@WarpedMirrorPMB: From Al Jazeera to ColumbiaUniversity: Joseph Massad’s obsession with Israel

(by Petra Marquardt-​Bigman) Columbia University professor Joseph Massad has been at it for years, but for some reason, his latest op-ed for Al Jazeera finally made many people sit up and pay attention to Massad’s relentless efforts to taint Israel and Zionism with preposterous Nazi-comparisons and claims of Nazi-collaboration.

Popular columnist Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted sarcastically: “Congratulations, al Jazeera: You've just posted one of the most anti-Jewish screeds in recent memory.”

While a lot of people agreed with Goldberg and either retweeted him or posted similar tweets, it is debatable if Massad’s latest Al Jazeera column was really so much worse than the many others that reflect his obsession with Israel. As I have documented only recently, Massad’s writings on Israel can easily be confused with material from the neo-Nazi “White Pride World Wide” hate site Stormfront – and at least in one case, he actually did write a passage that closely resembles a Stormfront post that is taken from David Duke’s notorious “minor league Mein Kampf.”

It was therefore arguably long overdue that people finally noticed that Massad was using his Al Jazeera columns to spread his vicious views on Israel and Zionism. In his latest lengthy and rather incoherent screed, Massad tries once again to resurrect the “Zionism is racism”-equation with the added twist of insisting that Zionism is really Nazi-like racism. This brings Massad to the utterly ridiculous conclusion that

“Israel and the Western powers want to elevate anti-Semitism to an international principle around which they seek to establish full consensus. They insist that for there to be peace in the Middle East, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims must become, like the West, anti-Semites by espousing Zionism and recognising Israel’s anti-Semitic claims [i.e. Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state].”

Furthermore, according to Massad,

“the Palestinian people and the few surviving anti-Zionist Jews […] are […] the heirs of the pre-WWII Jewish and Palestinian struggles against anti-Semitism and its Zionist colonial manifestation. It is their resistance that stands in the way of a complete victory for European anti-Semitism in the Middle East and the world at large.”

It is almost amusing that Massad insists that “the Palestinian Authority and its cronies” are not part of this oh-so-noble tradition of opposing the kind of antisemitic Zionism that is the product of his fevered imagination. But of course, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Columbia University professor Joseph Massad clearly share a fondness for the “historical narishkayt” that there was some sort of cozy “relationship between Zionism and Nazism before World War II.”

Indeed, Massad – who works at Columbia University as an expert on “modern Arab politics and intellectual history” – faithfully reflects the antisemitic demonization of Israel that is so commonplace in the Arab media and that keeps poisoning Arab politics.

In reaction to Massad’s latest screed, many on Twitter dismissed his vicious views as proof of his ignorance, and a widely recommended post by Liam Hoare opened with the verdict that “Joseph Massad’s op-ed, ‘The Last of the Semites’, demonstrates above all that the Columbia professor knows very little about not a lot.”

But while Hoare does a good job demonstrating that Massad’s views amount to “a total perversion of Jewish history and what Herzl actually thought and wrote,” it’s safe to assume that Professor Massad thinks of himself as a foremost expert on Zionism and Israel. Indeed, his Al Jazeera columns on these subjects usually include a reference to his book on “The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians,” and it turns out that this spring semester, Massad is also teaching a course that covers some of the very subjects he knows so “very little about.”

Unfortunately, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Massad’s students are likely to learn how to present Zionism as “a total perversion of Jewish history and what Herzl actually thought and wrote.”

Whether the resulting ideas are articulated in a Columbia University classroom or on Al Jazeera or Stormfront makes little difference as far as their substance is concerned. I tried to illustrate this point in my recent post on Massad with some quotes (I have added here two more) that are either from Massad or from Stormfront – see if you can tell them apart:

1) “Nazism was a boon to Zionism throughout the 1930s.”

2) “For all intents and purposes, the National Socialist government was the best thing to happen to Zionism in its history.”

3) “In Germany, the average Jews were victims of the Zionist elite who worked hand in hand with the Nazis.”

4) “Hitler could have just confiscated all the Jewish wealth. Instead he used the ‘Haavara Program’ to help establish the State of Israel.”

5) “Between 1933 and 1939, 60 percent of all capital invested in Jewish Palestine came from German Jewish money through the Transfer Agreement.”

6) “In fact, contra all other German Jews (and everyone else inside and outside Germany) who recognised Nazism as the Jews’ bitterest enemy, Zionism saw an opportunity to strengthen its colonisation of Palestine.”

7) “Zionists welcomed the Nazis’ anti-Semitic policies. Like the Nazis, they believed in race-based national character and destiny. Like the Nazis, they believed Jews had no future in Germany."

8) “the Zionist Federation of Germany […] supported the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, as they agreed with the Nazis that Jews and Aryans were separate and separable races. This was not a tactical support but one based on ideological similitude."

9) “Zionism […] developed the idea of the first racially separatist planned community for the exclusive use of Ashkenazi Jews, namely the Kibbutz.”

10) “The Zionists were afraid that the ‘Jewish race’ was disappearing through assimilation.”

Needless to say, Massad and his admirers who enthusiastically endorsed his recent column – among them Max Blumenthal of Mondoweiss, Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, and the “Angry Arab” Professor As’ad AbuKhalil  – would all insist, just as Massad claims in his Al Jazeera piece, that their staunch anti-Zionism means quasi by definition that they can’t be antisemitic, even if they propagate the same perverted tropes that are popular on Stormfront.

Anyone from the Class of '83 remember Obama?

I graduated from Bir Zeit on the Hudson a little too early to remember Barry Soetoro a/k/a Barack Hussein Obama. But isn't it more than a little curious that not a single one of the 25 members of the Columbia College Class of 1983 - allegedly Obama's class - who lives in Israel remembers him?

What are Obama's classmates in Israel up to? Quite a few, like him, went straight to law school after finishing their undergraduate degrees. One is a doctor, several are engineers, and a few hold top jobs in finance. There's an architect in the group, a tour guide, a librarian, a speech pathologist, an occupational therapist and a journalist. Most are married with children (about three on average ), a few are already grandparents, while others, who came to parenting relatively late in life, are still chasing around toddlers. Among the group are also two married couples who began dating while in college.

