| May 2008 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
July 2007 Stats for The Big Picture.
This week the David Horowitz Freedom Center is launching a Declaration Against Genocide, with a call "to student governments, to campus human rights organizations, to Muslim Students Associations and to individuals in the academic community, to join us in drawing a collective line in the sand against barbarism and to declare ourselves for civilization and hope." From an email distributed by the Center:
David Horowitz Freedom Center Announces Declaration Against Genocide
The David Horowitz Freedom Center announced that it will distribute a Declaration Against Genocide and ask individuals and groups, particularly those on American college campuses, to sign it. The Declaration notes that the Sudanese and other Africans have been victims of a slow motion genocide, and that Islamo fascists in the Middle East are preparing a new genocide against the Jews and can be found here: http://terrorismawareness.org/petitions/140/declaration-against-genocide .
In describing the objectives of this new initiative, David Horowitz, President of the Freedom Center, said: "We are asking all campus groups to repudiate the genocidal passage in the Islamic Hadith which reads: "The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: 'The time [of judgment] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!'"
Horowitz continued: "We are also asking all campus groups, including the Muslim Students Association, to condemn the Hamas Charter which says: `Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.' Signers of the Declaration will also be asked to repudiate the Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has said `The accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible.' And Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah, who called the Jews `a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment,' and has said, "If the Jews `all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.' These are hateful doctrines that threaten the lives not only of Jews, but of all Americans."
In addition to condemning the genocidal agenda of these leaders and organizations, the Declaration calls on campus groups to affirm "the freedom of the individual conscience and the right to change religions or have no religion at all; the equal dignity of men and women; and the right of all people to live free from violence, intimidation and coercion."
"Although a Declaration Against Genocide should be seen as a document with universal appeal," Horowitz notes, "a coalition of groups with ties to the Islamo-fascist jihad are bound to protest this effort. Our goal is to test universities' claims that they support religious and ethnic tolerance, and to challenge the campus left, which consistently overlooks statements by Islamic radicals which are nothing less than an invitation to mass murder."
Click here to sign the Declaration.
Islamic and leftist organizations on university campuses, will have the opportunity to show that they support tolerance and stand against genocide. Will they sign the Declaration?
In an ill-considered, knee-jerk response to pressure put on it by CAIR, PACE University has called the police and had arrested, a student, for putting a Koran in a toilet. This, when flag-burning is protected free speech, and desecration of Christian religious symbols is called "art" and put in museums. The public outrage from Americans who love free speech is threatening to turn this into a firestorm of public outrage directed against PACE. The topic is red-hot on LGF and is looking like a gathering blogswarm, with Google showing 110 blog posts on the subject in the past 12 hours. It appears likely that this subject will dominate talk radio tomorrow.
Earlier today I emailed this to the President of PACE University, Stephen J. Friedman:
Dear Mr. Friedman,
PACE has called the police to prosecute Mr. Shmulevich in response to pressure put on PACE by CAIR. Please reconsider. PACE is about to be on the receiving end of a massive public outcry from Americans outraged that PACE has, in error and without specifically intending it, launched a legal attack on U.S. freedom of speech.
To see the depth of the passion of Americans who love our free speech and our way of life, I strongly advise you to read the comments on this post (link) on a site that has tens of thousands of visits a day. There are already over 500 comments as I compose this email.
You are unintentionally making PACE the center of a firestorm of public outrage. And PACE is on the wrong side - standing against freedom of speech, which should be the top priority of a great University such as yours.
Act now to prevent a debacle, and massive international damage to PACE's reputation. Stand up for Mr. Shmulevich's right to free speech. Drop the charges.
I included the first 460 comments from the second LGF post on the subject, including:
#1 pbird 7/29/2007 8:20:06 am PDT
You described it perfectly Charles. I am speechless. So frightening.
...#3 m 7/29/2007 8:20:30 am PDTAnd Mr. Shmulevich needs a paypal account. This is ########.
#4 BabbaZee 7/29/2007 8:20:56 am PDT
re: #3 m
Amen.
#5 newsjunkie_ky 7/29/2007 8:21:48 am PDT
This scares the sh*t out of me. What next?
