Light is sown like seed for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Psalm 97:11
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Breaking: mass shooting, San Bernardino, plus “training exercise”
December 2, 2015
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)
KTLA reports (“More Than 14 Killed, 14-Plus Wounded After Up to 3 Shooters Open Fire: San Bernardino Police Chief”, Posted 11:19 AM [PST], December 2, 2015, by Tracy Bloom and Melissa Pamer) —here’s a key quote:
“The call first came in at 10:59 a.m. of multiple shots fired from the area of 1365 S. Waterman Ave., San Bernardino Police Department Lt. Richard Lawhead said. The department’s SWAT team was training nearby and was suited, ‘ready to roll’ and responded rapidly, Lawhead said.”
Note: KTLA report updated at 03:29pm [PST], December 2, 2015:
“The call first came in at 10:59 a.m. of multiple shots fired from the area of 1365 S. Waterman Ave. The Police Department’s SWAT team was training nearby and was suited, ‘ready to roll’ and responded rapidly, Lt. Richard Lawhead said.”
—Yet another mass shooting where, by chance, a training exercise was going on during or prior to the event.
San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles. Reports state several shooters in a cluster of three office buildings that employ 600 people, 20 victims down, and shooters apparently at large.
Here is a recent article I wrote about mass shootings paralleling training exercises:
Training exercises dovetail with mass shootings What are the odds?
Training exercises dovetail with mass shootings
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
By Jon Rappoport
Note: Thanks to humansarefree.com. I found much information at the site, as well as links to relevant articles.
Whether mass shootings are approached as the mainstream reports them, or as false flags, staged scenarios, or outright hoaxes, there is a common thread which runs through some of them: official training exercises held just prior to, or at the same time as, the shootings.
I’m not trying to present an all-inclusive list here.
The November 13, 2015, Paris attacks: “Since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, from which 16 people died, Paris-area ambulance crews and emergency personnel have taken part in regular exercises designed to test their readiness for possible attacks. One such exercise was held on Friday morning, the day of the latest terror attacks. In a twist of fate, the simulated emergency was a mass shooting, according to Dr. Mathieu Raux, emergency room chief at the Pitié-Salpetrière hospital in Paris.” (Bloomberg, 11/17/15, “Hours Before the Terror Attacks, Paris Practiced for a Mass Shooting”)
The Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting, June 17, 2015: See The Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers Advanced Training Schedule chart (in the article), which lists training courses in various locations. The chart indicates that, in Charleston, there was an “Active Shooter Threat Instructor Program” from June 15 to June 19, which overlapped the church shooting. (humansarefree.com, 6/24/15, “‘Active Shooter Drills’ Took Place in the Same Day as Charleston Shooting…”)
Boston Marathon attack, April 15, 2013: In this case, the training exercise was called off, because the real thing happened before the exercise took place—“…the DHS-funded drill, known as ‘Operation Urban Shield,’ was intended to take place during the summer, according to the Boston Globe — that is until the ‘real’ event beat it to the punch. But the drill itinerary so closely resembles what actually occurred the day of the bombings that even the mainstream media source responsible for bringing it to light could not help but point out this incredible ‘coincidence,’ …The [training exercise] scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear, explains the Boston Globe…” (Natural News, 6/22/13, “DHS documents prove Boston Marathon bombing was false flag ‘drill’ planned months in advance”)
Sandy Hook school shooting, December 14, 2012: “By grim coincidence, even as the terrible events were unfolding in Newtown on Friday morning, the Putnam County Emergency Response Team (‘ERT’) happened to be assembled for regular training in Carmel, and team members were at that very moment engaged in a mock scenario of an active-shooter in a school. The ERT is comprised of specially trained and heavily armed officers from the Sheriff’s Office and the Carmel and Kent Police Departments. When news broke of the Newtown shooting, the Putnam County ERT commander called Newtown Police and offered to have the ERT respond to the Sandy Hook school, but that response was not needed because Connecticut police had already secured the scene.” (Southeast-Brewster Patch newspaper, 12/18/12, “Sheriff: Putnam Officials to Talk School Safety This Afternoon”)
The July 20, 2012, Aurora, Colorado, “Batman” shooting: “The tragedy that played out in an Aurora movie theater Friday was ironically paralleled as a classroom learning experience in a medical school in Parker the same day. Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine is in the middle of holding specialized classes in disaster life support for 150 second-year medical students. Along with response to natural disasters like hurricanes and floods and terrorist attacks, one of the scenarios being used to train the students is how to respond if a shooter fires at people in a movie theater and also uses a bomb in the attack. ‘The irony is amazing, just amazing,’ said Rocky Vista Dean Dr. Bruce Dubin.” (Denver Post, 7/21/12, “Real life shooting imitates training exercise at Parker medical school”)
The Oslo bombing/shooting attack, July 22, 2011: “Only hours before Anders Behring Breivik began shooting children on Utøya, the police emergency squad concluded an exercise where they practiced an almost identical situation. Four days in advance, and also the same Friday the attack was carried out, the police special unit trained on an ongoing terror campaign that was approximately equal to the situation that hours later, met the 22 police officers within the emergency squad on Utøya. As far as Aftenposten has been informed, the training transcended directly into what the policed then faced in the Tyrifjord that very day; a mobile terror attack, in which one or more perpetrators only goal was to shoot as many people as possible and then shoot the police when they arrived. Only 26 minutes after the emergency squad’s training had concluded, the car bomb went off in the government quarter. The Emergency Squad arrived early on the scene.” (publicintelligence.net, 8/30/11, “Norwegian Police Conducted Drill for ‘Almost Identical’ Scenario Minutes Before Utoya Massacre”)
The 7/7/2005 bomb attacks on the London underground: “A fictional ‘scenario’ of multiple bomb attacks on London’s underground took place at exactly the same time as the bomb attack on July 7, 2005.
“Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, a private firm on contract to the London Metropolitan Police, described in a BBC interview how he had organized and conducted the anti-terror drill, on behalf of an unnamed business client.
“The fictional scenario was based on simultaneous bombs going off at exactly the same time at the underground stations where the real attacks were occurring:
POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.
HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?
POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don’t want to reveal their name but they’re listening and they’ll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they’d met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on. (BBC Radio Interview, 7 July 2005—as reported at Global Research, 8/8/15,
“Ten Years Ago: The London 7/7 Mock Terror Drill: What Relationship to the Real Time Terror Attacks?”)
Obama In Paris: Mass Shootings Don’t Happen In Other Countries
Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
“I say this every time we have one of these mass shootings. This just
doesn’t happen in other countries,” he said during a press conference
in Paris today.
The only problem with his answer was that he was standing in Paris, where a mass shooting conducted by Islamic State terrorists had just taken place, killing over 100 people.
Obama followed up his statement acknowledging that America was “rightly determined to prevent terrorist attacks wherever they occur” but seemed to separate the two events in his mind.
He argued that since the United States was determined to fight terrorism, it was important for Americans to demand more gun control as well.
“We devote enormous resources, and properly so, to rooting out networks and debilitating organizations like ISIL and maintaining the intelligence and improving the information sharing that can identify those who would try to kill innocent people,” he said. “And yet, in the United States, we have the power to do more to prevent what is just a regular process of gun homicides.”
He urged Congress and State and local governments to make changes on gun laws to prevent people who were “deranged” or had “violent tendencies” from killing in the United States.
The only problem with his answer was that he was standing in Paris, where a mass shooting conducted by Islamic State terrorists had just taken place, killing over 100 people.
Obama followed up his statement acknowledging that America was “rightly determined to prevent terrorist attacks wherever they occur” but seemed to separate the two events in his mind.
He argued that since the United States was determined to fight terrorism, it was important for Americans to demand more gun control as well.
“We devote enormous resources, and properly so, to rooting out networks and debilitating organizations like ISIL and maintaining the intelligence and improving the information sharing that can identify those who would try to kill innocent people,” he said. “And yet, in the United States, we have the power to do more to prevent what is just a regular process of gun homicides.”
He urged Congress and State and local governments to make changes on gun laws to prevent people who were “deranged” or had “violent tendencies” from killing in the United States.
Israel extremely nervous over Russian operations on its Golan border
But the first disquieting sign appeared Tuesday, Dec. 1. Senior Russian and Israeli officers were due to meet in Tel Avid to discuss strengthening the cooperation between the two army commands. But no word from Moscow or Jerusalem indicated whether the meeting had taken place.
debkafile’s military sources report that this week, the show of optimism is giving way to an uneasy sensation in the offices of the prime minister, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gady. They suspect an ulterior motive behind Russia’s military movements in southern Syria, especially its air strikes against Syrian rebels, just across from Israel’s Golan border.
In particular, Moscow may be giving Hizballah and Iran an umbrella for achieving their longstanding design to displace the Syrian rebels with Revolutionary Guards and Hizballah forces and deploy them along Israel’s Golan border.
This suspicion gained ground when Tuesday, Dec. 1, the day after the Putin-Netanyahu encounter, the combined Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah units expanded their thrust from the southern Syrian town of Deraa to the Golan town of Quneitra, within sight of Israel’s defense positions.
All that day, heavy battles raged over the rebel-held line of hills running from a point just south of Quneitra to the Israeli-Syrian-Jordanian border junction. The combined force was supported by Russian air strikes and heavy tanks and artillery, seen for the first time in this war arena.
When the fighting resumed Wednesday, the IDF placed its Golan units on high alert and an extra-vigilant eye was trained on this battle.
The Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah side is gaining a distinct advantage from the deep feud dividing rebel ranks. The Islamic State and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Syrian Nusra Front forces are tearing into each other with suicide bombers and explosive cars. Tuesday, an ISIS-rigged bomb car blew up at Nusra headquarters near Quneitra (see photo).
But this also means that an Islamic State force has come dangerously close to the Israeli border.
However, even more perils are in store if Bashar Assad’s army backed by Iran, Hizballah and Russia manages to capture the hills opposite the Golan:
1. Two years of unrelenting Israeli military and intelligence efforts to keep Hizballah and Iranian forces away from its Golan border will have gone to naught.
2. Hizballah will open the door for Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers to set up a command center right up to the Israeli border.
