Month: November 2018

On Wednesday, right-wing investigative journalist Laura Loomer was permanently suspended from social media platform Twitter over a tweet wherein Loomer criticized Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Islamic practices like female genital mutilation (FGM).

“Isn’t it ironic how the twitter moment used to celebrate ‘women, LGBTQ, and minorities’ is a picture of Ilhan Omar? Ilhan is pro-Sharia Ilhan is pro FGM. Under Sharia homosexuals are oppressed and killed. Women are abused and forced to wear the hijab. Ilhan is anti-Jewish,” said Loomer, 25.

The tweet apparently violated Twitter’s “rules against hateful conduct,” which seem to be applied fast and loose and mostly dependent on your political ideology. Loomer, who is Jewish, had accumulated over 260,000 on Twitter before she was effectively silenced.

It took Facebook less than 24 hours to issue a suspension against Loomer.

In a statement on social media platform Gab, which describes itself as “the free speech network,” Loomer said she has been “silenced in America for simply telling the truth.”

“Free speech is under attack by the Left and big tech companies in this country,” said Loomer, adding, “My haters are celebrating today, and they are saying this is the end of my career, but I want everyone to know I’m just getting started. Everyone who knows me knows I don’t back down.”

Rep. Omar, who is Muslim, has a history of anti-Israel comments, and voted against a bill that would block efforts to boycott Israeli businesses.

“Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel,” said Omar in a tweet from 2012, which she defended as recently as May 2018.

Additionally, as reported by The Daily Wire, “In 2017, the Minnesota House passed HF400, the ‘Israel Boycott Ban’ bill, which banned the state of Minnesota, including Minnesota colleges and universities, from contracting with vendors boycotting Israel. Omar voted against the bill, saying, ‘I would have loved to vote for a bill that expands our ideals of fighting against discrimination, that actually stood up against all discrimination. I don’t want to be part of a vote that limits the ability of people to fight towards justice and peace.'”

Loomer recently made headlines for confronting celebrity attorney and anti-Trump activist Michael Avenatti and Women’s March supporter and actress Alyssa Milano at Politicon in Los Angeles. After Loomer confronted Milano about the Women’s March’s leaders’ ties to anti-Semitism, the actress denounced them.

On Wednesday, in a video reacting to the Twiiter ban (see below), Loomer called on President Donald Trump to do something about the “monopolistic” big tech companies silencing opposition.

“If you want to win in 2020, you have to ensure your supporters have a voice on social media,” she implored.

WATCH:

The U.S. envoy to a meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) accused Iran on Thursday of developing banned chemical weapons and failing to disclose its activities as required by the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.

AFP summarized the allegations made by U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Ward at Thursday’s meeting of the OPCW:

“The United States has had longstanding concerns that Iran maintains a chemical weapons program that it failed to declare to the OPCW,” Ambassador Ward told a five-yearly meeting on the body’s future.

“The U.S. is also concerned that Iran is pursuing central nervous system-acting chemicals for offensive purposes.”

Ward said Iran had failed to declare the transfer of chemical-filled shells sent to Libya in the 1980s despite an appeal by the OPCW to identify their origin. They were found after the death of Libyan leader Moammar Quaddafi in 2011.

“They were clearly of Iranian origin as evidenced by the farsi writing on the boxes containing the artillery shells,” he said.

Iran had also failed to declare a “chemical weapons filling capability” despite the discovery of toxic shells and bombs in Libya and also in Iraq.

Finally, Iran had failed to declare riot control agents despite having marketed them at defense expos, he added.

On Friday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi denounced the American allegations as “groundless” and speculated the U.S. wishes to distract international attention from Israel’s alleged chemical weapons arsenal.

Iran’s delegate to the OPCW conference, Gholam Hossein Dehghani, more vaguely accused some other nations of “hypocritical behavior” because they indulge the use of chemical weapons against civilians by “terrorist groups.”

