Christiane Amanpour Slams 'False Moral Equivalence' on @CNN's AC 360

Well, she's calling out idiots Andrew Sullivan and Charles Blow, so I'll give her that.

Intense and passionate.

At Politico, "Christiane Amanpour gets emotional on Syria."

'Pass the Torch' Super-Pac

Ainsley Earhardt interviews activist Sarah Ponn.

Rush Limbaugh on American Exceptionalism

Via Common Cents.

U.S., Russia Agree on Plan on Syrian Chemical Weapons

Hey, maybe Obama's finally off the hook.

Putin pulled O's chestnuts out of the fire, and good thing too. It's been unbearable to watch all this time.

At WSJ, "Target Is for Damascus to Destroy Stockpiles by Early 2014":

 

GENEVA—The U.S. and Russia agreed Saturday on a broad framework for destroying Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons by the first half of next year.

Under the agreement between Moscow and Washington, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must provide a complete list of the types, quantity and locations of his country's chemical-weapons stockpiles to the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons by next Friday.

The plan will be codified in a U.N. Security Council resolution that won't rely on a threat of military action for enforcement, officials indicated. The U.S., France and Western allies had favored arming any U.N. resolution with a threat of force for noncompliance. But opposition from Moscow forced the Obama administration to drop the demand to pursue a diplomatic outcome and avoid U.S. military action.

Instead of a threat of force, an initial U.N. resolution will put into effect the process of inspection and destruction of Syria's chemical warfare infrastructure. If inspectors complain of noncompliance, a second U.N. resolution could be adopted under a U.N. rules that in some instances allows for the use of force.

However, Russia's opposition to force makes it nearly certain that any U.N. resolution on Syria will avoid military penalties, U.S. officials acknowledge, while reserving the right for military strikes by the U.S. acting on its own or with allies.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Saturday that the agreement marked progress in U.S.-Russian ties and "represents an important, concrete step" toward disarming Syria of chemical weapons. But he also insisted that the Assad regime live up to the agreement and indicated that if it didn't, the U.S. could respond militarily.

"This framework provides the opportunity for the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons in a transparent, expeditious, and verifiable manner, which could end the threat these weapons pose not only to the Syrian people but to the region and the world," Mr. Obama said in a statement. "And, if diplomacy fails, the United States remains prepared to act."

Hey, let's take the military option off the table... Wonderful, for Russia and Syria!

Assad will be playing cat and mouse from the outset with no fears of hard military reprisals. And Russia's  restored to key geopolitical player. Thank goodness! Now the Obama amateurs are breathing a sigh of relief at the White House and State Department. Vladimir is the man!

More at the link.

And see, "Four Reasons the Syria Deal Could Fall Apart," and "Syria Deal Revives a Partisan Divide: Republicans, Democrats Split After Brief Accord on Military Action."

Death Sentences in India Gang Rape Case

Do they matter?

See the New York Times, "Many Doubt Death Sentences Will Stem India Sexual Attacks":

NEW DELHI — There was no mistaking the whoop of joy that rose outside Saket District Court on Friday, when word got out that four men convicted in last December’s horrific gang rape and murder had been sentenced to death by hanging. People burst into applause. They hugged whoever was beside them. They pumped the air with their fists.

“We are the winners now,” said a woman holding a placard. Sweat had dried into white rivulets on her face, but she had the look of a woman who had, finally, gotten what she wanted. And it was true: A wave of protests after the December rape have set remarkable changes in motion in India, a country where for decades vicious sexual harassment has been dismissed indulgently, called “eve-teasing.”

But some of India’s most ardent women’s rights advocates hung back from Friday’s celebration, skeptical that four hangings would do anything to stem violence against women, a problem whose proportions are gradually coming into focus.

“I think a lot of people were hugging each other because they thought this evil is localized, and it will be wiped out, and that is not the case,” said Karuna Nundy, a litigator who has argued before India’s Supreme Court. “The sad truth is that it is not a deterrent.”

From the moment it broke, the story of the 23-year-old woman who became known as “Nirbhaya,” or “fearless,” awoke real rage in the population.

Hoping for a ride home from a movie theater, she and a male companion boarded a private bus, not realizing that the six men aboard had been cruising Delhi in search of a victim. After knocking her friend unconscious, they took her to the back of the bus and raped her, then penetrated her with a metal rod, inflicting grave internal injuries. An hour later, they dumped the pair out on the road, bleeding and naked. She died two weeks later of her injuries.

Young men and women, mobilized through social media, joined protests that spread across India, demanding tougher laws and more effective policing.