3. Israel’s steadfast policy and military action to prevent advanced Iranian weapons reaching Hizballah in Lebanon via Syria will be superseded. On the Golan, Hizballah will have gained direct access to any weapons it wants directly from Syria and be able to deploy them at far shorter distances from Israeli targets than from their firing positions in Lebanon.
4. Vladimir Putin attaches extreme importance to recovering southern Syria from the rebel forces backed by the US and Israel, because he regards the threat to the Assad regime as great from the south as it is from the north or the center.
5. Israel faces a grave dilemma between keeping up its “honeymoon” with Moscow by giving way on its essential security interests, or taking the bull by the horns and keeping the enemy at bay, whatever the cost to the understanding reached with Putin.
Officials in Jerusalem point out that the threat to Golan peaked just hours after the Russian leader met the prime minister in Paris. Putin is conducting a hands-on policy on Syria and keeps close track of the slightest occurrence on the battlefield. He must have been perfectly aware of the state of play on the Golan when he met Netanyahu, but nonetheless kept it out of their conversation.
The Elite Are Bugging Out to Deep Underground Bunkers In Morocco-WW III Is Here!
All signs point to the fact that the world has reached the point of no return with regard to the culmination of World War III which will begin in Syria. This article details military actions which has not been relased by the American media. This article also details the mostly likely site for which the elite will “bug out” to in preparation to survive World War III.
What the Mainstream Media Is Not Telling You
S-400 anti-air defense system.
Further, the following reports clearly refer to the Turkish military buildup on the Syrian border. This is not only an act of war, this is precisely the action that preceeds military conflict. Again, it should be emphasized that none of this is being disseminated in the American media and as such, the American media should already be discounted in its totality. The fact is that the United States and Russia are going to war. Millions, if not billions, are going to die, and our corporate controlled media, owned by only six corporations, continues to lie the American people as their benefactors and owners prepare to bug out to Tarfaya, Morocco.
Stunning News From a Reliable Source
Yesterday, I received a call from Bob Griswold who owns Ready Made Resources. He informed me that Tim Moller, of Moller Engineering. Mr. Moller informed Bob Griswold that a South Korean construction firm contacted him and wanted 4,000 generators delivered (yesterday) to Tarfaya, Morocco. The call for the generators was very urgent. Why would someone want that many generators that quickly? Very simply, the Deep Underground Bunkers that are being constructed in Tarfaya, Morocco, need ventilation, power and a reliable energy source. The urgency of the need to deliver 4,000 generators is very concerning. My confidence call on this event is 100%. I know Bob Griswold. I have interviewed him many times. I also have a business relationship with him. In the time that I have known him, his information has ALWAYS been reliable. Further, the circumstantial evidence coming out of Tarfaya, is interesting and circumstantially confirming of these reports.Tarfaya, Morocco, is on the cusp of big developments. Developments which are totally out of proportion to this very small and sleepy fishing village. For example, a massive wind farm is being constructed 25km away and a new port is planned. New beachfront promenades and restaurants are also on the drawing board. How convenient for the elite who will be looking to survive in this sleepy little village of 5,600 people in Southern Morocco.
If you were choosing a bug out location, wouldn’t you want the location to be located in a mild climate that could be enjoyed when it was safe to emerge from a deep underground bunker? This is precisely what we see in Tarfaya, Morocco.
Tarfaya,
Morocco wind farm which will produce several times the energy than is
presently available. Tarfaya is no Palm Springs, CA. Something is
terribly wrong with this picture.
Conclusion
I would be remiss if I did not say that
Paul Martin has been telling me for two weeks that his sources are
telling him that massive bug outs are being carried out by the elite.
A blind man could see that something is
terribly wrong with this picture. We are witnessing the coalescing of
forces which could lead to the destruction of most life on this planet
for once NATO engages Russia in Syria, and they will, all hell will
break loose. The Federal Reserve is not going to allow Syria, Iran and
the BRICS to undermine the Petrodollar without a fight. And the fight
has already begun. May God help us.
A Bible Believer Asks The Question ‘When Does Life Begin?’
This study will seek to answer this subject from the very beginning
with the right question, “When does man become a living soul?”
December 1, 2015
What is life? In essence, mankind has only three designations. In his physical state, he is either born or unborn. And, in his spiritual state, he is either regenerated or lost
We all know that life begins at conception. But, is that the end of the matter? Should we stop there and ask no more questions? Of course not! Shouldn’t Bible Believing Christians who claim the Bible as their standard of truth and science, at the very least, look in the BIBLE for the answers to their questions? Yes, we should! We should look in the Bible for the answers AND we should look in the Bible for the QUESTIONS, too. We should ask ourselves, “Is that question even a Bible question?” The truth is, before someone can get to the right answer they must first get to the right question. For example, when someone asks the question, “When does life begin?” it should send up for us red flags right away because that question falls short of a far bigger question someone should be asking – a better question – a more biblical question. And, since God has the right answers and more importantly the right questions, this study will seek to answer this subject from the very beginning with the right question, “When does man become a living soul?”Keeping in mind that God is The Author of life – all life – both physical and spiritual; the purpose of the following chart is to present the biblical view of the controversial subject, “When does man become a living soul?” Being a man becomes a living soul at birth, whatever your present view, we do NOT advocate abortion of any kind. We advocate life! And, unless God deems fit to take that life away, no one has any warrant to interrupt it in any stage. Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life.” (John 10:10) We advocate birth for the unborn and a new birth for Adam’s fallen race. (John 3:1-8) Of the three natures of man, none stand alone. The fact is, prenatal life is needed for physical birth, physical life is needed for the new birth, and Eternal life is needed for the Believer’s glorification. Hence, life is needed in every stage of man.
