Free Speech Week at Berkeley Cancelled: AG Will Weigh in

The organizers of a scheduled Free Speech week at UC Berkeley (September 24-27) canceled the events even though Milo Yiannopoulos and others say they plan to show up on campus and speak anyway.

I may not be privy to all the details involved, but it can be safely said that if Berkeley were open to all forms of political speech, these problems would not exist and the event could go on. It was obvious that it would have drawn massive disruption and violence from the left.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/09/25/sessions-to-declare-free-speech-under-attack-on-campus-in-broadside-at-political-correctness.html

It is good that the Justice Department will look into this-not to crack down on leftist speech, but to ensure that conservative speech can also be heard. I believe that this Antifa activity is something that crosses state lines and that there are active conspiracies (Yes, conspiracies) to shut down speech which the far left objects to. These are not spontaneous disruptions. They are planned and organized. People are traveling from state to state and somebody is paying for it. That justifies bringing in the Justice Department.

Oh No! Villanueva Apologizes to Team

Amid a national backlash against the Pittsburgh Steelers for not taking the field until the National Anthem was finished Sunday (with the exception of Army combat vet Alejandro Villanueva), now the waters get muddied. Villanueva is blaming himself for what he calls a screw-up and apologizing to his teammates for making them look bad. Apparently, he though some other players would join him at the end of tunnel where he stood during the playing of the Anthem.

http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/steelers/2017/09/25/alejandro-villanueva-steelers-national-anthem-protest/stories/201709250175

Let me say this: The report is somewhat confusing, but I suspect Villanueva is getting some negative blow back from  his teammates. He owes them no apology. They made themselves look bad. He says he had been getting messages from his buddies and fellow vets imploring him not to snub the Anthem. He knew what his teammates were doing, and he made the correct decision to show himself for the Anthem. Whether he thought others were joining him or not I have no idea. The fact is no one else did.

Villanueva owes more to his fellow vets than his fellow Steelers. What does he owe to Steeler running back Le'veon Bell, for example? This guy has been suspended twice in his career for failing drug tests. Nevertheless, he chose to skip the entire pre-season over a contract dispute. Now he has played poorly in the first three games of the regular season. He's the guy who should be apologizing to Villanueva.

In addition, I don't appreciate Coach Mike Tomlin's comments throwing Villanueva under the bus during a press conference. Tomlin said he expected "100% participation" referring to Villanueva.

Moreover, Steeler President Art Rooney was weak in his statement that was devoid of taking a stand.

Not weak in his statement is (former) Steeler fan Richard Williams of Texas. He has made the below video burning all his Steeler gear and explaining why.

https://sports.yahoo.com/steelers-fan-burns-paraphernalia-protest-165255172.html

I have not yet made the decision to burn my Steeler paraphernalia, but here is what I hope. If this team decides to continue their demonstration, I hope the Heinz Field crowd roundly boos them. I also hope the stadium will be half full on Sundays for the rest of the year. Only the fans can send a message to the NFL, its teams and their players.

Praying for Death in the Streets of Paris

Hat tip Vlad Tepes


Vlad Tepes is running video of Muslims praying on a major street in Paris and reciting a verse from Sura 9 of the Quran that beseeches Muslims to fight against the infidels.

https://vladtepesblog.com/2017/09/25/illegal-street-prayers-in-paris-demand-death-to-the-unbelievers-collectively/

This will only accelerate and accelerate until somebody draws the line. Public streets are not for people to use for prayer especially when they are calling for the deaths of people who are not Muslims.

The French could have stopped this in the last election, but they chose to stay with the same old establishment liberals. I guess they haven't gotten mad enough yet.

The Man Who Attacked a Church in Tennessee

You may recall that when President Trump imposed his travel ban against six countries, opponents claimed that nobody from those nations had ever launched an attack against Americans on American soil.

Meet Emanuel Kidega Samson from Sudan.

Yesterday, Samson opened fire on a  church in Antioch, Tennessee killing one woman and wounding six. I should note that Samson is apparently not a Muslim since he had reportedly attended this church at some point in the past according to reports. Whether he is a recent convert to Islam is not known. As yet, we don't know the reason for the attack. The FBI is involved in the investigation, which indicates that terrorism has not been ruled out. Since Samson is Sudanese and Sudan is a predominantly Muslim country, that probably explains the FBI's involvement.

So we will await the results of the investigation, but one of the arguments against Trump's travel ban just went out the window.

Screw the NFL/Steelers

*This article first appeared in New English Review I updated it to include the information about Alejandro Villanueva. At the time of my submission to NER, I was unaware of Villanueva's actions.