#6 NinoBrown79 7/29/2007 8:22:08 am PDT
A koran in the toilet and the guy gets thrown in jail? Is this America or Iran?
#7 mrsoc 7/29/2007 8:22:44 am PDT
Well, are we going to help him, or not?
#8 albemarle 7/29/2007 8:22:46 am PDT
How long before he gets his own fatwa ?
#9 Cartman 7/29/2007 8:22:56 am PDT
This is gonna be really interesting.
#10 christheprofessor 7/29/2007 8:23:18 am PDT
I can't seem to find any instance of PU's (somehow, that abbreviation seems so appropriate) having arrested somebody for burning an American flag....
#11 Roger 7/29/2007 8:23:37 am PDT
Will do, Charles.
I can't find which campus?
If anyone knows a good timing and if they are going to go, let me know.
#12 m 7/29/2007 8:23:41 am PDT
Who the f' was he harassing? The plumbers? Aggrevated harassment at that!
#13 Armigerous 7/29/2007 8:23:55 am PDT
From what I understand about the case,the Koran in question belonged to the university and not to him personally....can anybody verify that?..that would seem to be the crux of the problem
#14 BabbaZee 7/29/2007 8:24:11 am PDT
re: #7 mrsoc
Absolutely we are going to help him.
Any way we can.
...#16 distwalker 7/29/2007 8:24:21 am PDTYou can burn an American flag and get police protection.
You can create an image of the Virgin Mary in elephant dung and get it in a New York museum.
You can create performance art in which you insert a crucifix in your anus on stage and get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
You can burn a pile of bibles and get an article in the New York Times.
One Koran in the toilet results in two felony charges?
People, this is the center of the god damned storm. This is where we make our stand. If we can't win this one for this man, we have lost the war.
Institutions like PACE respond to pressure from the public. So far, CAIR is pressuring them, and they are responding. If they start hearing directly from us, demanding the protection of free speech, and the destruction of nascent double standards for Islam, the situation will change.
Evan Sayet's YouTube video already had 18,000 views yesterday morning, before it was linked by Drudge. Today it has over 120,000 views.
It's also currently ranked as the #5 Top YouTube Favorite for the Month in News & Politics. It's got over 700 comments. What is making this video so hot? Let's take a look at a few excerpts:
The modern liberal will invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Give the modern liberal the choice between Saddam Hussein and the United States, he will not only side with Saddam Hussein, he will slander America and Americans in order to do so. Given the choice between the vicious, mass-murdering, corrupt terrorist dictator Yasser Arafat, and the tiny and wonderful democracy of Israel, he will plagiarize maps, forge documents, engage in blood libels, as did our former President, Jimmy Carter, to side with a terrorist organization, and to attack the tiny state.
......how do they think they're making better world, by siding with Saddam Hussein, by keeping his rape and torture rooms open, by seeking the destruction of a democracy of Jews that, I don't know if you've seen the list going around on the Internet, of all the Nobel Prize-winning scientists from this tiny state of Israel. How do they think they're making a better world by promoting to children, behaviors that are inappropriate and cause diseases and unwanted pregnancies and ruin people's lives? How do they think they're making a better world?
What I discovered is, the modern liberal looks back on - give me a number here - 50,000 years, 100,000 years of human civilization - and knows only one thing for sure: that none of the ideas that mankind has come up with - none of the religions, none of the philosophies, none of the ideologies, none of the forms of government - none have succeeded in creating a world devoid of war, poverty, crime and injustice. So they're convinced, that since all of these ideas of man have proved to be wrong, the real cause of war, poverty, crime and injustice must be found - can only be found - in the attempt to be right. See if nobody ever thought they were right, what would we have to disagree about? If we didn't disagree, surely we wouldn't fight. If we didn't fight of course we wouldn't go to war. Without war there'd be no poverty, without poverty, there'd be no crime, without crime there'd be no injustice. It's a utopian vision. And all that's required to usher in this utopia, is the rejection of all fact, reason, evidence, logic, truth, morality and decency. All the tools that you and I use in our attempts to be better people, to make the world more right, by trying to be right, by siding with right, by recognizing what is right, and moving towards it.