They're scattered around the country, but Beit Shemesh and Ra'anana seem to be their preferred locales. Four live in Jerusalem and its outskirts, three in Tel Aviv, two are up north in Kfar Vradim, and two live over the Green Line in the settlement of Ginot Shomron.

But here's the thing: Not one of us remembers Barack Obama - who transferred to Columbia after his sophomore year at Occidental College in California - from our undergrad years, nor do we know anyone else who does.

"If he wasn't on my radar, he wasn't on anyone's radar," asserts Jamie Miller, a mother of five, who lives in Beit Shemesh and remains active in the alumni association, traveling back to New York every five years to attend reunions.

"I was a cheerleader, so I knew all the jocks," says Miller, who went to law school after college and today works as a librarian and English teacher. "I was in the marching band, I worked on the yearbook, and I was involved in student government, so I knew everyone. But I never saw him around."

Sarah Graber Nehrer, a speech pathologist who moved with her family from the United States to Rehovot last summer, says she became curious about Obama even before his first presidential run. "When he first came on the political scene, back when he was running for the Senate, I was living in Illinois, and I was like, 'Wait, this guy went to school with me,'" she explains. "But I had no recollection of him whatsoever, and neither did anyone else I know, which I found very strange."

Compared with other American universities, Columbia, a member of the prestigious Ivy League, is small. Its graduating class in 1983 - including Columbia College for men, Barnard College for women and the College of Engineering - had fewer than 2,000 students. And since the campus itself, located in the uptown Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, is also quite small, the opportunities to bump into your classmates and get to know faces over a period of four years were abundant.
...
Yet another classmate, Michael Teplow, notes that someone with presidential aspirations "wouldn't be shy, but in fact, quite gregarious," which is why he, too, was surprised to discover "when I first started flipping through my yearbook looking for his picture that he wasn't there, and I didn't remember him at all." Like Obama, Teplow went onto law school after he graduated Columbia. Today he lives in the settlement of Ginot Shomron, from which he travels each weekday to his law firm in Tel Aviv. Most of his practice is in corporate law, but Teplow has also built up a pro-bono side practice over the years representing Palestinians who have served as informers for Israel's security forces.

Another Tel Aviv corporate lawyer in the group is Norman Menachem Feder, a senior partner in Caspi & Co., who once clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Menachem Elon. "I spent most of my time at Columbia either in the library or in the gym practicing for fencing, so if Obama wasn't hanging out in those places, I wouldn't have seen him," he notes.

Teddy Weinberger moved to Israel 15 years ago with his wife and former classmate Sarah Jane Ross, who works in institutional sales at Excellence Nessuah investment house. From their home in Givat Ze'ev, in the West Bank just north of Jerusalem, where the couple live with their five children, Weinberger continues to maintain close ties with many of his old college buddies, and says he understands why Obama may not have been on any of their radar. "He was a transfer student living off campus and that made it possible for him to keep such a low profile."

What might be a fair comparison is to ask how many of them knew another famous Columbian from that era - George Stephanopoulos - who was a class ahead of them.
You don't think Barry lied about going to Columbia, do you?

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Report: 'Nutella Theft' a Major Problem for Dining Services at Columbia, As Students Gorge Themselves on Dozens of Pounds Each Day

Report: ‘Nutella Theft’ a Major Problem for Dining Services at Columbia, As Students Gorge Themselves on Dozens of Pounds Each Day

(Gawker by Neetzan Zimmerman)Columbia is reporting a rash of thefts on campus that have resulted in an estimated $5,000 worth of lost property each week.
But before concerned students go out and purchase expensive security measures, it should be noted that all reported thefts are of a single item: Nutella.
As first reported by the Columbia Spectator, students just can't seem to get enough of the frosting-like chocolate-hazelnut spread, and may be swiping as much as 100 pounds of the sweet stuff a day from campus dining halls.
"The demand [for Nutella] has been greater than originally expected," Dining Services executive director Vicki Dunn told the Spectator in an email. "Students have been filling cups of Nutella to-go in Ferris Booth Commons and taking the full jars out of John Jay, which means we're going through product faster than anticipated."
Since last month, when Dining Services began offering Nutella to students on a daily basis, covering the cost of Columbia's unhealthy habit has set the university back some $5,000 per week according to Columbia College Student Council rep Peter Bailinson.
But some are saying that the problem is being exaggerated, and Nutella raids aren't all that widespread.
The New York Times talked to a university spokeswoman who said the figures being reported are "speculative and inaccurate" and were "roughly 10 times greater than the actual figures."
Some have pointed out that if Dining was truly spending $5,000 a week on 100 pounds of Nutella, it was clearly buying its stock in the wrong place.
But the problem is obviously real enough for Dining to consider pulling the plug on certain "luxury" items, according to Bailinson.
"When you're paying that much for a dining plan, some people feel a bit more entitled to taking things from the dining hall," Bailinson told the Spectator. "But what they don't realize is that dining uses any extra money to get awesome new items like Nutella, almond butter, and to make structural changes like the JJ's renovation."
Dining insists it won't stop serving Nutella, but may cut back on more expensive comestibles "like lobster tails."
[photos via WikiMedia, AP]

Did you know that many of the people who work in our government get jobs working at colleges? Notice that both are going broke. Might be time to stop freaking out about people liking Nutella and think about the price of tuition compared to what the students actually get back and then question why these institutions are borrowing so much money because they are in debt. Tuition is a tiny fraction of a University budget. What I suspect is gross negligence and corruption. If Muslim nations have that much influence at Columbia University through the Allawi foundation that has ties to Iran then you can count on corruption. I suspect the Nutella panic is an attempt to blame the students for a problem with an administration

As college student, Eric Holder participated in 'armed' takeover of former Columbia University ROTC office

(This recording can also be purchased as a downloadable MP3 from the Ayn Rand Institute eStore. © Ayn Rand Institute. All rights reserved. via aynrand.org) As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned.

Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon.
Holder was then among the leaders of the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded that the former ROTC office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge.” The change, the group insisted, was to be made “in honor of a man who recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.”

via dailycaller.com

Black radicals from the same group also occupied the office of Dean of Freshman Henry Coleman until their demands were met. Holder has publicly acknowledged being a part of that action.
The details of the student-led occupation, including the claim that the raiders were “armed,” come from a deleted Web page of the Black Students’ Organization (BSO) at Columbia, a successor group to the SAAS. Contemporary newspaper accounts in The Columbia Daily Spectator, a student newspaper, did not mention weapons.
Holder, now the United States’ highest-ranking law enforcement official, has given conflicting accounts of this episode during college commencement addresses at Columbia, but both the BSO’s website and the Daily Spectator have published facts that conflict with his version of events.
Holder has bragged about his involvement in the “rise of black consciousness” protests at Columbia.
“I was among a large group of students who felt strongly about the way we thought the world should be, and we weren’t afraid to make our opinions heard,” he said during Columbia’s 2009 commencement exercises. “I did not take a final exam until my junior year at Columbia — we were on strike every time finals seemed to roll around — but we ran out of issues by that third year.”

via dailycaller.com

Though then-Dean Carl Hovde declared the occupation of the Naval ROTC office illegal and said it violated university policy, the college declined to prosecute any of the students involved. This decision may have been made to avoid a repeat of violent Columbia campus confrontations between police and members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1968.
The ROTC headquarters was ultimately renamed the Malcolm X lounge as the SAAS organization demanded. It later became a hang-out spot for another future U.S. leader, Barack Obama, according to David Maraniss’ best-selling ”Barack Obama: The Story.”
Holder told Columbia University’s graduating law students during a 2010 commencement speech that the 1970 incident happened “during my senior year,” but Holder was a freshman at the time. “[S]everal of us took one of our concerns — that black students needed a designated space to gather on campus — to the Dean [of Freshmen]’office. This being Columbia, we proceeded to occupy that office.”
Holder also claimed in his 2009 speech that he and his fellow students decided to “peacefully occupy one of the campus offices.” In contrast, the BSO’s website recounted its predecessor organization’s activities by noting that that “in 1970, a group of armed black students [the SAAS] seized the abandoned ROTC office.”
While that website is no longer online, a snapshot of its content from September 2010 is part of the archive.org database.
In a December 2010 GQ magazine profile of Holder, one of his Columbia friends confirmed that he and Holder were both part of the ROTC office takeover.
Holder particularly “connected with four other African-American students” at Columbia, correspondent Wil S. Hylton wrote. “We took over the ROTC lounge in Hartley Hall and created the Malcolm X Lounge,” said a laughing Steve Sims, one of those students.
Hylton described Sims as “the attorney general’s closest friend” and “a man Holder describes as his ‘consigliere.’”

via dailycaller.com

The SAAS was part of a radicalized portion of the Columbia student body whose protest roots were hardened in the late 1960s. Its members collaborated with the SDS to stage a series of protests on the New York City campus in 1968, the year before Eric Holder arrived on campus.
Those earlier protests culminated in a separate armed takeover of Dean Henry Coleman’s office in which students held him hostage and stopped the construction of a gymnasium in the Morningside Heights neighborhood, near the campus.
The BSO reported on its website as recently as 2010 that those students were “armed with guns.”

via dailycaller.com

Emboldened by their successes, SAAS leaders continued to press their demands, eventually working with local black radicals who were not college students. A young Eric Holder joined the fray in 1969 as a college freshman.
The SAAS also actively supported the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement, according to Stefan Bradley, professor of African-American studies at Saint Louis University and author of the 2009 book “Harlem vs. Columbia University.” He has described the Columbia organization as being separatist in nature.
“In 1969, SAAS has taken up a new campaign to establish a Black Institute on campus that would house a black studies program, an all-black admissions board, all-black faculty members, administrators and staff and they wanted the university to pay for it,” Bradley told an audience in 2009.
Though Columbia never met all of the black militants’ demands, it brought more black students to campus through its affirmative action program, introduced Black Studies courses and hired black radical Charles V. Hamilton — co-author of “Black Power” with Black Panther Party ”Honorary Prime Minister” Stokely Carmichael (by then renamed Kwame Ture).
“The university hadn’t thought of all of this by itself,” said Bradley. “It took black students [in the SAAS] to do this.”

via dailycaller.com

In March 1970 the SAAS released a statement supporting twenty-one Black Panthers charged with plotting to blow up department stores, railroad tracks, a police station and the New York Botanical Gardens.

(Afeni Shakur)

The SAAS, along with the SDS and other radical campus groups, staged a campus rally on March 12, 1970 featuring Afeni Shakur — one of the Panthers out on bail and the future mother of rapper Tupac Shakur.
The rally’s purpose, The Columbia Daily Spectator reported, was to raise bail money for the twenty other Panthers and to call on District Attorney Frank Hogan to drop the charges. All 21 defendants would later be acquitted after a lengthy trial.
The April 21, 1970 SAAS raid on the Naval ROTC office and Dean Coleman’s office came one month after the Black Panther arrests. The Columbia Daily Spectator released a series of demands from the student leaders on April 23 in which they claimed to be occupying the ROTC office for the purpose of “self-determination and dignity.” They needed the space, they said, because of “the general racist nature of American society.”

via dailycaller.com

In their statement, the SAAS leaders also decried “this racist university campus” — in particular its alleged “involvement in the continued political harassment of the Black Panther Party” — along with what they called a “lack of concern for Black people whether they be students or workers” and a “general contempt towards the beliefs of Black students in particular and Black people in general.”
“Black students recognize the necessity of not letting the university set a dangerous precedent in its dealings with Black people,” the statement read in part, “that is letting white people direct the action and forces that affect Black people toward goals they (white people) feel are correct.”
Among the black professors who publicly supported Holder and the SAAS during this period was Black history teacher Hollis Lynch, who is one of four professors Holder later said “shaped my worldview.”