Man: A Living Soul
In essence, mankind has only three designations. In his physical state, he is either born or unborn. And, in his spiritual state, he is either regenerated or lost. Jesus gave us the key to understanding all this, when He said,“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. …Except a man be born of water[the first birth] and of the Spirit [the second birth], he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh [the first birth] is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit [the second birth] is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” (John 3:3-7)
This study will deal specifically with the three conditions of man:
- Physically UNBORN, in darkness, in his mother’s womb.
- Physically BORN, in light physically, in darkness spiritually.
- Physically BORN, in light physically and spiritually.
“How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” (John 3:4) The first condition of man is inside his mother’s womb.
Jesus added the other two conditions…
“Born of water” (womb) – natural birth and “born of the Spirit” –spiritual birth (John 3:5 and 6)…
That translates to three natures:
- UNBORN nature
- UNREGENERATED nature
- REGENERATED nature
According to Jesus, if there is no natural life without a natural birth, there will be no spiritual life, without a spiritual birth. (See note below.)
So, the question still remains, what determines when a man becomes a living soul? Jesus answered that in the next verse of our main text…
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)
Jesus likened spiritual birth to wind – blowing air. If “every one that is born of the Spirit” breathes spiritually for the first time at their new birth, then it stands to reason, that everyone who breathes naturally for the first time, does so at their physical birth.
Adam became a “living soul” when, “the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7), and the soul of the widow’s son of First Kings seventeen came “into him again” after he received “breath” (vs. 17).
“As God liveth, who hath taken away my judgment; and the Almighty,who hath vexed my soul; All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils….” (Job 27:2-3)
“The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.” (Job 33:4)
“And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind [Remember; Jesus likened wind to being born of the Spirit – John 3:8], Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” (Ezekiel 37:8-10)
Here is the KEY to understanding this subject. Remember, the question is, “When does man become a living soul?”…
Like a man’s spirit and soul leave a man at death (which leaves a FULLY DEVELOPED BODY), so too, at this stage (see first chart below – “Begins Birth”) you have a FULLY DEVELOPED BODY THAT IS LIVING (totally dependent on its mother for life), in anticipation of birth where it receives a spirit, and becomes a living soul.
Therefore…
PHYSICAL LIFE is generated at CONCEPTION, and completed at BIRTH – where man becomes a LIVING SOUL* that breathes on his own, for the first time ever. And, SPIRITUAL LIFE begins at CONCEPTION** and completed at BIRTH – The NEW BIRTH – where a living soul has been regenerated into a SAVED SOUL that is breathing spiritually, for the first time ever.
* When God created man, He created him as a COMPLETE being. God, as a triune being, made man in His own image. In that sense, man looked like God, with a “spirit and soul and body.” (I Thessalonians 5:23)
** See I PETER 1:23 and Mark 4:8a, 20a – The seed of the word of God implanted in “good ground.”
** When God created man, He created him as a COMPLETE being.
Note: Spiritually speaking, a man might conceive the seed of the word of God, but he is not breathing (spiritually), according to the Lord Jesus, UNTIL he is born again. It is no different in the physical realm. A woman receives corruptible seed that produces a corruptible body that has to grow to maturity, in order to be born and breath on his own.
Who threatened to shoot all blacks?
Who threatened to 'shoot all blacks'? Answer is priceless
Kean University Kean University alumna Kayla-Simone McKelvey The 100 black activists protesting racial intolerance at New Jersey's Kean University really do have someone to fear – but the distressing shooting and bomb threats aren't coming from racist white people. In a surprising twist, the vicious threats came from a sneaky agent inside their own ranks. Kayla-Simone…
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Our World: The American war against the Jews Caroline Glick
The foundations of American Jewish life are under assault today in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago. Academia is ground zero of the onslaught. The protest movements on campuses are first and foremost anti-Jewish movements.
For the past decade or so, Jewish communal leaders and activists have focused on just one aspect of this anti-Jewish campaign. Jewish leaders have devoted themselves to helping Jewish students combat the direct anti-Semitism inherent to the anti-Israel student movements.
Despite the substantial funds that have been devoted to fighting anti-Israel forces on campuses, they have not been diminished. To the contrary, with each passing year they have grown more powerful and menacing.
Consider a sampling of the anti-Jewish incidents that took place over the past two weeks.
Two weeks ago, Daniel Bernstein, a Jewish student at University of California Santa Cruz and a member of the university’s student government was ordered not to vote on a resolution calling for the university to divest from four companies which do business with Israel.
