitudes can be harsh, with vigilantes inflicting beatings or beheadings.
Many, like Kacem el-Ghazzali, a Moroccan, reckon the only solution is to escape abroad. The 23-year-old was granted asylum in Switzerland after people found out he was the author of an anonymous blog, Atheistica.com. …
Nahla Mahmoud, a 25-year-old Sudanese atheist … fled to Britain in 2010. …
Ibn Warraq, the pseudonymous Indian-born author of “Leaving Islam”, a collection of essays by ex-believers, … lives in exile and has received death threats for campaigning on the behalf of apostates. … Arguments for the death penalty [he says] are usually based on a Hadith, one of the sayings which, along with the Koran, form the basis of Islamic law: “The Prophet said: whoever discards his religion, kill him.” …
Ibn Warraq says that the nub of the problem is that sharia makes atheism the number one sin, ahead of murder. …
2. From the Guardian, on Ashraf Fayadh in Saudi Arabia:
A Palestinian poet and leading member of Saudi Arabia’s nascent contemporary art scene has been sentenced to death for renouncing Islam.
A Saudi court on Tuesday ordered the execution of Ashraf Fayadh, who has curated art shows in Jeddah and at the Venice Biennale. The poet, who said he did not have legal representation, was given 30 days to appeal against the ruling.
Fayadh, 35, a key member of the British-Saudi art organisation Edge of Arabia, was originally sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes by the general court in Abha, a city in the south-west of the ultraconservative kingdom, in May 2014. But after his appeal was dismissed he was retried earlier this month and a new panel of judges ruled that his repentance did not prevent his execution.
3. From Patheos, the Friendly Atheist itself, on Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia:
December 26, 2013 by Paul Fidalgo [who is admirably scathing in his disgust – ed).
Saudi blogger and religious dissident Raif Badawi has been cruelly punished and toyed with by the Saudi legal system for about a year now, and things have taken a darker turn. According to Badawi’s wife, now living in Lebanon, the high court will try Badawi on the charge of apostasy. If convicted, Badawi could be executed.
This comes after a court opted not to charge him with apostasy in January, but did put him up on charges of “insulting Islam and showing disobedience”. How did they come to this decision? Badawi is the co-founder of a website called the Liberal Saudi Network, which is bad enough, but imagine the horror that washed over Saudi society with this kind of action:
The evidence against him included the fact that he pressed the “Like” button on a Facebook page for Arab Christians.
As a result of this heinous behavior, in July, Badawi was sentenced to 600 lashes and seven years in prison.
Which was horrifying enough. But now it looks like Badawi is being brought up on apostasy charges in earnest. Badawi’s case is one of many being watched by the Office of Public Policy at the Center for Inquiry, where I work, and our Campaign for Free Expression. Browse the cases we have listed there, and you’ll see that, sadly, Badawi’s case is hardly unique.
Cases like this need more international attention, and those who position themselves as “allies” of Saudi Arabia, such as the United States, need to discover their consciences. How can the civilized world refer to itself as such when an ally practices such barbarism, it looks the other way?
The judge in Badawi’s subsequent appeal stiffened the original 2013 sentence – seven years in prison and 600 lashes – to 1000 lashes, ten years in prison and a fine of $266,000. See our post, The punishment of reason, January 12, 2015, where there is an eyewitness description of the first of the series of lashings Badawi is being subjected to.
Badawi had written, “My commitment is… to reject any repression in the name of religion… a goal that we will reach in a peaceful, law-abiding way.”
This was interpreted by the judge as “insulting Islam”.
Badawi’s health is now frail. He is unlikely to survive the lashings.
4. From Poetry Foundation, on Hashem Shaabani in Iran:
We were saddened and horrified today to learn of the death of Hashem Shaabani, who was executed on January 27th by the order of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
From Radio Free Europe:
An Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal reportedly had sentenced the poet to death, along with 14 others, last July on charges that included “waging war on God”.
Press reports said Shaabani was hanged after his sentence was approved by President Hassan Rohani.
In a statement on February 5, Freedom House said Shaabani was subjected to severe torture and interrogation during his three years in prison.