Alejandro Villanueva-The only Steeler to come out for the National Anthem


The events in the NFL on Sunday have pushed me to the point of walking away from it all. First, players from the Ravens and Jaguars, playing in front of a British crowd in London, stood for God Save the Queen (as they should), but knelt for their own National Anthem. They embarrassed their own country.

Then the Pittsburgh Steelers, a team I have rooted for for 62 years-since I was 10 years old- chose to remain in the locker room in Chicago during the National Anthem. Imagine the Chicago Bears out there on the field and the Steelers in the locker room. To add insult to injury, the Steelers went out and stunk up the field losing to a clearly inferior Bears team.

I must add, however, that one Steeler walked onto the field alone and stood for the Anthem. That was left tackle Alejandro Villanueva, a West Point grad and Army Ranger captain with three tours in Afghanistan to his resume, something that no other Steeler fat cat teammate can match. Villanueva put the rest of his teammates and coaching staff to shame. I don't know if he'll get any flack from his teammates but at 6'9 and 300+, I think he can handle it.

Notwithstanding my hero, Villanueva, this has put me in a position I never thought I would experience-walking away from the Steelers as a fan. Something that was unimaginable is happening. Today I am thinking that I will not watch another game this season until this crap stops.

It is now up to us the fans whether we go to the stadium or watch on TV, to say, "that's enough".  It will be hard to break with the Steelers, but I can try.

And you know what? If this stuff spreads to baseball, as it might -one Oakland player is now doing it- I can stay away from baseball too. I  have been a die hard Cub fan since 1963 and experienced the joy of last year's championship. But if the Cubs start doing this, I will consider walking away from them too.

Of course, the demographic makeup of the players in football and baseball differs. The NFL has over 50% African-American players. In baseball, a large percentage of players are foreign-born. Many are from Latin America. They know that it is expected to stand for anybody's national anthem. It is also true that in this point in time, there are not that many African-American baseball players, a sad state of affairs due to many social and economic factors which we don't need to go into here.

To be fair, I should note that most black football players are standing during the National Anthem. I applaud them. I do not respect those that are disrespecting our country, our anthem, and our flag. This is not 1968, and Colin Kaepernick is no John Carlos or Tommie Smith. He has started something very ugly and divisive and it is spreading.

I am not sure how I feel about President Trump's comments. I agree with him, but I wonder if a president should be jumping into it. Now the NFL commissioner,  Roger Goodell, is reacting as well as the sportscasters and sports pundits. They are now basically supporting the players who kneel as a way of opposing Trump.

Of course everybody has their right of free expression. The players have a right to kneel or stay in the locker room. Trump has a right to say his piece. We have a right to agree or disagree. We also have a right to stay away from the stadium or turn off the TV.

After all, I love my country more than I do the Steelers.

Merkel Re-Elected: Go Figure

German voters have decided that they will follow Angela Merkel over the cliff. In spite of increased unpopularity over her insane immigration policies, she has been re-elected.

The one positive note is that the new anti-open borders party, Alternatif fuer Deutschland, won 13% of the vote gaining entrance into the Reichstag. How much influence they will have I don't know.

The anti-open borders parties are winning surprising percentages in Europe's elections, but the establishment candidates and parties continue o come in first. These  Western European countries continue their road to self-destruction.

Ravens and Jaguars Kneel on Foreign Soil

One of the points I have made about the Colin Kaepernick controversy is that when on foreign soil it is still expected that you stand when their country's national anthem is played even though you are not a citizen of that country. That is what I have done many times on such occasions. I asked whether Kaepnernick would fail to stand for God Save the Queen were he playing in England as the NFL now does.

Today, the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars answered that question. They stood for God Save the Queen (as was proper) while many of them knelt for their own anthem. While British fans had the courtesy and respect to stand for both anthems, many of these players chose to kneel for their own anthem in front of a foreign crowd.

http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2017/09/24/ravens-jaguars-players-kneel-during-national-anthem-after-trumps-attacks-on-nfl.html

To me this is worse than kneeling in an American stadium. What these players did was embarrass their own country while on foreign soil. That was a double insult.

Quite a legacy this man Kaepernick is establishing. I suspect the NFL lost many more fans today.

OC Register Op-ed on the New Anti-Semitism

Orange County Register columnist Joel Kotkin has an article today in which he correctly identifies the new anti-semitism as being on the left and Islamic.