via dailycaller.com

Entering Columbia Law School in September 1973, Holder joined the Black American Law Students Association. Less than a month later, that organization joined other minority activist groups in a coalition that demanded the retraction of a letter to President Gerald Ford, signed by six Columbia professors, that argued against affirmative action and racial quotas.
“Merit should be rewarded, without regard to race, sex, creed, or any other external factor,” the professors wrote to President Ford. Following a campaign marked by what two of those professors called “rhetoric and names hurled” at them, they changed their position and denied they actually opposed affirmative action.
The Columbia Spectator’s editorial page later argued against affirmative action as a factor in university admissions, touching off another controversy with the coalition that included the Black American Law Students Association. “Affirmative action is just a nice name for a quota, and quotas are just a nice name for racism,” the editorial board wrote.
In response, the minority students’ coalition responded that “traditional academic criteria have a built-in bias” that leaves many minority students “automatically excluded.”
“[A]ffirmative action is neither racist nor sexist,” they wrote. “Rather it is opposition to it, which fails to provide alternative means for eradicating bias, that supports the racist and sexist status quo.”

via dailycaller.com

As attorney general, Holder has defended the affirmative action policies that are now the status quo. In February 2012, Holder said during a World Leaders Forum at Columbia University that he “can’t actually imagine a time in which the need for more diversity would ever cease.”
“Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation practices,” Holder said. “The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin. … When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”
Holder has also come under fire for presiding over a Justice Department that declined to prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party who allegedly intimidated white voters outside a Philadelphia polling precinct in 2008.
Follow Charles on Twitter

via dailycaller.com

Barbara Walters Apologizes For Attempting To Get Assad Aide An Internship At CNN, Place At Columbia

Updated: (Syrian aide to Basher al-Assad defends her relationship with Barbara Walters) News report here.

Barbara Walters has apologized after newly released emails showed her attempting to get a close aide to Syrian president Bashar al-Asaad an internship at CNN and a place at Columbia University.

Asaad, whose bloody crackdown on his citizens has made him something of a pariah, granted Walters an exclusive interview in December. On Thursday, the Daily Telegraph reported that Walters stayed in close contact with Sheherazad Jaafari, the daughter of Syria's ambassador to the United Nations and a close aide to Assad, after the interview was over.
Jaafari was a regular presence in emails obtained by the Guardian in March. "This man is loved by his people," she said in one email.
Syrian opposition forces — perhaps the same ones who gave the Guardian the earlier documents — passed on a new cache of files to the Telegraph. They showed Walters calling Jaafari "dear girl" and writing to Piers Morgan and his producer about her. "I wrote to Piers Morgan and his producer to say how terrific you are and attached your résumé," she wrote. On Tuesday, a CNN spokesperson told The Huffington Post's Michael Calderone that the network received the letter, but did not speak with Jaafari or offer her an internship.
Walters also contacted a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism to plug Jaafari's bona fides. (Jaafari was not admitted, though the professor, who is also the father of Piers Morgan's producer, assured Walters she would be given "special attention.")
Contacted by the Telegraph, Walters admitted that, even though she refused to get Jaafari a job at ABC News, her actions "created a conflict and I regret that."

CORRECTION: Walters contacted CNN about an internship for Jaafari, not a job as the article originally stated.

via huffingtonpost.com

...at least Barbara Walters apologized. You won't see the rest of the media doing the same.

How to misuse statistics: Israel accused of jailing too many journalists

(EOZ) From Justin Martin at Columbia Journalism Review:

At the end of each year, the Committee to Protect Journalists counts the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide and lists the countries in which they’re locked up.
These data are very helpful, but I think we can consider them under a new lamp by taking into account each country’s size. China and Eritrea, for example, have about the same number of journalists rotting in prison, 27 and 28 respectively. But the population of China is over 250 times that of the small dictatorship.
Any country that unjustly arrests or imprisons a single journalist is democratically suspect, of course, and that includes you, America. Ratings of press freedom in the United States tanked after 2011, as counts of arrested journalists in this country soared. Still, though police in the United States tend to arrest journalists filming or otherwise documenting unrest, their bosses usually get embarrassed at the media blowback and drop the charges. Imprisoning journalists for months or years at a time is another matter and, other than the outright murder of journalists in places like Russia and Syria, the long-term jailing of reporters is the offense with which the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is most concerned.
For a new take on this scourge, I quickly calculated the highest twelve ratios of jailed journalists to a country’s population size.

So we see that according to this criterion, Israel jails more journalists per capita than any other nation except for Eritea.
Sounds damning, right? (read on... it's misleading, but I would of never caught this)

wow... tricky

Freedom of speech, Bir Zeit on the Hudson style

(israelmatzav.blogspot) This is too good to check. A classmate from Bir Zeit on the Hudson sent me a promo for something called Columbia conversations online. They're holding a two-day celebration of the launch of something called the Columbia Global Center in Istanbul, Turkey. The Columbia Alumni Association is presenting two webcasts as part of the celebration, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday, each at 11:30 am eastern time. The topic of the one on Wednesday is rich (Hat Tip: Merrill W).

Is the Internet Too Free?
Moderated by Dean Nicholas Lemann and Sheila Coronel
A panel discussion on the perils of—and prospects for—journalism online. Is the Internet a safe place for original and independent reporting? Or is it a threatened space? Are the freedoms that citizens and journalists enjoy online more myth than reality?

In case you are wondering, Nicolas Lemann is the dean of the Graduate school of Journalism. One would at least hope that his answer to the discussion question will be "no."
If any of you are interested in watching, go here.

