Fears of a Jihadi Attack Result In Beefed Up Security, Cancelled Events For New Year's Eve

Welcome to your new "normal," infidels:

• In Times Square, the expected one million revelers will be guarded by a beefed-up security force this year, including hundreds of officers carrying long guns, radiation detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs.
• In Brussels, a planned New Year's Eve fireworks display was canceled late Wednesday over fears of an attack.
• Meanwhile in Paris, 11,000 police officers, military personnel and firefighters were set to patrol the streets on New Year's Eve — 2,000 more than last year. People would be banned from selling or using combustible products, such as fireworks, sparklers or firecrackers, or drinking alcohol from glass bottles in certain areas.  The city's firework display on the Champs-Élysées was also canceled in the wake of the attacks in which 130 people died.
• London's celebration would be accompanied by 3,000 police officers on the streets — including an increased number carrying guns, which is not the norm in the U.K.

Funny how, "norm"-wise, the entire Western world has suddenly turned into, well, Israel.



Update: Some more new-"norm" stuff--"Know, O Obama, that we are coming to America, and know that we will sever your head in the White House."

Why Would Iran Fire Rockets Alongside a U.S. Navy Air Carrier--Again?

TIME magazine's Mark Thompson says that "fathoming Tehran’s motives is always challenging."

To which I'd respond: yeah, that "Death to America!" stuff is soooo opaque.

Dumbest. Comment. EVER!

Trudeau: Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention exemplifies “our shared beliefs" (Hat tip: MW)

"Our shared beliefs" in what? Islamic supremacism? The Muslim Brotherhood?

Dhimmi (or is it true believer?) Trudeau may see those as being "our" values, but, clearly, they are not.

With Apologies, For Sure, To Clement C. Moore

'Twas the eve of the Eve, when more often than not,
The police had revealed yet one more jihad plot.
The cautions were issued for us to beware
In hopes that the terrorists wouldn't be there.
(With partyers gathering hither and yon
Let's pray visions of carnage are banished and gone.)
And Obama in Hawaii, and Trudeau who-knows-where?
Both decry "Islamophobia" with their devil-may-care.
When a new attack comes, and more lives are shattered
Will they say that our hate's the thing that most mattered?
When a suicide bomber blows up in a flash
With they say it's because he was "poor" and lacked cash?
They both moon over "victims" of First World "oppressors"
While jihadi supremacists think we're their lessers.
Oh, when will these leaders ever have pause
And see that this clash is one over laws?
With those God-decreed laws--i.e. the shari'--
There is no place for freedom or e-qual-i-ty.
Now CAIR along with the NCCM
Whinge and whine 'bout what we do to them:
"Now, dash it all! dash it all! dash it all, see!
Your animus sparks jihad's ubiquity!
When you criticize Islam, in any form, shape or way,
You are making 'em mad, and for that you will pay!
So you'd better think twice 'fore you open your yap
And spew out your hateful, Islamophobic crap!"
And then, in a twinkling, they will shout even louder
And free speech as we know it will soon take a powder.
As I tried to calm down, I couldn't be merry
For I thought of the words of that pea-brain, John Kerry.
When jihadis attacked in Paree, at the end,
Kerry sent 'em James Taylor to sing "You've Got a Friend."
When Paree was attacked with a vengeance once more
Kerry couldn't compute what its purpose was for.
His words--how they sickened! his Botox, how rigid!
His face never moved; his countenance: frigid!
His coldness suffused every line that he uttered
While down in the White House his boss floundered and sputtered.
A joke of a leader, the worst POTUS ever,
He brought falsehoods and failure to every endeavor.
He was lean as can be, with no middle age spread
'Cuz the fat in his frame was all up in his head.
With a blink of his eye and, yes, even a tear,
He opined, "Climate change is the threat we most fear!"
Then off to play golf, the thing he does best.
But as for jihadis--they never rest.
And next year, I predict, you will hear near and far:
"The Caliphate's great--Allahu Akbar!"

Mark Steyn: A Tale of Two Bills

One's an old horndog whose rapey ways belie his avuncular image. The other one's Bill Cosby (rimshot).

Cohen Excoriates Kerry--And It's a Beautiful Thing

In today's must-read essay (from UK periodical Standpoint), Nick Cohen tears a strip off that pompous pea-brain John Kerry and the creed he espouses:

Kerry believes the satirists Islamist gunmen killed at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris’s 11th arrondissement on January 5 had it coming. It is not that they deserved to die. John Kerry is a New England liberal, after all, and does not endorse the death penalty for journalists. But liberalism is a two-faced creed. It can mean that you believe in individual freedom and abhor every variety of prejudice, including the prejudice that allows men to shoot journalists dead for producing a magazine they disapprove of.  Or it can mean that you go to such lengths to take account of your enemy’s opinions you become indistinguishable from him.

John Kerry’s liberalism, and the liberalism of millions like him, ignores Chesterton’s warning not to be so open-minded that your brains fall out. Kerry wanted to understand radical Islam and to seek the root causes of its apparently psychopathic violence. Not for him the knee-jerk condemnations of a red-state redneck. When Kerry applied his nuanced and expensively educated mind to the corpses in the magazine office, he discovered that the dead had provoked their own murders. The assassins had, well, if not quite legitimate reasons, then certainly a “rationale” which explained why they were “really angry because of this and that”. 