Russia supports Iran and claims Tehran has fully complied with the relevant international laws and agreements.

Two U.S. officials told the Associated Press last week about the Trump administration’s plans to accuse Iran of violating the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. The officials said U.S. lawmakers were notified last Friday that a complaint would be filed against Iran at The Hague.

Analyst Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Voice of America News that Iran benefits from the reluctance of international agencies like the OPCW to accept U.S. intelligence reports and the widespread perception that Iran is among the world’s leading victims of chemical warfare, its troops having been gassed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the brutal Iran-Iraq War. There have long been suspicions that Iran retaliated against Iraq with chemical weapons of its own during the war, but analysts such as the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington deemed the evidence against Iran inconclusive.

“The fact that this archival U.S. intelligence material exists and is not engaged with or dismissed is part of a larger problem because it leads analysts to take Iran’s war account at face value,” said Taleblu.

“While I will be the first to say that Iran’s chemical weapons experience in the war was horrific, the fact that Iran learned the lessons of deterrence the hard way is what made it so active in weapons of mass destruction and missiles after the war,” he added.

President Donald Trump has endured blistering criticism from the media and from his political opponents in both parties over his statement earlier this week expressing support for Saudi Arabia, even in the wake of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a veteran and war critic, even called Trump “Saudi Arabia’s bitch.”

In fact, the situation is exactly the reverse, and Gabbard should be praising Trump for advancing the cause of peace.

Trump now has the Saudis exactly where he wants them. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), once the toast of the world’s elites, is now widely portrayed as an accused murderer. President Trump could join the attack, perhaps even pushing MBS out of power and destabilizing the Saudi regime itself. Instead, Trump has positioned himself as MBS’s last and best friend. Without Trump’s support, MBS might not survive long — and he knows it.

That puts Trump in a position to make demands. He has already engineered peace talks in Yemen between the Saudi-backed government and the Iranian-backed rebels. He claims to have convinced the Saudis to increase oil production to keep prices low. And he may be able to achieve bigger things yet — such as Saudi support for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that would conclude the conflict on terms favorable to the United States and Israel.

Trump could, for example, instruct the Saudis to accept, and to pressure the Palestinians to accept, a peace plan that recognizes both Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem. He could tell MBS that the burden of bankrolling the Palestinians — including the so-called “refugees” — is now his. And he could sweeten the deal by giving the Saudis some authority over Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. MBS would be foolish to refuse.

Alternatively, Trump could bow to the “Obama bros” and the cable news pundits, and attack MBS for the death of Khashoggi, downgrading relations and insisting on regime change.

But it is not clear what broader good that would achieve. The Middle East is not going to become a more humane place just because another tyrant falls. And Iran would take advantage of Saudi Arabia’s weakness to bolster its terrorist proxies and its nuclear ambitions.

President Barack Obama’s approach shows exactly what not to do. When U.S.-allied Arab regimes began cracking down on protests during the Arab Spring, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first defended the regimes, in line with the neorealist dogma in vogue among the anti-war left and reflected in the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, whose principle scribe was Obama lackey Ben Rhodes. But they lacked the will to follow through.

Obama and Clinton then swung behind the rebels and the Muslim Brotherhood, hoping to guide the revolutionary fervor in the direction of liberal democracy. Their hope was that new Islamist governments might look like Recep Tayyip Ergodan’s government in Turkey, then seen as a model of how to balance political Islam with modernity. When Obama and Clinton attacked Libya in 2011, they had come full circle: they were the neo-neo-conservatives.

When that failed, Obama abandoned the idea of appeasing the Sunni world, and backed the idea of Iran as a new regional hegemon, hoping that by re-integrating the regime into global markets, he would encourage it to become more moderate.

The opposite happened, because — just as he did in “normalizing” relations with Cuba — Obama gave away American leverage over the Iranian regime up front, removing sanctions and delivering pallets of cash.