Bernstein represents UCSC’s Stevenson College at the university student government. He is also vice president of his college’s Jewish Student Union. Ahead of the anti-Israel vote, Bernstein received a message from a member of his college’s student council ordering him to abstain from the vote on Israel divestment.
The student council, Bernstein was informed, had determined that he was motivated by “a Jewish agenda,” and therefore couldn’t be trusted to view the resolution fairly.
In the same message, Bernstein’s correspondent gave him a friendly “heads up” that his fellow students are considering removing him from office because he is a Jew supported by the Jewish community.
To his credit, Bernstein ignored his orders. He voted to oppose the anti-Israel resolution.
Following the incident Bernstein published a statement decrying the anti-Jewish discrimination and hatred now rampant on his campus.
Among other things, he wrote, “I wish that [my] being subjected to anti-Semitism was a shocking new occurrence. But the truth is that I’m not shocked. I’m not shocked because this hatred and ignorance has followed me everywhere. I’m not shocked because Jewish students have been targeted with this vile racism all over the [University of California] UC system for years, and especially since BDS became a major issue of discussion. Anti-Semitism ... has ... become an inseparable part of campus politics right here at UC Santa Cruz and across the UC system.”
Then there is the growing movement of professional associations that boycott Israel.
Last week the National Women’s Studies Association passed a resolution to join the BDS movement. The resolution, written in turgid, incomprehensible prose, proclaimed that the only state in the Middle East that provides full and equal rights to women is so evil that it must be singled out and boycotted, sanctioned and divested from.
Whereas Bernstein was personally targeted, and the NWSA criminalizes Israel, at CUNY, on November 12, a group of protesters targeted the Jewish community as a whole.
That day, as part of a national “million student march,” where students demanded free tuition, anti-Jewish students at CUNY rallied at Hunter college and introduced a new demand: the expulsion of all Israel supporters from campus.
Congregating in the center of the campus, some 50 students chanted in unison, “Zionists out of CUNY!”
Aside from an anodyne statement in favor of “freedom of expression,” CUNY administrators had nothing to say about the affair.
For their part, Hunter’s administrators issued a statement “condemning the anti-Semitic comments,” made by the rally participants.
But no disciplinary measures were taken against any of them.
Speaking to the Algemeiner, StandWithUs’s northeast regional director Shahar Azani said that the Hunter incident “is another example of the hijacking of various social causes by the anti-Israel movement.”
In making this claim, Azani was merely repeating the position taken by Jewish communal leaders and activists involved in the fight to defend Jews and Israel on university campuses. Unfortunately, this position is incorrect.
According to the prevailing wisdom guiding Jewish communal responses to the onslaught against Jewish students on campuses, the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish movements are distinct from the wider anti-liberal forces now disrupting campus life throughout the US. As Jewish leaders see things, there is no inherent connection between the protesters embracing victimhood and demanding constraints on freedom of expression, inquiry and assembly (and free tuition), and those who seek to drive Jews out of the public sphere on college campuses.
In other words, they believe that Zionists can be crybullies too.
But they can’t.
The crybully movement, which demands that universities constrain freedom to cater to victim groups, is necessarily hostile to Jews. This is the reason that at the same time that “victims” from blacks to transgenders are coddled and caressed, Jews have emerged as the only group that is not protected. Indeed, the BDS movement requires universities to discriminate against Jewish students.
The inherent conflict between the tenets of the “progressive” movement and Jewish rights is exposed in a guide to racial “microaggressions” published earlier this year by the University of California. Students and faculty must avoid committing these “microagressions” if they want to stay on the right side of campus authorities and the law.
The UC defines “microagressions” as, “brief, subtle verbal or non-verbal exchanges that send denigrating messages to the recipient because of his or her group membership (such as race, gender, age or socio-economic status).”
Transgressors can expect to be accused of engendering a “hostile learning environment,” an act that can get you expelled, fired and subjected to criminal probes.
As law professor Eugene Voloch reported in The Washington Post last June, among other things, the list of offenses includes embracing merit as a means of advancing in society. A statement along the lines of “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” can destroy a person’s academic career.
So too, statements rejecting race as a significant factor in judging a person’s competence are now deemed racist. For instance statements to the effect of, “There is only one race, the human race,” “America is a melting pot” or “I don’t believe in race” can land a student or instructor in hot water.
In a column last week, Dennis Prager noted that the list castigates as racism all the pillars of liberal society in America. The list, he wrote, shows that “the American university is now closer to fascism than to traditional liberty.”
Prager is right, of course. But the fascist takeover of American academia will not affect all Americans equally.
Jews are the greatest victims of this state of affairs.
For the better part of the past hundred years, the upward mobility of American Jewry has been directly correlated with America’s embrace of meritocratic values. The more Americans have looked past race and ethnicity and judged people by their talents, characters and professional competence, the higher Jews have risen. Conversely, where qualities other than competence, talent and professionalism have determined social and professional status, Jews have suffered. They have faced discrimination and their opportunities to advance have been limited.
Academia is but a small component of American society. But to earn a place in America’s middle, upper-middle and upper classes, you need at least an undergraduate degree. Moreover, university graduates go on to populate and head the state and federal governing bureaucracies, the business world, the entertainment sector and every other major area of human endeavor in American society.