Charlie Hebdo mocked the prophet Muhammad, Islamic State and Boko Haram. Its editor Stéphane Charbonnier (aka Charb), the cartoonists and columnists who wrote for him, and the police officers who died protecting their freedom (and ours) knew the risks and paid the price. They went looking for trouble and we should not be shocked that they found it.

All the rest of us had to do was to moderate our behaviour. If we were careful not to make terrorists “really angry” about “this and that”, we would be safe.

Perhaps I am being too kind to Kerry. But I assume even he must have had one doubt buzzing around his empty head like a dazed bluebottle...

That's very charitable of you, Nick. Me? I assume no such thing.

"It's Like Speed Dating, But Steeped in the Muslim Faith"

The devout had an opportunity to find Mr./Miss Right at this year's Reviving the Islamic Spirit Conference.
 
Let's hope it doesn't result in any Tashfeen Malik/Syed Farook-type couplings.

New Year's Eve in Eurabia Typifies the "New" Normal

As New Year's Eve approaches, Europe is on high alert due to the threat of an attack by party-pooping jihadis:

European capitals of the possibility [sic] of a shooting or bomb attack before New Year, prompting police across the continent to increase security measures. 

"Several possible names of potential attackers were mentioned, which were checked, and the investigation based on (these checks) has so far yielded no concrete results," Vienna police said in a statement, some six weeks after 130 people were killed in a terrorist bombing and shooting attacks in Paris. 

"In the days before Christmas a warning was sent out by a friendly (intelligence) service to numerous European capitals, saying that it could come to an attack involving explosives or a shooting between Christmas and the New Year in crowded spaces." 

The police asked Austrians for their understanding of the need for more security controls. 

Extra steps include surveillance in crowded spaces, "especially at events and traffic hubs" as well as intensive identity checks and higher alertness for objects which could carry explosives such as bags or "bicycle frames", it said. 

Vienna police were not immediately available for further comment. 

A spokesman for the German Interior Ministry said it did not comment on particular situations for operational reasons. 

"Germany is still in the crosshairs of Jihadist terrorism," he said, adding the country had reviewed and adapted its security measures, where necessary, following the Paris attacks. 

But in London, a leading British MP urged Britons to celebrate New Year as normal...

Fat chance. There is nothing "normal" about living at a time of resurgent jihad.

That being so, I've rejigged the appropriate song:

Should old, old doctrines of jihad
Allow 'em to go far?
Should old, old doctrines of jihad
Bring on "Allahu Akbar"?

For old, old jihad's new again,
For old jihad's gone far.
They'll kill 'cuz they're supremacists
For old "Allahu Akbar"!

Rick Salutin's Trumbo Mumbo-Jumbo

Turns out Dalton Trumbo is one of Salutin's heros--no surprise there, eh?--and he thinks the film starring Bryan Cranston is, like, really complex, especially re the issue of victimhood:

Something also cuts against this grain in Trumbo. In the final scene, when Trumbo Vindicated receives yet another Hollywood honour, he speaks words the real life Trumbo wrote about the period: “It will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none; there were only victims.”  

This restores victimhood as a complex category, by deheroizing it. It’s as if the character realizes at the very end that his moralistic posturing earlier may have been superficial and self-serving. He’s arrived at a deeper understanding.

A deeper understanding? As if! Fact is Trumbo never recanted his Stalinism and cared not a whit about its victims, ones whose victimhood, unlike his, was genuine.

A deeper understanding? As if Trumbo was the one who was dispatched in some dark alley via a Stalinist bullet, or left to waste away in the Siberian Gulag for trumped up "crimes" against the thuggish state. 

Compare that to Trumbo's "suffering." As a dedicated Communist working on behalf of this murderous regime, all he had to endure was a few years of hiding behind a fake name when flogging his Hollywood screenplays. That was followed soon enough by decades of lionization which continue to our day.

A deeper understanding?

Give me a freaking break!

As for "complexity"--the Trumbo of the movie explains Communism to his young daughter by using a simile involving a sandwich. Communism, he tells her, is like sharing half your sandwich with a kid who comes to school with nothing to eat.

Wow. That's just sooooo "complex."

And so totally out to lunch.

NYT Phrase of the Day: "Dovish Groups"

That's the New York Times, an entity with a pronounced and profound animus toward Israel, downplaying the sabotage done to Israel's body politic by Euro--and more often than not, German--NGOs, who mask their antipathy as concern for "justice" for Palestinians and a desire for peace in our time.

Of course, the "dovish groups" designation--euphemism--tells you a lot more about the New York Time than it does about the pernicious work of these so-called doves.

Doves? These bodies are much more like birds of prey than they are like those symbols of peace.

Iran's Rouhani Wants Muslims To Stop Focusing On Syria and Redirect Their Attention to the "Real" Problem

"It's the Jooooos!," fumes the faux-moderate.

Can You Defuse the Jew-Hatred Inherent in Hitler's "Mein Kampf" By Loading It Up With Reams of "Commentary

Now that the copyright in Germany has run out and the book is in the public domain, that seems to be the publisher's plan: bury the Hitler stuff under a mountain of annotation/commentary so as to try to stifle the toxic message.

Will it work? I doubt it. Not when the book--unannotated--has been a perennial best-seller in the Arab world, Turkey and even in India.

