Overturn The FCC’s Power Grab.

ROBERT MCDOWELL: Overturn The FCC’s Power Grab.

Thursday marked the largest government intervention into the Internet ecosphere in American history. By equating the dynamic 21st century Internet to the telephone system of 1934, the Federal Communications Commission has thrust powerful but antiquated utility-style regulations onto the U.S. tech economy. . . .

The FCC’s power grab discards the bipartisan light-touch regulatory framework laid out during the Clinton administration. That hands-off approach made the Net the greatest deregulatory success story of all time.

History teaches us that utility-style regulation raises costs to consumers, reduces investment and innovation, and creates uncertainty due to the politics-driven nature of “mother may I innovate” government mandates. Regulation only grows. Now the Internet cannot escape that fate.

The ultimate result of more government encroachment will be something akin to the sagging European Internet market, where investment in broadband infrastructure is only one-fourth of America’s due to heavy-handed regulations. Even worse, this new power grab could trigger expanded intergovernmental powers over the Web through existing telecom treaties, jeopardizing Internet freedom.

What many in Silicon Valley don’t understand is that, according to the Supreme Court’s 2005 Brand X decision, nearly any “tech” company that builds a telecom-style network to deliver its content and apps has the potential to be captured by the FCC’s new rules. If the agency tries to exempt some companies but not others, it will be choosing the politically favored over everyone else.

Well, that’s the whole point of this exercise, one suspects. I mean, isn’t it always?

Comrades for Net Neutrality

Comrades for Net Neutrality

The powers behind the FCC’s muscling of the Internet

By John Fund — February 26, 2015

Today’s vote by a bitterly divided Federal Communications Commission that the Internet should be regulated as a public utility is the culmination of a decade-long battle by the Left. Using money from George Soros and liberal foundations that totaled at least $196 million, radical activists finally succeeded in ramming through “net neutrality,” or the idea that all data should be transmitted equally over the Internet. The final push involved unprecedented political pressure exerted by the Obama White House on FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, head of an ostensibly independent regulatory body.

“Net neutrality’s goal is to empower the federal government to ration and apportion Internet bandwidth as it sees fit, and to thereby control the Internet’s content,” says Phil Kerpen, an anti-net-neutrality activist from the group American Commitment.
The courts have previously ruled the FCC’s efforts to impose “net neutrality” out of bounds, so the battle isn’t over. But for now, the FCC has granted itself enormous power to micromanage the largely unrestrained Internet.
Back in the 1990s, the Clinton administration teamed up with Internet pioneers to promote a hands-off approach to the new industry and keep it free from discriminatory taxation. Many still prefer that policy. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab and the charity One Laptop Per Child, says that net neutrality “doesn’t make sense” because “the truth is, not all bits [of data] are created equal.”
Will Marshall, head of the Progressive Policy Institute (which was once a favorite think tank of Clinton Democrats), issued a statement that net neutrality “endorses a backward-looking policy that would apply the brakes to the most dynamic sector of America’s economy.”
But such voices have been drowned out by left-wing activists who want to manage the Internet to achieve their political objectives. The most influential of these congregate around the deceptively named Free Press, a liberal lobby co-founded in 2002 by Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor.
His goals have always been clear. “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies,” he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. “But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.” Earlier in 2000, he told the Marxist magazine Monthly Review: “Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.” When I interviewed him in 2010, he admitted he is a socialist and said he was “hesitant to say I’m not a Marxist.”
In essence, what McChesney and his followers want is an Unfree Press — a media world that promotes their values. “To cast things in neo-Marxist terms that they could appreciate, they want to take control of the information means of production,” says Adam Therier of the blog TechLiberation.
Certainly McChesney seems blind to the dangers of media control on the left. In 2007, he co-authored a remarkable survey of the media under Hugo Chávez’s already clearly thuggish regime in Venezuela: “Aggressive, unqualified political dissent is alive and well in the Venezuelan mainstream media, in a manner few other democratic nations have ever known, including our own.”
Despite his astonishingly radical goals, McChesney’s Free Press group was able to leverage foundation cash and academic “research” into an influential force behind net neutrality. Julius Genachowski, President Obama’s first FCC chairman, hired Free Press’s Jen Howard as his press secretary. The FCC’s chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd, has co-authored a Free Press report demanding regulation of political talk radio. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan cited research from Free Press and other left-wing groups backing net neutrality more than 50 times.
The battle for control of the Internet isn’t over. Over two-thirds of the House and Senate are on record as opposing FCC regulation of the Internet, and a new president could change the policy overnight in 2017 even if the courts don’t block it.
But for now, the “media reform” movement led by McChesney and his allies can claim bragging rights for their Saul Alinsky–style outflanking maneuver on Internet regulation. They financed the research behind the idea, installed their political allies in power, got the government to consider them experts on the issues they cared deeply about, and finally ran roughshod over both Congress and an initially reluctant FCC chairman. Conservatives should study how the Left won on this issue even as they acknowledge and fight the illegitimacy of many of the results.
— John Fund is national-affairs correspondent for NRO.

Random Thoughts - GB

Glenn Beck

18 hrs · Facebook Mentions · 

So much to comment on tonight. While live long and prosper is on my mind today, LN (Leonard Nimoy)  did exactly that and I for one am glad he lived and shared his gift.

I wish the same could be said for yet another dead Russian patriot trying to warn his people about Putin and his real plan in the Ukraine. Boris Nemtsov was shot near the kremlin today. Shot four times. One for each child he left behind. We need to wake on this massive threat.

Lois Lerner's emails should send many people including her to jail, but it won't. 8-10 years from now America will begin to understand just how corrupt this administration really was. If we last that long.

How does Hillary Clinton sleep at night. Her Bengazi emails are now out and show she knew it had nothing to do with a film with in two minutes. It wasn't until she and the president spoke on the phone that night that she brought up the film. Corruption, lies and dead Americans. Shameful.