The only positive consequence of Obama’s blundering was an unintended one: by strengthening Iran, he caused the Saudis and other sunni Arab regimes to reach out to Israel in a tacit alliance against their common enemy.

Trump has seized the opportunity that re-alignment provides. At the same time, he has undermined Saudi Arabia’s only real source of leverage over the U.S. — oil — by encouraging domestic oil production, which Obama tried to discourage.

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi was a terrible crime — one the U.S. has condemned, backing words with sanctions against many Saudi officials believed to have been involved. Yet it does not follow that our national interests should suffer as a result.

Though it may be hard to see through his plain-spoken, even jarring prose, Trump has chosen to be a statesman rather than a scold, exploiting the Saudi predicament to promote the chances of peace and prosperity.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

That quaking beneath your feet is not a stampede; it’s the march of hungry consumers barging through the local Best Buy in pursuit of that 50% off SmartTV for Black Friday.

Nothing quite says “Merry Christmas!” like beating the living daylights out of a total stranger for snagging the last “Sally Wets Her Pants” doll on the shelf. Gone are the days of gathering around the fireplace for some Nat King Cole and roasted chestnuts; in 2018, Black Friday is the ritual by which we welcome the “most wonderful season of all,” and this year started off with a bang … literally.

According to local reports, an altercation between two adults outside of a Footaction at the Riverchase Galleria in Alabama resulted in one death and two injuries after a 21-year-old male suspect pulled his gun and fired on an 18-year-old male shopper. More from the report:

The suspect shot an 18-year-old male once. A 12-year-old female was struck, though it is unclear when it occurred.

The suspect, a 21-year-old from Hueytown, fled following the shooting and police say two nearby officers approached the suspect and shot and killed him.

According to police the 18-year-old victim is at UAB with serious injuries and the 12-year-old female is being treated at Children’s. Police say their latest update of the female victim is that she is “alert” and “talking.”

Police say they recovered a gun left in Santa’s Village.

Witnesses say the shootings occurred between JCPenney and Footaction, where they heard separate rounds of gunfire. The exact nature of the dispute remains unclear at this time. In a statement, the Riverchase Galleria, which was opened on Thanksgiving, said the mall would remain closed until further notice.

“We are devastated by the incident that happened tonight in our shopping center,” said the Riverchase Galleria. “We are working closely with the Hoover Police Department and are grateful for their swift action to contain the situation. While there is no current danger to our community, the shopping center will remain closed until further notice.”

The mall reponed at 6 a.m.

Another Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Alabama, closed early last year when police were called in to break a brawl up between two women. Witnesses at the time reported of seeing a shoe thrown in the scuffle which planted into a baby’s face.

On social media, cell phone video footage at varying Walmarts showed fights and brawls breaking out between customers as well as employees forged with the impossible task of quelling the rabid masses. At one Walmart in an unspecified city, video showed customers wrestling over a stack of television sets. Another video at another Walmart showed two men fighting as their significant others cursed them out. This video shows security guards pushing customers back as they stampede through the store.

According to Business Insider, Black Friday sales are expected to be the strongest in years.

“Retail stocks were mixed following projections Black Friday 2018 will be the strongest in years,” the outlet reports. “Total spending over the Black Friday weekend was expected to climb 5.7% versus a year ago to $59.6 billion, according to estimates by GlobalData Retail. That would make for the strongest growth rate since 2011.”

Business Insider continued: “Big box retailers like Walmart (+0.83%), Best Buy (+0.71%), and Target(-2%) traded mixed. The SPDR S&P retail exchange-traded fund gained 0.7%. Elsewhere, the department stores Macy’s (-1.44%) and Nordstrom (-0.88%) were weaker.”

Another holiday classic has been slapped with the label “racist” by SJWs for supposedly marginalizing the token black character: “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.”