Proposed Panacea for Ontario's Purported Racism: More Government-Funded Scourges, Scolds and Busy-Bodies

Ontarians not opening wide and swallowing their multiculti cod liver oil/codswallop of late? The best way to remedy the "problem, "according to the Toronto Star, is to create yet another bureaucracy to root out any and all recalcitrance:

Last March, EKOS conducted a poll to measure whether Canadians were becoming more racist. One of its more disquieting findings was that opposition to immigration has nearly doubled since 2005, when it was at an all-time low of 25 per cent.  

What’s more disturbing was that the number of Canadians saying we admit too many visible minorities “cracked” the 40-point ceiling for the first time ever, noted EKOS president Frank Graves.  

Opposition to immigration doesn’t necessarily reflect racial discrimination. It could reflect economic anxiety, he explained. “But it’s hard to see how those saying too many immigrants are visible-minority can be motivated by anything but racial or cultural bias.”  

Graves is right. That is why Premier Kathleen Wynne should give serious consideration to NDP Leader Andrea Horwath’s call for an anti-racism secretariat...

Heaven help us! Don't we already have "diversity" and "human rights" bodies galore to push us around and purvey the prevailing multiculti dogma in an eerily 1984-esque way?

I'd say we need an "anti-racism secretariat" about as much as we need, say, another SARS outbreak.

Shallow, Callow Diaspora Jewry Manifest an "Interfaith" and Islamophobia-Phobic Mindset--Which Is a Recipe for Disaster

Re the suicidal impulse of deploring everyone and everything on the Right and ignoring the Zionhass/Jew-hatred inherent in mainstream Islam, Melanie Phillips writes:

As a result of this mindset [that those on the Left are invariably good and those on the Right are inarguably wicked], neo-Nazis are conflated with democratic nationalists who merely want to halt the mass immigration now threatening to submerge Europe. They, too, are thus deemed to be fascists. 

The result is a reckless absence of self-preservation by Diaspora Jews in seeking to embrace those who would kill Jews or destroy Israel. 

Hence the campaign by both Orthodox and progressive denominations in Britain to welcome all Syrian refugees, despite well-founded warnings that an unknown number of these may have been recruited by Islamic State or other Islamists. 

This perverse behavior stems partly from fear and ignorance, but also from a supremely shallow identification with another religious minority whose clothing and rituals set it aside from the mainstream. 

It also reflects the grip of interfaith work. 

This precludes addressing any truths so unpalatable that they might cause Muslims to walk out, thus imperiling their support on issues of apparent common interest such as defending ritual animal slaughter and circumcision. 

Mostly, though, it reflects the equation made by Diaspora Jews between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. This equation is utterly false. Anti-Semitism is pure bigotry,  reflecting hatred of Jews not for what they do but for what they are. Islamophobia, by contrast, is nothing other than a mind-bending smear designed to stigmatize and silence all who seek to expose or fight Islamic extremism and holy war. 

One understands the Jewish impulse to want to side with the "underdog"; it is pretty much written into our genetic coding. However, too many supposedly smart Jews know nothing about Islamic doctrine and therefore assume that anything negative said about it must be false and hateful because of the manifold false and hateful things shouted and whispered about "the Jews."

In so doing, these uber-compassionate Jews have allowed doctrines which harbor the most poisonous Jew-hate at their very core to hitch a free ride on the Judenhass choo-choo train.

How perverse is that?

Have a Cool Yule, Y'All

I'm signing off for now. Hope your holiday time's full of love and good cheer, and I plan to be back 'fore the end of the year.

Today's Dueling Limericks

This one's in the NatPo:

In view of a TRC plank,
The Grits are expected to yank
A part of the law
That says Ma and Pa
(And others) have license to spank.

Here's my effort:

As Grit poseurs preen and preach
The state's tentacles extend their reach.
They have criminalized spanking
And succeeded in yanking
Some lessons that parents can teach.

This Year's Massive "Reviving the Islamic Spirit" Conference Will Emphasize "The True Message of Islam"

Apparently, this year's confab is still replete with by-the-book Islamist "scholars," but, for the sake of optics, they're attempting to repackage/reposition the "true message" such that it has more to do with "social justice" and socialism than it does with supremacist teachings calling for Muslims to wage jihad on infidels until and unless they capitulate--and the Toronto Star is definitely on board with that (my bolds):

Around 20,000 people are expected to attend the Reviving the Islamic Spirit conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The event runs from Dec. 25 to 27, and will feature speakers that include scholars, imams and authors.   

Kutty predicted the event would draw criticism, noting the unfair assumption that “Muslims have to answer for the actions of the extremists.”   

The theme of the 2015 event is “Alliance of Virtue,” which organizer Summayah Poonah said speaks to a need to “[form] cross cultural alliances in order to aid and facilitate social justice.”  

“We need to be able to diversify our portfolio as a community and contribute in a significant way to other social platforms, like the issue of race or income inequality,” said Poonah.   

Past conferences had focused on more basic needs, Poonah said: “a roof over your head and food on the table."  

Poonah said she is looking forward to hearing Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. The New York Times credited Sarsour with “[helping] to partly dismantle the New York Police Department’s program of spying on the city’s Muslims.”

Good going, Linda! Now NYPD cops and city authorities have no way of knowing whether or not jihad is being preached within its precincts. But, hey, I suppose if Islam is now nothing more than a sort of religious "Occupy" movement, there's nothing to worry about. ;)

And the fact that the convention is behind held on Christmas? I wouldn't read any "replacement theology"/supersessionism into that, not with Islam's new "true message" sounding no more threatening than, say, the Liberal Party policy book, I mean.