I grew up in the neighborhood and using the Columbia gym to play basketball in. I suppose even though I didn't graduate there I felt like it was my school. We all know where they are going with this journalist lecture. They feel threatened because they can not control the content. I suppose you should too because I repost your stuff for my blog on mine, but at least I try to give credit... (though I admit I've made mistakes before, but I also know people use my site and don't give credit). I noticed this well known site who didn't give me a hat tip the other day and I said to myself.... what can I do? I don't want to scold the guy because I want to steal back from him. His theft is rather good. There has got to be some happy and fair moderation. Sometimes I subvert what you say by the repost because I don't always agree. That is threatening to the news standards, but it works both ways. Sometimes the news does do good things... and they are being punished.

Stealth Jihad Invades Columbia University (Again)

JanSuzanne Krasner (Docs Talk/American Thinker) Columbia University students, along with others on the campus, will be able to get a good look at "stealth jihad" in action as the "Students for Justice in Palestine" (SJP) hold a three-day training program next weekend on campus.

The attraction being used to seduce the students to this event is a rapper named "Immortal Technique," who, according to claims made by the National Conference on Jewish Affairs (NCJA), is an entertainer "who extols and incites violence and criminality, spews brutal anti-American vitriol, and is a condemner of Israel ... and a fan of the Nation of Islam, among other repellent views." The event is to take place on October 14-16. Organizers hope to raise $30,000 in preparation for the upcoming 2012 national campus event called "Israel Apartheid Week" that has been held the past seven years in February or March. When one enters their website, the most prominent message that appears alongside the face of Hatem Bazian, Professor at UC Berkeley and Chair of American Muslims for Palestine National (AMPN), is "America's college students are at the cutting edge of the global free Palestine movement in the US and across the globe and they are making a difference."
Scrolling the site, one finds quotes from individuals and organizations that proudly attest to the success of the SPJ. The list includes several professors from highly acclaimed universities, lecturers, authors and journalists, founders and organizers of anti-Israeli movements like BDS, and a human rights attorney. Most striking is the endorsement by the Free Gaza Movement that reads: "Organizations such as the student movement, SJP, are an integral part of the non-violent revolution now sweeping the world."
Folks, it couldn't be any clearer as to what is happening on our college campuses.
Under the guise of Israel-bashing, it is really our country that has become the target of attacks at universities across the U.S., but most students don't realize that. The creation of the SJP organization at UC Berkeley in the early '90s has now grown to a national movement where anti-Israeli supporters argue that "Israeli Apartheid" is analogous to the anti-Apartheid student mobilizations some decades ago directed at South Africa.
Their claim can't be farther from the truth, but that is another subject. However, it must be said that the delegitimization of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state (where Arabs are also permitted to be citizens) must be contrasted against the SJP's demand for a state for Palestinians (where 45% of its Palestinian residents will be denied citizenship), where no Jews can live. It seems like SJP should be looking in a mirror to see what apartheid really looks like.
In an effort to stop Columbia from allowing this event, the NCJA is asking in its recently released "Action Alert" why "President Bollinger and the Board are turning Columbia, a university once known for its rigor and academic excellence, into one that instead is gaining the reputation of sell-out to ugly hatred and flaccid standards." Furthermore, the NCJA believes that the SJP event "violates Columbia University's own code of 'Civil Behavior and Community Standards' as written[.]"
It is expected that in and out of the classroom, on and off campus, each student in the School of General Studies will act in an honest way and will respect the rights of others. Freedom of expression is an essential part of University life, but it does not include intimidation, threats of violence, or the inducement of others to engage in violence or in conduct which harasses others. Conduct which threatens or harasses others because of their race, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or for any other reason is unacceptable and will be dealt with very severely. For all to benefit from the diversity to be found at Columbia, all must live up to these standards.
The NCJA is taking a lead to express the frustration felt by many about the excuses Columbia University's representatives have used in the past to explain the school's political activities:
Of course we will not be surprised to hear from President Bollinger and the Board that this is just a "student group" and the university is "not involved" and that this is "the free expression of ideas," intellectual freedom" or even "art." But we can no longer accept these excuses for what appears to be pure hatred and efforts to intimidate pro-Israel Jewish students and others who do not agree with SPJ's views. We need to know if Columbia University is providing any financial or other support to SJP and this event, including providing the building in which Immortal Technique is performing.
American parents and alumni (not to mention all who believe in our democratic republic), it is time to recognize how Islamism is encroaching on our society with its patient, systematic plan to infiltrate from within and slowly end democracy as we know it. The Muslim Brotherhood actively supports and finances student organizations like SJP and the Muslim Student Association (MSA). Islamists have found that invading Western culture through its educational institutions is an extremely effective strategy to spread the word of Allah.
The Muslim Brotherhood's three-stage blueprint for covert jihad, written in the early 1920s, still has the power to inspire many Muslims to continue their required participation in a "non-violent jihad." The first stage of this plan calls for the spread of the Islamic message through propaganda, media, confrontation, and character assassination of opponents, and the training of messengers of Islam in the form of professors and lecturers to reach schools, mosques, and public facilities. Keeping this in mind helps to put a clear perspective on this "training event' at Columbia University, as well as appreciating the true mission of Islamists.
The NCJA also questions Hillel, the organization for Jewish campus life, as to why "they are failing to stand up against hatred and the incitement of violence against Israel and Israel supporters." Considering the lack of interest or courage in the Columbia University's community towards this event, the NCJA is reaching out for public support.
First, they are asking for individuals to contact the Office of the President Lee Bollinger in NYC by calling (212) 854-9970, by sending a fax to (212) 854-9973, or by sending an e-mail to officeofthepresident@columbia.edu. You can also call the university's chapter of Hillel at (202) 449-6500 and voice your anger that they are not protecting Columbia's Jewish and non-Muslim students. If people make their disapproval known, they will have the power to change the situation.
In recognition that both the SJP and the SMA are making formidable strides to further an Islamic radical agenda on our American youth, the NCJA is also forming an "Education and Campus Life Task Force" to address these concerns on campuses around the country.
Readers, now is the time to take action to prevent the "stealth jihad" disguised as "freedom-fighting" from continuing to reach our children through the hate-filled rhetoric promoted by these Muslim student associations and the professors and lecturers that carry their message of hate.