“As a woman, and mother, I understand how protesters feel,” Sonia Gandhi, India’s most powerful female politician and the president of the governing Congress Party, said at the time. “Today we pledge that the victim will get justice.”

After intensive public discussion of the case, some changes followed with extraordinary speed. Reports of rape have skyrocketed; in the first eight months of this year, Delhi’s police force registered 1,121 cases, more than double the number from the same period in 2011 and the highest number since 2000. The number of reported molestations has increased sixfold in the same period.

The government created a fast-track court for rape cases and introduced new laws, criminalizing acts like voyeurism and stalking and making especially brutal rapes into a capital crime. Scholars have delved into the social changes that may be contributing to the problem, as new arrivals in India’s huge cities find themselves unemployed and hopeless, stuck in “the space below the working class,” as the writer Rajrishi Singhal recently put it in an editorial in The Hindu.

But many were thinking of something more basic — punishing the six (one, a juvenile, got a three-year sentence in August, and the driver was found dead in his cell in March) who attacked the woman in the bus. It was those people who found their way to the Saket courthouse on Friday. Many came like pilgrims, hoping to find closure in a case that had haunted them.

Kiran Khullar arrived in a wheelchair, accompanied by her daughter, 17. “I have come here as a mother,” she said. “I came here only to see these men get the death penalty.”

More at that top link.

And change to India won't come until the culture changes, and it's a sick culture, for example, "‘Two-Finger’ Test for Rape Needs to End, Experts Say."

Screw That Guy and His New Agey 'Medium' Crap

Says Film Ladd on Twitter:

@AmPowerBlog That guy and his new-agey "medium" crap makes me want to vomit. Just another ass who wants to control the medium for politics.

— Film Ladd (@FilmLadd) September 14, 2013

Click through for the Tech Crunch article.

Failure to Define the #AlQaeda Network Has Confused American Policy and Strategy

Via AEI:

Obama's Larger Syria Strategy in Disarray

You think?

That's the AP headline at the ABC News site, via Memeorandum.

Hot Shots Calendar 2014

The full roster of lovelies.

Fake Follower @Twitter Spam Mars Company's IPO Rollout

Well, that Twitter IPO has a lot of folks atwitter, with some looking forward to a huge payday (see NYT, "The Payday at Twitter Many Were Waiting For").

But for us grunts down in the Twitter trenches, everyday is Twitter gulag defense day. And there's none more hip to that reality than Robert Stacy McCain, who's been plagued by a literal plague of fake followers in some deranged coordinated attack to have his account suspended. TGDN!

See, "Crime Is a People Problem: Why @Twitter Must Prosecute Fake Account Makers."

Online as in real life, every time a criminal gets away with illegal activity, he will be emboldened to further crimes, until he becomes so arrogant about his ability to evade prosecution that his continued spree of criminality is like an advertisement of the ineffectiveness of law enforcement: “You can’t catch me, cops!” Where wrongdoers no longer fear justice, the innocent must always fear wrongdoers.

Twitter is permitting this lawlessness. If they were genuinely determined to prevent the mass creation of fake accounts, there would not be — there could not be — these tens of thousands of fakes that have descended on my account like Egyptian locusts. After nearly 48 hours of this plague, I’m not just angry about the harassment, I’m becoming angry at other people for not being angry about it.

Continue reading.

Hey, it makes me angry, especially that Twitter's known about this problem all along, and is still looking to score that big payday without so much as a reckoning from the markets.

In any case, Robert's at least making a jovial time of it. More here, "‘Gosh, Stacy, There’s No Way @Twitter Could Spot All These Fake Accounts’," and "Dear @Twitter Security: Kill These Fake Accounts (Real People RT, Please)."

Winged Victory of Samothrace

Here's the real thing.

I love it.

Via Wikipedia:

The Winged Victory of Samothrace, also called the Nike of Samothrace, is a 2nd-century BC marble sculpture of the Greek goddess Nike (Victory). Since 1884, it has been prominently displayed at the Louvre and is one of the most celebrated sculptures in the world. H.W. Janson described it as "the greatest masterpiece of Hellenistic sculpture."

I had art history in college and we used H.W. Janson's, History of Art. It must've had an impact on my, because I'm still amazing by that sculpture.

PREVIOUSLY: "LBCC Academic Senate Retreat at Rancho Los Alamitos."

Elizabeth Hasselbeck Fox News Debut September 16th

Via Fire Andrea Mitchell.

Change is the theme on fox and friends. Just finished Sat. rehearsal. Dont miss Mon. @foxandfriends pic.twitter.com/nu6IQEdvY7

— Brian Kilmeade (@kilmeade) September 14, 2013

How Muslims Celebrate September 11th

With cake. What else.

