Many Americans don't talk about Islam for the fear of being labeled Islamophobic. When logical and factual discussions are avoided, only simplistic and extreme positions prevail. Thus there are people on the far right who totally fear Islam, and there are people on the left who can only repeat clichés such as, "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism." Here's a quick overview of Islam and the elements within Islam that give rise to extremism and terrorism.

In a few weeks, a new intake of students will arrive, all fresh-faced and excited, at universities around the country. They'll be thrilled at the prospect of escaping the wagging finger of mum and dad, eager to absorb new ideas. But I'm afraid they are in for a rude awakening. Unless they're very fortunate, they will soon find themselves enveloped in a world that's more censorious than stimulating and taught not to question ideas but to learn by heart the progressive creed. It will take a brave and resilient youngster to survive university with their intellectual curiosity intact.

Every aspect of campus life, from what you can say to how you should party, is minutely policed by what I called the Stepford Students in this magazine three years ago. 'No Platform' policies strictly govern who can speak on campus. Anybody, no matter what their political background or supposedly liberal credentials, can find themselves shunted off campus for having the wrong opinion in the eyes of the Stasi of student politics.

Albermarle County police department confirmed Chris Cantwell was arrested just before 2 am Monday morning at a bus stop near the town of Esmont.

He is charged with two felony counts of illegal use of explosives as well as illegal use of gases and injury by a caustic agent.

AMS reported on the interesting chain of events that led the famous white supremacist to this point.

For a few triumphant hours, Cantwell was the thick-armed embodiment of white nationalism to tens of millions of people - the star of VICE News and HBO's Web documentary about last weekend's rallies, which has been seen more than 30 million times.

He looked every bit the rebel leader in that footage from Friday night and Saturday, greeting other white nationalists from as far away as Canada; marching by torchlight to the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee; screaming "Jews will not replace us!"

"I carry a pistol. I go to the gym all the time," Cantwell tells the camera, muscles bulging beneath a shirt that advertises his blog, which in turn advertises Cantwell as a libertarian "fascist."

"I'm trying to make myself more capable of violence!" he says." - Denver Post

This picture painted by the Denver Post is exactly what we all thought of this self-proclaimed Neo Nazi. At first glance, it all seems expected. Neo Nazi talks a big game and gets a big scary reputation. But then things took a surprising turn.

Following the firing of Google engineer James Damore, there is little that would surprise us about Google's corporate operating policies. In an recent interview with Reason magazine, Damore divulged additional details about life at the Orwellian tech giant, including how Google would send weekly emails to its employees on "microaggressions." The Washington Examiner summarizes the relevant portion of the interview below:

Damore told Young in an interview published this week that, at Google, "'microaggressions' are being taught and compared to actual violence." He further divulged that a weekly email is sent to 20,000 Google employees "where people submit examples of microagressions. Asked whether the microaggressors are ever identified in these emails, he replied, "Sometimes they are, and other times it's obvious to whoever reads it (which is a large portion of the company now)."

Damore recalled one email that included an employee complaining about a coworker who "[suggested] to use a picture of an attractive person on an ad to increase the number of clicks. According to Damore, that was "apparently a case of 'lookism'" to the offended Google employee.

So-called microaggressions have risen to prominence in recent years as professors and administrators are increasingly diligent about raising awareness of the concept among students. A recent New York magazine article defined them as "inadvertently offensive things members of majority groups say or do to members of marginalized groups in everyday life." One example might be expressing surprise that a woman is studying engineering or mathematics.

Since Damore's firing, many of the points made in his now-infamous memo continue to be proved right. For instance, following the memo, female colleagues refused to show up to work as they were upset over the memo's content.

Rebel flag sales are up since Charlottesville. One north Alabama shop may be the only flag manufacturer in America meeting the increased demand.

Alabama Flag & Banner is located in a small strip near downtown Huntsville. Two years ago, the company began manufacturing the Confederate flag after retailers pulled it from their shelves in the wake of the mass shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C. in which nine people were killed by a white supremacist who'd been photographed holding a Confederate flag.

