Links - 27th August 2018

From Muhammad Syed - "While fact-checkers and establishing the truth is incredibly value, the method for doing so is susceptible to hijacking. The methodology used is seeking out experts on any specific issue, usually from academia and getting their opinion on the issue under discussion. What happens, if academia itself becomes trapped with political motivations - portraying Islam in a positive light due to the current political climate or religious motivations - dishonest scholars that are motivated by Islam rather than the truth? Both of the top two have put out false articles about Islam. Politifact on FGM and Snopes on slavery by Mohammed. I've reached out to both in the past with data / citations on their error with no retractions issued. Sadly, by refusing to use the truth as the ultimate benchmark they poison the discourse at large, opening a gateway to those looking to dispute reality itself. Not only must #exMuslims and other honest academics work to persuade fact-checkers but also reclaim the space within academia increasingly occupied by charlatans.
Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/indiana-muslims-muhammads-deeds/
Politifact: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/oct/02/reza-aslan/fact-checking-reza-aslans-retort-bill-maher/"
Of course in the original post everyone is just getting off on bashing conservatives and Republicans as ignorant

Toronto faces having to close community centres, cancel programs to house migrant tide from U.S. - "Tory called on the federal government Tuesday to take more responsibility for the tangible consequences of its refugee policies."

Of Superheroes and Humans: Kimberley Motley's Fight for Human Rights in Afghanistan - "“No woman in Afghanistan will come to court to say she was raped,” says Motley. “If Gulnaz hadn’t been in prison, she almost certainly would have been killed. Her family and brothers wanted to kill her.”... “In a country where over eighty-five percent of women are victims of some type of abuse, don’t tell me wearing a headscarf makes people any more respectful of women. You’d best believe one hundred percent of the women abused were wearing a headscarf.” She follows this up with choice words for the hypocrisy of some to cherry-pick, flouting only that which they deem inconvenient: “I’ve had Western women say to me that I should be wearing it out of respect for the culture. I ask them, ‘Do you drink? Do you have male friends or a boyfriend? Don’t try to be the Rosa Parks of Islam and pick the parts of it that are cool for you.”... For someone who has seen what she has, the trivialities of our culture wars are an affront to the horrors that plague women in Afghanistan. “Feminism,” she says, “is being diluted. The fact that women here can protest anything at all is miles ahead of what women elsewhere can even fathom doing. We need to move past our myopic approach”."
In other words, feminism is basically #firstworldproblems

The left loses its cool - "In the Donald Trump era, the left is as aggressively confrontational as at any time in recent memory... there’s a bipartisan sense that this election season marks another inflection point in the collapse of civil political discourse... "If you see anybody from that Cabinet — in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station — you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” implored California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters... “When you’re violent and cursing and screaming and blocking me from walking into a movie, there’s something wrong,” she said. “The next people are going to come with guns. That’s what’s going to happen.” According to Bondi, she and a friend were confronted at least four times — while buying tickets, entering the theater, standing in line at the concession stand and then on their way out — and that activists were aggressive in each instance, with one yelling so loudly at her that he spit in her hair, either unintentionally or because he meant to expectorate on her. She said they also taunted her friend as “blue eyes” and asked him in a threatening manner if he was going to protect her, as though they wanted to fight... The public shaming of party officials is more closely associated with Latin American politics... White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was told by the co-owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, to leave. The owner did not want Sanders there in part because she works for an "inhumane and unethical” administration. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who became the face of her boss’ “zero tolerance” immigration policy, was interrupted at dinner at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Washington several days earlier by protesters who shouted "Shame" and "If kids don't eat in peace, you don't eat in peace." Demonstrators also chanted outside her northern Virginia townhouse... “It seems that when these groups realize they can’t win an argument in a civil discussion of the issues, they believe it is perfectly acceptable to turn to bullying.” Presidential historian Michael Beschloss lamented that the flare-ups are “a new disheartening sign of a country that is becoming more divided by the hour. It is almost beginning to sound like some of the things that happened before the Civil War. It’s a polarized country. But it is an extremely polarizing president.”... Republicans contend the confrontational politics will inspire a backlash among a silent majority that is watching the left grow unhinged. “There’s not more energy on the left. There’s more hatred,” said Toledo, the Tampa Republican who said her kids were bothered in a coffee shop. “I signed up for this. But my kids? I thought kids were off limits. Family is off limits. And it backfires when you attack families.”"
It's good to know that the left is following the same logic as abortion clinic bombers