Academia’s simultaneous rejection of core liberal principles and legitimization of anti-Semitic forces is not a coincidence. Jews are a constant reminder that human agency – rather than race and other group identities – has everything to do with a person’s ability to excel in academics and beyond. For fascist principles to hold, Jews must be demonized and hated. The intrinsic link between anti-Semitism and fascism and their simultaneous embrace by a key American institution means that the equal rights and freedoms of Jews are far more threatened in America today than most Jewish leaders and activists have realized. The Jewish community’s failure to date to successfully defeat the anti-Semitic forces on campuses owes at least in part to its failure to recognize or contend with the dual nature of the problem.
Our World: Obama’s new counter-terrorism guru - Caroline Glick
In broad terms, Obama’s strategy for dealing with radical Islamic terrorism and jihadist movements is to ignore their motivating ideologies, take minimal action to combat them, criticize other governments for failing to destroy IS and its jihadist brethren on their own, and attack Republicans for criticizing Obama’s strategy for defeating radical Islamic terrorism.
The new justification for Obama’s refusal to revise his strategy was first uttered by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton at the Democratic presidential debate on November 14. Five days later, the Democratic National Committee produced an ad attacking Republican presidential candidates based on this new rhetorical theme.
Obama himself resonated the new message during his press conference in Malaysia on Sunday.
According to the new taking points, Republicans have no right to criticize Obama, or Clinton, for their failure to contend with the nature of the enemy because in ignoring the enemy’s doctrine, ideology and strategic goals, they are merely following in president George W. Bush’s footsteps.
During the Democratic presidential debate, Clinton argued that refusing to identify the radical Islamic nature of the enemy that attacked the US on September 11 and in the months and years that followed “was one of the real contributions – despite all the other problems – that George W. Bush made after 9/11, when he basically said – after going to a mosque in Washington – we are not at war with Islam or Muslims.”
In its new ad, the DNC attacks five Republican presidential candidates that have stated in recent days that radical Islam is the force that is warring against the US and its allies.
To prove that the candidates are “unpresidential,” for naming the enemy, the DNC ad includes a clip of Bush’s speeches in praise of Islam as “a religion of peace,” which he delivered in the days immediately following the September 11 attacks.
The Democrats’ invocation of Bush as their counterterrorism authority and as a means to justify their refusal to use the term “radical Islam” is more than a bit ironic, of course, since they have spent the past 14 years pillorying Bush’s counterterrorism policies.
But it is also extremely helpful. By aligning with Bush to justify their refusal to discuss the radical Islamic foundations of the terrorist scourge facing the free world and devouring large swaths of the Middle East, the Democrats have given us the opportunity to consider what that refusal has meant for the US’s ability to lead the free world in its war against the forces of radical Islam.
At the time of the September 11 attacks, and for the first five years of Bush’s war on terrorism that followed them, Michael Gerson served as Bush’s chief speechwriter.
Gerson authored Bush’s statements about Islam being a religion of peace.
In November 2014, Gerson participated in a debate vabout the nature of Islam and the war on terror. Gerson explained that Bush’s decision to ignore the nature of the enemy emanated from a strategic calculation.
Bush believed that radical Islam was but a marginal force in the Muslim world. By embracing Islam as a whole, and insisting that the terrorists from al-Qaida and other groups did not reflect the authentic nature of Islam, Bush hoped to draw the non-radical Muslims to America’s side against the jihadists.
In Gerson’s words, “Every religious tradition has forces of tribalism and violence in its history, background and theology; and, every religious tradition has sources of respect for the other. And you emphasize, as a political leader, one at the expense of the other in the cause of democracy.”
Gerson continued, “That is a great American tradition that we have done with every religious tradition that comes to the United States – include them as part of a natural enterprise and praise them for their strongly held religious views, and emphasize those portions that are most compatible with those ideals.”
The flaws in this reasoning began surfacing immediately.
When Bush made his remarks about Islam after the September 11 attacks, he was flanked by Muslim leaders who were in short order exposed as terrorism apologists and financiers.
On the battlefield, by failing to acknowledge, let alone discredit the enemy’s world view, Bush made it all but impossible for Muslims who oppose radical Islam to stand up against it. After all, if the Americans didn’t think it was a problem, why would they? Since the Americans refused to admit the existence of radical Islam, the US refused to favor non-radical forces over radical ones. And so, in the 2005 Iraqi elections, while Iran spent a fortune financing the campaigns of its supporters, the US did nothing to support the Iraqi forces that shared the US’s goal of transforming Iraq into a multi-denominational, pluralistic democracy.
The results were preordained. The elected government took its cues from Iran, and as soon as US forces withdrew from Iraq, all of America’s hard won gains were squandered. The Iraqi government became an Iranian puppet. And in areas where Iran didn’t care to assert its control, al-Qaida-aligned forces that now comprise Islamic State rose once again.
Obama’s refusal to discuss radical Islam stems from a different source than Bush’s refusal to do so. Unlike Bush’s position, Obama’s insistence that IS, al-Qaida, Hamas, Boko Haram and their brethren have nothing to do with Islam does not owe to a strategic calculation on how to win a war. Rather, it stems from an ideological conviction that the US and the rest of the Western world have no right to cast aspersions on jihadists.