The one fact he omits that in the US, the focal point is on our campuses.

http://www.ocregister.com/2017/09/24/the-changing-face-of-anti-semitism/#disqus_thread

A Fascinating Interview With Tatjana Festerling

Hat tip Gates of Vienna, Vlad Tepes and Oz-Rita


Tatjana Festerling is a former leader of PEGIDA in Germany and a co-founder of Fortress Europa. The below interview is with the French outlet Libertes. As noted in the link, the interviewer poses his questions in French and Festerling answers in German. Sub-titles and translation are by Vlad Tepes and Oz-Rita respectively.

This exchange lasts 11 minutes and is well worth the time. Festerling describes the madness in Germany caused by Angela Merkel's open door policy toward refugees. She also questions the current mentality of the German people who seem to accept it blindly no matter the risk to their safety. She also says that the East Europeans need to build a new Iron Curtain  to protect themselves from Western Europe.


http://gatesofvienna.net/2017/09/tatjana-festerling-there-is-no-will-to-defend-there-is-only-this-collective-suicidal-madness/

Merkel is running for re-election this year. Her main opponent is Martin Schulz, an empty suit socialist who would certainly continue Merkel's mad policies.

The True Intent of BDS

As part of the Palestinians' PR war against Israel, they established something called Boycott, Divest and Sanctions against the Jewish state. One of their co-founders, Omar Barghouti. travels the world giving anti-Israel speeches-usually on university campuses, where their movement is strongest.

The stated objective is to promote boycotts of Israel, its academics, and companies that do business with Israel. As to what should happen to Israel itself, the stated objective is that they want to force Israel to change its policies and give the Palestinian people their due justice (whatever that is).

Their true intent is to help bring about an end of the Jewish state.

Let's begin with the proposition that the Palestinian leadership and most of its people want not just the West Bank and Gaza plus any land where Israeli settlements have sprung up; they want it all. They want the complete elimination of the Jewish state. They want a land called Palestine, not existing peacefully next door to Israel, but all of it.

Let me also state my opinion that the 70-year conflict is not really over who is entitled to the land. Both the Arabs and the Israelis have claims on the land, and both sides have valid points to argue. The real issue is that the (overwhelmingly Muslim) Arabs don't want a Jewish state in their midst. Fortunately for Israel, many of the Arab nations have come to the realization that they cannot defeat Israel militarily, and that many of Israel's enemies (Iran, for example) are their enemies as well.

Getting back to BDS and its proponents in the US, the question is whether these activists, like Barghouti, would all go away if Israel and the Palestinians were to make a peace deal. Barghouti himself has answered that question. That occurred  when he spoke at the University of California at Irvine in 2013 on behalf of the Students for Justice in Palestine and the  Muslim Student Union. I was present in the first row and videotaped the event (over the SJP/MSU's objections). Barghouti was asked about that possibility and answered that BDS would not accept it unless its (BDS) conditions were satisfactory to them (again BDS). He listed the right of return as an example.  But don't take my word for it. Watch it yourself. This was my posting after attending the event. His comments on that issue are in the last clip after the 4-minute mark.

You will also note that Barghouti, who was not even born in the disputed region but got his higher education at Tel Aviv University after moving to the West Bank at some unclear point in his life, refused to answer my question as to where he was born.

As I said above, BDS has its strongest presence on college campuses. Every year student governments at various universities have to spend days and long overnight hours debating resolutions to call on their universities to boycott companies that do business with Israel. Sometimes these resolutions pass and sometimes they don't. If passed, virtually every university has rejected its demand. One would wonder why the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has become such a hot button issue on US campuses, but it has as I can personally attest having just completed 18 years teaching part-time at UC Irvine (1998-2016). It was a nice post-retirement gig for me teaching two hours a day after my law enforcement career. However, I did get involved  in campus issues like this (out of the classroom. Unlike many professors, I did not express my personal opinions in class. I was teaching English to foreign students.)

I have seen first-hand the anti-semitism that accompanies the anti-Israel drive on campus. SJP and the Muslim Student Associations deny they are anti-Jewish, just anti-Zionist. Many of their invited speakers whom I have observed put the lie to that. I mention people like Amir Abdel Malik Ali, Mohamed al Asi and Abdul Alim Musa as examples. I invite the reader to Google them. They have a long history of hate-filled rhetoric against Jews including at UC Irvine. As another example, when a BDS resolution was passed at UC Davis in 2015, it was accompanied by a swastika being painted on the outside wall of a Jewish frat building. I can list many documented examples of anti-semitism on college campuses including the University of California system that have accompanied this movement.

