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Monday, December 18, 2017

'Internationalist' student group calls for book ban at GW

6 Campus Reform 7min // keep unread // hide

A new left-wing student group at The George Washington University has been created to advocate for “internationalism” and “oppose nationalism” around the world.

The Internationalist Students’ Front aims to challenge “popular narratives about U.S. foreign policy,” according to The GW Hatchet, which reports that the group plan to host “teach-ins” to warn classmates about the consequences of fascism.

Alaina Taylor, a member of the organization, said that the teach-ins will also educate students on U.S. interference in elections abroad, as well as Winston Churchill’s role in the starvation of Indians during World War II.

Sheng Zhang, another member of the group, said that students should take a “cosmopolitan approach” to international relations, saying, “internationalism means that we stand in solidarity with every single struggle against oppression in the world.”

Posts on the new student group’s Facebook page, meanwhile, have celebrated figures from the Black Panther Party and former communist leader Fidel Castro.

Another member of the organization, Josh Gomez, disputed claims that the Internationalist Students’ Front is a communist group, saying that isn’t the main purpose of the club, though he acknowledged that the group is a radical organization, following in the footsteps of many other radical groups on campus.

“Our main focus is anti-imperialist work and anti-imperialist ideas and ideals, and so while many of us are left-wing, I don’t think we can really be characterized as a communist student org because our main focus isn’t communism,” Gomez told the Hatchet.

George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley, however, has criticized the group’s effort to ban two books from the university’s library, which the group described to the Hatchet as propaganda put out by the Japanese far-right.

“It is a uniquely poor way to start a group on offering different perspectives of historical events by trying to prevent students and faculty from reading alternative perspectives,” Turley writes, arguing that while one of the book’s denial of war atrocities is “painful” to read, faculty and students research these denials in their studies and sometimes “buy books to gain perspective of fringe or discredited views.”

“It would be a far better focus for the group to work to raise their voices rather than to silence others,” he concluded, adding that “The issue is not ideology but tolerance of opposing views and works.”

This new left-wing group joins the ranks of many that already exist on campus, including GW College Democrats, Young Progressives Demanding Action, GW Student Vanguard, GW Voices for Choices, GW Students for Justice in Palestine, Feminist Student Union, Fossil Free GW, Democracy Matters, and the Progressive Student Union.

Campus Reform reached out to Internationalist Students’ Front for comment but did not receive a response.

Follow this author on Twitter @kara_kirsten

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Sunday, December 17, 2017

TRUMP TO REMOVE ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’ AS A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT

DECEMBER 15, 2017 By Mollie Hemingway

Trump Admin To Remove Climate Change From List Of National Security Threats

The Trump administration will reverse course from previous Obama administration policy, eliminating climate change from a list of national security threats. The National Security Strategy to be released on Monday will emphasize the importance of balancing energy security with economic development and environmental protection, according to a source who has seen the document and shared excerpts of a late draft.

“Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system,” a draft of the National Security Strategy slated to be released on Monday said. “U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth, energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests. Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.”

This matches President Trump’s vision, sometimes shared using his trademark hyperbole, that the United States needs to emphasize national security and economic growth over climate change.

During his successful campaign, Trump mocked Obama’s placement of climate change in the context of national security. Here’s a sample of his approach from a campaign speech in Hilton Head, South Carolina, in late 2015:

So Obama’s always talking about the global warming, that global warming is our biggest and most dangerous problem, OK? No, no, think of it. I mean, even if you’re a believer in global warming, ISIS is a big problem, Russia’s a problem, China’s a problem. We’ve got a lot of problems. By the way, the maniac in North Korea is a problem. He actually has nuclear weapons, right? That’s a problem.
We’ve got a lot of problems. We’ve got a lot of problems. That’s right, we don’t win anymore. He said we want to win. We don’t win anymore. We’re going to win a lot — if I get elected, we’re going to win a lot.
(Applause)
We’re going to win so much — we’re going to win a lot. We’re going to win a lot. We’re going to win so much you’re all going to get sick and tired of winning. You’re going to say oh no, not again. I’m only kidding. You never get tired of winning, right? Never.
(Applause)
But think of it. So Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the — a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, OK? It’s a hoax, a lot of it. And look, I want clean air and I want clean water. That’s my global — I want clean, clean crystal water and I want clean air. And we can do that, but we don’t have to destroy our businesses, we don’t have to destroy our —
And by the way, China isn’t abiding by anything. They’re buying all of our coal; we can’t use coal anymore essentially. They’re buying our coal and they’re using it. Now when you talk about the planet, it’s so big out there — we’re here, they’re there, it’s like they’re our next door neighbor, right, in terms of the universe.