Glad to see people walk out of cpac with Jeb. How does the GOP expect to win with a third of the base turning their back?

Loved Laura Ingrahm today at cpac.

Funny how I spoke about progressive republicans and was never invited back. smile emoticon. Good job Laura!

The GOP doesn't have a clue. Thank God the HR stopped the funding for parts of DHS tonight. Illegal is illegal. Congress must stand up for equal power. Louis Gohmert gave a great speech today.

Still no one is talking about the Chicago Police Black site where they are Ghosting people. Huge story. Please find it and pass it on. ALL Americans need to be aware of the militarization of our police force.

Finally, pay attention to Benjamin Netenyahu's speech next week. The Administration does not want you to see or hear this. They are afraid of him going direct to the American people because they know he will connect.

I am convinced this could be a pivot point in history. Our president is Neville Chamberlain or worse and BB N is the closest we have to Winston Churchill.

If BBN does what I think he is capable of doing and people actually watch and listen to his speech the country may begin to reject the nonsense of middle eastern job creation schemes.

The caliphate is real and they believe they are the army to bring on Armageddon. We don't have to believe it, but we do have to understand they do. You cannot negotiate with people who are that psychotic. Russia is the other hand. The rise of fascism is real and spreading fast in Europe.

Pray for all those who are in danger tonight because of their faith, opinion, sexual preference or color. We are in this together.

United we stand.

From a snowy Dallas. Goodnight America.

Islam, the Religion of Slavery

The slow collapse of Dubai, a desert mirage built on oil money, human misery and the greed of Western businesses, reminds us once again of the fate of all slave economies in the end. But for all the skyscrapers in Dubai, the glittering avenues built by slave labor and the abundance of luxury American and European automobiles-- the story of Dubai and Saudi Arabia is very much an old story in a Muslim Middle East, of fat prosperous sheiks clutching their ill gotten gains to themselves and ruling over harems and companies of slaves, until the end comes.

Like Muslim Brotherhood derived terrorists using the latest Web 2.0 social media as part of a quest to drive humanity back into the dark ages, the Gulf States are a very old story with the external gilt and glitz of modernity. While the Muslim world may employ the tools and utilities of the 21st century, even mimic its terminology, it has never left its own dark ages... and its dominant religious and social movements are all geared toward making sure that it never does.
And while above the skyscrapers gleam in Dubai's night sky, below are the armies of foreign workers, some prosperous Western Dhimmis driving luxury cars who come to do all the higher labor that the native Emiratis lack the ability or will to do, and outnumbering them are the labor gangs of Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern workers who erect the edifices designed by Western architects to fool Western investors into believing that the backward totalitarian sheikdom is actually a modern free republic.
As with any fairy tale, behind the glamour lies an ugly truth. A truth that goes back to the dates back to Mohammed. That stretches from slave caravans to slave ships. From England to America and through Turkey to Russia, the roots of slavery can be found in the Muslim slave trade.

The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth)... Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.
The Impact of the Slave Trade on Africa, Elikia M’bokolo

The silent genocide is little spoken of, because it is an inconvenient interruption of the modern liberal historical narrative in which industrialized European powers exploited the unfortunate peoples of what is now the Third World. But Muslim slavery was indeed a genocide, one that stretched on for a thousand years of horror, misery and cruelty. That helped lead into the European era of slavery as well... but what is often forgotten is that before Europeans were slaveholders, they along with Africans, were slaves of Islam.
Many centuries before European slave ships began raiding African coasts, Muslim slave ships were raiding European coasts and sending their armies deep into the heart of Europe. While it is European slavery that is best known, it is Muslim slavery that came long before it and lasted long after it into the present day. The guest workers who labor on Dubai's mirage of skyscrapers and luxuries die by the thousands with no civil or human rights, cheated out of wages, imprisoned at a whim and viewed as subhuman by their Emirati masters-- are the latest extension of a tradition of Muslim slavery stretching for over a millennium.
Without slavery it is likely that Islam would have never survived long enough to become the worldwide menace that it is today. Mohammed, himself a slaveowner, exploited slavery to gain power in two ways.
First, Mohammed attracted men to join his cause by allowing them to raid caravans and towns, seizing goods and carrying off men, women and children into slavery. The men would be sold to labor, the women would be raped and then perhaps taken as concubines or forcibly married, as Mohammed himself did on more than one occasion. The children would be raised in slavery.
By treating non-Muslims as subhuman property, Mohammed was able to create an important financial incentive for men to join him in his wars to conquer the region-- as well as demonstrating to those who refused to convert and join him just what would happen to them and their families if they refused to bow to him. By invalidating the marriages of captured women, Mohammed simultaneously legalizing both rape and adultery under the banner of Islam.
Back when Mohammed was essentially running a biker gang with a religion, his dehumanization of non-Muslims turned anyone who had not become a Muslim into human loot to satisfy their greed and appetites. Had Mohammed not done this, he would have ended up as nothing more than another nomad cultist with delusions of grandeur. But by trading in human chattel, his religion gained "followers" who wanted loot and slaves, more than they wanted "Allah".
Second, Mohammed promised freedom to slaves who came to join him. This allowed him to expand the ranks of his followers further, while posturing as morally being opposed to slavery. This cynical maneuver in which Mohammed and his followers turned non-Muslims into slavery, yet promised freedom to slaves who agreed to become Muslims is often cited by Muslims who are looking to promote Mohammed as being opposed to slavery.
In fact Mohammed very much favored slavery, he simply understood that turning his army into a magnet for escaped slaves whom he could transform into free men through his omnipotent religious impramptur, would swell his ranks and diminish those of his enemies. Mohammed himself owned slaves, and raped and abused them. And today slavery remains far more widespread in the Muslim world, while it has become extinct in Christian and Jewish countries.