Human Rights Voices also reports on the execution, writing:
To those who knew him, was a man of peace and understanding struggling to extend spaces of individual freedom within the despotic Khomeinist system … In one of his letters from prison, made available to use through his family, Shaabani says … “I have tried to defend the legitimate right that every people in this world should have which is the right to live freely with full civil rights. With all these miseries and tragedies, I have never used a weapon to fight these atrocious crimes except the pen.”
5. From the Guardian on Avijit Roy and Rafida Bonya Ahmed in Pakistan:
No one could have predicted that the Bangladeshi writer Rafida Bonya Ahmed would make it to London last week. … In February, Islamist fanatics hacked her husband, Avijit Roy, to death with meat cleavers as the couple left a book fair in Dhaka. They nearly killed Ahmed too: slicing off her thumb and covering her body with wounds. …
Together, Ahmed and Roy ran a secular blog that promoted the writings of young liberal Bangladeshis They wrote on evolution and humanism; they condemned extremism fearlessly, as the title of Roy’s 2014 book The Virus of Faith makes clear. Seeing and fearing a courageous opponent, the enemies of free thought killed him for his ideas. …
6. From a Reuters report on Ananta Bijoy Das and others in Bangladesh:
Third Atheist blogger killed in Bangladesh.
A blogger was hacked to death by machete-wielding attackers in Bangladesh on Tuesday (May 12), the third killing of a critic of religious extremism in the Muslim-majority nation in less than three months.
Ananta Bijoy Das, a blogger who advocated secularism, was attacked by four masked assailants in the northeastern district of Sylhet on Tuesday morning, senior police official Mohammad Rahamatullah told Reuters.
Rahamatullah said Das was a 33-year-old banker.
He was also editor of science magazine “Jukti,” which means “logic,” and on the advisory board of “Mukto Mona” (Free Mind), a website propagating rationalism and opposing fundamentalism …
According to the monitoring service SITE Intelligence Group, Islamist militant group Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh said al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) had claimed responsibility for the attack. …
Imran Sarker, the head of a network of activists and bloggers in Bangladesh, said Das was “a progressive free thinker and a good human being”. …
Militants have targeted secularist writers in Bangladesh in recent years …
On March 30, Washiqur Rahman, another secular blogger who aired his outrage over [Avijit] Roy’s death on social media, was killed in similar fashion on a busy street in the capital, Dhaka.
Their deaths followed the killing in 2013 of Ahmed Rajib Haider, who backed calls to impose the death penalty on Islamist leaders accused of atrocities in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence.
Why do our fellow atheists – of the leftist “Humanist” persuasion – not burn with anger against the ideology that persecutes atheism, secularism, rationalism, and shun the company of its devotees?
If they think they are earning the goodwill and tolerance of the Muslims towards whom they’re making this gesture, they’re pathetically deluded. Their nice little letter is not going to change sharia law, or the minds of those who want to impose it on us all.
They seem simply not to believe that the Muslims they contacted might be members of “radicalizing” mosques – which is to say, mosques with imams who urge them to support terrorist groups or join ISIS. There’s no hint that they explored the possibility. In their minds, the accusation must be wholly unjustified.
And one more thing. When those poor persecuted Muslims “in the Moscow/Pullman area” whimpered that “Islam is the most disrespected group in this country”, they are lying. The president of the United States is the son of a Muslim and an Islam lover who has brought Muslim Brotherhood advisers into his administration – and has clearly formed policies on their advice..
At the time of this writing there have been 27,322 deadly attacks carried out by Muslims since 9/11. (See the tally in our margin, taken from The Religion of Peace.) Muslim terrorists do all they can to terrify non-Muslims, and then cynically accuse them of an irrational fear of Islam, calling it “Islamophobia”.
Muslims are the target of few “hate crimes” in the US. But they perpetrate more than any others do.
We quote from an article by David J. Rusin at Islamist Watch. His staistics come from a December 2014 report of 2013 figures. (We await the 2014 report this coming December):
New FBI Hate Crime Stats: Another Blow to Islamist Fictions
There were 1,031 incidents inspired by religion last year, 625 (60.6 percent) of which were anti-Jewish. Anti-Islamic ones constituted just 13.1 percent.