Al Jazeera's shill to U.S. audience by Pres. Bollinger of Columbia U. AKA Washington Post AKA chair Fed Bank

Lee Bollinger, Columbia University's $1,753,984-a-year president who also serves as chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Columbia Univ. President 
Lee C. Bollinger
(a member of the 
Pulitzer Prize board)
awarding Samantha Powers

her trophy Pulitzer
so she can have an excuse
to say Obama should invade Israel

Lee Bollinger, Columbia University's $1,753,984-a-year president who also serves as chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has an article in Bloomberg Businessweek arguing that the Federal Communications Commission should force cable companies to carry Al Jazeera. He describes access to the channel as "critically valuable" to "our democracy" and to "America's understanding of the world."

This is ridiculous. Anyone who wants to see what Al Jazeera English has on offer can easily visit its Web site. One can find an article by an American responding to the recent murder of Israeli children by writing that "Netanyahu has never condemned or even expressed remorse over the killing of 300 plus Palestinian children by the IDF during the Gaza war. (In fact, one would be hard pressed to find any Israeli government that ever even criticised the killing of Palestinian children by the IDF, although many hundreds have been killed over the last decade)." One can find an article by a Columbia professor asserting that "a 'manly' and 'straight' heteronormativity was manufactured for 'Arabs'" and calling for humans to transcend "obscene class divisions."
There's no disclosure at all to Bloomberg Businessweek readers that Mr. Bollinger and Columbia have some substantial ties to the al Thani family that owns both the country of Qatar and Al Jazeera. A Columbia art exhibit Web site acknowledges the support of "The Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar and the Qatar Foundation, Her Excellency Sheikha al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and His Excellency Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammed bin Ali Al Thani." ABC News reported "the Qatari princess went to college at Duke University in North Carolina and is now pursuing a masters at Columbia University in New York." Mr. Bollinger has shown no hesitation in the past when it comes to accepting donations from undemocratic or unfree Arab countries; Columbia took money from the United Arab Emirates that Harvard refused to accept. If Americans are looking for an Al Jazeera-type perspective they don't even need the American government to force Al Jazeera onto their cable television; they can just go enroll in Columbia's Middle East studies department, at least one of whose professors Mayor Bloomberg's own administration has adjudged unworthy of training New York City public school teachers.
The whole column is an embarrassment to both Mr. Bollinger (who is apparently difficult to embarrass) and Businessweek. It's not clear what is so special about Al Jazeera that it deserves to be forced by the U.S. government onto American televisions. Does Mr. Bollinger want every foreign television channel whose owner is a major Columbia donor or potential one to be forced by the American government onto American television?
Mr. Bollinger is a paid director of the Washington Post Company, which owns a cable television company that serves 720,000 customers in 19 states. If he thinks it's so vitally important to American democracy for all Americans to watch Al Jazeera, let him speak up at the next Post board meeting and earn his directors fees by forcing Al Jazeera into the cable package of all of his own company's customers, rather than asking the government to impose the channel on the rest of us.

via futureofcapitalism.com
Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University via charlierose.com

Columbia Journalism School's Lecture Hall was packed Friday afternoon when a panel of five journalists and digital media experts gathered to discuss the power and potential of social media in a televised discussion with Marwan Bishara, host of Al Jazeera English's "Empire."Watch it here  Check the broadcast schedule via journalism.columbia.ed Al Jazeera: Reporting in Gaza Listen via journalism.columbia.edu

Cable ONE is a United States cable service provider and subsidiary of The Washington Post Company, functioning as its own self-contained corporation within its parent company. The company's name and current focus dates back to 1997; prior to that time the company was known as Post-Newsweek Cable. It is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.^[1]
Cable ONE is the 10th largest cable provider ^[2] in the USA with most subscribers residing in small rural communities in nineteen midwestern, southern, and western states. As of January 2009, about 699,000 subscribers receive basic service and about 230,000 receive digital video service from Cable ONE. The company offers broadband Internet to over 370,000 subscribers. ^[3] In May 2006, Cable ONE began a system-by-system launch of its digital telephone service with currently about 94,000 subscribers. Cable ONE is the only major cable provider that maps subchannel numbers same as digital cable box channel numbers. ^[4] via en.wikipedia.org

Columbia University's New Center For Palestine Studies

The October launch of Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies (CPS), the first institution at an American university specifically dedicated to the study of Palestinian Arabs, received surprisingly little notice.

here are signs that politics have already infiltrated the CPS. Take, for example, the fact that Joseph Massad (the professor accused of bullying students in 2004) is associated with the center. Massad’s body of work is a postmodern mash-up of high-minded critical theory and base innuendo. His book Desiring Arabs theorizes that homosexuality is a western construct that imperial powers imposed upon the Middle East and that a “gay international” cabal (consisting of groups like Amnesty International and the Human Rights Campaign) uses the rhetoric of minority rights to unfairly vilify Muslim regimes.

via tnr.com

Columbia University seems to have become infested with parasites. It is almost every other post is about the place's flaws. obviously the campus is very ill. I wouldn't send my child there. I believe they even were getting donations from Iran through the Alawi Foundation recently.

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Columbia U. vs. the little guy

via nypost.com

Bollinger: Rich bully is getting his way.

We often hear politicians and pundits denounce property rights. Property rights, we're told, protect the fat cats against the needs of the public. They're a tool for keeping the little guy down.

Like a lot of what we hear from politicians and pundits, this is exactly the opposite of the truth. The fat cats don't need the protection of property rights, because they already control the political system. It's the little guy (or gal), the one without political juice, who needs strong property rights for protection from the fat cats and the politicians they control.

We often hear politicians and pundits denounce property rights. Property rights, we're told, protect the fat cats against the needs of the public. They're a tool for keeping the little guy down.
Like a lot of what we hear from politicians and pundits, this is exactly the opposite of the truth. The fat cats don't need the protection of property rights, because they already control the political system. It's the little guy (or gal), the one without political juice, who needs strong property rights for protection from the fat cats and the politicians they control.

