Grouchy Ryerson Prof.: Don't Focus On Canadians Welcoming Syrian Refugees; Focus on the Refugees

On CBC radio show The 180, Ryerson journalism prof Kamal Al-Solaylee throws cold water all over Canadians who have been according "Syrian refugees" a rapturous reception. Al-Solaylee doesn't come right out and use the phrase "misplaced moral narcissism"--it happens to be Mark Steyn's--but, in essence, that's the problem as he sees it--the reality that we Canucks have turned these Les Miserables into secondary characters in their own life stories, and it is these stories, in all their wretchedness, that should be told.

While I agree with Al-Solaylee to some extent (the sight of some Canadians, including more than a few Jewish ones, furiously patting themselves on the back for their own virtuousness has been a little hard to take), I think he has gone a bit overboard with this rant.

Yes, Syrian refugees have had a rough time and will probably face many challenges. And, yes, in all likelihood the first generation of these arrivals will have to work awfully hard so that their children can go on to succeed as Canadians in Canada. But, really, is that any different that what others who have come here from godforsaken parts of the world have had to face?

Is it different, for example, from what my own grandparents, who came to Canada early in the 20th Century, confronted?

I think not. I think, in fact, that my grandparents (who were not greeted at their point of arrival by a prime minister bearing a puffy Canucki jacket) had it much, much, tougher.

I am reminded of a friendly and extremely chatty taxi driver, a gentleman from Pakistan, who drove my mom and me home from a doctor's appointment at a downtown hospital a few weeks ago. He told us he had come to Canada almost two decades ago and since then had had a number of different jobs. He had worked hard and had made enough money to put his two daughters through university. One was a pharmacist and the other was now in medical school. He was so grateful to be here, and didn't once gripe about what Canada "owed" him, and how it had failed to deliver on its promises.

Wouldn't it be awesome if the Syrians now arriving--as well as Prof. Al-Solaylee--had that sort of attitude?

A "Canadian Polemicist" In Brisbane

A sighting as rare as, say, a wallaby in Ottawa?

Our Ninny PM Thinks Giving Moolah to Hamas-Supporting UNRWA Is a Way to "Re-engage" In a "Constructive Way"

Here's the video (via CAMERA):

What's Behind Angela Merkel's Refugee Madness?

I wholeheartedly concur with Hugh Fitzgerald's conclusion:

The obvious explanation for Merkel’s madness is that she subliminally sees her policy — the expression of a diseased sympathy — as a way of “making amends” (as if amends could ever be made) for the Hitlerian horror of seventy years ago, one still hauntingly present in some, though not all, German psyches. But to make amends to the dead Jews of Europe by admitting live Muslims into Germany, when it is Muslims who today are the chief carriers of antisemitism all over Europe, from Malmo to Madrid, is madness. 

Monstrous: Video Shows ISIS Dad Turning His 11-Year-Old Son Into An IED

Words fail in the face of such darkness.

See You There?

 

In His New Book, "The United States of Jihad," Peter Bergen Purveys the Fiction of the "Paranoid Right"

What a muddled book this is! On the one hand, it tries to get inside the heads of the likes of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (who, interestingly, had a penchant for shtupping prostitutes) and Fort Hood shooter Dr, Nidal Hassan. On the other hand, it strives to minimize the threats posed by jihadis and to utterly trash the handful of Americans who are in the forefront of speaking the truth about the jihad imperative and its roots in classic Islamic doctrine. Hence this--Bergen's disgusting misrepresentation of the anti-jihad fighters (on pp. 269-270):

[Pamela] Geller updated the paranoid right for the post-9/11 era. Instead of a Communist plot to take over America, the 1950s conspiracy du jour, the threat was now Muslims. Geller was only the most visible of a number of such commentators. Former Reagan administration official Frank Gafney published a pamphlet titled The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration; former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy offered How Obama Embraces Islam's Sharia Agenda; frequent Geller collaborator Robert Spencer wrote the book Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America Without Guns or Bombs; and journalist Paul Sperry added Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington.

These assertions defied common sense. To claim that nationwide sharia law is imminent is to ignore simple facts: Muslims make up around 2 percent of the U.S. population; there isn't a jurisdiction in the States where sharia is the law; not is anyone demanding its imposition...

Bergen, though an acknowledged expert on the subject of terrorism, unpacks reality through a leftist lens, the reasons, I contend, why he views that above-named anti-jihadis as paranoics who have hyped what, at most, is a limited, non-existential threat. Having read most of the authors listed, however, I feel confident in saying that they do not say that the implementation of sharia law is "imminent." Rather, they see incremental moves away from the things that make America exceptional--including a commitment to the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech--and toward a belief that "hurt feelings" (about, say, critical things being said about the more problematic aspects of Islam and jihad) should become paramount. That sort of thinking is not going to impose sharia rules re free speech imminently. However, it is easing us down the long and winding road at the end of which we may find that "our" ideas about free expression and sharia rules on that subject are more or less in synch.

It is not "paranoid" to see what's unfolding right before our eyes. It is a clear-sightedness that amounts to heroism; a willingness to subject oneself to the slings and arrows of those like Bergen who are likely to dismiss you as being an "Islamophobe" with a mental disease.

Bergen hews to the Obama derangement which views the "right-wing" threat as being the far stronger and scarier threat. Toeing the Obama line, he writes:

Americans have also long tended to overestimate the threats posed by jihadist while underestimatint the sources of other forms of terrorism, generally defined as any act against civilians motivated by ideology. Since 9/11, extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right-wing credos, including white supremacists, antiabortion extremists and anti-government militants, have killed around the same number of people in the United States as have extremists motivated by al-Qaeda's ideology. As we have seen, by the end of 2015, forty-five people have been killed in jihadist terrorist attack in the United States, while right-wing racists and antigovernment militants have killed forty-eight.

I'm not sure from whence Bergen accessed these stats, but have a sense that some fudging may have been involved because Obama, too, is obsessed with the narrative that the right is more dangerous than jihadis. (You could say that that's his story and he's sticking to it).

I have no desire to chase down the sources of these stats--they are not listed in the books' notes. By coincidence, however, there's a comment piece in the Toronto Sun which poses some crucial questions about our responses to radical Muslims in our midst (Canadian Senator David Lang who wrote the piece is raising issues that have a Canadian locus, but they are no doubt equally applicable to the American context (my bolds):

I have just returned from a NATO meeting in Brussels where our delegation heard that Europe’s security concerns mirror many of ours: an unpredictable and belligerent Russia continues to challenge the transatlantic alliance; mass migration is destabilizing Europe; and Islamic radicalization is on the rise. 

During the past three years that I have chaired the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, we have studied and reported on the threats to national security. 

Our report, Countering the Terrorist Threat in Canada, was clear about the terrorist threat we face. After 9 months of hearings and testimony from over 100 witnesses, we learned that:

• By late 2014, authorities identified 318 radical Canadian jihadists, 93 of them seeking to travel abroad, 145 overseas and 80 returnees. These numbers have since increased
• There were 683 identified cases of terrorist financing in the last five years, to our knowledge, there have not been any specific charges or prosecutions were initiated
• Foreign funds had entered Canada for religious-oriented programming despite their donors’ and recipients’ being linked to radicalization
• Eight Canadian charities had their charitable status revoked because of indirect or direct connections to terrorism – yet none of their executive or staff faced criminal prosecution;
• Terrorist promotion and radicalization remain a concern in many areas of society, including at schools, colleges, and in religious facilities
• Government agencies and political leaders conduct outreach to some disturbing individuals and organizations linked to terrorism and radicalization
• The government was failing to communicate clearly with Canadians about the scope of the terrorist threat
• Emergency preparedness at the municipal, provincial and federal levels required enhancing in view of the threat we face.

We are concerned that despite extensive evidence received about radicalization and terrorism in Canada and the fact that so many Canadians appeared to be involved, only 52 individuals were charged with terrorism-related crimes, since 2001. This invites the question – why are we not proceeding with more charges? 

The failure to lay charges and have those accused appear in open court, undermines our agencies’ counterterrorism work, staff morale and public confidence in government.

Why aren't we proceeding with more charges? Isn't it obvious? It's because we don't want open ourselves to charges of being "Islamophobes" with an unhinging mental illness--the same sticky mud that Bergen has flung at Geller, Spencer, McCarthy et al.

Also, you would think that were the potential for "right-wing" terrorism really on par with jihadi terrorism, it would take up at least half of this Countering Terrorism Report and, clearly, they do not.

Melanie Phillips Urges Us To Curb Our Enthusiasm Over the UK Government's Anti-BDS Stance

The stance may be driving Israel's leftist enemies into a frenzy, but Phillips says Israel and its supporters would be well advised to "temper their jubilation" because "the Israel boycott is by no means the whole problem":

BDS is to anti-Israel lunacy what ISIS is to Islamic extremism: merely the noisiest and most eye-watering manifestation of a deeply rooted and widespread lethal contamination.

The poison is incubated in the universities. This week, the co-chairman of the Oxford University Labor Club, Alex Chalmers, announced he was resigning over its rampant anti-Semitism and endorsement of Israel Apartheid Week on campus.

“Whether it be,” he wrote, “members of the executive throwing around the term ‘Zio’ (a term for Jews usually confined to websites run by the Ku Klux Klan) with casual abandon, senior members of the club expressing their ‘solidarity’ with Hamas and explicitly defending their tactics of indiscriminately murdering civilians, or a former co-chair claiming that ‘most accusations of anti-Semitism are just the Zionists crying wolf,’ a large proportion of both OULC and the student Left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews.”

A further statement from the Oxford University Jewish Society said senior members of the Labor Club liked to regale listeners with a song called “Rockets over Tel Aviv” and endorsed Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, stated all Jews should be required to denounce Zionism and the State of Israel, and said those who refused to do so should be shunned. And they had arranged for a group of students to harass a Jewish student and shout “Filthy Zionist” at her.

Preventing BDS will not stamp out this deranged animosity against Israel and Zionism that has now gripped most of the Labor Party and Britain’s “progressive” intelligentsia.

Indeed, the new guidance may provide a fig leaf for the derangement to continue...

Indeed--agreed. Like earlier versions of Jew-hate, the "deranged animosity" of Zionhass, the Jew-hate of our time, is a type of mania that's impervious to logic, truth or reality and will therefore continue to flourish in the hothouse environments where "progressives" gather--with or without BDS.

Trump Meets "The Honeymooners"

Let's just say Ralph's not a fan (h/t VR).

The Odds Of Syrian Butcher Bashar Al-Assad Being Prosecuted for War Crimes: Zero to Nil

The reason Assad will likely elude ICC prosecution, in brief: His Big Shot allies, Russia and China, are still in his corner, and are unlikely to desert him.

Caroline Glick on What Could Be the Gravest Threat to Israel's Survival

Many (on the left) insist the gravest threat comes from the religious right. But Glick believes that the nearly unanimous leftist orientation of those in charge of Israel's security/defense establishment could well prove to be the biggest single threat to Israel's chances for long term survival.