On April 15, 2013, Muslim terrorists murdered three and injured hundreds at the Boston Marathon, prompting familiar warnings about an imminent anti-Muslim backlash. The FBI’s findings are proof that such collective punishment did not materialize — as it almost never does.
How have Islamist groups greeted the FBI data? With silence. It is the sound of disappointment on the part of radicals who need Muslim victims, preferably real ones, to serve as human shields for the Islamist agenda. Bad news for Islamists is once again good news for the rest of us.
The spinner of tragic destiny 73
Almost incredible but true – a trained inventor of fictions lurks in the White House, spinning tall tales that have catastrophically affected millions, destroyed the lives of tens of thousands, and set the course of history towards disaster and despair.
The name he goes by is Ben Rhodes.
He is an incarnation – with a sex change – of Clotho, the Spinner of destiny among the Three Fates in Greek mythology.
He is grim. He is the slickest and most poker-faced of liars. He is one of the most sinister operators in Obama’s sinister White House.
Investor’s Business Daily reports and comments:
Despite terrorism risks, the White House has doubled down to admit Syrian refugees to the U.S., with Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes assuring us of “robust vetting procedures”. It’s not his first fiction.
The hard facts are as follows: FBI director James Comey has soberly warned there are no means for vetting potential terrorists among the 10,000 Syrian refugees being admitted to the U.S.
This is urgent because Islamic State warns it has seeded Syria’s refugees with terrorists, and in Paris last week the terrorists showed they meant it.
This means nothing to the deputy national security advisor for strategic communications and speechwriting, who characterizes the refugees as just “women and children”.
It’s not the first time that Rhodes has cooked up fiction. A literary hipster with a master’s in fiction from New York University, Rhodes has plied his creative writing skills in the Obama administration to fawning press reports. …
In 2012, Rhodes coordinated the infamous talking points that blamed the 9/11 Benghazi terror attack on a mob response to a YouTube clip. The dishonest claims followed Rhodes’ own policy advice for the administration to overthrow the Gadhafi regime.
Rhodes also wrote President Obama’s infamous 2009 Cairo “apology” speech to the Islamic world. It led to a perception of weakness and the violent Arab Spring — with Rhodes advising Obama to withdraw support from longtime ally President Hosni Mubarak.
Rhodes also was an early proponent of rapprochement with Iran and launched the White House’s #TheIranDeal Twitter propaganda site.
He’s spread the false line on his Twitter site that Russia isn’t bombing Islamic State targets. The hard fact remains that Russia lost a jetliner to an ISIS terror attack on Oct. 31. But Russia would refrain from bombing it?
Now Rhodes would have us believe — without a scintilla of evidence in favor and much to contradict it — that the U.S. is vetting the Syrian refugees it’s letting in.
Here’s a photo of the man. He appears from time to time in the media. (We don’t know if this is his real face or a mask.)
To find out more about him – and confirm that both our own and the IBD account of what he does, and with what dire consequences, is accurate – go to Discover the Networks here.
A quotation from that source:
Ben can always make policy through the speeches and statements made by President Obama.
What Hillary did 254
The Democratic Party must be “in denial”. Is it really offering as its only candidates for the presidency an old communist – aka “a democratic socialist” – whose mind was badly made up never to change again way back in the last century; some other man no one knows or cares anything about; and, primarily, a hideously corrupt old female whose reputation is laden with more scandals than any other figure in modern American history, and is the subject of a criminal investigation by the FBI?
Yes, mirabile dictu, it is!
John Hawkins provides a useful summary of things the old woman has been and done:
Conservatives have been amusing themselves for months by watching Hillary Clinton supporters sputter out laughable answers when they’re asked to name her biggest accomplishments. You can’t blame them for not being able to come up with anything significant because Hillary has choked on the same question in interviews. That’s one of the reasons her staffers have been shielding her from the press like a mother standing between her child and Jared Fogle.
If you want to double down on the laughs, go read an actual list of “accomplishments” on her website.
All seven “accomplishments” are things Hillary didn’t have much to do with — like CHIP and the Family Medical Leave Act (Those went into effect when her husband was in office) or getting 9/11 first responders health care (Was that ever a question?). Alternately, they’re just ridiculous.