The draft of the National Security Strategy makes this approach policy, emphasizing national security and economic growth over climate change.

President Obama made climate change, and the burdensome regulations that accompany its focus, a primary focus of his administration, including in his National Security Strategy released in 2015. “[W]e are working toward an ambitious new global climate change agreement to shape standards for prevention, preparedness, and response over the next decade,” that report said.

“In some ways, [climate change] is akin to the problem of terrorism and ISIL,” Obama said at climate talks in Paris in 2015. During a weekly address, Obama said “Today, there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change.”

In September 2016, President Obama released a memorandum requiring federal agencies to consider the effects of climate change in the development of national security-related doctrine, policies, and plans. All of this alarmed critics concerned with more pressing security risks.

By contrast, President Trump’s National Security Strategy will focus on conventional and immediate national security risks. The draft says, in part:

North Korea seeks the capability to kill millions of Americans with nuclear weapons. Iran supports terrorist groups and openly calls for our destruction. Jihadist terrorist organizations such as ISIS and al Qaeda are determined to attack the United States and radicalize Americans with their hateful ideology. States and non-state actors undermine social order with drug and human trafficking networks, which drive violent crimes and cause thousands of American deaths each year…. Strengthening control over our borders and immigration system is central to national security, economic prosperity, and the rule of law. Terrorists, drug traffickers, and criminal cartels exploit porous borders and threaten U.S. security and public safety. These actors adapt quickly to outpace our defenses.

As for climate change, the draft report says “The United States will remain a global leader in reducing traditional pollution, as well as greenhouse gases, while growing its economy. This achievement, which can serve as model to other countries, flows from innovation, technology breakthroughs, and energy efficiency gains –not from onerous regulation.”

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway

Photo National Guard / public domain

Climate Change economic growth energy policy Global Warming national security National Security Strategy

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Why It’s Becoming Increasingly Obvious Adam Schiff Probably Leaked Trump Jr.-WikiLeaks #FakeNews To CNN

December 16, 2017 by Joshua Caplan 103 Comments

In a letter sent to Congressman Michael Conaway (R-TX) this week, Donald Trump Jr. attorney Alan S. Futerfas, called for an investigation into leaks from the House Intelligence Committee, suggesting the individual who leaked the false WikiLeaks story did so knowingly.

But first, here is a recap of the “story.”

The mainstream media embarrassed itself once again after it was caught pushing ‘Trump-Russia’ fake news. Both CNN and CBS fell for inaccurate reports alleging a WikiLeaks email was sent to Donald Trump Jr. with an encryption key to access future leaks.

However, WikiLeaks had tweeted a link to the information to the general public days before the email reached Trump Jr. inbox.

Washington Post reports:

A 2016 email sent to President Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier. The email — sent the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016 — noted that “Wikileaks has uploaded another (huge 678 mb) archive of files from the DNC” and included a link and a “decryption key,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post. The writer, who said his name was Michael J. Erickson and described himself as the president of an aviation management company, sent the message to the then-Republican nominee as well as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top advisers. The day before, WikiLeaks had tweeted links to what the group said was 678.4 megabytes of DNC documents. The full email — which was first described to CNN as being sent on Sept. 4, 10 days earlier — indicates that the writer may have simply been flagging information that was already widely available.

“The Sept. 14 email to Trump campaign advertising WikiLeaks emails promoted publicly available info, was riddled with typos and came from a Trump backer who had given $40 to the campaign months earlier, per email viewed by @WSJ,” confirmed Wall Street Journal reporter Rebecca Ballhaus.

Rebecca Ballhaus
✔@rebeccaballhaus
The Sept. 14 email to Trump campaign advertising WikiLeaks emails promoted publicly available info, was riddled with typos and came from a Trump backer who had given $40 to the campaign months earlier, per email viewed by @WSJ.
10:14 AM - Dec 8, 2017
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Monday, December 18, 2017

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December 16, 2017 by Joshua Caplan 103 Comments

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