Poll: 59% fear violence from Trump haters, 31% predict civil war - "The new polling evidence of fear in the country over political division follows the harassment of three top Trump aides, including spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, ordered out of a southern Virginia restaurant, and senior adviser Stephen Miller whose condo drew protests from liberals. It also follows a call by liberal California Rep. Maxine Waters to bring pressure to Trump officials when in public and urgings from legal experts for Trump aides to apply for concealed carry permits and buy guns."

Maxine Waters does not speak for Democrats or liberals - "Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) recently told her supporters to hound President Trump’s Cabinet members wherever they find them... Waters does not speak for all Democrats or liberals. Nor do those who threw Sarah Huckabee Sanders out of the Red Hen restaurant. Neither do those who have harassed other members of the Trump administration. But these rude extremists are a symptom of the times. The divisions have gotten so bad that many on both sides refuse to speak or listen to those on the other side. Either you are for Trump or against him, and that is all some people need to know to make judgments about you. I know this because I have experienced this firsthand on Martha’s Vineyard... I have defended Trump’s civil liberties, along with those of all Americans, just as I would have defended Hillary Clinton’s civil liberties had she been elected and subjected to efforts of impeachment tor prosecution. My book, “The Case Against Impeaching Trump,” could just as easily have been the case against impeaching Hillary Clinton. Indeed, I wrote such a book about Bill Clinton, “Sexual McCarthyism: Clinton, Starr, and the Emerging Constitutional Crisis.” I am opposed to appointing a special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and I was against it for Trump. I am a liberal Democrat in politics, but a neutral civil libertarian when it comes to the Constitution. But that is not good enough for some of my old friends on Martha’s Vineyard. For them, it is enough that what I have said about the Constitution might help Trump. So they are shunning me and trying to ban me from their social life on Martha’s Vineyard. One of them, an academic at a distinguished university, has told people that he would not attend any dinner or party to which I was invited. He and others have demanded “trigger warnings” so that they can be assured of having “safe spaces” in which they will not encounter me or my ideas. Others have said they will discontinue contributions to organizations that sponsor my talks. This is all familiar to me, since I lived through McCarthyism in the 1950s, when lawyers who represented alleged communists on civil libertarian grounds were shunned. Some of these lawyers and victims of McCarthyism lived on Martha’s Vineyard. I never thought I would see McCarthyism come to Martha’s Vineyard, but I have. I wonder if the professor who refuses to listen to anything I have to say also treats his students similarly. Would he listen to a student who actively supported Trump? What about one who simply supported his civil liberties? These childish efforts to shun me because I refused to change my position on civil liberties that I have kept for half a century discourages vibrant debate and may dissuade other civil libertarians from applying their neutral principles to a president of whom they disapprove. But one good thing is that being shunned by some “old friends” on Martha’s Vineyard has taught me who my real friends are and who my fairweather friends were. From a personal point of view, I could not care less about being shunned by people whose views regarding dialogue I do not respect."
Alan M. Dershowitz joins the ranks of the Nazis

TPUSA Activists Hounded Out of a Philly Restaurant by Antifa Mob - "An angry antifa mob hounded Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens out of a Philadelphia restaurant where they were attempting to eat breakfast Monday morning... The all-white mob also howled, "F*** white supremacy!" at Owens, TPUSA's outspoken communications director. The irony of this didn't escape conservatives on Twitter: "I haven't seen this many white Democrats kick a black woman out of a diner since the 1950s"... "If a angry conservative mob formed while two young liberals, one white guy and a black woman, were eating breakfast, and the mob hurled horrific insults, threw objects and assaulted them, the left would call it a “hate crime” and every major outlet would be demanding condemnation""
I'm sure those who jutified Sarah Huckabee being hounded will cheer this as well