“Fought for children and families for 40 years and counting.”
“Told the world that ‘women’s rights are human rights’,”
“Stood up for LGBT rights at home and abroad.”
The very fact that Hillary Clinton considers those things to be “accomplishments” that she should be applauded for as opposed to things that should evoke eye-rolling and “Is she serious?” comments tells you a lot about why she shouldn’t be President.
Of course, the real problem Hillary has isn’t that she doesn’t have achievements; it’s just that they’re not exploits that anyone would want to base a run at the Presidency on.
1) She has been willing to endure America’s most humiliating marriage to achieve wealth and power: It’s fun to guess what Hillary Clinton would have done with her life if she hadn’t married Bill and ridden his coattails. City council member in Little Rock, Arkansas? EPA bureaucrat? A lawyer for Planned Parenthood? She’s a very small person who latched onto her husband’s very big last name.
In return, she had to stay married to a man who cheated on her. Constantly. Worse yet, not only did she know it, the whole world knows it.
Bill Clinton was impeached by the House for perjuring himself over an affair with Monica Lewinsky. He settled a sexual harassment case against Paula Jones. He was accused of sexual assault by Kathleen Willey. He was accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick. Then there’s Gennifer Flowers, Dolly Kyle Browning, Elizabeth Ward Gracen and undoubtedly dozens of other women he’s slept with. Given that some of the troopers who guarded him in Arkansas claimed they procured women for him and his confirmed trips to “orgy island”, the number may be in the hundreds and chances are, while you’re reading this, Bill is having sex with a woman who’s not Hillary Clinton. No normal woman would be so hungry for power over her fellow human beings that she would endure that and that does separate Hillary from the rest of us who aren’t as desperate for power.
2) Four people are dead in Benghazi because of her: It seems hard to believe that it’s even possible, but there were more than 600 ignored security requests related to Libya and the consulate in Benghazi. Had Hillary paid attention to those requests, it’s entirely possible that none of our men would have died in Libya. However, Hillary claims none of those requests reached her desk. Since it’s generally accepted that Hillary lies incessantly about anything and everything, maybe that’s another lie. On the other hand, given that she’s 68 years old, hasn’t driven a car since 1996 and clearly can’t handle her own email, maybe she just didn’t know what she was doing. Either way, if we had a different Secretary of State, those four men would probably be alive today. Most of us have made mistakes at work, but how many of us have the guts to ask for a promotion after four people DIED because we missed hundreds of requests for help from them?
3) She was one of the worst Secretaries of State in U.S. history: Donald Trump calls her “the worst Secretary of State” in American history, but this is an old country that has had a lot of people in that position; so that may be unfair. Maybe she’s just one of the worst Secretaries of State in American history. Look at what happened on her watch.
We helped radical jihadis take over in Libya and that country is falling apart. Benghazi also happened and while she was publicly telling the world a video caused it, she was privately telling people it was a terrorist attack. Additionally, we backed a radical jihadi takeover of the government in Egypt that thankfully fell apart. We pulled all our troops out of Iraq, which set the stage for ISIS to move in. Our relationship with the Israeli government deteriorated. So did our relationships with China and Russia. To top it all off, the State Department lost track of 6 billion dollars while she was Secretary of State. It would be easy to write Clinton off as a pitiable character whose ambition led her to take a job that was far too big for someone of her meager abilities, but unfortunately she’s trying to use her miserable failure as Secretary of State as a stepping stone to the presidency where she could do even more damage.
4) She managed to turn a career in government service into immense wealth: Hillary and her husband managed to become filthy rich one percenters because of their government service. Granted, they did cut a few corners in the process. For example, while Bill was governor, Hillary got away with taking a nearly $100,000 bribe from Robert L. “Red” Bone via sleazy cattle futures deals. While she was Secretary of State, money poured into the pockets of her husband and the Clinton Foundation from defense contractors and foreign governments that got fat contracts from the State Department. Among the governments that funneled money into the Clinton bank account via speeches are Iran, North Korea [actually, the State Department did not permit that one! – ed] the Democratic Republic of the Congo, UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China. They paid the Clintons an awful lot of money and if Hillary becomes our next President, people might be surprised at how much those foreign governments end up getting in return for making the Clintons rich.