The country's major flag manufacturers stopped producing rebel flags. Eventually, said longtime owner Belinda Kennedy, Alabama Flag & Banner became the go-to manufacturer for hundreds of retailers across the country looking to stock American-made Confederate flags. Online orders boomed, too.

Two weeks ago, after the deadly Charlottesville rally sparked a national debate about whether Confederate monuments should be removed from parks around the country, flag sales spiked again.

"After the church shooting (in 2015), Amazon and Walmart stopped selling (the flag) and people were afraid they wouldn't be able to buy it," she said. "And then you started seeing streets renamed, schools being renamed, mountains being renamed. And then people started getting angry. And then there's another surge (in sales)."

A student was arrested along with other protesters when about 800 people gathered at McCorkle Place on Tuesday night to demand the removal of the Silent Sam Confederate statue from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus.

The statue was surrounded by two sets of barricades earlier Tuesday morning in an effort to prevent protesters getting close to it. The barriers, combined with the fact that the statue is continually monitored by surveillance cameras, prompted many to state that Silent Sam is better protected than any student on the campus.

At times Tuesday night, police had difficulty controlling the crowds as protesters chanted and marched for several hours, at times taking to Franklin Street and forcing the closure of the road, as officers dressed in riot gear guarded the monument.

"It doesn't need to be in the middle of campus. In a museum is fine, it's ok, but here in the middle of campus, it promotes violence," said protester Zaria Williams.

A blast hit central Kiev on Thursday, after a military parade ended nearby. At least two people were injured, with police now working at the scene. US Secretary of Defense James Mattis is visiting Ukraine as it celebrates Independence Day.

An unknown device exploded at around 2pm local time on Grushevsky street, local police report. The street is Kiev's central avenue, with the Ukrainian parliament building, the national bank of Ukraine, and other governmental structures located in the area.

A man and a woman were taken to the hospital following the explosion, police say.

Bomb disposal units have been dispatched to the scene. The secretary of Ukraine's National Security Council and head of national police have also arrived, local media report.

Ukraine marked its independence day with a military parade, which ended shortly before the explosion.

The novelist Doris Lessing yesterday claimed that men were the new silent victims in the sex war, "continually demeaned and insulted" by women without a whimper of protest.

Lessing, who became a feminist icon with the books The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, said a "lazy and insidious" culture had taken hold within feminism that revelled in flailing men.

Young boys were being weighed down with guilt about the crimes of their sex, she told the Edinburgh book festival, while energy which could be used to get proper child care was being dissipated in the pointless humiliation of men.

"I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed," the 81-year-old Persian-born writer said yesterday.

"Great things have been achieved through feminism. We now have pretty much equality at least on the pay and opportunities front, though almost nothing has been done on child care, the real liberation.

Since May 2017 an ongoing insurgency has been raging in the Shia heartland town of Awamiya in eastern Saudi Arabia and it's only thanks to the BBC being allowed to enter the area and film the destruction that the world can see how the House of Saud's war against the Shia population of Yemen has now expanded to include the Shia population of eastern Saudi Arabia.

The BBC World report shown on Wednesday, August 16, seemed to have come from Syria, with al-Zara, the ancient Shia capital of the Persian province of Bahrain and the rest of the town of Awamiya showing a level of devastation resembling that in Syria or to the Kurdish cities destroyed recently by Erdogan Ottoman's Janissarris.

Block by block destruction of the Old City, with no visible signs of the Shia people who once lived here for millennia, with almost 500 buildings destroyed and over 20,000 driven from their homes by Saudi airstrikes, artillery and mortar fire.

The BBC crew was only allowed there in armored vehicles, filming through bullet proof windows while traveling as a part of an armored convoy. The one time they were allowed to stop and step outside the battlewagons they were riding, firing could be heard and they were quickly ordered to return to their vehicles so they could escape.

A recent study conducted by a Grand Valley State University professor suggests that political correctness, at least among millennials, is little more than a charade.

In an August 16 study, Professor Karen Pezzetti explains that millennials pursuing careers in education "position themselves as good, non-racist people," but in many cases may just be going through the motions of using "politically correct" terminology to "talk about students from diverse backgrounds."

"Perhaps [they] are simply more savvy about the ways they talk about students from diverse backgrounds."