Rep. Maxine Waters owed an apology from top Dems for not protecting her against 'unwarranted' Trump verbal attacks, nearly 200 black female leaders say - "Black female leaders and allies are blasting House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for what they see as their “failure” to protect Rep. Maxine Waters from “unwarranted attacks from the Trump administration and others in the GOP.” ... “Disparaging or failing to support Congresswoman Waters is an affront to her and Black women across the country and telegraphs a message that the Democratic Party can ill afford: that it does not respect Black women’s leadership and political power and discounts the impact of Black women and millennial voters,” the women wrote... Waters defiantly said to those who want to harm her that they had better “shoot straight because there’s nothing like a wounded animal.”... The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, said those who "daily promote diversity, I would call upon them to respect diversity of opinion." “I think we all know that words matter,” Hensarling said. “I also lament, as I look back, that there was a time in America’s history where you could be denied service at a restaurant based on the color of your skin. Now apparently, it’s the color of your voter registration card,” Hensarling said, in a reference to the incident involving Sanders getting kicked out of a Virginia restaurant last month."
If someone shoots and kills her, can we blame her for literally asking for it?

Trump takes aim at Maxine Waters after she calls for public harassment of his Cabinet - The Washington Post - "Her call to drive Trump officials from public life has made her a hero to many on the left — and has disturbed not only Trump supporters but some moderates and Democrats who accuse her of hastening the country's descent from centuries-old civic standards... “The people who claim tolerance seem to be the most intolerant in this process,” McCarthy said. “We need civility in this country.”... “We’re kind of back to the Colonial era in terms of public shaming, with virtual and symbolic stocks in the public square rather than literal ones,” U.S. historian Jon Meacham told The Washington Post's Mary Jordan. He called this a perhaps uniquely “tribal moment” in the country's history. Without mentioning Waters, David Axelrod, former president Barack Obama's onetime chief strategist, wrote he was “kind of amazed and appalled by the number of folks on the Left who applauded” Sanders's expulsion from a restaurant."

Muna Mire on Twitter - "Civility is also white anglo culture. I have never met a polite African or a Jew that insisted on manners over urgency so. Stop forcing WASP culture on us lmao"
Basically she's saying that coloured people are rude. White supremacists would probably agree with her

SJW Paradox anti-sjw - Posts - "#SJWParadox: Maxine Waters did not cause dead animal carcas to appear at the home of opposition staffers! (nope) But she did call upon people to harass them! (yup) vs. When Trump said media were the enemy, he CAUSED someone (who had an ongoing law suit against a conservative paper since 2011) to SHOOT them. CALLING them the enemy is the SAME as DIRECTING people to harass... or some other action....But Obama did not incite people to kill anyone when recalled the political opposition the enemy... Suggesting so would be RACIST!"

The 'Resistance' Is Turning into a National Lynch Mob - "Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tried to eat at a Mexican restaurant, only to face a mob of protestors inside the eatery screaming “Shame” amidst profanities and insults. Florida Attorney General (and frequent defender of President Trump on Fox News) Pam Bondi was identified, harassed, and spat on when she tried to watch the new Mr. Rogers movie... Rosie O’ Donnell called for a military coup to prevent Trump’s inauguration. Madonna spoke of “blowing up the White House.” Kathy Griffin posed like an ISIS terrorist, holding a wax version of the president’s bloodied head. One-time actor Peter Fonda opined that Trump’s young son Barron ought to be thrown in a cell and gang-raped... We’ve seen this kind of rhetoric just once before since America was founded -- in the build-up to our Civil War... Cynthia Nixon, candidate for governor in New York, is calling for ICE to be disbanded. That federal agency’s offices were occupied by an Antifa mob in Portland, Oregon—and authorities had to sneak in by night to secure federal property. A professor at NYU has exposed the personal information of thousands of ICE employees, putting their lives in danger. (Remember that ICE contends daily against human smugglers linked to violent drug cartels.) An official of the Department of Homeland Security came home last week to find the burned, decapitated corpse of an animal on his front porch. That’s the kind of threat that Mexican drug gangs often use against their enemies... When one political faction decides that losing an election is the same as enduring Nazi occupation, and every means of sabotage and persecution is legitimate… well, that’s how you end up in a state of civil war. Come November, voters should remember which side is trying to provoke that."
"When they go low, we go lower"

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