5) She’s better at surviving sleazy scandals than anyone else: Hillary Clinton has been tied into more scandals than any other five politicians combined. Where she goes, an ocean of corruption, sleaze and controversy always follows. It’s amazing in a horrific way that Hillary is still considered a serious candidate for the presidency despite having more gaffes and scandals than the entire GOP field COMBINED. It would take a book to fully detail all of them, but just to name a few, there’s Emailgate, Pardongate, Whitewater, Travelgate, using the IRS to attack her political opponents, looting the White House, illegally acquiring FBI files on her Republican opponents, the Boeing payoff, the Uranium One payoff, the Norway embassy payoff, the Congo payoff, ripping off AIDS patients in the Third World, taking bribes via cattle futures, lying about landing under “sniper fire” in Bosnia, laughing about tearing apart a 12 year old girl in court to get a child rapist off and Benghazi. There are mob bosses with cleaner records than Hillary Clinton and yet, not only has she avoided prison so far, she’s running for President.
An appalling record. Yet it leaves out the worst thing Hillary Clinton accomplished.
She it was who insisted that Libya be attacked from the air to help anti-Gaddafi rebels depose the dictator. That they did (and tortured him to death). Tritely she squealed, “We came, we saw, he died.” And since then, Libya has been in chaos. From its shores untold multitudes of “refugees” sail for Europe. Many drown. Families are torn apart. Europe sinks.
If she could do so much harm as secretary of state, how much more could she do as president?
Race 13
We well know the evils of racism. Racial hatreds have been the cause, through oppression, persecution, discrimination, and attempted genocide, of extreme human suffering.
In the United States, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made discrimination against Blacks in the public sphere illegal; and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed all legal barriers to Blacks voting in federal, state and local elections, so theoretically enfranchising all adult, sane, free Americans. Laws against “mixed race” marriages persisted in some southern states for a couple more years, but were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1967.
Of course acts of law cannot root out irrational hatreds from people’s minds. It certainly cannot be claimed that after 1967 race differences went unnoticed, or that no one was disadvantaged in America by his or her race.
But it could fairly be said that between then and 2009, race was in general a less troubling issue than it had been.
Then in 2008 a vast number of Whites decided to vote Barack Hussein Obama into the presidency of the USA for no better reason than that he was black. By doing so, they wanted to prove that they were not racists. What they actually proved was that they were.
And ever since the absurd election of Obama – a wholly unqualified candidate, but the son of a black African father and a white American mother – race has become a hugely troublesome issue again. President Obama consciously tried to make it so. He has succeeded. And the result is that Black racism has become a serious problem; interfering most disastrously with the administration of justice, most dangerously with the enforcement of law and order, and most vociferously in the universities.
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For Obama’s defense of the Black Lives Matter movement, see here.
For examples of Obama’s leaping to judgment and taking sides in disputed cases of Black arrests or deaths during violent confrontations: the Professor Henry Gates case, see here; the Trayvon Martin case, see here; his quick reactions to the deaths of the black men Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, and his ignoring of the shooting of the white victim Kate Steinle by an illegal Hispanic alien in San Francisco, see here.
For the refusal by Obama’s appointee, Attorney General Eric Holder, to allow the prosecution of the Black Panthers see here.
For a probable effect of Obama’s biased attitude to the deaths of Blacks in confrontation with the police – ie. the murder of two policemen in New York after the death in custody of the black man Eric Garner – see here.
For the Black racist protests at the universities of Missouri and Yale, see here and here. Also see our own post, Our conspiracy theory, November 12, 2015.
For similar student protests at Dartmouth, see here, and Amhurst, here. And at Wright State University, see here. And at Johns Hopkins, see here.
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This is from Campus Reform by the Dartmouth Review Staff:
Black-clad protesters gathered in front of Dartmouth Hall Thursday night, forming a crowd roughly one hundred fifty strong.
Ostensibly there to denounce the removal of shirts from a display in Collis, Dartmouth’s student center the Black Lives Matter collective began to sing songs and chant their eponymous catchphrase. The band then marched into Baker-Berry Library.
“F*** you, you filthy white f***s!”
“F*** you and your comfort!”