People on social media have expressed outrage over the fact that the lone black character Franklin in “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” appears seated differently juxtaposed to the white characters during the famous dinner scene where Charlie Brown serves popcorn and toast to his hungry guests instead of turkey and stuffing. From The Hill:

The scene in question has four characters from Charles M. Schulz’s iconic ‘Peanuts’ cartoon — Sally, Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty and dog Snoopy — sitting on one side of a makeshift outdoor table for Thanksgiving dinner, with Marcie at one end of the table and Linus at the head.

The cartoon’s lone black character, Franklin, is on his own side of the table seated on a lawn chair.

Comicbook.com was the first to flag the reactions to the scene on social media.

“Not watching Charlie Brown Thanksgiving anymore, until they sit some people on the same side of the table as Franklin,” said one Twitter user.

“How come Franklin, Charlie Brown’s only black friend, sits alone on the other side of the table? And in a lawn chair,” said another Twitter user. “Am I woke now, why is Franklin in Charlie Brown Thanksgiving sitting all by himself at the table. Man. Things that I did not notice as a child,” said another.

One Twitter user said the scene was reminiscent of the film “Get Out,” a story about rich, white liberals who insert their brains into black people’s bodies: “Let’s talk about Franklin. Dude gets invited to Charlie Brown’s by Peppermint Patty. Then he finds out that it wasn’t a real invite, a dog is cooking the food and he’s gotta sit by himself at dinner. That’s Get Out.”

Of course, all of them have no idea what on earth they are talking about. Fortunately, black journalist Jeremy Helligar cleared up some of the controversy on Friday when he noted that the character Franklin had prime seating in other episodes of the “Peanuts.”

“A relevant aside: During the farewell dinner about one hour and five minutes into 1972’s ‘Snoopy Come Home,’ Franklin was seated on the same side of the table as Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Frieda — in a regular chair,” Helligar said on Medium.

The historical significance of the character Franklin cannot be understated; his creation was reportedly demanded by Charles Schulz following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. when a teacher named Harriet Glickman sent him a letter.

“When asked by the head of the cartoon’s publisher, United Feature Syndicate, if he was sure he wanted to add a black character, Glickman says Schulz replied, ‘Either you run it the way I drew it, or I quit,'” reports The Hill.

The Schulz Museum also celebrated Franklin’s 50th anniversary in July. He has never been treated like a token black character added for cheap lip-service to diversity and has always been a valued member of the “Peanuts” gang.

“A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” is not the only holiday classic the Left has skewered as racist in recent years. In 2016, Salon.com denounced “A Christmas Story” as a racist vehicle of “white nostalgia”:

This is a perfect depiction of the nonwhite “other,” tailored to the conservative and superficial “color-blind” politics of the post-civil rights era

This is an example of the “white racial frame” in action: People of color are present in a way that does not challenge the cultural and personal psychology of white racial innocence. They are present without being objectionable or intrusive in any way; they present no threat to the way whiteness and memory combine to nurture a nostalgia for a “simpler” time that in actuality did not exist.

Fortunately, no ban of “A Christmas Story” ever came about. Hopefully, “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” will enjoy the same fate.

When a holiday outright has the words “thanks” and “giving” in its name, you know that some liberals are going to take offense.

One university is crying racism about the celebration and taking down the holiday with its “Thanks But No Thanks-giving: Decolonizing an American Holiday” event.

The announcement of the University of Oregon’s student-run event called Thanksgiving a “celebration” of “ongoing genocide” and said the alternative event would help people with raising their “critical consciousness and identifying ways to decolonize the holiday.”

The school’s event description reads, “The main messages are that of gratitude, food, and family; however, Thanksgiving is, foundationally speaking, a celebration of the ongoing genocide against native peoples and cultures across the globe.”

It’s too bad these Oregon students weren’t at the first Thanksgiving to help the native Americans “decolonize” their celebrations.

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Campus Reform, which describes itself as a “watchdog to the nation’s higher education system,” sent correspondent Josiah Tejada to ask students whether they believe Thanksgiving is racist or celebrates genocide.

“Honestly, like, I’m not super educated on the topic, but I just know that it has to do with the way the settlers treated the natives who lived here,” one student told him.