I have to say, though, that, as a Jew, this line gave me pause:

An interfaith dialogue is planned for Saturday, featuring a cardinal, imam and pastor.

Way to diss the Jews, RIS!



Update: You see that little icon for Islamic Relief, the one with minarets, in the right hand corner? Were RIS really turning over a new leaf re Islam's true message, there's no way Islamic Relief, which is a Muslim Brotherhood entity, would be funding it.

Update: Here's a Ceeb interview with one of the RIS speakers, Imam Zaid Shakir.

How an Emphasis on "Feelings" Is Ruining Higher Education

As a parent who is getting set to send her beloved one and only young'un into the arms of academia next fall, I am less than delighted that this--the culture/tyranny of hurt feelings, high horses and hissy fits--is what likely awaits him:

Grave consequence for education and the university await those who elevate the unreasoned perspective of aggrievement. Little imagination is required to see that giving equal weight to knowledge and untutored feeling undermines the possibility of education itself. The standard of feeling presumes that human beings do not require perfecting. Feelings have the appearance of purity. They purport to be sincere and authentic; as such, they need not be clarified or contradicted by reason. Feelings appear to be self-contained, incontrovertible revelations. But education presumes that minds are imperfect—that they are distorted by various admixtures of opinions, passions, and images and in need of correction.  

Genuine education aims to destroy false feelings of self-importance, while creating doubt about ideas and doctrines that distort the mind. Feelings tell us that there is nothing to learn. Intellectual authorities worthy of reverence and imitation don’t exist. For philosophers like John Locke, education was liberation from prejudice. The modern university, by contrast, too often flatters and protects prejudice. Gaining and preserving wisdom takes a back seat to the creation of safe-spaces—shelters, in other words, for prejudice, not from it.

My kid is a libertarian who debates SJWs online. I think he may be in for a bit of a rough ride if and when he lands in a place that esteems feelings--and the coddling thereof--above all else.

Report From France: Jihadi Who Beheaded His Boss Hangs Himself in Jail

A story for our times:

PARIS — French authorities say that man suspected of beheading a businessman at a French gas factory in June has committed suicide in his prison cell. 

Deputy Prosecutor Jean-Michel Bourles in Evry, a Paris suburb, said Wednesday that Yassin Salhi hanged himself with an electric cable Tuesday night in Fleury-Merogis prison. The former delivery driver faced preliminary murder and terrorism charges and of suspected of ties to Islamic State extremists. 

The attack in France's southeast put the country back on high alert after January's deadly extremist attacks. 

French prosecutors said Salhi lured his boss into a van, knocked him unconscious and beheaded him. Salhi allegedly carried a long-bladed knife, a gun and two brand-new flags emblazoned with the Muslim declaration of faith.

Time for France to ban the long-bladed knife, no?

Today's Must-Read Essay

One of my favorite essayists, Ruth Wisse, offers many insights, some quite profound, on the subject of "Jews and Other Poles."

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Why There Can NEVER Be a "Two-State" Solution

Jonathan S. Tobin wrote it (my bolds):

The fault for the Palestinians’ woes is widely attributed to Israel, but complaints about the “occupation” only go so far. It’s true the Palestinians want to be free of Israeli rule. But as Daniel Polisar wrote last month in Mosaic magazine in his study of Palestinian public opinion, their goal isn’t so much a two-state solution as it is the elimination of the Jewish state. Their dissatisfaction is wrongly attributed to the failure of the peace process. Their real problem is not so much with negotiations that always end with Palestinian refusals of Israeli statehood offers (as Arafat did in 2000 and 2001 and Mahmoud Abbas did in 2008) or an unwillingness to negotiate seriously (as Abbas has done for the last seven years despite U.S. support for his demands) but rather with the failure of the Palestinian Authority to wage an effective war against the Jews.

Or, to make it even more succinct: It's the eliminationism, stupid.

Two Clowns In a Car Getting Coffee

One's of them is Seinfeld; the other's the POTUS.

WaPo Blasts Obama's "Fecklessness" Re Iran

Wow. You mean to say that the WaPo-Obama honeymoon is finally over?

Rather late in the game for that, no?

Update: Claudia Rosett unloads on what she calls "Obama's fire sale foreign policy."

The Entity Formerly Known As CAIR-CAN's 5 Point Formula For Maintaining Peace and Quiet In Canada

I bet you won't be surprised to learn that its five point "solution," issued late last month, involves curbs on free speech in the name of preventing "Islamophobia" as well of a variety of measures which enshrine Muslims alone as society's perennial victims and which muddy the waters re Islam's core doctrine of jihad and the part it plays in inspiring today's holy warriors/avid caliphatists (my bolds):

First, the federal government should immediately partner with Canadian Muslim communities to fashion an effective strategy to combat extremist narratives. This new brand of terror promotion is a contemporary phenomenon that few know how to tackle. The previous government did provide limited funding for an initiative called Extreme Dialogue which highlights the experiences of a mother of a young Canadian who was killed fighting overseas for extremist groups and the experiences of a former white supremacist. There was also some funding provided to explore community resilience through workshops and public fora. We need more of this, implemented strategically across the country. 

Second, community stakeholders must come together to find new ways to teach about acceptance and to promote multiculturalism. Again, leadership is key: for example, provincial ministries of education must ensure that teachers are using the resources that national organizations like MediaSmarts and others provide to ensure curricula are taught through a lens that allows young people to identify stereotypes and to challenge popular misconceptions. We need to create safe spaces for our increasingly global classrooms. 

Third, police services must bolster hate crimes units and their responses. Victims are often reluctant to report and it’s important to provide both adequate resources and support. Perpetrators must also be swiftly brought to justice. 

Fourth, Islamophobia must be considered as offensive and as socially unacceptable as any other hatemongering out there, whether anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia or sexism. This means that even in political discourse, there must be a responsibility to ensure that questions about refugees, for example, are not giving people license to air anti-Muslim sentiments and fuel suspicions about people fleeing the very same type of terror we witnessed in Paris. 

Fifth, it’s time to take the Islam, out of ISIS. Most of the world calls this terrorist movement Daesh and ISIS has been widely condemned by Muslim scholars and institutions worldwide. Muslims and Islam should not be synonymous with a group of barbaric criminals. It hurts our communities, it hurts our children, and it only bolsters their false claims. Even law enforcement agencies agree that language has the power to cast suspicion over entire communities, and provide a veneer of credibility to the terrorists’ claims. 

Finally, Canadians must choose “love over fear,” to echo the touching sentiments expressed in a Montreal metro earlier last week by three young men who posted a video of their solidarity. Holding each other’s hands, a Muslim originally from Egypt, his friends from Paris and New York, did what many Canadians must do now—defeat the extremist narrative by coming even closer together.

All of that amounts to nothing more than this outfit's sharia-tinged wish list, and its recommendations, even if fully implemented, would to squat to put the brakes on the jihad, which is global in scale and out of control.

Update: You can always count on the "progressives" at the Toronto Star to buy in to the NCCM "victim" narrative. In today's editorial, for instance, the paper insists that "Denying anti-Islam sentiment won't solve problems."

What about those who deny Islam's anti-infidel sentiment? How, exactly, does that solve problems?

What "Stars Wars" and "Going Clear" Have In Common: When "The Force" Is a Farce

I just watched the HBO documentary Going Clear--again. (What can I say? I find the topic endlessly fascinating.) It occurs to me that the powers one is supposed to acquire once one has "moved up the Bridge to the highest level(s)" sound a lot like Star Wars' "the force" as described by New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane:

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is, as the title suggests, aimed squarely at anyone who was worried that the Force was asleep on the job. Not that you can blame it for dozing off. One virtue of the new film is that it encourages viewers to ask afresh: What is the Force, exactly? I always assumed it was something that George Lucas dreamed up after too many Tolkien-themed parties at U.S.C. Like the One Ring, the Force can be wielded for both good and evil ends, but then so can a set of screwdrivers. We learn, from this latest installment, that the Force moves through all living things, which sounds lovely, if a trifle nebulous, yet the uses to which people put it, in the course of the narrative, seem highly specialized and precise. For instance, if you find yourself shackled to a torture rack in the stronghold of your enemy, you can brainwash your guard into releasing your fetters and leaving the door open. Very handy. Better yet, if the hilt of your light sabre is partially buried in snow and you can’t reach it, the Force—manifesting itself as a superior wobble—can pull the weapon out for you, like a splinter from your thumb.

I have to say that "the force" in Star Wars sounds a lot more plausible than the powers acquired via Bridge-climbing. As well, the price of the Star Wars movie, plus refreshments, is a pittance compared to the mega-thousands of dollars you're expected to fork out over the course of the climbing--and climbing, and climbing, and somehow never managing to reach the summit.

The Phantom Menace of Global Warming

"The more urgent other problems become, the more our leaders double down on the invented threat of global warming."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Something That Should Be Obvious But, Alas, Isn't

Syrian Refugees Aren't Like Jewish Refugees

Trudeau Scales Back Memorial to Victims of Communism (Because, Being a Leftist Movement, Was Communism REALLY All That Bad?)

The victims of communism under leaders such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. number in the tens of millions. The Toronto Star, however, is convinced that the previous government wanted to erect a memorial to those murdered for purely opportunistic reasons, and is therefore applauding the new government's plans to scale back/downsize/play down plans for the monument (my bolds):

The Trudeau government has done the right thing by arranging for a controversial memorial to victims of communism to be downsized and moved away from the heart of official Ottawa...  

The Ottawa memorial was a favourite of the Harper government, which paved the way for a private group to erect a jarringly intrusive structure right next door to the Supreme Court of Canada building, just west of Parliament on Wellington St. 

It wasn’t the right design and it certainly wasn’t the right place. It smacked of political opportunism as the Conservatives curried favour among the Polish and Ukrainian communities, in particular, which understandably hold bitter memories of their nations’ suffering under communism.  

A chorus of critics – including the likes of Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin – pushed back. And now the new Liberal government has sensibly arranged for the memorial to be relocated to a more suitable spot in the Garden of the Provinces and Territories, further west along Wellington St.  

Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly says the government is also cutting its financial support for the project in half, to a maximum of $1.5 million, ensuring the memorial will have a more human scale.  

This is a deft move. The memorial now stands a good chance of adding to the national capital instead of becoming a needlessly divisive symbol.

You know that Trudeau and the Star are giving communism a break because it is seen as a leftist movement (hence the misbegotten idea that memorializing its victims--who vastly outnumber the victims of the Nazis--in the way that the Harper government wanted to would be "needlessly divisive"; that line about the memorial having "a more human scale" is also a dead giveaway--and a huge insult to those who were murdered on a massive scale, one that was hardly "human," by evil, vindictive, power-crazed totalitarians).

The "Progressive" Agenda In Action--Trudeau's Libs Get Set to Criminalize Parental Spanking

It's part and parcel of Justin Trudeau's ill-considered promise to enact every single recommendation of the "Truth and Reconciliation Commision," apparently:

In promising to enact all of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the federal Liberals have agreed to remove a section of law that allows parents to spank their kids without fear of prosecution. 

Groups that oppose corporal punishment of children have spent many years urging successive governments in Ottawa to repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code that permits parents and teachers to use reasonable force to correct the behaviour of youngsters in their care. 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which heard thousands of tales of physical abuse inside Indian residential schools, said in its final report that “corporal punishment is a relic of a discredited past and has no place in Canadian schools or homes.” The repeal of Section 43 was No. 6 on a list of 94 “calls to action” included in the report, which was made public last week. 

When asked if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to act on every TRC recommendation meant repealing the so-called spanking law, a spokesman for Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould would only say the government remains committed to implementing all of the commission’s calls to action. 

In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that physical force was acceptable within certain bounds – it cannot be used on children under the age of 2, it cannot involve implements such as a paddle or a belt and blows to a child’s head are not allowed. Teachers and faith-based groups praised the decision, saying the people who are responsible for raising children must have the leeway to decide when moderate physical discipline is required. 

A move to open parents and teachers who spank children to the possibility of criminal charges is unlikely to pass through Parliament unopposed...

And how, pray tell, are you going to police such a law? Are you going to institute a "snitch line," so kids can turn in their spanking parents?

While I certainly don't believe in harming a child, I don't think it's in society's best interest for the state to intervene here. The state has no business deciding for a parent whether or not an occasional smack on a child's backside is indicated. Moreover, it is counterproductive, to say the least, to transform the disciplinary act of an otherwise loving parent into something criminal.

Sorry, Justin, but the whole think seems bonkers to me.

New Ad Accusing Anti-Israel NGOs of Treason Make Tablet Scribbler Feel Sick

Liel Leibovitch identifies the source of his nausea here (my bolds):

To put it mildly, I don’t have much love these days for the Israeli left. I watch my former colleagues in the so-called peace camp and am astonished by how deluded they are in their belief that negotiations with the murderous and corrupt Palestinian Authority are still possible, how dishonest they are in their refusal to speak honestly about Palestinian anti-Semitism and incitement, and how ready they are to blame Israel for the smallest of infractions while giving its sworn enemies the benefit of every doubt. I find them a morally muddled, intellectually confused, and emotionally squishy bunch. But even I felt sick the other day when watching the controversial new ad by the right-wing movement Im Tirzu. 

The ad, which is about as subtle as a Trump stump speech, accuses the leaders of four Israeli leftist nonprofit organizations of being shtulim, a loaded Hebrew word roughly meaning undercover agents. The four, the video argues, using military-style imagery, receive funds from European governments while severely criticizing Israel and providing Palestinian terrorists with legal counsel. “While we fight terror,” the video menacingly concludes, “they fight us.” 

You hardly have to be a card-carrying Likudnik to agree that there’s something infuriating—and potentially corrosive to Israeli democracy—about European governments funneling millions into Israeli organizations committed to furthering anti-Israeli bias, advocating sanctions against Israeli institutions and individuals, or challenging the country’s national security interests in ways direct and indirect.

But how to address such threats?...

Leibovitz seems to be more offended by the ad than he is by the harm being done on a daily basis to Israel by anti-Zionist Israelis working on behalf of anti-Zionist NGOs based in Europe. I suspect that's more a function of this writer having a foot, and perhaps even his entire brain, in the leftist camp.

As a former leftist and now a long-time non-leftist, I am far more outraged by these ghastly, extremely corrosive NGOs than I am by the ad, which, going by the line that's been quoted--the one I've put in bold letters--seems to have nailed the problem completely and succinctly.

If Leibovitz really wants to be offended, he should read Tuvia Tenenbom's rollicking takedown of these NGOs in his book Catch the Jew!.

Ontario "Human Rights" Commision Chief Hails Ottawa Police Chief's "Anti-Discrimination" Efforts

She even sent this letter, which is posted on the OHRC site:

Dear Chief Bordeleau, 

I am writing to commend the Ottawa Police Service for its continued leadership in addressing bias and discrimination in Ontario. 

Your proactive approaches have built strong and positive relationships with communities affected by hate crimes and are to be commended. I know that many officers and members from across your Service have been involved in these efforts. 

You have shown true leadership by repeatedly reaching out to Ottawa’s communities affected by Islamophobia and xenophobia. By building bridges and working with community partners, you increase public confidence and trust. 

I also want to commend you and your Members for your continued commitment to the Traffic Stop Race Data Collection Project (TSRDC). This is an important undertaking designed to further study racial profiling. The success of this project is another example of a meaningful community partnership between the Ottawa Police Service, your community partners like the Community Police Action Committee (COMPAC) and the Ontario Human Rights Commission. 

Finally, I wish to congratulate you on your inaugural Human Rights Learning Forum which took place on December 3, 2015. It was a pleasure to have met you and I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to participate in the forum. 

Initiatives like these help move Ontario towards a path of becoming a model of harmony and inclusion. I look forward to future opportunities for the Commission and the Ottawa Police Service to work together. 

Sincerely,
Renu Mandhane, B.A., J.D., LL.M.
Chief Commissioner

"A model of harmony and inclusion": that's just swell, but are the people of Ottawa any safer/better protected from bloodthirsty jihadis--one of whom has already scored a direct hit there--because of it? 

Perhaps the better question to ask is this: by coddling and sucking up to Muslims--by turning them into the victims--could Renu Mandhane's priorities actually end up doing more harm than good in these perilous times?

Update: You never know what you'll turn up on the Internet. Stuff like this, for instance:

IHRP - Addameer Speaking Tour: Rights for Palestinian Human Rights Defenders

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Location: 

Solarium

The IHRP is proud to host Ala Jawadat from Addameer, a prisoner rights
 organization based in Ramallah, who will be speak about Israel's criminalization of the work of human rights defenders. 
 
For more information, please e-mail
Renu Mandhane at
renu.mandhane@utoronto.ca

Charming, no?

Update: Here's something else (from 2012):

A young Palestinian boy holds up a tear gas bomb used by the Israeli military on protesters during demonstrations against the occupation. A woman is shown with a tear rolling down her cheek as she tells of her “lost childhood” after she was repeatedly raped during the Rwandan genocide.

These are two examples of the photos taken by law students in the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. The IHRP is celebrating its 25th anniversary from Feb. 9 to 23 with an exhibit of photos taken by students while doing internships around the world.

The IHRP — which started out with seven student interns and has grown to 300 — is often one of the reasons law students choose U of T, says IHRP director Renu Mandhane. 

The program has a couple of objectives. “One is so that if [students] want to do this as a career they get their foot in the door, but also to make them global citizens so that when they do practise on Bay Street or wherever, they have that global outlook and they can bring that to bear on their practice and on their pro bono work,” Mandhane says...

It seems obvious that Mandhane herself has that sort of "global outlook"; the sort that criminalizes Israel, the one democracy and one bright spot in its region; the sort who sees no problem with juxtaposing and conflating the self-defensive actions taken by Israelis with the acts of the murderers who perpetrated the Rwandan genocide.

It is extremely disturbing that Ontario's premier tapped this particular woman who possesses this particular outlook to helm the OHRC.

Hitler Has Only Got One Ball...

Whaddya know? Turns out the monorchism alleged in that WW2-era Nazi-dissing song is true.

Bernard-Henri Lévy's Eurocentric Explanation Overlooks the Islamic Core of "Jihadism"

I appreciate that professional intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy is a really smart guy, but I fear his analysis of the root cause of "jihadism" is missing a key element. (Hat tip: MW)
 
Lévy told a packed crowd in NYC the other day that today's jihad is but the latest manifestation of--wait for it--European fascism:

Jihadism did not fall from the sky. It came from the past. And you cannot explain the fame of Jihadism today if you do not go back to the 1920s. Fascism enflamed Europe, Japan, and the Arab world. You had a wing of Nazism in the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in the late 1920s as a part of this fascist movement. The big difference between Europe and Iran, Syria, Egypt and Palestine, is that in Europe, after the defeat of Nazism, there was work of mourning, and memory and action to eradicate this plague. One of the problems of the Arab world is that the work was not only not done, it was not even begun. It remains in Hamas, it remains in the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Nusra, and al-Qaeda. The last pearl dropped by the oyster of fascism is ISIS.

That's good as far as it goes, M. Levi, but what also remains in Hamas and all the others--what, in fact, inspires them and lends credence, they believe, to all their efforts--is the jihad imperative, a core component of supremacist Islam. And that root cause predates European fascism by many, many centuries, even if it married up with it, to a degree, all those years later.

 

Unless one understands that, one understands rien.

Report: Even If (Big If) ISIS Is Defeated, 15 Other Crazy Jihadi Groups In Syria Are Ready, Willing and Able to Replace It

ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas, etc.--they're the many heads of one reptilian hydra that is the "jihad".

Same Old Muslims; Same Old Jews, Too

You know you're living in a crazy world, where up is down and day is night, when you repeatedly hear the claim that "Muslims are the new Jews"; such egregious bilge is especially hard to take when it's a "progressive" Jew who's spouting it.

Here comes Daniel Greenfield to shoot down that specious narrative:

In this twisted historical revisionism, the Jews, a beleaguered minority hanging on to a country slightly bigger than Fiji, who have spent the last 40 years cutting pieces off their small slice of the world to hand over to the region’s massive Muslim majority in the hopes of being left alone, are the new Nazis. 

And the Muslim billion ruling over vast territories where human rights for non-Muslims are rarer than hen’s teeth, where non-Muslim populations decline year after year as they are forcibly converted or are forced to flee their Muslim oppressors, are somehow the new Jews. Orwell would have wept.

Hagel's Complaint

Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the third--or it is the fourth?; who the hell can keep track of 'em all?--to be appointed to resign that position during the Obama presidency, says this White House is so vindictive that, after he left, it tried to "destroy" him.

A "Sparklepile of Sunshine"? Bah, Humbug!

I can't help it--the Toronto Star's Susan Delacourt brings out the Scrooge/Grinch in me:

A Sparklepile of Sunshine seems an excellent title for a holiday movie.  

The exact phrase, “sparklepile of progressive sunshine,” comes from GQ magazine’s recent description of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his welcome to Syrian refugees.   

But the words also capture the festive red glow around Canadian politics these days, featuring scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in a cheesy Christmas classic.   

It was hard not to think of the opening scenes of the 2003 holiday film Love Actually, for instance, when Trudeau went to the airport to greet the first planeload of Syrian refugees. As Hugh Grant (also a new prime minister in the film) narrates over the scenes from Heathrow Airport’s arrivals area: “If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.”  

After a highly political year in Canada, featuring one of the longest election campaigns in the nation’s history, perhaps it isn’t surprising that the holiday season has acquired political overtones. A new red Liberal government against the backdrop of a green Christmas (so far) in Ottawa, and lots of talk about peace on earth and goodwill toward everyone.   

As the Star’s Tim Harper observed in a recent column, “The capital is Bedford Falls, Old Man Potter has been banished and we’re all living in the final scene of It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Aren't progressive delusions grand? Don't they fool you into believing that you're living in the final scene of It's a Wonderful Life when in fact their policies are about to make you life a whole lot more difficult verging on the just plain awful?

In that way, Justin Trudeau is much more like the film's idiotic Uncle Billy, who loses all of George Bailey's money, than he is like James Stewart/George Bailey. 

BTW, did you know that every time Prime Minister Sparklepile makes another silly promise (one he knows he can't keep) an angel gets its wings?

Or is it a devil gets its horns?

As Delacourt demonstrates, I guess it depends on your perspective.

Another Seasonal Standard Gets the Jihad Treatment

Beatin' around the jihad bush
At the White House once again.
Barry won't say the "j" word, folks,
'Cuz the truth's beyond his ken.

Beatin' around the jihad bush:
It's the Democratic way.
Later we'll hear some platitudes
About "refugees"--oy vey!

You will get prevarications when Obama bleats:
"People, chill; don't get frenetic.
Ev'rything is copacetic!"

Beatin' around the jihad bush,
Give Islam a great big kiss!
Then go about your daily lives
Because ig-
Nor-
Ance is bli-iss!

"Here Is the Shahada, the Islamic Statement of Faith, Written in Arabic...Try Copying It By Hand

It is claimed that that's nothing more than "a standard homework assignment on Islam," but some parents in a Virginia county weren't buying it (I'm with them), and schools were shut down as a result.

Okay, maybe the reaction was a bit much--why shut down schools?; why not just change/chuck the problematic lesson? But there's nothing "standard" about compelling non-Muslim kids to copy the shahada.

Islamist: yes.

"Standard": not really.

Not unless your "standard" is being set by, say, CAIR.

Justin Trudeau Is So Freaking Hot That His APEC Chair Fetches the Highest Price--Even Higher Than Obama's!--At a UNICEF Auction

Wow, Ceeb. I'm so...not impressed.

Other, however, are thrilled to bits. For example, It's a new day In Canada, and I'm feeling good! comments:

Well, what do you expect...Canada and our new PM are making welcomed headline news throughout the world...and it makes me proud to be a Canadian.

Another fan--someone named leepalig--notes:

World recognizes PM Trudeau as people person. we are proud of our PM. 

A party pooper named Ragnar Lothbrok, however, has the termerity to be less than awestruck:

Seriously, this is news? CBC keeps worshipping and idolizing it's hero.

Nailed it, RL.

I am reminded of a set of lyrics by Neil Diamond:

"I am"... I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair

Those lines never made sense to me--until now. ;

I think I'd put it in another way, though. To wit: Chair today; gone today.

"The Sacred Hair of the Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H.) Will Be Shown In the Program"

Only the one?

Superb Analysis Re The Mess In Syria and Why There's Not a Hope In Hades It Can Be Fixed

Daniel Greenfield hits it out of the park with his succinct, spot on examination of Obama, Osama, ISIS and why Syria won't be "fixed" any time soon, if ever.

Obama Respond to Iran's Latest Nuke Treaty Violation? What a (Pay) Load O' Crapola!

Iran just violated the terms of that joke agreement it signed with Obama and the other idiot kafirs in a really big way. But don't expect the POTUS to--nudge, nudge, wink, wink--go ballistic about it.

In the Lead Up to Christmas, Obama Tells Anxious Americans Yet Again To Not Sweat the Jihad

Soon after Obama claimed that ISIS was "contained," ISIS-inspired holy warriors unleashed a wide-scale and obviously well-planned series of assaults on Paris; 140 infidels were brutally murdered in that effort.

Then, mere hours before a jihadi couple decked themselves out in body armor and opened fire on infidels enjoying a holiday party in San Bernardino, Obama told Americans yet again that they had little to fear from ISIS jihadis.

Now, as the Christmas holiday looms, Obama has stepped up to assure the populace that there is no "specific threat" of another jihadi terrorist attack.

I think Americans would be well advised to take Obama's mealy-mouthed words with a boulder of salt and place them in context of his previous ill-timed pronouncements.

Update: I would also put it in context of Obama releasing more than forty hardened and implacable jihadis from Gitmo--once he finds "safe" countries that are willing to take 'em. (Funny how he didn't bring it up in his "don't worry, be happy" speech just now