“F*** you, you racist s***!”
These shouted epithets were the first indication that many students had of the coming storm. The sign-wielding, obscenity-shouting protesters proceeded through the usually quiet backwaters of the library. They surged first through first-floor Baker-Berry, then up the stairs to the normally undisturbed floors of the building, before coming back down to the ground floor of Novak Café.
Throngs of protesters converged around fellow students who had not joined in their long march. They confronted students who bore “symbols of oppression” such as “gangster hats” and Beats-brand headphones. The flood of demonstrators opened the doors of study spaces with students reviewing for exams. Those who tried to close their doors were harassed further. One student abandoned the study room and ran out of the library. The protesters followed her out of the library, shouting obscenities the whole way.
Students who refused to listen to or join their outbursts were shouted down:“Stand the f*** up!” “You filthy racist white piece of s***!” Men and women alike were pushed and shoved by the group.
“If we can’t have it, shut it down!” they cried. Another woman was pinned to a wall by protesters who unleashed their insults, shouting “filthy white b****!” in her face.
In the immediate aftermath of the demonstration, social media was abuzz with comments condemning the protesters for their tactics. Many students who had experienced the protests took advantage of Yik Yak’s anonymity to air their grievances. Some students reached out toThe Dartmouth Review to provide additional details.
An anonymous member of the class of 2019 explained that while working on a group project in a private study room, his undergraduate advisor came in and expressed his disappointment that the he was not joining in the protest. The advisor then demanded that he and the other members of his group project to leave the room and join in.
Another member of the class of 2019 recalled clapping after a protester said, “let’s give a round of applause for the beautiful people of color who were here for this protest.” The protester then turned on her saying, “for all of you that are sitting down and applauding right now, we don’t care about you.”
Protesters have also spoken out in the aftermath of their march. One woman, who identified herself as one of the protesters in a lengthy post to Facebook, wrote, “we raised hell, we caused discomfort, and we made our voices heard all throughout this campus in the name of standing up for our brothers and sisters across the country who are staring terrorism and assault directly in the face.” She went on to accuse those she thought were insincere in their support for the movement of “faking allyship” …
So if you are white, don’t try to pretend that you ally yourself with this Black racist movement. You won’t get away with it.
What can you do? Lie in the dust and apologize for your “white privilege”?
Or continue the long fight against racism of any kind, including this kind, in whatever way you can?
The blind and stupid governments of Europe 3
At the time of this writing, 129 people are known to have been killed today, Friday November 13, 2015, in co-ordinated terrorist attacks in France. [Update Sunday 11/15/2015: 132 killed.]
The attacks by IS/ISIS/ISIL on six crowded public places in Paris must have taken a lot of organizing. There must have been a few hundred operatives involved in the plot and an immense amount of “chatter” about it on cell phones and the social media for weeks and probably months beforehand. And yet the French police caught not a whiff of it? Not a whisper on the wind?
The attacks are an intelligence failure of monstrous proportions. Or was there monstrous corruption? Always a possibility.
ISIS – the Islamic State – is of course primarily responsible for the deaths, injuries, and terror. But the French government – which like the German government, the Swedish government and all the other European governments have let in and are letting in millions of Muslims – must be held responsible for preparing the conditions that ISIS takes advantage of to spread its savage war.
There will certainly be more such attacks in Europe.
And in America?
Shortly before the hour when the attacks in Paris began, President Obama ridiculously declared that ISIS was “contained”.
He also continues to maintain that the Islamic State “has nothing to do with Islam”. So clearly, in the blind and stupid stakes, Obama keeps up with the front runners.
However, according to Judicial Watch, “the FBI has nearly 1000 active ISIS probes inside the US”. If that is so, they are doing a lot better than the French police.
ISIS will act in America. It is just possible that they will find it more difficult than in Europe. But not very difficult. Not when Obama is importing tens of thousands of Muslim “refugees” from the Middle East, unvetted and unvettable. And not when any terrorist can cross the southern border illegally, be met by a bus, and be driven to a welcome center where he can start collecting cash and goods.
And getting busy on his cellphone to organize the murder of Americans.
Our conspiracy theory 81
A figure steps out from behind the protestors – and takes charge.