This was demonstrated again this week, as the last legal barrier (a possible US Supreme Court review) to Columbia University's efforts to condemn and seize two businesses -- Tuck-it-Away Self-Storage and a gas station owned by Gurnam Singh and Parminder Kaur in West Harlem -- vanished.
Columbia said the condemnation was necessary to support the university's "vision" for a new campus; school President Lee Bollinger called the victory "a very important moment in the history of the university."
It was an important, if not especially proud, moment for Columbia -- but it was surely a bigger moment in the lives of those West Harlem business owners, as their property gets taken away to promote the "vision" of what is, in fact, a multibillion-dollar corporation servicing the daughters and sons of the wealthy, the powerful and the connected.
Traditionally, the "public-domain" power was used to acquire property needed for things like roads and bridges. It's still often defended in those terms, but the "public use" required for such takings has now been interpreted by courts to include pretty much anything the government wants to do with the property -- including handing it over to someone else who just happens to be wealthier or better-connected than the original property holder.

In this case, the government lacks even the weak excuse that the change will boost tax revenues, since -- as Megan McArdle of The Atlantic Monthly pointed out -- the property is being transferred from taxpaying businesses to a largely non-taxpaying enterprise.
Part of the American Dream was the expectation that if you started a business, you might go broke but you didn't have to worry about the government seizing your business on behalf of those with more political juice. That sort of thing was for Third World countries, corrupt kleptocracies where connections mattered more than capability.
Not anymore. In fact, some of those formerly corrupt Third World countries have started providing stronger protection for private property, as they've realized that the more power you give to politicians and their cronies, the less incentive people have to try to succeed through hard work. What's the point, if you're at the mercy of the cronies?

if you really look at this right.  this is what is happening to America as a whole.  small banks can't compete against government banks that can't fail 

Updated: State Department To Columbia University Students: DO NOT Discuss WikiLeaks On Facebook, Twitter

This is your Ivy League college
with $$$$ from Islamic states

This is your government
with the Arab Lobby
controlling information.

Any Questions?

[The alumnus] recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter," the Office of Career Services advised students. "Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.  

Original e-mail message from the Office of Career Services:

From: Office of Career Services

Date: Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 3:26 PM

Subject: Wikileaks – Advice from an alum

To: “Office of Career Services (OCS)”
Hi students,
We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.
The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.
Regards,

Office of Career Services

Full e-mail message from SIPA Dean John H. Coatsworth follows:

December 6, 2010
Dear SIPA Community,
Last Tuesday, SIPA’s Office of Career Services received a call from a former student currently employed by the U.S. Department of State who pointed out that the U.S. government documents released during the past few months through WikiLeaks are still considered classified.  The caller suggested that students who will be applying for federal jobs that require background checks avoid posting links to these documents or making comments about them on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter.
OCS emailed this cautionary suggestion to students, as it has done many times with other information that could be helpful in seeking employment after graduation. We know that many students today share a great deal about their lives online and that employers may use that information when evaluating their candidacy.  Subsequent news stories have indicated that the Department of State has issued guidelines for its own employees, but has not issued any guidelines for prospective employees.
Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution. Thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences.  The WikiLeaks documents are accessible to SIPA students (and everyone else) from a wide variety of respected sources, as are multiple means of discussion and debate both in and outside of the classroom.
Should the U.S. Department of State issue any guidelines relating to the WikiLeaks documents for prospective employees, SIPA will make them available immediately.
Sincerely,

John H. Coatsworth

Dean

 via wired.com
via huffingtonpost.com

Center for 'Palestine' Studies at Columbia University AKA Bir Zeit on the Hudson and taqiyyah

Martin Kramer notes that when he first coined the phrase Bir Zeit on the Hudson in 2003, Edward Said's response was that there were only two 'Palestinians' among the 8,000 faculty members at Columbia and that Kramer was a McCarthyite. 

 And yet, as Carl reported earlier this week, there is now a Center for 'Palestine' Studies at my alma mater. What happened since? Kramer explains. via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

At least the center is in New York.  My college Carnegie Mellon University moved a campus to Qatar.

So how did Columbia go so rapidly from “two Palestinians teaching in a faculty of 8,000 people!” to “a unique concentration of distinguished scholars on Palestine and the Palestinians”? Don’t be shocked, but Edward Said was out to deceive in that 2003 interview. Obviously there were more than two Palestinians back then. But I didn’t invent the nickname Bir Zeit-on-Hudson because of their number. It was meant to evoke precisely the atmosphere of intimidation—anti-Israel intimidation—that would later come to light in the “Columbia Unbecoming” affair.

Now that Columbia boasts of being home to “a unique concentration of distinguished scholars on Palestine” (who “will have a national and global reach”), Bir Zeit-on-Hudson hardly sounds far-fetched. By that, I don’t mean a “terrorist hideout”—those were Said’s words, not mine—but a redoubt of militant Palestinian nationalism in the guise of scholarship. And I mean militant: the affiliates of the new center aren’t only engaged in the positive affirmation of Palestinian identity, but are activists in the campaign to negate Israel. This is obviously the case in regard to Joseph Massad and Nadia Abu al-Haj—their field isn’t Palestine studies, it’s anti-Israel studies—but it’s increasingly true of the new center’s co-director, Rashid Khalidi, Columbia’s Edward Said Professor, an enthusiastic spokesman for the PLO in its terrorist phase and a severe critic of the same leadership in its present phase.
For now, Khalidi is cleverly doing what Said did with his “two Palestinians” shtick. “We have absolutely no money,” Khalidi said at the launch (attended by an overflow crowd). “What our little modest center will be able to do may be some narrow, specific things,” he reassured a journalist from the Jewish Forward. I’m not buying it, and I think that the moniker Bir Zeit-on-Hudson is too modest to convey the scope of the ambition behind this project. So I’m working on an alternative. For a preview, click on the thumbnail or here.