As Obama sees things, the problems in the Middle East, and the Middle Eastern terrorism plaguing the rest of the world, are the result of past Western imperialism and chauvinism. All anti-Western movements – including jihadist movements – are legitimate responses to what Obama perceives as the crime of Western power.
Obama’s peevish response to the massacre in Paris and his assaults on Republicans who argue that the religious convictions of Syrians requesting asylum in the US are relevant for determining whether or not to let them in have brought his refusal to identify the enemy to the forefront of the US debate on how to defeat IS.
This debate is clearly uncomfortable for liberal US media outlets. So they have sought to change the subject.
As the Democratic Party adopted Bush as its new counterterrorism guru, the liberal media sought to end discussion of radical Islam by castigating as bigots Republicans who speak of it. The media attempt over the weekend to claim falsely that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump called for requiring American Muslims to be registered in a national Muslim database marked such an attempt to change the subject.
The common denominator between Bush’s strategic decision to lie about the nature of the enemy, Obama’s apologetics for IS and the media’s attempt to claim that Republicans are anti-Islamic racists is that in all cases, an attempt is being made to assert that there is no pluralism in Islam – it’s either entirely good or entirely evil.
This absolutist position is counterproductive for two reasons. First, it gets you nowhere good in the war against radical Islam. The fact is that Islam per se is none of the US president’s business. His business is to defeat those who attack the US and to stand with America’s allies against their common foes.
Radical Islam may be a small component of Islam or a large one. But it certainly is a component of Islam. Its adherents believe they are good Muslims and they base their actions on their Islamic beliefs.
American politicians, warfighters and policymakers need to identify that form of Islam, study it and base their strategies for fighting the radical Islamic forces on its teachings.
Bush was wrong to lie about the Islamic roots of radical Islam. And his mistake had devastating strategic consequences for the world as a whole. It is fortuitous that the Clinton and the Democratic Party have embraced Bush’s failed strategy of ignoring the enemy for justifying their even more extreme position. Now that they have, they have given a green light to Republicans as well as Democrats who are appalled by Obama’s apologetics for radical Islam to learn from Bush’s mistakes and craft an honest and effective strategic approach to the challenge of radical Islam.
Obama Has Just Begun
Reblogged from nationalreview.com
by Victor Davis Hanson November 24, 2015 4:00 AM
How much damage can he do in his last year in office?
Insidiously and inadvertently, Barack Obama is alienating the people and moving the country to the right. If he keeps it up, by 2017 it will be a reactionary nation. But, counterintuitive as it seems, that is fine with Obama: Après nous le déluge.
By sheer force of his personality, Obama has managed to lose the Democratic Senate and House. State legislatures and governorships are now predominantly Republican. Obama’s own favorable ratings rarely top 45 percent. In his mind, great men, whether Socrates or Jesus, were never appreciated in their time. So it is not surprising that he is not, as he presses full speed ahead.
Obama certainly has doubled down going into his last year, most recently insisting on letting in more refugees from the Middle East, at a time when the children of Middle Eastern immigrants and contemporary migrants are terrorizing Europe.
What remaining unpopular executive acts might anger his opponents the most?
Close down Guantanamo, let thousands more refugees into the United States, free thousands more felons, snub another ally, flatter another enemy, weigh in on another interracial melodrama, extend amnesty to another million illegal aliens, make global warming laws by fiat, expand Obamacare, unilaterally impose gun control? In lieu of achievement, is the Obama theory to become relevant or noteworthy by offending the public and goading political enemies?
An Obama press conference is now a summation of all his old damn-you clichés — the fantasy strawman arguments; the caricatures of the evil Republican bogeymen; the demagogic litany of the sick, the innocent, and the old at the mercy of his callous opponents; the affected accentuation (e.g., Talîban; Pakîstan, Îslám, Latînos, etc.) that so many autodidacts parade in lieu of learning foreign languages; the make-no-mistake-about-it and let-me-be-clear empty emphatics; the flashing temper tantrums; the mangled sports metaphors; the factual gaffes; and the monotonous I, me, my, and mine first-person-pronoun exhaustion. What Obama cannot do in fact, he believes he can still accomplish through invective and derision. Getting under his critics’ skin is about all that is left of a failed presidency.
In the 2016 election campaigns, most Democratic candidates in swing states will have distanced themselves from the last eight years. Otherwise, they would have to run on the patently false premise that American health care is more affordable and more comprehensive today than it was in 2009; that workforce participation is booming; that scandals are a thing of the past; that the debt has been addressed; that Obama has proved a healer who brought the country together; that immigration at last is ordered, legal, and logical; that the law has never been more respected and honored; that racial relations are calmer than ever; that the campuses are quiet; that the so-called war on terror is now over and won with al-Qaeda and ISIS contained or on the run; that U.S. prestige aboard has never been higher; that our allies appreciate our help and our enemies fear our wrath; that Iran will now not go nuclear; that Israel is secure and assured of our support; and that, thanks to American action, Egypt is stable, Libya is ascendant, Iraq is still consensual, and the Middle East in general is at last quiet after the tumultuous years of George W. Bush.