......So what you have is people who feel that the best way to eliminate rational thought, the best way to eliminate the attempt to be right, is to work always to prove that right isn't right, and to prove that wrong isnt' wrong. To bring about a philosophy - and you see this in John Lennon's song, "Imagine." "Imagine there's no countries." Not "imagine great countries." Not "imagine defeat the Nazis."
"Imagine no religions." And the key line is imagine a time when anything and everything that mankind values - is devalued to the point where there's "nothing left to kill or die for."
Obviously this is not going to happen overnight. There's still going to be religions - but they're going to do their best to denigrate them. There are still going to be countries, but they're going to do their best to get us to cede our sovereignty to one-world bodies.
But in the meantime, everything they believe is designed - everything they teach in our schools, everything they make into movies, the messages of the movies - the TV shows - the newspaper stories that they pick, and how they spin them - have but one criterion for truth, beauty, honesty, etc. etc. - and that's, does it tear down what is good, and elevate what is evil. Does it tear down what is right, and elevate what is wrong. Does it tear down the behaviors that lead to success, and elevate the ones that lead to failure, until there's nothing left to believe in.
...There is no standard to them, because a standard would require them to say that something is better than something else, which goes against this entire philosophy.
(View the video for much more, including the many examples Evan provides, as well as the brilliant metaphor he opens with, regarding a man who says he hates his wife, and whose friend habitually assumes he is joking.)
What's making this hot, may be one of the same things that's making the movie 300 so hot - i.e., the proposition that there is good, there is evil, there is right, there is wrong, and that we have the ability to distinguish between them and to champion what is right and good, and to oppose what is wrong and evil.
Sayet brilliantly identifies that today's Liberals refuse to say that something is better than something else - and that they consistently seek to tear down those who are doing good, and to build up those who are doing evil.
I encountered an example of this, this very morning. I was recently talking to my friend, A.T., and telling him about the danger France (and all of Europe) is in, from radical Islamists, who seek to destroy European culture, and replace it with Sharia culture. This morning A.T. called up and said he's discussed this with a friend of his, a reporter for NPR, and she had said that the Muslims in France are oppressed, that they are denied rights, and that is the reason for their riots. The NPR reporter provided a perfect example of what Sayet describes. She did not express one word of condemnation of the Muslims for their evil burning of thousands of cars in France, or for their violent attacks on the Jews of France, as noted in this recent Miami Herald article. On the contrary, she took their side. She supported those who are doing evil, violent attacks. She showed no support for the people of France who are being attacked.
A.T. immediately agreed with me that seeking for rights would not justify these violent attacks on people and property. (I asked A.T. to ask his NPR reporter friend to provide links to me to
document her assertion that Muslims in France are denied rights.)
Sayet's views are immediately applicable to what we see around us. Try it out.
I've heard acquaintances say that yes, our university professors are wildly liberal, but they aren't likely to actually persuade students to change parties or to vote differently. Some documentary evidence has appeared to show otherwise. From Michael Barone:
In 2004, the electorate that went to the polls or voted absentee was, according to the adjusted NEP exit poll, 37 percent Democratic and 37 percent Republican.
...At this stage of the campaign, pollsters try to screen their respondents and report only those who answer a series of questions in ways that suggest they are actually going to vote. Many polls find that a higher proportion of Democrats than Republicans pass the screen. Others find similar proportions do. But pollsters of both parties will admit that polls do a poor job at projecting turnout.
That was particularly true in 2004, when both parties conducted massive turnout drives. Democrats concentrated on black neighborhoods in central cities and on university towns, where they could be sure of getting 80 percent to 90 percent of the vote. They achieved their goals in just about every target state, with big turnouts in Cleveland and Madison, Wisc., in St. Louis and Gainesville, Fla. Nationally, John Kerry got 16 percent more popular votes than Al Gore had in 2000.
That seems pretty compelling - Dems were 37% nationally, but in university towns, votes were 80% - 90% for Dems.
Teens in the Lincoln Park school district in Michigan are now intentionally daring their schools to expel them for wearing patriotic clothes:
Ben Lewandowski says he was only trying to be patriotic when he wore a homemade T-shirt featuring an American flag bumper sticker and the words "Remember 9/11" to Lincoln Park High School on Monday.
After all, it was Sept. 11 -- five years after the terrorist attacks.
The 17-year-old Lincoln Park resident put the shirt on Monday morning and headed to school -- where he was quickly sent to the office and suspended for three days for violating the school's dress code.
He was one of at least seven students sent home for wearing shirts featuring patriotic images and messages. It comes less than a week after three siblings were suspended for wearing shirts emblazoned with the First Amendment, despite warnings, and a week after more than 200 students were sent home on the first day of school for violating the district's dress code -- which bans apparel with writing or pictures.
This is what happens when Liberal schools attack patriotism - it makes patriotism hip. When it takes courage, in this country, for a student to express his or her love of America, then you know that the school has lost sight of what America is all about.
Other Detroit school districts have a dress code similar to that of Lincoln Park, but permit patriotic clothing:
Southfield's school district implemented a dress code last year similar to those enacted in Detroit and Pontiac this year. Southfield Schools Deputy Superintendent Ken Siver said Tuesday that the district didn't have any problems Monday with students violating the policy to wear patriotic garb.
Amazingly, this is a rare case in which the ACLU is weighing in on the Conservative side of an issue:
This, according to the ACLU of Michigan, may violate the students' rights, particularly because it allows students to wear clothing that encourages school spirit but bans other forms of expression. ACLU officials have said that they plan to look into the constitutionality of the dress code.
My review of the Darwin chapters in Ann Coulter's new book is getting a lot of pageviews. At the moment, a Google search for "Ann Coulter Darwin" lists this site as the second entry.
And the comments posted with the review are fascinating. Here's one, from Doc Duke:
I received my Bachelor and PhD degrees from MIT and Princeton, respectively, and am familiar with these arguments, having read the sources some years ago. Ann has done her readers a great service by presenting succinct, humorous, well-documented prose for her readers, of which there are happily very many. I agree with her, and think you have well summarized her arguments (and those in her cited literature), Vik.
I have two children in a public High School, and spend a considerable amount of time evenings and weekends making sure (1) that they know the other side if I don't trust what they are being taught, and (2) ensuring that they know to keep their mouths shut so that this knowledge does not have a negative impact on their grade-point averages.
You will seldom hear from (employed) scientists on this subject, because they to not wish to follow, even in a small way, the path of Natan Sharansky in Russia. Consult his "The Case for Democracy" to see where we could be headed without effective voices such as yours, Vik.
Doc, thanks very much for the good words.
What I can't get over is that not only does Doc have to check what his kids are being taught and personally give them the alternative view when necessary -- since the schools aren't doing so -- but he also has to tell them not to let on at school, that this is happening. This looks to me as though free expression at school is not only not permitted, it's actually being punished. There's the state-approved view of things, and discussing of alternative views is punished. Even thinking about alternative views is dangerous if discovered. This is showing some of the characteristics of a state that lacks freedom of speech.
This exposes why the current judicial reading of the Constitution, as forbidding the government from showing support for the Judeo-Christian tradition, is dangerously wrong. That judicial reading imposes a preposterous state-approved view of things in which it is forbidden to say anything favorable about any religion in our own schools. This, in a nation that was founded on the principals of freedom of speech and expression!
Michael J. Gaynor provides detail on why this judicial reading is wrong:
Did the United States Constitution really require complete separation of church and state, prevent the United States government from acknowledging God and supporting religion generally, and compel the United States government and state governments to be strictly neutral as between religion and "irreligion"?
The answer is no.
The contrary claims are secular extremist myths that need to be exposed.
In 1947, in Everson v. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court disregarded history and misconstrued the Constitution at the urging of the secular extremist minority and the expense of the overhwehelming religious majority in ruling that neither federal nor state governments "can pass laws which aid all religions."
In so ruling, the Court presumptuously substituted its personal view for the views of those who founded the United States, wrote and ratified the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, and adopted the First Amendment and misued a much-quoted letter in which Thomas Jefferson had described the First Amendment as "building a wall of separation between church and state."
The First Amendment did not create a wall between church and state. It prohibited Congress from making a law "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
The kind of separation that was intended is suggested by Pierre L'Enfant's plan for a national cathedral. In 1791, Congress selected the site to be the capital of the United States. George Washington, previously President of the Constitutional Convention and then President of the United States, then commissioned L'Enfant to design an overall plan for the future seat of government. That plan included a church "intended for national purposes, such as public prayer, thanksgiving, funeral orations, etc., and assigned to the special use of no particular Sect of denomination, but equally open to all." The Founders and Framers favored governmental neutrality among denominations, but they never expected government to be barred from supporting religion generally to please a tiny Godless minority.
The judicial reading is wrong and is corroding free speech in America.
As you may have heard, Ann Coulter's new book, Godless, rejects Darwinism. When I first found out about this from an early review of the book, I fully expected this to prove an embarrassment to Ann. Even as I read the book, as I began those chapters (chapters 8 - 10), I expected them to be specious.
But in the storm of criticism of the book so far, there has not yet been one word from the scientific community, objecting to Ann's views (at least that I have seen). How is this possible?
The astonishing answer is that Coulter has founded all of her views on the published work of prominent scientific experts, and presented them in a very compelling and persuasive manner. In short, it appears possible that she may be right.
She begins by discussing the Darwinian assumption that the intricate structures of an organism evolved gradually, via one random mutation at a time:
[Lehigh University biochemist Michael] Behe produced various "irreducibly complex" mechanisms, of which there are thousand -- complex cellular structures, blood-clotting mechanisms, and the eye, among others. A bacterial motor, called a flagellum, depends on the coordinated interaction of 30-40 complex protein parts. The absence of almost any one of the parts would render the flagellum useless. An animal cell's whiplike oar, called a cilium, is composed of about 200 protein parts. Behe compared these cell parts to a simple mousetrap, with far fewer necessary components than a cilium or flagellum. Though there are only a few parts to a mousetrap, all of them have to be working together at one time for the contraption to serve any function whatsoever. If one of the parts i s missing, Behe says, you don't get a mousetrap that catches only half as many mice: you don't get a mousetrap at all. Behe then demonstrated that it is a mathematical impossibility for all 30 pats of the flagellum (or 200 parts of the cilium) to have been brought together by the "numerous, successive, slight modifications" of natural selection. Life at the molecular level, he concluded, "is a loud, clear piercing cry of design."
Coulter goes through the responses from the scientific community to Behe's work, and notes that while many said that "more research is needed," no one even attempted to disprove it.
The evolutionist's answer is Assume that each one of the hundreds of mutations necessary to create the final product is itself "fit" in ways we don't understand but must accept on faith because it's Holy Scripture.
...Evolutionists believe -- purely as a matter of faith -- that individual, unrelated mutations facilitated the production of all 200 necessary parts, completely by chance, and thus created the flagellum. And then they tell us they want to keep "faith" out of the classroom. Okay.
Coulter then details something I did not know about -- and I suspect most of those reading this did not either -- namely that there is no evidence in the fossil record to support the theory of the slow transformation of species into other species. Such evidence would be expected based on Darwin's classic work, "The Origin of Species."
It was a nice yarn Darwin had spun, but there was absolutely nothing in the fossil record to support it. Far from showing gradual change with one species slowly giving way to another, as Darwin hypothesized, the fossil record showed vast numbers of new species suddenly appearing out of nowhere, remaining largely unchanged for millions of years, and then disappearing (almost like there was a big flood or something.)
Coulter quotes David Raup, a geologist at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, who wrote in 1979:
[W]e are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of he fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information -- what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic.
Coulter comments:
Darwin's disciples simply assert that evolution led from this species to that by the process of random mutation -- with cruel nature striking down th genetic losers -- and to hell with the fossil record's showing nothing of the sort. At some point, it's not even pseudo-science anymore, it's just a crazy religious cult.
Coulter provides a massive amount of facts, examples, and evidence along these lines.
I've got a lifelong interest in the advances of science, and a couple of Master's Degrees (although neither is in science), and I'd never heard about this in my life. Coulter gives many examples of why this might be. Schools which attempt to discuss these facts in class are sued by the ACLU; scholars who attempt to publish on these items have been fired.
At this point, I can only consider this mind-blowing. It's too far-reaching for me even to feel comfortable stating at this instant that I am convinced Coulter is right (although I'm mighty close being convinced.) I have to hear the response from the scientific community.
Which makes the silence to date from that community, deafening.
Can it possibly be, that we are in the exact same state as our ancestors, who condemned Galileo for saying the Earth traveled around the sun? Can we be as ignorant as they were, punishing anyone who disagrees with an official view of the world which is without basis in fact?
We know that we as humans can find "the unknown" to be frightening; can it possibly be that we are still so far from understanding enough about how we can have come into existence on this earth, that we must use lawsuits and firings to prevent people from discussing that lack of understanding, out of an inability to face that (irrational) fear?
Update: See this follow-up post, Follow-Up on Ann Coulter and Darwin: Scientists Admit There is No Proof of Darwin.
I saw a TV ad last night for gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, in which he claimed that education is underfunded. (Here's a link to an article quoting him saying the same thing.) Let me explain what blatant nonsense it is for him to say that.
LAUSD (the Los Angeles Unified School District) has over 710,000 students, and an annual budget that was $13.4 billion -- that's billion with a "b" -- in 2004. This translates into well over $18,000 -- per student -- per year!
When an answer was demanded, from School Board Member Julie Korenstein, as to why this astonishing amount was being spent per student per year by the LAUSD, she claimed that $11,000 per student was being spent on new school buildings. $11,000 per student is $7.8 billion. Evidently she's claiming that $7.8 billion per year is being spent each and every year on new school buildings -- because by law the LAUSD budget can never go down from one year to the next!
Angelides is working a scam. He wants the support of the Teacher's Union and he's bribing them with a promise of more money. There's no shortfall in education funding. There is a massive, absurd, overbudgeting in education funding. Clark Baker has observed that with a system of vouchers, schools would be able to chase that $18,000 per student by offering better service; Baker suggests that if vouchers were only $9,000 per student, a school with a mere 100 students would have a more-than-adequate budget of $900,000 per year.
A similar system is being used successfully in San Francisco right now.
I'd like to see an accounting of where that $18,000 per student per year is going, because I doubt that it is going to educating the kids. There appears to be a giant ripoff of the people of Los Angeles going on, on the part of the LAUSD.
Last night I attended the premiere in Los Angeles of a new documentary film by StandWithUs, called Tolerating Intolerance: Hate Speech on Campus.
What this film documents is astonishing to those of us who are not currently on campus. Today at many universities it is common for invited guests to give speeches in which they rage, in guttural, hate-filled tones, against "Jews" and "Zionist Jews," and call for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Note that the state of Israel cannot be destroyed without killing and/or driving out all the Jewish people who live there. Note also that no one calls for the destruction of any other state. It is therefore perfectly evident that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel are identical to anti-Semitism -- in other words, hate speech.
It is all but incomprehensible that such speech is tolerated on campus.
Roz Rothstein, national director of StandWithUs and director of the film, at one point in the film interviews Manuel A. Gomez, Vice Chancellor for student affairs at the University of California, Irvine. Chancellor Gomez himself describes the speech in question as "abhorrent," but states that as free speech it is protected. Rothstein then offers him the opportunity to use his own right to free speech, and to speak publicly, and/or encourage the university faculty to speak publicly, stating that the speech in question is abhorrent.
Amazingly, not only do the universities at which such speeches occur tolerate it, they do not publicly distance themselves from it in any way.
Not only that, the film provides footage documenting that speakers who come to campus to speak in favor of Israel, are often shouted down, and even prevented from speaking entirely, by those who oppose them.
By this policy universities support a system in which free speech is only available to those who deny it to others.
Roz Rothstein, Director Of The Film, And National Director Of StandWithUs (Right), Introducing Students Who Appear In The Film. Click For A Larger Image. Note: This photo is merged from two smaller photos.
UCLA Professor Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl, appeared and received a standing ovation.
In his remarks, Professor Pearl stated:
I found students being exposed to a racist orgy.
If there are any college administrators here, they will not like to see their college's names listed in the film as someone who invited [racist agitator] Malik Ali.
He called for the public to observe that speech advocating the destruction of Israel is identical to anti-Semitism, and called for exposure to the world of the toleration of this sort of speech on campus.
Pro-Israel, pro-peace speaker Nonie Darwish, of Arabs for Israel, also spoke. I've described her in this previous post as "a firecracker." Her speech last night again merited that description.
Arab American Nonie Darwish.
A few excerpts from her remarks:
This kind of speech reminds me of the hate speech I grew up with in Gaza. It should never be tolerated.
When I grew up there was never suicide bombing. But generations of hate speech led to it. It should never be tolerated in any civilized country.
She earned a standing ovation as well.
Contact StandWithUs to arrange to show the documentary to friends or associates.
STUDENT GETS F GRADE FOR MENTIONING GOD:
The mother of four from Apple Valley, Calif., [Bethany Hauf] is now demanding an apology from the school, as well as a regrading of her 10-page report.
“I don’t lose my First Amendment rights when I walk into that college,” she said.
...”I have one limiting factor – no mention of big ‘G’ gods, i.e., one, true god argumentation,” [Professor] Shefchik stated.
...Judy Solis, chair of the English department, says Hauf was given three options: submit the report with God included, make revisions and edit out the G-word, or rewrite the entire report.
“She continued to write her paper,” Solis told the Press. “She knew what the consequences were.”
Bethany has contacted, and is being support by, an organization called the American Center for Law & Justice.
...”Bethany’s paper discusses some of the evidences supporting a hypothesis that, while the Constitution prohibits an established church, religion was essential to the founding of the Nation and to its governance thereafter,” [Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the ACLJ] writes.
It sounds like a great paper.
From RockyMountainNews.com—‘The Water Plot’ thickens:
Nearly two decades after Dam the Dams released its pamphlet outlining the ill-fated plan, he republished virtually the same work, eventually claiming it as his own.
Dam the Dams published The Water Plot in 1972. In 1989, Churchill published a version of The Water Plot with the same structure, language and information found in the original. He credited that piece to Dam the Dams and his own research organization, Institute for Natural Progress.
In 1991, Churchill took sole credit for another version of The Water Plot that was largely identical to the 1989 version. In 2002, he published a third version of the essay under his own name.
Churchill declined to comment on why he took credit for work done by members of Dam the Dams.
From Cathy’s World:
If someone can get me an image of “West Wing” producer Laurence O’Donnell’s forehead veins popping as he screams at me on Dennis Miller this evening, I’d love to use it as an illustration tomorrow. I’d heard something about his reputation as a Boston Brahmin/faux populist asshole, but really, what an amazing meltdown this was, brought on by bascially nothing. I mean, I’m not exactly Swift Boat veteran John O’Neill, whom O’Donnell famously called “a filthy liar!!” on Scarborough Country before the election.
I’m curious to see how it looks on TV. Sitting there on the Varsity, what I noticed was that O’Donnell actually puffed out his chest, stuck out his manly jaw and sat up extremely straight as he started yelling—I suppose so I could get the full effect of just how much taller he is than me. And how about that “I’m a Lumberjack, and I’m OK” outfit he had on? Maybe O’Donnell was on edge from Dennis looking at him just before the cameras rolled and remarking: “What, are you dating Rock Hudson now?”
I’m happy to provide the requested photos, Cathy. Here they are.
O’Donnell had said that every public school teacher he’d met had been great and Cathy said he was delusional. O’Donnell then railed rudely at her, in a loud angry voice, that every public school teacher he’d ever encountered in his entire life had been fantastic. Clearly he wanted to debate by volume rather than by persuasion.
REPORT: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD.
Affirmative action produces no concrete benefits for minority students and actually has several harmful effects, according to a new report by the Cato Institute.
“Recent research shows that college admissions preferences do not offer even the practical benefits claimed by their supporters,” writes Marie Gryphon, a lawyer and policy analyst with the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.
Story Continues Below
...But preferences at these selective schools have not increased college access for minorities because most minorities leave high school without the minimum credentials necessary to attend any four-year school.
Political scientist Jay Green found that only 20 percent of African-American students and 16 percent of Hispanics leave high school with the minimum credentials.
“Minority underrepresentation in college is caused by public schools’ failure to prepare minority students,” writes Gryphon. “It is a failure that affirmative action does not remedy.”
Well, I don’t think the schools are entirely to blame. I think the parents of those kids—even when there’s just one single parent—need to inspire their kids to work hard and succeed.
It would be great if more leaders in the Black community, instead of celebrating thug life, would celebrate hard work and success. Where are the Black leaders who will do that? Where’s today’s Martin Luther King?
As I noted previously, the AUT, which is the leading British lecturer’s union, has approved a policy of boycotting Israeli universities. This blatant policy of intellectual repression has led to a revolt on the part of British academics. From Melanie Phillips:
The revolt against the Anglosphere’s jihad
Academics appalled at the AUT’s boycott of Israeli universities have hit upon an elegant and appropriate way to protest at this infamy. They are asking the AUT to add their names to those to be boycotted as a roll of honour. Thus Emanuele Ottolenghi of St Antony’s College, Oxford has sent a message to the AUT thus:
‘Regarding the AUT recent decision to boycott Haifa University and Bar Ilan University in Israel, I am shocked to learn that, in addition to a call for boycott, the AUT is ready to offer a waiver to scholars on condition that they publicly state their willingness to conform to the political orthodoxy espoused by the academics who sponsored your motion.
‘Oaths of political loyalty do not belong to academia. They belong to illiberal minds and repressive regimes. Based on this, the AUT’s definition of academic freedom is the freedom to agree with its views only. Given the circumstances, I wish to express in no uncertain terms my unconditional and undivided solidarity with both universities and their faculties. I know many people, both at Haifa University and at Bar Ilan University, of different political persuasion and from different walks of life. The diversity of those faculties reflects the authentic spirit of academia. The AUT invitation to boycott them betrays that spirit because it advocates a uniformity of views, under pain of boycott.
‘In solidarity with my colleagues and as a symbolic gesture to defend the spirit of a free academia, I wish to be added to the boycott blacklist. Please include me. I hope that other colleagues of all political persuasions will join me.’
This not only avoids the obvious ethical drawbacks of a counter-boycott, but if enough academics join in making such a request—particularly those with international reputations—this can seriously discommode the boycotters, along with exposing them to widening opprobrium and ridicule and creating a coalition of principled revulsion. Brilliant.
(Hat Tip to Georgette Gelbard.)
Religious oppression in Saudi Arabia is off the charts:
Before boarding his flight to Crawford to meet with President Bush Monday, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah presided over the arrest of 40 Pakistani Christians on Friday. Their crime? The Pakistanis were caught praying in a private home in the capital Riyadh in violation of the state’s strictly enforced religious law that bans all non-Muslim worship.
As the State Department has determined, there is no religious freedom in Saudi Arabia and everyone there, Muslim or not, must obey the rules of the extreme sharia of the kingdom’s established religion, the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. The Saudi state indoctrinates its nationals from an early age in the Wahhabi ideology of zero tolerance for the “other.” Government textbooks and publications teach that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and warn against imitating, befriending, or helping them in any way, or taking part in their festivities and celebrations. The state teaches a Nazi-like hatred for Jews, treats the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact, and avows that the Muslim’s duty is to eliminate the state of Israel.
Even other Muslims are viciously oppressed in Saudi Arabia:
For example, Muslims who follow the Sufi and Shiite traditions are viewed as heretical dissidents and viciously condemned and discriminated against by the state. Regarding those who convert out of Islam, the Saudi ministry of Islamic affairs explicitly asserts in publications Freedom House has acquired, they “should be killed.”
Which really makes you wonder about these boneheads at the leading British lecturer’s union, the AUT:
Israeli academics who refuse to condemn their government’s actions in the occupied territories risk a boycott by the UK’s leading lecturers’ union.
The Association of University Teachers’ annual council, which begins on April 20 in Eastbourne, will also debate whether to boycott three of Israel’s eight universities – Haifa University, Bar Ilan University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem – over their alleged complicity with the government’s policies on the Palestinian territories. The union voted against an academic boycott policy two years ago, but campaigners believe the motions are more likely to be passed this year.
The new boycott motion contains a clause to exclude “conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state’s colonial and racist policies”.
By opposing intellectual freedom and freedom of speech, and by supporting the very Islamofascists who want to oppress them, those morons at the AUT show that they don’t care about anything except backing whoever they think has the most power. They are intellectually bankrupt.