Make sure to follow that last link - especially if you went to Columbia or Barnard. It will give you a new perspective on the campus. Heh. Khalidi has learned the practice of taqqiyah well.

image of Ayers, Obama and Rashid Ismail Khalidi (Arabic: رشيد خالدي‎) via patdollard.com

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous

Rashid Ismail Khalidi (Arabic: رشيد خالدي‎), born 1948, a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East, is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University,^[1] and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.

via en.wikipedia.org

New York High Court Upholds Columbia University Takings

In today’s decision in Kaur v. New York State Urban Development Corp.>, The New York Court of Appeals (the state’s highest court) has upheld the condemnation of property in the Manhattanville area of New York City for transfer to Columbia University. This outcome is not surprising. In fact, I predicted it back in December. In the recent Atlantic Yards case, the Court of Appeals had already held that state and local officials could declare virtually any area “blighted” and thereby make it eligible for condemnation and transfer to favored private interest groups.
Nonetheless, there are several extremely troubling aspects of this case. As in Atlantic Yards, The court upheld an extremely dubious “blight” condemnation by applying a rule holding that any area could be declared blighted so long as it might be “underdeveloped.” Indeed, even the presence of “underdevelopment” (a phenomenon that occurs in almost every neighborhood at one time or another) need not actually be proven. Instead, the government need only show that there is “room for reasonable difference of opinion as to whether an area is blighted.” As the lower court opinion in Kaur pointed out, this kind of lax standard would allow the city to declare “[v]irtually every neighborhood in the five boroughs” blighted. And, as I pointed out in this post, the court’s position makes a mockery of the New York state constitution, which allows blight condemnations only in ““substandard and insanitary areas.”
Even worse, the Court of Appeals in Kaur brushed aside or completely ignored extensive evidence showing that the blight study justifying the condemnations had been rigged in Columbia’s favor and that Columbia itself was likely responsible for most of the “blighted” conditions. The key “blight” study was conducted by AKRF, a consulting firm hired by Columbia. As the lower court decision pointed out:

It is critical to recognize that [the state Economic Development Corporation’s] 2002 West Harlem Master Plan which was created prior to the scheme to balkanize Manhattanville for Columbia’s benefit found no blight, nor did it describe any blighted condition or area in Manhattanville. Instead... the Plan noted that West Harlem had great potential for development that could be jump-started with rezoning. It was only after the Plan was published in August 2002 that the rezoning of the “upland” area was essentially given over to the unbridled discretion of Columbia. In little more than a year from publication of the Plan, EDC joined with Columbia in proposing the use of eminent domain to allow Columbia to develop Manhattanville for Columbia’s sole benefit.
This ultimately became the defining moment for the end game of blight. Having committed to allow Columbia to annex Manhattanville, the EDC and [Empire State Development Corporation] were compelled to engineer a public purpose for a quintessentially private development: eradication of blight.
From this point forward, Columbia proceeded to acquire by lease or purchase a vast amount of property in Manhattanville. It is apparent from the record that ESDC had no intention of determining if Manhattanville was blighted prior to, or apart from Columbia’s control of the area.... Throughout this time Columbia not only purchased or gained control over most of the properties in the area, but it also forced out tenant businesses, ultimately vacating, in 17 buildings, 50% or more of the tenants. The petitioners clearly demonstrate that Columbia also let water infiltration conditions in property it acquired go unaddressed, even when minor and economically rational repairs could arrest deterioration. Columbia left Building Code violations open, and let tenants use premises in violation of local codes and ordinances by parking cars on sidewalks and obstructing fire exits, and maintaining garbage and debris in certain buildings over a period of years....
ESDC delayed making any inquiry into the conditions in Manhattanville until long after Columbia gained control over the very properties that would form the basis for a subsequent blight study. This conduct continued when ESDC authorized AKRF to use a methodology biased in Columbia’s favor. Specifically, AKRF was to “highlight” such blight conditions as it found, and it was to prepare individual building reports “focusing on characteristics that demonstrate blight conditions.”
This search for distinct “blight conditions” led to the preposterous summary of building and sidewalk defects compiled by AKRF, which was then accepted as a valid methodology and amplified by Earth Tech. Even a cursory examination of the study reveals the idiocy of considering things like unpainted block walls or loose awning supports as evidence of a blighted neighborhood. 

The Court of Appeals decision completely ignored the fact that Columbia may well have created much of the “blight” that justified the condemnation transferring property to the university. On the issue of the objectivity of the AKRF study, the Court of Appeals opinion claimed that the mere fact that AKRF was employed by Columbia does not disprove the validity of its conclusions, and also notes that those conclusions were validated by a later study conducted by another firm. It does not consider the evidence cited by the lower court showing that the methdologies of both studies were deliberately biased in Columbia’s favor.
It is perhaps worth noting that AKRF was also the firm that conducted an equally dubious blight study justifying the Atlantic Yards takings. In that case, the blight study and takings were heavily influenced by politically influential developer Bruce Ratner, the originator of the development project in question.
The Court of Appeals also makes much of claims that the Columbia project will produce important public benefits by creating jobs and other economic payoffs. However, there is little if any proof that the condemnation of these particular properties (which are only a small part of the total area where Columbia wants to build) is actually needed to produce those benefits. Moreover, as I point out in this article, private interest groups and local governments routinely inflate such estimates because once the property is condemned, they are not legally required to actually produce the economic gains that supposedly justified the condemnation in the first place. Based on past experience, it would not be at all surprising if Columbia ultimately fails to produce more than a small fraction of the benefits it now predicts.
The problem of over-broad definitions of blight is hardly limited to New York. It is present in numerous other states too, including many that have enacted post–Kelo eminent domain reform laws. Nonetheless, the Atlantic Yards and Kaur cases set a new low in this field. Not only has the New York Court of Appeals applied an extraordinarily broad definition of blight, it has also endorsed blight designations based on studies that are probably rigged in favor of private interests who benefit from condemning the areas in question. Moreover, it has opened the door to condemnations based on the presence of “blight” created by the very people who will get to own the property after it is taken.

via volokh.com

too many loop holes for anyone to take anything away

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous