Saturday, August 6, 2016
The Audacity of Mendacity
That's my suggested title for a new book by Obama. (I think the Iranians would be willing to back me up on that one.)
A Question Re the Rio Olympics Opening Spectacle
Anyone else think it was pretty rich to be hectored about "global warming" by a country that cut down its rain forest and that's mired in poverty and corruption?
Barbara Kay to Widdle Justin: Put Your Freakin' Shirt Back On
Barb has some sage advice for Prime Minister Selfie.
Saint-Denis and the "Values" of Maghreb Immigrants' Children Make for a Toxic Brew in France
A worthwhile read in Standpoint explores the highly fraught situation:
Saint-Denis feels stigmatised, disorientated and vulnerable. Muslim men talk as if they are all suspects. “They call us all terrorists,” says Mbraki, a 34-year-old halal butcher. “We’re not!” But they nearly all also lament the loss of authority. Mbraki leans on his metallic counter, dripping red mutton behind him. “The French are too scared to come and shop in Saint-Denis since the attacks. There’s fear. There’s less order — less police, more druggies, more dealers and more thieves. It’s getting worse. I tell you — ten years ago it was not this bad.”"A generation in thrall to football, rap and Allah": if that's not a cautionary tale for our "diversity"-mad Trudeaupia, I don't know what is.
How does the French state explain all this? I take the butcher’s accusation to the prefect. Grey-haired Philippe Galli is Saint-Denis’s most powerful official and the president’s envoy to the department of Seine-Saint-Denis. His throaty, gravelly voice is accustomed to power.
“Those same people who say there is a lack of authority,” snaps the 60-year-old prefect, “are the same ones who refuse the police access when they try and enter. Those from the Maghreb, by origin, permit themselves to behave in ways that would be unthinkable where they came from.”
He tells me that the secret services are currently monitoring 700 people at risk of radicalisation in Saint-Denis, and the police are too frightened to enter alone most areas under his control. So what, on the outskirts of Paris, has gone so wrong?“The children of this great wave of immigration are living in failure,” he says. “The failure of integration, the failure of schooling, the failure of employment.” Every day, Islamists are gaining ground in Saint-Denis. Militant Salafist and fundamentalist groups are active around the mosques, says the prefect, who finds the imams worryingly reluctant to speak to his officials. “The children of immigrants don’t recognise as their values those values that attracted their parents to France.” He remembers the first wave of North African immigrants: no veils, no beards, no Salafists. They came, he says, not just for French jobs but also for French liberty. “They were proud of those values. But I don’t think their children share the same pride.” Under his administration the prefect sees a generation in thrall to football, rap and Allah. And the old values? “They just don’t attach any value to them.” ...
Friday, August 5, 2016
As the Mother of a Son Who Has Been Manipulated and Subverted at Every Turn By a Powerful But Jealous Female, I Strongly Object to Obama's "All Men Are Sexist" Essay in Glamour Magazine
The girl in question pretended to one of my son's closest friends. My son--who is certainly no shinking violent--was consistently done dirt by this faux friend, who felt threatened by his intelligence, saw him as a rival, and therefore did whatever she could to keep him down. (She could do so because she held some powerful positions in organizations in which he too participated, ones which held the sorts of competitions that look good on a university application.)
The situation came to a head at the end of this school year--which coincided with the end of High School. My son was devastated--no, gutted--by the extent of his so-called friend's series of betrayals. Part of the problem was that, as a kid who would never go in for such sabotage, especially of someone he considered to be a very good friend, it took him a while to wrap his head around her dirty dealings. That someone whose friendship he valued could do that to him came as the rudest of awakenings. As his mother, I can tell you it was very hard to watch.
Fortunately, he's never been one to wallow in his misery or be tripped up for long by a crappy situation (in that way, he's a lot different than his mom, since I tend to suffer and stew for days, if not longer), and he was able to shake it off pretty quickly.
It is perhaps instructive to keep my son's experience in mind when reading this, about Barack Obama essay in next month's Glamour magazine, for which he's won much praise:
My son was in no way "threatened by the presence and success" of his friend; he was always supportive of her endeavors and successes, even when she was in direct competition with him. She was the one who felt threatened by him, and by the possibility that he might be the smarter, more successful one.
I wonder if Obama would have "written" this essay in exactly the same way if he'd had a son who, like mine, had been treated so horribly by a girl.
The situation came to a head at the end of this school year--which coincided with the end of High School. My son was devastated--no, gutted--by the extent of his so-called friend's series of betrayals. Part of the problem was that, as a kid who would never go in for such sabotage, especially of someone he considered to be a very good friend, it took him a while to wrap his head around her dirty dealings. That someone whose friendship he valued could do that to him came as the rudest of awakenings. As his mother, I can tell you it was very hard to watch.
Fortunately, he's never been one to wallow in his misery or be tripped up for long by a crappy situation (in that way, he's a lot different than his mom, since I tend to suffer and stew for days, if not longer), and he was able to shake it off pretty quickly.
It is perhaps instructive to keep my son's experience in mind when reading this, about Barack Obama essay in next month's Glamour magazine, for which he's won much praise:
In his most extensive remarks about feminism, President Barack Obama has written an essay for Glamour magazine in which he reflected on American women’s long fight for equality and called on men to fight sexism and create equal relationships.
In the 1,500-word essay, which was published online Thursday and will appear in the September print magazine, the president argued that “when everybody is equal, we are all more free.” He praised the progress of American women over the past century while pledging to work on securing equal pay and reproductive rights. The president also warned against “dated assumptions about gender roles.”
The president said that it was important to his daughters that he be a feminist, “because now that’s what they expect of all men.”
“We need to keep changing the attitude that raises our girls to be demure and our boys to be assertive, that criticizes our daughters for speaking out and our sons for shedding a tear,” he wrote. “We need to keep changing the attitude that punishes women for their sexuality and rewards men for theirs.
“We need to keep changing the attitude that permits the routine harassment of women, whether they’re walking down the street or daring to go online. We need to keep changing the attitude that teaches men to feel threatened by the presence and success of women.”
It's so unusual that I doubt the president actually wrote it. (More likely, it was penned by one of his factotums.) Furthermore, the idea that all girls are potential victims and all boys potential victimizers is, quite simply, unfair and unfounded.Brenda Weber, the professor and the chairwoman of the gender studies department at Indiana University, said she was “delighted” by the essay, which she said showed a nuanced sense of women’s issues. It is unusual for a man to write such an essay, let alone a president, she said. ...
My son was in no way "threatened by the presence and success" of his friend; he was always supportive of her endeavors and successes, even when she was in direct competition with him. She was the one who felt threatened by him, and by the possibility that he might be the smarter, more successful one.
I wonder if Obama would have "written" this essay in exactly the same way if he'd had a son who, like mine, had been treated so horribly by a girl.
What Does Obama Have To Do To Get Criticized by the NYT or the WaPo--Greenlight a Break-In at Republican Headquarters?
Nah. I doubt even that would get a rise from the corrupt, besotted news hawks.
Passengers Find "Nasty-Looking Knife" on Board Air Canada Flight
Don't worry, though. It belonged to an Air Canada employee and not a wannabe jihadi:
As Glenn Deir sat down on a St. John’s to Toronto flight Saturday morning next to his wife, he could tell something more than the tight legroom was making her uncomfortable.
Deborah Youden, who had been “squirming,” was sitting on a folded four-inch pocket knife.
“We opened the blade and it’s this nasty-looking knife . . . with a serrated edge,” Deir said, noting Youden had been patted down at random by security before boarding, so it couldn’t have been hers.
“We said, ‘How in the name of God did this get on the plane?’ ”...
The knife turned out to have been dropped by an employee who had been working on the plane before the flight, Air Canada said.
“We can confirm it is a tool that an AC employee was using to repair a seat onboard the aircraft and not a security breach,” said company spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick in an email. “In fact, the employee was still onboard the aircraft speaking to the captain when the tool was brought to the crew’s attention. All tools were removed before the flight departed.”
But Deir says the incident begs security questions about employee screening in airports. ...No kidding.
World Vision Is Shocked--Shocked!--That the Head of Its Gaza Office Has Been Accused of Repurposing Charity Bucks to Aid Hamas
Here is the supposedly neutral organization's statement expressing shock and horror over its employee's arrest:
Update: According to Shurat HaDin, it has been warning about World Vision's humaniterrorism for a while now:
On June 15th, 2016, Mohammad El Halabi, the manager of operations for World Vision in Gaza, was arrested on his way home from routine meetings. On August 4th 2016, after 50 days in Israeli state detention, Mohammad was charged with providing support to Hamas. World Vision was shocked to learn of these charges against Mohammad.
World Vision is a Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. World Vision serves all people regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender. World Vision has been working in Israel/Palestine for over 40 years, striving to give hope to over 500,000 of the most vulnerable children, through education, health, child protection and resilience programs. "We continue to call for a fair, legal process."
World Vision subscribes to the humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality and therefore rejects any involvement in any political, military or terrorist activities and maintains its independence as a humanitarian aid agency committed to serving the poor, especially children. World Vision has detailed procedures and control mechanisms in place to ensure that the funds entrusted to us are spent in accordance with applicable legal requirements and in ways that do not fuel conflict but rather contribute to peace.
World Vision programs in Gaza have been subject to regular internal and independent audits, independent evaluations, and a broad range of internal controls aimed at ensuring that assets reach their intended beneficiaries and are used in compliance with applicable laws and donor requirements. We will carefully review any evidence presented to us and will take appropriate actions based on that evidence. We continue to call for a fair, legal process for Mohammad.Now for some facts that, go figure, didn't make it into the statement (my bolds):
Critics over the years have attributed to World Vision a pro-Palestinian bias.
Among others, pro-Israel Christians have been troubled by the stance taken by a major evangelical organization whose work around the world is generally held in high regard.
“The bulk of World Vision’s work involves assisting poor communities, and rarely crosses the line into political or theological controversies. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an exception,” Luke Moon of the Institute of Religion and Democracy wrote in a July 2014 edition of The Tower.
“World Vision makes no secret of its distaste for Zionism, both Jewish and Christian.”
As long ago as 2004, NGO Monitor, an Israeli group that monitors the work of civil society groups working in the region, summed up World Vision as follows: “Tacit support for terror and a highly politicized agenda reflecting anti-Israel rhetoric and biased history, under the guise of ‘development assistance and justice.’” ...So much for "humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality."
Update: According to Shurat HaDin, it has been warning about World Vision's humaniterrorism for a while now:
For the past four years, Shurat HaDin has been warning that funds provided to Gaza by Christian mega charity, World Vision, were being utilized for terrorism. In 2012, Tel Aviv based civil rights center, Shurat HaDin, notified the Australian government that its aid money being administrated by World Vision was being transferred to front charities of Palestinian terror groups in Gaza. Both the Australian government and World Vision denied Shurat HaDin's warning.
In 2015, Shurat HaDin again cautioned the Australian government that World Vision was operating as an active arm of the PFLP and other terror groups. World Vision's chief executive, Tim Costello, vehemently denied the charges and claimed that WVA had “no interest in supporting terrorism.” However, as of this week, Shurat HaDin’s warnings against WVA have been proven true. Israel’s internal security service has arrested a senior employee of World Vision, Mohammed Halabi, who stands accused of transferring up to $50 million, over the course of several years, to Palestinian terror organization Hamas.
According to Shurat HaDin’s President, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner: "For years we have been warning that World Vision is funding Palestinian terror groups in Gaza. World Vision has repeatedly denied our charges and refused to seriously investigate where its funds are going. They assured us that the organizations they fund had been vetted and were not engaged with terrorism. Who knows how many of Hamas's missiles and how many of the stabbing attacks were funded by World Vision after they were put on notice that they were financing Palestinian terror. The assistance to Gaza by foreign aid organizations is directly responsible for the murder of scores of Jews in Israel."
Go HERE to read more about this in The Jerusalem Post.
Thursday, August 4, 2016
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