Of all these slave routes, the "slave trade" in its purest form, i.e. the European Atlantic trade, attracts most attention and gives rise to most debate. The Atlantic trade is the least poorly documented to date, but this is not the only reason. More significantly, it was directed at Africans only, whereas the Muslim countries enslaved both Blacks and Whites.
The Impact of the Slave Trade on Africa, Elikia M’bokolo

While the European slavery was more labor oriented, with racial justifications used to maintain a slave economy-- Muslim slavery has traditionally been more luxury oriented. The Europeans may have seen slavery as a convenient means of production, Muslims traditionally saw slaves as a luxury in and of themselves. That is why slavery in the European world was more limited to developing economies with a labor shortage and high transportation costs such as the Americas, while in the Muslim world it is traditionally the most prosperous countries with a surplus of the wealthy who collected the most slaves.
The Zanj Rebellion in 9th century Iraq in which half a million slaves rebelled against the Muslim Empire of the Abbasid Caliphate virtually prefigures the state of affairs in present day Dubai and Saudi Arabia. And indeed Dubai and Saudi Arabia may well face the same if enough of their abused workers ever turn a riot into an outright uprising, that will likely have to be crushed with borrowed US troops acting on behalf of the Saudis and Emiratis.
Unlike European slavery where the number of slaves related to production, Muslim slavery places no limits on slavery because it is as much a luxury as a means of production. That is also why slavery became extinct in European colonies, as much on economic as on moral grounds, but can never go extinct in the Muslim world, because the moral grounds and personal example for the maintenance of slavery was provided by Mohammed himself, and Muslim slavery is not rooted exclusively in the rationale of production, but in the sense of Muslim superiority.
Slavery may be odious in the free world, but the Muslim world is by no means free. And the social nature of an un-free world is a world of masters and slaves. In a society of masters and slaves, the best way to demonstrate your freedom is by owning slaves.
While the prosperous citizens of a free nation demonstrate their accomplishment through hard work, in a master-slave society the prosperous demonstrate their prosperity through public laziness and self-indulgence. In a master-slave society, freedom means the freedom to do nothing, the freedom to have a slave do it for you instead. And that is Dubai, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in a nutshell... in which foreign workers make up much of the population and do everything. A Briton to manage your investments, an American to pump your oil, a Filipino maid for your second wife to boss around, a Ukranian to include in your harem and a Thai to work at your construction site. That is a Muslim's idea of paradise and the dream of Dubai. It is the mindset behind Muslim slavery and it is why Muslim slavery continues into the present day.
One cannot reform Islam, without first reforming Muslims. Yet where does one begin reforming the culture of slavery, the ethos of the master and slave that is so deeply embedded into Islam that it in fact is Islam? Muslims describe themselves as the Slaves of Allah, because that is the deepest form of loyalty they can imagine.
Islam is the Master-Slave dynamic of the Middle East writ large into a religion, with Muslims viewing themselves as the slaves of Allah, and everyone else as their slaves. Within Islam, the higher status Saudis who style themselves the keepers of Mecca and the birthplace of Mohammed, feel free to enslave other Arab Muslims. Arab Muslims in turn enslave African and Asian Muslims, whom they consider racially inferior. And these in turn move to Europe where they view Europeans and other resident non-Muslims as inferior to them, as slaves.
Islam in short is nothing more than slavery in religious form, relying on the sort of crude punishments you would dispense to a slave, and the sort of crude rewards you would offer to a slave-- namely the chance to enslave and abuse others, and sample forbidden luxuries. Islam is a religion of slavery for a religion of slaves.
It is no wonder then that the modern day Jihad in built on slavery, funded by the royal families of the Gulf States, using the oil revenues produced by the oil pumps that they would never sully their own fat fingers with, with the aim of destroying and enslaving the civilized world that stands between them and world power. The Wahhabi mosques rising up across the world, their minarets and crescents, are the banners of a worldwide call to slavery. For mankind to fall to its knees and bow toward Saudi Arabia, to the Masters of Mecca, the paymasters of Al Queda and a thousand other Muslim terrorist groups around the world all clamoring for their own states and territories as part of a new Muslim Empire.
The question is will we dare to resist them?

The Secular Religion of the Left

For most of human history, men and women have derived their moral dimension of life from the family and religion. Both of those are now dead or dying in the West under the influence of its new moral and ethical system. That system is one that we know in its various forms as the left.
The left can be summed up as moral materialism. It is a secular religion that claims to add a moral dimension to materialism. Its obsessions are largely economic, from its early class warfare focus to its modern environmentalism. Even its racial politics code class warfare by skin color.
Kill off religion and what do you have left? The answer can be seen in China. You're left with materialism and family interests.. Cast off the shackles of the family for individualistic consumerism and you're left with nothing except materialism as can be seen in any major Western city.
Modern urban man is much too "smart" for religion. At least his own. He wants to add an ethical dimension to life without having to believe in anything except the sense of fairness that he already has, but which he does not realize is not nearly as valid objectively as it is subjectively in his inner emotional reality.
And that is what the left is. It strips away everything except that egotistical sense that things should be run more fairly with predictably unfair results.
Liberalism, and the milder flavors of the left, provide a permission slip for materialism by elevating it through political activism. This is the philosophical purpose of environmentalism's green label. It tells you that you are a good person for buying something and soothes the moral anxieties of an urban class with no coherent moral system except the need to impose an ethical order on the consumerism that defined their childhood, their adolescence and their adult life.
Those most in need of the moral system of materialism are the descendants of the displaced, whether by immigration to the United States or migration within the United States from rural to urban areas, who have become detached from a large extended family structure that once sustained them.
Their grandparents had already loosened their grip on religion and as the family disintegrated, materialism took its place. Their grandparents worked hard to provide for their children, but the children no longer saw maintaining the family as a moral activity. Sometimes they didn't even bother with a family. They became lonely individuals looking for a collective. A virtual political family.
Liberalism fills the missing space once inhabited by religion and the family. It provides a moral and ethical system as religion did and the accompanying sense of purpose and its state institutions replace and supplant the family. It does both of these things destructively and badly as its institutions forever try to patch social problems created by the disintegration of the family and its ideas provide too few people with a sense of purpose of a meaningful life.
And yet it isn't entirely to blame for this state of affairs. The left has actively tried to destroy the family and religion, but the American liberal was until recently less guilty on both charges. His main crime was collaborating with the left while refusing to acknowledge its destructive aims. The process by which the displacement of liberal ideas and their replacement by the ideas of the far left is nearly complete. The American liberal is now an aging relic. In his place is the resentful radical.
The process that led to this state of affairs isn't the left's fault either. Even if it's not for lack of trying. In some ways the left isn't the problem, it's a symptom of the problem. Its ability to fundamentally transform people is limited. The transformation that has occurred is because of the choices that people have been led into making trading religion and family for a dead end materialism. Those choices evolved organically from the natural direction of society and technology.
And into that empty space, the left came. It dominates because there is nothing else to fill that space. It can only be truly resisted by cultural groups that have maintained hold of family and religion. Without that sense of purpose, there is only the endless baffled retreat of the Republican Party.

Liberalism appeals more to the middle class and the upper class because it is a religion of materialism. It makes very little sense to those who don't have material things. The underclass might embrace the harsher populism of the left, but shows little interest in its larger collectivist philosophy. The underclass is losing family and religion at a faster rate than the upper class, but it clings to what it has and finds meaning in it. It may be nakedly materialistic, but it doesn't believe that it is too smart for religion or too individualistic for family. It has many flaws, but arrogance isn't one of them.
Ennobling consumerism is a difficult task. The left doesn't come anywhere close to succeeding at it. Instead it makes it more expensive and raises the entry barriers for everything by working to eliminate cheap food, cheap household goods and cheap everything. It's a class issue.
Why does the left really hate Walmart? It doesn't really have a lot to do with unions and has a lot to do with class. Walmart's crime is industrial. It's the crime of the factory and the supermarket and every means of mass production and consumption. It makes cheap products too readily available to the masses. Liberals like to believe that they oppose consumerism, but what they really want to do is raise the entry levels to the lifestyle. Liberal consumerism is all about upselling ethics.
When tangible goods become too easy to produce, you add value through intangibles. The fair trade food tastes the same as non-fair trade food. Organic, a category with a debatable meaning, doesn't really provide that much more value. And environmental labels are worth very little. And yet the average product at Whole Foods is covered in so many "ethical liberal" labels that it's hard to figure out what it even is.
Intangible value is all about class. And class is all about creating barriers to entry.
Liberalism has become a revolt against the middle class that its grandparents struggled to reach, a rejection of their "materialism" while substituting the "ethical materialism" of liberalism in its place that envisions a much smaller upper and middle class that derives its wealth and power not from hard work in the private sector, but highly profitable social justice volunteerism in the public sector.
An American Dream of universal prosperity has been pitted against the left's dream of a benevolent feudal system in which the few will be very well paid to oversee the income equality of the many.
The left's private argument against the American Dream is that it's little more than Walmart. And to some degree they're right. Easy availability of the necessities of life does not lead to a meaningful life. But the easy contempt that the left has for it shows its basic inability to understand how important these things are and how hard they were to come by for most of human history.
Salt was once a precious commodity. Today it sells for pennies a pound. The ability to light the darkness meant the difference between studying at night and living in ignorance. Today a light bulb goes for a quarter. At least it did until the left banned them. And electricity, the left also keeps raising the price of that. Few of the post-apocalyptic fantasies spilling out of Hollywood really describe what would happen if the people manufacturing them were thrown back before the industrial revolution..
Progress has made a good life materially possible, but it has also displaced and damaged the social mechanisms that make a good life socially possible. We have easy access to technology and streets full of vicious illiterate thugs. We can discuss anything with anyone, but we live in a society that values few things worth discussing. We have mass production, but not mass character.
For all its feigned populism, such elitist critiques of society are not foreign to the left. The left's elitist critiques differ in some regards, but they are on the same basic wavelength as those of the social conservative. And its solution is to promote what it considers social progress by reversing or slowing down industrial, commercial and technological progress. The environmental movement is only the latest ideological incarnation of this philosophy which strives to slow down the rate of progress.
The left's social collectivism however is no replacement for what is being lost. What it really does is attempt to apply industrial and commercial strategies to human relationships. Not only is it not a challenge to a consumeristic society, but it attempts to worsen the damage by rebuilding society on the model of the factory and the department store as an impersonal system.
That's not a solution to the problem. It is the problem.
The left cannot escape its own materialism. Its attempts at adding an ethical dimension to materialism fail because its ethical dimension is still materialistic. Its pathetic efforts at injecting pastiches of Third World and minority spirituality into its politics to provide the illusion of a spiritual dimension are hollow and racist. The left cannot fill its own hole, because it is the hole.
Like Islam, it provides something for people to believe in, but the thing it provides is the compulsion to find meaning by forcibly remaking other people's lives in a perpetual revolution which becomes its own purpose.
The left can't replace family or religion. Its social solutions are alien and artificial. They fix nothing and damage everything. Their appeal is to those who are arrogant and starved for meaning, who want religion without religion and family without family only to discover that they are not enough.

King Barack vs Netanyahu

In Israel’s hour of need

Friday, February 27th, 2015

It is hard to get your arms around the stubborn determination of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. For most of the nine years he has served as Israel’s leader, first from 1996 to 1999 and now since 2009, Netanyahu shied away from confrontations or buckled under pressure. He signed deals with the Palestinians he knew the Palestinians would never uphold in the hopes of winning the support of hostile US administrations and a fair shake from the pathologically hateful Israeli media.

In recent years he released terrorist murderers from prison. He abrogated Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. He agreed to support the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. He agreed to keep giving the Palestinians of Gaza free electricity while they waged war against Israel. He did all of these things in a bid to accommodate US President Barack Obama and win over the media, while keeping the leftist parties in his coalitions happy.

For his part, for the past six years Obama has undermined Israel’s national security. He has publicly humiliated Netanyahu repeatedly.

He has delegitimized Israel’s very existence, embracing the jihadist lie that Israel’s existence is the product of post-Holocaust European guilt rather than 4,000 years of Jewish history.

He and his representatives have given a backwind to the forces that seek to wage economic warfare against Israel, repeatedly indicating that the application of economic sanctions against Israel – illegal under the World Trade Organization treaties – are a natural response to Israel’s unwillingness to bow to every Palestinian demand. The same goes for the movement to deny the legitimacy of Israel’s very existence. Senior administration officials have threatened that Israel will become illegitimate if it refuses to surrender to Palestinian demands.

Last summer, Obama openly colluded with Hamas’s terrorist war against Israel. He tried to coerce Israel into accepting ceasefire terms that would have amounted to an unconditional surrender to Hamas’s demands for open borders and the free flow of funds to the terrorist group. He enacted a partial arms embargo on Israel in the midst of war. He cut off air traffic to Ben-Gurion International Airport under specious and grossly prejudicial terms in an open act of economic warfare against Israel.

And yet, despite Obama’s scandalous treatment of Israel, Netanyahu has continued to paper over differences in public and thank Obama for the little his has done on Israel’s behalf. He always makes a point of thanking Obama for agreeing to Congress’s demand to continue funding the Iron Dome missile defense system (although Obama has sought repeatedly to slash funding for the project).

Obama’s policies that are hostile to Israel are not limited to his unconditional support for the Palestinians in their campaign against Israel. Obama shocked the entire Israeli defense community when he supported the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, despite Mubarak’s dependability as a US ally in the war on Islamist terrorism, and as the guardian of both Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and the safety and freedom of maritime traffic in the Suez Canal.

Obama supported Mubarak’s overthrow despite the fact that the only political force in Egypt capable of replacing him was the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks the destruction of Israel and is the ideological home and spawning ground of jihadist terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and Hamas. Obama then supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime even as then-president Mohamed Morsi took concrete steps to transform Egypt into an Islamist, jihadist state and end Egypt’s peace with Israel.

Israelis were united in our opposition to Obama’s behavior. But Netanyahu said nothing publicly in criticism of Obama’s destructive, dangerous policy.

He held his tongue in the hopes of winning Obama over through quiet diplomacy.

He held his tongue, because he believed that the damage Obama was causing Israel was not irreversible in most cases. And it was better to maintain the guise of good relations, in the hopes of actually achieving them, than to expose the fractures in US-Israel ties caused by Obama’s enormous hostility toward Israel and by his strategic myopia that endangered both Israel and the US’s other regional allies.

And yet, today Netanyahu, the serial accommodator, is putting everything on the line. He will not accommodate. He will not be bullied. He will not be threatened, even as all the powers that have grown used to bringing him to his knees – the Obama administration, the American Jewish Left, the Israeli media, and the Labor party grow ever more shrill and threatening in their attacks against him.

As he has made clear in daily statements, Netanyahu is convinced that we have reached a juncture in our relations with the Obama administration where accommodation is no longer possible.

Obama’s one policy that Netanyahu has never acquiesced to either publicly or privately is his policy of accommodating Iran.
Since Obama’s earliest days in office, Netanyahu has warned openly and behind closed doors that Obama’s plan to forge a nuclear deal with Iran is dangerous. And as the years have passed, and the lengths Obama is willing to go to appease Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been left their marks on the region, Netanyahu’s warnings have grown stronger and more urgent.

Netanyahu has been clear since his first tenure in office in the 1990s, that Iran’s nuclear program – as well as its ballistic missile program – constitutes a threat to Israel’s very existence. He has never wavered from his position that Israel cannot accept an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.

Until Obama entered office, and to an ever escalating degree until his reelection in 2012, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has been such an obvious imperative among both Israelis and Americans that Netanyahu’s forthright rejection of any nuclear deal in which Iran would be permitted to maintain the components of its nuclear program was uncontroversial. In some Israeli circles, his trenchant opposition to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear capabilities was the object of derision, with critics insisting that he was standing strong on something uncontroversial while buckling on issues like negotiations with the Palestinians, where he should have stood strong.

But now we are seeing that far from being an opportunist, Netanyahu is a leader of historical dimensions. For the past two years, in the interest of reaching a deal, Obama has enabled Iran to take over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. For the first time since 1974, due to Obama’s policies, the Golan Heights is an active front in the war against Israel, with Iranian military personnel commanding Syrian and Hezbollah forces along the border.

Iran’s single-minded dedication to its goal of becoming a regional hegemon and its commitment to its ultimate goal of destroying the US is being enabled by Obama’s policies of accommodation. An Iran in possession of a nuclear arsenal is an Iran that can not only destroy Israel with just one or two warheads. It can make it impossible for Israel to respond to conventional aggression carried out by terrorist forces and others operating under an Iranian nuclear umbrella.

Whereas Israel can survive Obama on the Palestinian front by stalling, waiting him out and placating him where possible, and can even survive his support for Hamas by making common cause with the Egyptian military and the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the damage Obama’s intended deal with Iran will cause Israel will be irreversible. The moment that Obama grants Iran a path to a nuclear arsenal – and the terms of the agreement that Obama has offered Iran grant Iran an unimpeded path to nuclear power – a future US administration will be hard-pressed to put the genie back in the bottle.

For his efforts to prevent irreparable harm to Israel Netanyahu is being subjected to the most brutal and vicious attacks any Israeli leader has ever been subjected to by an American administration and its political allies. They are being assisted in their efforts by a shameless Israeli opposition that is willing to endanger the future of the country in order to seize political power.

Every day brings another serving of abuse. Wednesday National Security Adviser Susan Rice accused Netanyahu of destroying US relations with Israel. Secretary of State John Kerry effectively called him a serial alarmist, liar, and warmonger.

For its part, the Congressional Black Caucus reportedly intends to sabotage Netanyahu’s address before the joint houses of Congress by walking out in the middle, thus symbolically accusing of racism the leader of the Middle East’s only liberal democracy, and the leader of the most persecuted people in human history.

Radical leftist representatives who happen to be Jewish, like Jan Schakowsky of suburban Chicago and Steve Cohen of Memphis, are joining Netanyahu’s boycotters in order to give the patina of Jewish legitimacy to an administration whose central foreign policy threatens the viability of the Jewish state.

As for Netanyahu’s domestic opponents, their behavior is simply inexcusable. In Israel’s hour of peril, just weeks before Obama intends to conclude his nuclear deal with the mullahs that will endanger Israel’s existence, Labor leader Yitzhak Herzog insists that his primary duty is to defeat Netanyahu.

And as far as Iran is concerned, he acts as a free loader ad a spoiler. Either he believes that Netanyahu will succeed in his mission to derail the deal with or without his support, or he doesn’t care. But Herzog’s rejection of Netanyahu’s entreaties that he join him in Washington next week, and his persistent attacks on Netanyahu for refusing accommodate that which cannot be accommodated shows that he is both an opportunist and utterly unworthy of a leadership role in this country.

Netanyahu is not coming to Washington next Tuesday to warn Congress against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, because he seeks a fight with Obama. Netanyahu has devoted the last six years to avoiding a fight with Obama, often at great cost to Israel’s national security and to his own political position.

Netanyahu is coming to Washington next week because Obama has left him no choice. And all decent people of good will should support him, and those who do not, and those who are silent, should be called out for their treachery and cowardice.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

It's Not Islam! REALLY???

POSTED ON FEBRUARY 26, 2015 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ISLAM, TERRORISM

AUTHOR, BLOGGER, PHILOSOPHER AVIJIT ROY MURDERED BY JIHADISTS

Avijit Roy, a native of Bangladesh, was an engineer by training, an atheist, the proprietor of a web site, and the author of a number of books. Recently, he has lived in the United States, but has been threatened with death by radical Muslims because of his religious and social views. His wife, Rafida Ahmed Bonna, was raised as a Muslim but supported Roy’s work as an atheist.

Earlier today, they were in Dhaka, Bangladesh for a book fair that featured two of Roy’s books. While walking back from the book fair between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m., they wereattacked by men wielding cleavers. While they have not been caught, no one doubts that they were Muslims following through on the threats that had been made against Roy. They hacked both Roy and Bonna savagely. Roy died shortly thereafter in a hospital. Bonna survived; among other injuries, the attackers reportedly hacked off the fingers on her left hand.

Just another day in the jihad.

Hillary's State Knew (from the beginning)

Hillary Clinton’s Top Aides Knew from First Minutes that Benghazi Was a Terrorist Attack, E-mails Disclose  


by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY February 26, 2015 4:13 PM 

From the very first moments of the terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides were advised that the compound was under a terrorist attack. In fact, less than two hours into the attack, they were told that the al-Qaeda affiliate in Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, had claimed responsibility. These revelations and others are disclosed by a trove of e-mails and other documents pried from the State Department by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The FOIA litigation focuses on Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in the government actions before, during, and after the Benghazi attack, in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, was murdered by terrorists. Also killed in the attack were State Department information management officer Sean Smith, and two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who were contract security employees and who had fought heroically, saving numerous American lives. At least ten other Americans were wounded, some quite seriously. At 4:07 p.m., just minutes after the terrorist attack began, Cheryl Mills, Secretary Clinton’s chief-of-staff, and Joseph McManus, Mrs. Clinton’s executive assistant, received an e-mail from the State Department’s operations center (forwarded to her by Maria Sand, a special assistant to Secretary Clinton). It contained a report from the State Department’s regional security officer (RSO), entitled “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi is Under Attack.” The e-mail explained that approximately 20 armed people had fired shots at the diplomatic mission, that explosions had been heard as well, and that Ambassador Stevens was believed to be in the compound with at least four other State Department officials. About a half-hour later, another e-mail — this one from Scott Bultrowicz, then director of diplomatic security (DSCC) — related: 15 armed individuals were attacking the compound and trying to gain entrance. The Ambassador is present in Benghazi and currently is barricaded within the compound. There are no injuries at this time and it is unknown what the intent of the attackers is. At approximately 1600 [4 p.m.] DSCC received word from Benghazi that individuals had entered the compound. At 1614 [4:14 p.m.] RSO advised the Libyans had set fire to various buildings in the area, possibly the building that houses the Ambassador [REDACTED] is responding and taking fire. At 6:06 p.m., another e-mail that went to top State Department officials explained that the local al-Qaeda affiliate had claimed responsibility for the attack: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU):  “(SBU) Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and call for an attack on Embassy Tripoli” Despite this evidence that her top staffers were informed from the start that a terrorist attack was underway and that an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group had claimed credit for it, Secretary Clinton issued an official statement claiming the assault may have been in “response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.” This was a reference to an obscure anti-Islamic video trailer for a film called Innocence of Muslims. Secretary Clinton’s statement took pains to add that “the United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others” — further intimating that the video was the cause of the attack. I have previously recounted that this official Clinton statement was issued shortly after 10 p.m. — minutes after President Obama and Secretary Clinton spoke briefly on the telephone about events in Benghazi, according to Clinton’s congressional testimony. The White House initially denied that Obama had spoken with Clinton or other top cabinet officials that night. The president’s version of events changed after Secretary Clinton’s testimony. As I’ve also previously detailed (see here and here), Gregory Hicks, Ambassador Stevens’ deputy who was in Tripoli at the time of the Benghazi attacks, was the main State Department official in Libya briefing his superiors that night. He testified before Congress that he briefed Secretary Clinton and her top aides at 8 p.m. He further testified that the video was a “non-event” in Benghazi. Hicks added that he was clear in his briefing and other communications with his superiors that the Benghazi operation was a terrorist attack. Indeed, at the time he briefed Clinton, the pressing concern was that Ambassador Stevens might then be being held at a hospital that was under the control of terrorists. An hour later, at 9 p.m., Hicks learned from the Libyan prime minister that Stevens had been killed. At 12:11 a.m., about two hours after the issuance of Secretary Clinton’s statement suggesting that the video had prompted the violence, Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief-of-staff, e-mailed State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland to ask, “Can we stop answering emails for the night Toria b/c now the first one is hanging out there.” This appears to be a suggestion that the State Department allow Secretary Clinton’s statement stand alone as the department’s narrative for the media. At the time, the attack was still ongoing and there were still press inquiries about Ambassador Stevens’s whereabouts and well-being.   The revelations in the newly released e-mails were unveiled by Judicial Watch this afternoon at a press conference in Washington. In a press statement, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton asserted that the e-mails left “no doubt that Hillary Clinton’s closest advisers knew the truth about the Benghazi attack from almost the moment it happened.” Mr. Fitton further opined that “it is inescapable that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knowingly lied when she planted the false story about ‘inflammatory material being posted on the Internet.’ The contempt for the public’s right to know is evidenced not only in these documents but also in the fact that we had to file a lawsuit in federal court to obtain them.” 