Was getting him into the seat of power what it was all about?
A Washington Post report, while apparently oblivious to this possibility, provides information that stirs our suspicion.
Michael Middleton, it says, “replaces Tim Wolfe, who resigned Monday in the midst of escalating protests over his leadership and what some students have called a hostile campus climate” at the University of Missouri at Columbia [“Mizzou”].
We select these pieces of information:
“[He was] a founder of the Legion of Black Collegians – described by Mizzou as the only black student government in the country”.
“[He] delivered their [black students’?] list of demands to the then-chancellor in 1969”.
“He was an administrator when a second list of demands was delivered in 2005.”
“Most recently, he said, they [the Legion of Black Collegians?] have the list of demands from Concerned Student 1950, the leaders of the protests that upended the school.”
“He said he has been meeting with members of Concerned Student 1950 for several weeks, and had met with members of the group before it formed, talking about these same issues. He said he would meet with them after the press conference, and would continue to meet with them until problems are resolved. Middleton says he has kept the list on his desk since then, checking things off as they were achieved.”
“‘It is clear to me that a first step is to devote our attention to addressing those demands,’ Middleton said, ‘to ensure that all feel safe and comfortable and all four campuses are living up to their histories and their ideals.'”
“When asked at the news conference announcing his appointment whether that meant meeting the demands, he repeated the word ‘address’, then responded that each time those demands have been submitted by black student leaders, they have involved complex interactions among many people at the university.”
“‘I intend to lead this university toward satisfying each and every one of those demands that can be satisfied,’ he said.”
We invite readers to tell us: do you think we have reasonable grounds for our conspiracy theory, or not?
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Here is the list of the demands presented by the Legion of Black Collegians.
Notice the shop-worn, empty phrases: “social justice”, “white privilege”, “systems of oppression”, “diversity curriculum” etc. (The grievances listed to justify the protest are few, slight, obscure and unconvincing.)
Notice the spite: the desire to humiliate Tim Wolfe, the president of the university. Could it be inspired by personal envy?
1. We demand that University of Missouri System President, Tim Wolfe, writes a hand-written apology to Concerned Student 1-9-5-0 demonstrators and holds a press conference in the Mizzou Student Center reading the letter. In the letter and at the press conference, Tim Wolfe must acknowledge his white privilege, recognize that systems of oppression exits, and provide a verbal commitment to fulfilling Concerned Student 1-9-5-0 demands. We want Tim Wolfe to admits his gross negligence, allowing his driver to hit one of the demonstrators, consenting to the physical violence of bystanders, and lastly refusing to intervene when Columbia Police Department used excessive force with demonstrators.
2. We demand the immediate removal of Tim Wolfe as UM system president. After his removal, a new amendment to thd UM system policies must be established to have all future UM system president and Chancellor positions be selected by a collective of students, staff, and faculty of diverse backgrounds.
3. We demand that the University of Missouri meets the Legion of Black Collegians’ demands that were presented in the 1969 for the betterment of the black community.
4. We demand that the University of Missouri creates and enforces comprehensive racial awareness and inclusion curriculum throughout all campus departments and units, mandatory for all students, faculty, staff and administration. This curriculum must be vetted, maintained, and overseen by a board comprised of students, staff and faculty of color.
5. We demand that by the academic year 2017-18, the University of Missouri increases the percentage of black faculty and staff members campus-wide by 10 percent.
6. We demand that the University of Missouri composes a strategic 10-year plan on May, 1 2016 that will increase retention rates for marginalized students, sustain diversity curriculum and training, and promote a more safe and inclusive campus. [“Marginalized students ” means those who have failed. They must be allowed to pass regardless of their performance.]
7. We demand that the University of Missouri increases funding and resources for the University of Missouri Counseling Center for the purpose of hiring additional mental health professionals, particularly those of color, boosting mental health outreach and programming across campus, increasing campus-wide awareness and visibility of the counseling center, and reducing lengthy wait times for prospective clients.
8. We demand that the University of Missouri increases funding, resources and personnel for the social justice centers on campus for the purpose of hiring additional professionals, particularly those of color, boosting outreach and programming across campus and increasing campus-wide awareness and visibility.