The hordes of young male migrants abandoning the Middle East for the West are merely analogous to past waves of immigrants and should be uniformly welcome. For Obama, there is no connection between them and his slashing of American involvement in the Middle East — much less any sense of responsibility that his own actions helped produce the crisis he now fobs off on others.
If an American president saw fit to attack fellow Americans from abroad, and lecture them on their illiberality, there are better places from which to take such a low road than from Turkey, the embryo of 20th-century genocide, and a country whose soccer crowds were recently shouting, “Allahu akbar!” during what was supposed to be a moment of silence offered to the Paris dead. Surely an American president might suggest that such grassroots religious triumphalism about mass death is much more reprehensible behavior than are his own fellow citizens’ demands to vet the backgrounds of refugees.
If you suggested to Obama that, in his search for a contrarian legacy, he should do something to stop the slaughter in the Middle East and be careful about letting in more unexamined refugees, in answer, he would be more likely to do less than nothing abroad and vastly expand the influx of migrants. Getting under his critics’ skin is about all that is left of a failed presidency.
Many of our observers still do not quite grasp that Obama will end his presidency by seeking to get his opponents’ goat — and that his resentment will lead to some strange things said and done.
Few foresaw this critical element of the Obama character. The tiny number of prescient pundits who warned what the Obama years would entail were not the supposedly sober and judicious establishment voices, who in fact seemed to be caught up in the hope-and-change euphoria and missed entirely.Obama’s petulance and pique: the Evan Thomases (“he’s sort of god”), or the David Brookses (“and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” “It is easy to sketch out a scenario in which [Obama] could be a great president.”), or the Chris Matthewses (“the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”), or the Michael Beschlosses (“Uh. I would say it’s probably — he’s probably the smartest guy ever to become President.”), or the Chris Buckleys (“He has exhibited throughout a ‘first-class temperament,’ pace Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man”), or the Kathleen Parkers (“ . . . with solemn prayers that Obama will govern as the centrist, pragmatic leader he is capable of being”), or the Peggy Noonans (“He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief.”).
Obama feels liberated now that he is free from further elections. He thinks he has a legitimate right to be a bit vindictive and vent his own frustrations and pique. In truth, it was the loud, sometimes shrill, and caricatured voices of talk radio, the so-called crazy Republican House members, and the grassroots loudmouths of what would become the Tea Party who had Obama’s number. They warned early on that Barack Obama’s record was that of a petulant extremist, that his writing presaged that he would borrow and spend like no other president, that his past associations gave warning that he would use his community-organizing skills cynically to divide Americans along racial lines, that nothing in his past had ever suggested anything other than radicalism and an ease with divisive speech, that his votes as a state legislator and as a U.S. senator suggested that he had an instinctual dislike of the entrepreneur and the self-made businessman, and that his past rhetoric advised that he would ignore settled law and instead would rule by fiat — that he would render immigration law null and void, that he would diminish the profile of America abroad, and that he would do all this because he was an ideologue, with no history of bipartisanship but a lot of animus toward his critics, and one who saw no ethical or practical reason to appreciate the more than 60 years of America’s postwar global leadership and the world that it had built. Again, the despised right-wingers were right and the more moderate establishment quite wrong.
Abroad, from Obama’s post-Paris speeches, it is clear that he is now bored with and irritated by the War on Terror. He seems to have believed either that Islamist global terror was a minor distraction with no potential for real harm other than to bring right-wingers in backlash fashion out of the woodwork, or that it was an understandably radical manifestation of what was otherwise a legitimate complaint of Islam against the Western-dominated global system — thus requiring contextualization rather than mindless opposition. More Barack Obama Obama’s Increasingly Surreal War on ISIS Krauthammer's Take: Under Obama, ISIS Has Created Largest Terror-Training State in History Barack Obama, Red-Baiter
A lot of ambitious and dangerous powers are watching Obama assume a fetal position, and may well as a consequence act foolishly and recklessly this next year. Not only Russia, China, and North Korea, but also Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, ISIS, and assorted rogue states may take chances in the next 14 months that they would otherwise never have entertained (given that America is innately strong and they are mostly in comparison far weaker) — on the premise that such adventurism offers tangible advantages without likely negative consequences and that the chance for such opportunities will not present itself again for decades to come.
At home, Obama feels liberated now that he is free from further elections. He thinks he has a legitimate right to be a bit vindictive and vent his own frustrations and pique, heretofore repressed over the last seven years because of the exigencies of Democratic electioneering. Obama can now vent and strike back at his opponents, caricaturing them from abroad, questioning their patriotism, slandering them for sport, and trying to figure out which emblematic executive orders and extra-legal bureaucratic directives will most infuriate them and repay them for their supposed culpability for his failed vero possumus presidency.
The more contrarian he becomes, and the more he opposes the wishes of the vast majority of the American people, all the more Obama envisions himself speaking truth to power and becoming iconic of something rather than the reality that he is becoming proof of nothing. Hold on. We haven’t seen anything yet
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals. Did you like this?
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427522/obamas-most-dangerous-year?target=author&tid=900280
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