I saw Barghouti speak a second time at UC Riverside. On that occasion (2014), he was sponsored by no less than the Dept.of Humanities, but specifically by Professor David Lloyd, a BDS activist. (I believe that Lloyd is also Jewish, but trust me; more than a handful of Jewish activists in academia are vociferous enemies of Israel. I consider them to be left-wing misfits.) Again, I videotaped the event and took part in the q and a. I pointed out to the audience that Barghouti's own origins were something he was uncomfortable speaking about, and I also asked the university sponsors if they planned to invite a pro-Israel speaker so that their students could be exposed to both sides of the issue instead of just this one-sided presentation. Lloyd in his response termed the question "absurd".

What is absurd is David Lloyd and the UCR Dept. of Humanities who are indoctrinating their students instead of educating them.

Given the fact that universities are routinely and universally rejecting BDS resolutions, I am optimistic. BDS may be gaining symbolic victories, but other than swaying a few opinions, they are not resulting in what they want to achieve. Nevertheless, the PR war is important, and those who support Israel will need to continue combating the propaganda of Omar Barghouti and BDS.

The Netherlands Sink Lower-The Numbers Don't Lie

Hat tip Gates of Vienna and Vlad Tepes


Last week I posted an article about crime statistics in Sweden, the rape capital of Europe, showing that immigrants from Muslim countries are responsible for a disproportionate share of the crime. Of course, this is true of most all Western European countries, who for too many years madly imported people without any thought of assimilation. The Netherlands is just another case in point. Dutch politician Geert Wilders has been pointing out the dangers of Muslim immigration for years at the risk of his life and the cost of being repeatedly prosecuted by his own government for so-called hate speech. Now the wave of asylum-seekers has dramatically increased crime in Western Europe including the Netherlands. The statistics in the Netherlands bear this out.

 "Top 5 crimes by arrested asylum seekers (first nine months of 2016)

• Theft 663
• Crimes against persons (insult, threats, spitting, sexual assault, rape and assault and battery) 302
• Offenses (except traffic and environmental) 193
• Disturbing the peace, resisting arrest 156
• Vandalism 80
• Miscellaneous 273 (this is actually number 6)"

The linked article also illustrates the warped thinking that goes into considerations of deportation for those who abuse the generosity of receiving countries like the Netherlands. The policy should be easy: Arrest, prosecute, incarcerate, and deport in that order. Instead these countries bend over backwards to allow foreign criminals to stay. The cost is paid by the host country nationals in terms of their safety and having to pay for services to these foreign criminals, deadbeats, and in some cases terrorists who kill and maim on a large scale.

Of course, this is not to suggest that all immigrants to Europe fall into the above categories. Having lived in two different European countries (Germany and Italy) for a total of eight years and going back for visits every few years, I know better. It is undeniable, however, that Europe failed to do what America did (at least until recent years). We vetted immigrants and insisted on assimilation. The Europeans did not. They thought first and foremost about manual workers to do the work Europeans would not do. Then they realized they needed to import people because their own birth rates were insufficient to maintain the level of those working and paying the bills for their generous welfare states and retirement services. Finally, countries like Sweden decided they were not multi-cultural enough.

Europe could have had all three had they vetted their newcomers and insisted on assimilation. Instead they brought in millions of people without regard to assimilation and wound up with too many who had no respect for the host country values or even the concepts of free speech and democracy.  And that was before the recent tsunami of refugees, asylum-seekers, and plain old migrants most of whom are from Muslim background.

Incidentally, I am specifying Western Europe because the Eastern European countries, primarily, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, are fiercely resisting allowing Muslim refugees and migrants entry into their countries. They are defying EU demands that they take in "their fair share".

Ironically, the Netherlands up to now has arguably been the most successful of Western European countries in trying to assimilate immigrants. Historically, most of them came from the Dutch colonies (past or present) in Indonesia, Suriname, Curacao, Aruba, and other parts of the Caribbean. On the other hand, Moroccans, Afghans and Somalis, to name a few, are a different story. Wilders was brought up on charges for specifically referring to the crime problems among the Moroccan community.

It is time for the Netherlands to start listening to Geert Wilders instead of trying to put him in jail. In my view, it is time to elect him and his party the Dutch Freedom Party, and make him prime minister. However, I am not Dutch, so I don't have a vote. The Netherlands, just like the rest of the Western European countries, needs to close off their borders and rapidly deport the bad apples or they can say goodbye to their democracies and, indeed, their very countries.

Maxine Waters Openly Plays the Race Card

Hat tip IPatriot



There are few people in politics more rotten that Maxine Waters. Most of this year she has been calling for the impeachment of President Trump. When asked for the reason, she just says we have to dig deeper to find it.

At the same time, she is also one of the more racially divisive people in the country.

http://ipatriot.com/democrat-leader-says-black-people-better-get-controversial-play-race-card/

Too bad nobody is willing to dig deeper into Waters' tangled finances. It wouldn't be hard to find a lot there.