Via My Pet Jawa.



And of course if you criticize this you're RAAAAACIST!!

More Pamela!

Via Blazing Cat Fur, "Pamela Geller Speaks at AFDI 9/11 Press Conference, Ground Zero."



And at Atlas Shrugs, "WHAT HE SAW AT GROUND ZERO ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2013."

Previously: "Muslim Brotherhood Haters Try to Shut down Pamela Geller/Robert Spencer Event in Canada." And back over to BCF for more information on that, "Pamela Geller & Robert Spencer - Hilton Suites Hotel - 8500 Warden Ave. Sept. 17, 2013 @ 7:30 PM."

Muslim Brotherhood Haters Try to Shut down Pamela Geller/Robert Spencer Event in Canada

Pamela reports.

Can't have a diversity of opinion, no can we?

Dude Wears Lana Del Rey Shirt. Lana Del Rey Digs It.

Via Tumblr.



Her YouTube Vevo page is here.

Communist Groups Helped Organize Petraeus Protest

Well, I could've told you that, lol.

At National Review:

Protests against General David Petraeus Monday by CUNY students were organized by an ad hoc committee that includes several Communist groups.

A leaflet for the protests, which refers to Petraeus as a “war criminal” and “mass murderer,” says that the events were organized by the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY and were endorsed by the Internationalist Group, Workers Power-US, and IGNITE.

These groups are explicitly Communist in nature. Workers Power states that it is a “revolutionary, communist organization . . . in the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky.” The Internationalist Group uses the hammer and sickle alongside its articles. IGNITE is a self-described “communist youth league.”

No surprise here. I've been covering campus communists for years now. What's particularly bothersome is how they pick up so much support from rank-and-file students, to say nothing of Democrat Party and so-called progressive organizations. It's no enemies on the left, as I always say.

LBCC Academic Senate Retreat at Rancho Los Alamitos

The college Academic Senate met for a special meeting and retreat today at the historic Rancho Los Alamitos, a colonial rancho that is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. (Check the history lesson at the National Park Service page.)

Here's the main rancho, which is maintained as a museum and educational facility by the City of Long Beach:



Background from Wikipedia:

The history of the 85,000-acre (340 km2) Rancho Los Alamitos is almost a microcosm for the history of expansion throughout Southern California, from the Native Americana cultures to contemporary times.[3] The area was first the location of the major circa 500 C.E. - 1780s Tongva—Gabrieliño sacred cere­monial and trading village of Povuu'nga, now an archeological site.[4] After Spanish occupation the ownership was to change and the boundaries would shrink many times. Situated in the floodplain between the mouths of the ever-shifting Los Angeles, San Gabriel and Santa Ana Rivers, the coastal plain terrain of the rancho is virtually flat rich soil, and was subject to frequent flooding. The rancho building itself is located near Puvunga springs alongside on one of the few small hills, Alamitos Mesa, in the area.

Rancho Los Alamitos was one of five ranchos that resulted from the partition of the original Rancho Los Nietos grant given to Manuel Nieto, a former sergeant in the Spanish army, in 1784 by governor Pedro Fages, coincidentally his former commander.[5] Nieto's grant was not only one of the first three awarded by the Spanish in Alta California, it was also the largest. After Nieto died, his children requested his original grant be partitioned. In 1834, Mexican governor José Figueroa officially declared Rancho Los Alamitos as one of the five partitions.

Out in back of the house is a classic old red barn with a blacksmith's shop:







Some beautiful horses too:





At the main educational exhibition room there's a showroom with a huge map of the rancho on the floor. You can see that the original Spanish land grant stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the San Gabriel Mountains. The history of the rancho is considered a microcosm of California history from colonial times to the present.



There's a huge patio canopy for meetings at the side of the ranch house:



The Bixby family, the last owners of the property, were connoisseurs of fine art. They owned American impressionist works and other fine paintings, and replicas hang inside the house. (Apparently the Los Angeles County Museum of Art stores and maintains the original works.) Out in the gardens I noticed this replica of the famous Nike of Samothrace. I got a kick out of that:



A great day, very educational!

Julia Ioffe: Obama Got Played

She's a good lady, appearing yesterday on Jake Tapper's show at CNN:



And see "The Syria Solution: Obama Got Played by Putin and Assad" and "How Long Before the Syria Deal Fails? Any Minute Now."

Also, "Here's What Went Unmentioned in Putin's New York Times Op-Ed."

George Will's Libertarian Evolution

At Reason, "George Will's Libertarian Evolution: Q&A on Obama, Syria, & the Power of Choice."