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/414500/hillary-clintons-top-aides-knew-first-minutes-benghazi-was-terrorist-attack-e-mails

My Son was Murdered by a "Dreamer"

“Powerful”: Father of murdered black teen wants to know why Obama administration ignores real dangers 

by Wilson Thursday, Feb 26, 2015 at 2:44 PM EST Share This Tweet

This The country was torn apart last year over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York City. “Black lives matter” became the rallying cry as protests and riots erupted from New York to California. But one father wonders how true that is. His son wasn’t gunned down by white police officers, but by an illegal immigrant DREAMer. 

In a powerful speech, Jamiel Shaw fiercely criticized the Obama administration’s immigration policy. WATCH (scroll down for full text of his speech): 

My name is Jamiel Shaw. My son Jamiel Andre Shaw II was murdered by a DREAMer. DACA recipient. A child brought to this country by no fault of his own. My family’s peace and freedom were stolen by an illegal alien from Mexico. He was brought here by his illegal alien parents and allowed to grow up as a wild animal. 

Some people believe that if you are brought over by no fault of your own, that it makes you a good person. They want us to believe that DREAMer kids don’t murder. I am here to debunk that myth. Kids brought over the border by no fault of their own do kill Americans. How many Americans killed by illegal aliens are too many? One? Two? A hundred? Thousand? 100,000? Ask any parent whose child was murdered by an illegal alien how many is too many. As one of those parents, I’m here to tell you that one is too many. 

My son, Jamiel Shaw II was murdered while walking on his own street three houses down from his home. An illegal alien on his third gun charge was visiting a neighbor when my son was coming home. He shot my son in the stomach and then in the head killing him. 

Do black lives really matter, or does it matter only if you’re shot by a white person or a white policeman? The district attorney proved in court that my son was murdered because he was black and wearing a Spider-Man backpack. Jamiel’s mother Army Sergeant Anita Shaw, who was serving in Iraq fighting for their freedom called me from Iraq to ask, was it true that Jazz was dead? And Jazz is the name we call our son. His nickname. 

How many other military families have made that same phone call from some foreign land in disbelief that their sons or daughters have been killed in America by illegal alien invaders? Do military families matter? DREAMer kids have turned my family’s American dream into a nightmare. The illegal alien DREAMer that murdered my son only served four months of an eight-month sentence for assault with a deadly weapon and battery on a police officer. 

He was released from the county jail the day before he executed my son. Why was this violent illegal alien allowed to walk the streets of America instead of being deported? Why was ICE not called to pick up this violent invader? 

We were promised that the federal government would keep us safe from violent illegal aliens. Article four, section four of the US Constitution guarantees us protection against invasion. I see in here black politicians, black athletes, black stars say, ‘Hands up. Don’t shoot.’ My son was shot in the head by an illegal alien gangbanger while he lay on his back with his hands up. He still shot him through his hand into his head and killed him. My son thought he could walk down the street and not be murdered by an illegal alien. That he could depend on the government to secure our borders and keep the bad people out. 

Yes, black families matter. Yes, military families matter. All families matter. But the duty of the US government is to always put American families first. Honorable chairman — I had a different name. I’m sorry. Honorable chairman, ranking member, today’s hearing was called to review the Department of Homeland Security’s policies and procures for the apprehension and detention and release of noncitizens unlawfully present in the United States — United States. 

In his November 20th, 2014, speech to the nation on immigration, President Obama said, if you are a criminal, you’ll be deported. If you plan to enter the US illegally, your chances of getting caught and sent back just went up. 

The president said he wanted to work with both parties to pass a more permanent legislative solution. The president also said: And to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer, pass the deal. 

In three of the past four Congresses, Representative Walter Jones has introduced Illegal Alien Crime Reporting Act, which would address many of the issues this hearing was called to discuss, but could never get a hearing. In the 113th Congress Representative Jones renamed a bill after my son. HR 1888 the Jamiel Shaw Junior Memorial Act of 2013 never got a hearing. As we sit here today I offer for consideration HR 104 1he Jamiel Shaw II  Memorial Act of 2015.

 It is only two pages long but chops at the root of the problem. U ntil the FBI is allowed to track and report illegal alien crime it is doubtful that the american people will understand how severe the problem violent illegal alien crime is. I doubt any ten people would define comprehensive immigration reform the same way.

 But I can assure you there what we really need is comprehensive immigration enforcement: secure borders and ports of entry and the oversight of Congress to ensure that America and american families are job one Thank You.

 “That is a powerful, powerful speech,” Glenn said. “That’s a compelling testimony and a compelling argument. How did you take him apart? You don’t.”

Source: http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/02/26/powerful-father-of-murdered-black-teen-wants-to-know-why-obama-administration/?utm_source=glennbeck&utm_medium=contentcopy_link

2015 US Military Strength Assesment

2015 US Military Strenghth Assesment

Pentagon Documents Show Military Knew It Was Islamic Terrorism

Benghazi Scandal: New Pentagon Documents Show Military Knew It Was Islamic Terrorism

Helle Dale / February 25, 2015

Close to 500 pages of Pentagon Benghazi-related documents obtained last week by the non-profit group Judicial Watch prove the U.S. military was operating on the assumption terrorists killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on the night of Sept. 11, 2012.

The papers confirm statements about the nature of the attack to congressional committees made by both then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and then-AFRICOM Commander Gen. Carter Ham.

Judicial Watch has spent two years in dogged legal pursuit of the heavily redacted papers. The lawsuit to obtain the previously classified “secret” documents was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Sept. 4, 2014, (Judicial Watch v. Department of Defense (No. 1:14-cv-01508)).

Even with the heavy redactions, the documents show the White House-State Department narrative of the Benghazi attack—as a demonstration over a video run amok—to be completely out of sync with the Pentagon. The anti-Muslim video alleged at the root of all the trouble is not mentioned in the Pentagon documents.

The Pentagon papers show knowledge obtained on Sept. 12, 2012, that al-Qaeda-linked terrorists were attempting to establish an Islamic state in Libya and had been responsible for the previous attack on the American compound on June 6, which blew a wide hole in the perimeter wall. This attack “came in response to the 5 June (2012) drone strike on senior al-Qaida leader Abu Yahya al-libi.”

The newly released papers also contain a draft cable to the Joint Chiefs. The cable, dated Sept. 13, 2012, requested additional forces for an “immediate” military response to the Sept. 11 attack, “to protect military and naval assets.” The code name for the operation would have been “Jukebox Lotus.”

As we know, though certain military assets were placed on high alert and repositioned, the order was never executed. No attempt was made at a rescue or a retaliation for the lives of loyal public servants.

Instead, the White House chose to handle Benghazi as a law enforcement matter and gave the investigation to the FBI, which took more than a month to even get personnel on the ground to collect evidence and two years to make an arrest. And today the Middle East is afflicted with a new aggressive brand of terrorism branding itself the Islamic State.

The headline has been modified

Global Warming Left are Smearing Willie Soon

POSTED ON FEBRUARY 24, 2015 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CLIMATE

THE SMEARING OF WILLIE SOON

A blockbuster peer-reviewed paper in the Science Bulletin, authored by Christopher Monckton, Matt Briggs, David Legates and Wei-Hock (“Willie”) Soon, is roiling the global warming Left. The paper identifies flaws in the computer models that predict major global warming–which shouldn’t be a surprise, since the models’ predictions have flopped. It concludes that due to mathematical errors, the models overstate the impact of CO2 on the climate by a factor of three times.

So far, global warming Leftists haven’t been able to find any technical flaws in the Science Bulletin paper, which you can download here. So, naturally, they have resorted to smearing its authors. Greenpeace focused on Dr. Soon, an astrophysicist who works part time for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Greenpeace served a Freedom of Information Act request on the Smithsonian, a public entity, for documents relating to funding of Dr. Soon’s projects. Greenpeace claims that these documents show that Dr. Soon’s projects received funding from Southern Company Services that was not disclosed in certain papers that Dr. Soon published.

The New York Times, having been fed the documents by Greenpeace, eagerly took up the cudgels for global warming Leftists, publishing a supposed expose under the headline, “Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher.” The Times and its fellows on the Left argue that Dr. Soon should have disclosed certain corporate funding with respect to past projects–not, however, the recent paper that the Left seeks to discredit.

You can read about the controversy here and here, and draw your own conclusions. I am not able to sort out whether Dr. Soon should have made additional disclosures with regard to the funding of projects completed years ago; in any event, that has nothing to do with the current paper on the defects in the alarmists’ models.

This is the point I really want to make: the New York Times and other pro-government sources assume that government funding of research is lily-white, while corporate funding is inherently suspect. This is ridiculous. Put aside, for a moment, the fact that the American environmental movement is funded by Russia’s state-controlled oil company. Also the fact that Greenpeace gets money ($203 million) from the American Petroleum Foundation, with another $214 million coming from the Chamber of Commerce.

That isn’t the real scandal. The real scandal is that the overwhelming majority of money spent on climate research comes from governments. Governments, most notably ours, fund climate hysteria to the tune of billions of dollars per year. Why? Because the whole point of global warming alarmism is to persuade voters to cede more control over Western economies to government. (No one actually cares about CO2 emissions from India or China, which together vastly exceed ours.)

Governments fund climate research–but only climate research that feeds alarmism–because they are the main parties in interest in the climate debate. Governments stand to gain trillions of dollars in revenue and unprecedented power if voters in the U.S. and other Western countries can be stampeded into ceding more power to them, based on transparently bad science.

The New York Times and other left-wing news sources assume that government funding is no problem, but private funding is a scandal. I think the opposite is true. It is a scandal that our government spends billions of dollars, enriching many compliant climate scientists–Michael Mann is just one of many examples–to promote its own power. Thank goodness that there is a tiny amount of independent funding that supports objective research and contributes to a debate that is being won, hands down, by climate realists like Dr. Soon.