“There’s definitely a racist history to Thanksgiving, and that should probably definitely be addressed more in education,” another said.

Another student said Thanksgiving was “racist” because “we’re celebrating taking away land from natives.”

I’m not sure exactly how her Thanksgivings go down, but I for one have never taken part in any “taking away land” Thanksgiving day celebrations.

“It doesn’t have to be not celebrated, but if we can change it to instead of feeding ourselves maybe feeding the natives or donating to natives. Do we really need a giant feast?” she continued.

“The whole concept with, like, taking land and assigning a value to it through cost is, like, it was different through European cultures,” another student told Campus Reform.

One student seemed to have learned about the native Americans’ part in Thanksgiving, saying, “Growing up in school they routinely talked about the contributions that native Americans had toward the first Thanksgiving and the reason why we even celebrate it to begin with, so if you want to make that a bigger portion of it, that makes sense.”

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It may be hard for some liberal students, who are known for feeling entitled to everything, to wrap their heads around the concept of gratitude. This may explain their pushback against Thanksgiving.

However, one thing all the students had in common is that they are all living in America. If that’s not something to give thanks for, then I don’t know what is.

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President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he may close the U.S.-Mexico border if the rush of illegal migrants pushes border management out of control.

“If we find that it’s uncontrollable, Josh, if we find that it’s — it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control,” Trump told a gaggle of reporters in Palm Beach, Florida, according to a transcript prepared by Grabien.com.

“If you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country,” he said. “Democrats want open borders.”

Trump’s statement comes two days after a San Francisco judge temporarily shut down his November 9 border reforms at the request of a group of ACLU lawyers. The reform denies illegal migrants the right to ask for a full asylum and the right to live in the United States.

Trump’s threat to close the border also comes amid reports that White House officials may pressure Mexico to accept the temporary return of asylum-seeking migrants pending the courtroom resolution of their pleas for asylum in the United States.

Currently, some Mexican border officials are helping U.S. border officials limit the daily number of caravan migrants who are allowed to ask for asylum at the official ports of entry. That cooperation may be helping border officials reduce the flood of migrants that forces the catch-and-release policies. The catch-and-release policies allow migrants to get jobs from U.S. employers and to repay their debts to the cartels’ migrant-smuggling business:

Mexican police are helping US border officers limit the daily # of caravan asylum requests. This is important b/c it may prevent catch & release which happens when migrants overwhelm border. But Trump also must win court/asylum fight vs. progressives & biz https://t.co/EVsSxj4U34

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) November 17, 2018

Trump continued:

The whole border. I mean, the whole border. And Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the United States where they make so many cars at great benefit to them — not a great benefit to us, by the way. But at least now we have a good new trade deal with Mexico and with Canada. But we will close the border. And that means that Mexico is not going to be able to sell their cars into the United States until it’s open.

But we’re going to either have a border or we’re not. And when they lose control of the border on the Mexico side, we just close the border.

But business groups would strongly resist any shutdown of all or parts of the border. Some industries and companies would be forced to reduce operations within a few days if their cross-border supply of parts, food, or migrant workers are interrupted.

Trump also suggested that prior presidents opposed border controls and that many Democrats now oppose border controls because they gain politically from opposition to it:

Some of the [prior U.S.] presidents, I guess they didn’t care or they wanted open borders. I don’t think they wanted open borders– because most of them, if you go back to 2006, they all approved essentially a wall, a very powerful fence, which is pretty much the same thing. But in 2006, if you look, [former President Barack] Obama, you look at Hillary Clinton, you look at [Sen. Chuck] Schumer, all of the people that are standing up protesting, they think it’s good for them politically. See, I think it’s bad for them politically. I think the fact that they’re weak on the border is very, very bad for them politically. But you know, I have only been a politician for three years, so maybe they know better than me.

Officials expect to appeal the judge’s order to the U.S. Supreme Court.

An author of a study that examined the effects of the Common Core State Standards on school choice says the Obama-era K-12 school reform is the “worst large-scale educational failure in 40 years.”

Ted Rebarber of AccountabilityWorks, co-author with Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey of the Pioneer Institute study, discussed at a Heritage Foundation event last week how Common Core has not only damaged public-school education, but also has presented obstacles to real school choice.

Rebarber observed the danger when politicians succumb to the allure of standards-based education reforms.

“Standards become the blueprint around which schools organize their teaching, their day-to-day academic operations,” he said. “They’re effectively curriculum central planning by government.”

In the study, the authors observed that since Common Core was implemented in 45 states and Washington, DC, students have demonstrated sharp drops in academic performance. Additionally, those students who were already performing poorly– many of them minority students – declined even further.

Yet, in the name of accountability, when private school choice programs receive taxpayer-funded vouchers, they are often forced to adopt the curriculum on which the state standardized test is based. In most cases, that curriculum is aligned with Common Core.

According to the study, about two thirds of the nation’s tuition grant (“voucher”) programs mandate that schools administer a single curriculum-based test, usually a Common Core-aligned test, in order to receive the public funds.

An example is Central Christian Academy in Indiana, a state that has touted its extensive “school voucher” program. In 2017, the Christian school was presented with a “D” rating from the state because of students’ scores on the state-mandated test – which they must take because the school is receiving public funds. The poor rating was accompanied by a threat of a loss of voucher funding, a prospect that could have led to the closing of the school since vouchers help many families afford this private school option.

Ultimately, Chalkbeat observed that Indiana made some changes to how it evaluates schools and Central Christian’s students had to become more test-focused in order to remain open.

Nevertheless, the education news outlet noted that, in Indiana, private schools also “now live or die by test scores, too,” just as public schools, because of vouchers.

“That money comes with strings attached, and low test scores have cost 16 schools the right to accept new vouchers,” the report observed. “At least three have closed.”

Ironically, private schools that accept vouchers are forced to do things the “Common Core way,” even though dramatic declines in U.S. student performance on national and international assessments have occurred since the Core was implemented.

“Common Core blunts the innovation, dynamism and competition that is the heart of the school choice movement,” McCluskey noted.

The Core was sold not only as a set of standards that was “rigorous” and designed to encourage higher levels of achievement, but also as a program that would shrink the achievement gap between middle-class students and those from the lower socioeconomic levels.

In April of 2016, only about 37 percent of U.S. 12th graders were shown to be prepared for math and reading at the college level, according to the 2015 NAEP – also known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Additionally, results released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) showed that on the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), the U.S. has declined in performance from fifth in international ranking in 2011 to 13th in 2016 out of 58 international education systems.

The PIRLS revealed achievement for the top-performing 20 percent of students became flat over time, while the lowest 20 percent declined further.

“We seem to be declining as other education systems record larger gains on the assessment,” said Peggy G. Carr, acting commissioner for the federal NCES, according to the Washington Post. “This is a trend we’ve seen on other international assessments in which the U.S. participates.”

Accountability to the government has also become a major factor in terms of the content of what is taught and the services provided in religious schools that accept school vouchers.

NWItimes.com provides another example from Indiana.

Jennifer McCormick, the Republican state superintendent of public schools, has decided private schools that accept state voucher funds should not discriminate against LGBT children in admissions and other services – regardless of the school’s faith beliefs.

McCormick’s justification for her decision is based upon the Common Core “workforce development” model of education that views children as prospective laborers who can fulfill big business’s needs for inexpensive, local workers.

“If our goal as a state is to develop a well-educated workforce, and one that we want businesses to come here because we’re inclusive, we are accepting. I think part of that goes to our actions,” McCormick said. “And when we still have schools that receive taxpayer dollars that can exclude students — that’s a problem.”

According to the report, McCormick said private schools that accept vouchers would need to have their admissions policies controlled by the state.