With the Left in Crippling Denial About Omar Mateen's Jihadi Motivations, It's Like 1963 All Over Again

There was a horrible--and horribly ignorant--editorial in the New York Times the other day that blamed the atmosphere of bigotry--specifically, the bigotry of right wing Americans--for the carnage unleashed at that Orlando night club (my bolds). Here's the money paragraph:   

While the precise motivation for the rampage remains unclear, it is evident that Mr. Mateen was driven by hatred toward gays and lesbians. Hate crimes don’t happen in a vacuum. They occur where bigotry is allowed to fester, where minorities are vilified and where people are scapegoated for political gain. Tragically, this is the state of American politics, driven too often by Republican politicians who see prejudice as something to exploit, not extinguish.

A tragic event perpetrated by someone/something the Left, being the Left, refuses to acknowledge: now, why does that sound so familiar?

Then it hit me. In its basic outlines, it is exactly what occurred following JFK's assassination. Neither Jacqueline Kennedy nor all the president's men, who worshipped him, nor all the others on/of the Left, could wrap their heads around the fact that their idol, their hero, was murdered by some pissant little Commie and that his idol was smelly old Fidel Castro.

That truth was simply unacceptable. As such, something and someone else that had no connection to the Cold War had to be blamed. Here's James Pierson, author of a book on the subject, laying it all out for us in a 2011 Real Clear Politics piece (my bolds):

The central myth of the JFK assassination was that a climate of hate inspired by the far right created the conditions for President Kennedy's murder. A single assassin may have pulled the trigger, but he was put up to it by an undercurrent of hatred and bigotry that President Kennedy tried but failed to subdue. On this view President Kennedy was a martyr, somewhat like Abraham Lincoln, to the causes of civil rights, racial justice, and an elevated liberalism. JFK's assassination was a tragic but richly symbolic event for many Americans who saw it as a vivid expression of an ongoing battle in American life between the forces of light and darkness. 

This explanation for the assassination did not drop out of thin air but was circulated immediately after the event by influential leaders, journalists, and journalistic outlets, including Mrs. Kennedy, President Johnson, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, James Reston, Russell Baker, and the editorial page of the New York Times, columnist Drew Pearson, and any number of other liberal spokesmen. Mrs. Kennedy took the lead in insisting that her husband was martyred by agents of hatred and bigotry...

And there you have it. In 1963, a tragic event perpetrated by a man of the left was blamed on the "climate of hate" engendered by right-wing bigots. (They also blamed the city where the killing took place, as if there was something singularly evil in/about Dallas itself) In 2016, a horrific event is perpetrated by a gunman pledging allegiance to the leader of ISIS, and to make his motivations doubly clear, he screams the traditional jihadi war cry, "Allahu Akbar!" as he goes about his bloody business. And yet the geniuses over at the New York Times are even now scratching their collective empty noggins as they strive to understand what could have driven him to act out in such an extraordinarily bloody way. And, donning their tin foil beanies and cogitating extra hard on the subject, this is what they come up with: it must be because of all those right-wing "bigots" who "vilify" minorities and who tend to cavil about transgender bathrooms.

Why, what else could it be?

Yup. It's the "climate of fear" all over again. And the Leftists of today are as in just as much denial as they were back then.

No, I take that back. Their state of denial--their blindness to the reality that is staring them square in the face--is worse.

Much worse.

And the terrifying thing is that, considering what's at stake (i.e. nothing less than the survival of Western civilization), this time the denial could lead us to a very dark place, indeed.

Superb WSJ Editoral Lets Obama Have It For His "Voldemort" Approach to the Words "Radical Islamists"

For Obama, the label "radical Islamists" has been like the name Voldemart in the Harry Potter series, i.e. they-who-must-not-be-named.

That is until Trump double dog dared him to say it--prompting Mr. Calm, Cool and Collected to have a hissy fit:

Sunday’s massacre in Orlando contradicts President Obama’s many attempts to downplay the risks that Islamic State poses to the U.S. homeland, so it’s no wonder he wants to change the subject to something more congenial. To wit, his disdain for Donald Trump and Republicans. 

“For a while now the main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this Administration and me for not using the phrase ‘radical Islam,’” Mr. Obama said Tuesday, using his preferred acronym for Islamic State. “That’s the key, they tell us. We cannot beat ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists.’ What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change?” 

Since the President asked, allow us to answer. We’re unaware of any previous American war fought against an enemy it was considered indecorous or counterproductive to name. Dwight Eisenhower routinely spoke of “international Communism” as an enemy. FDR said “Japan” or “Japanese” 15 times in his 506-word declaration of war after Pearl Harbor. If the U.S. is under attack, Americans deserve to hear their President say exactly who is attacking us and why. You cannot effectively wage war, much less gauge an enemy’s strengths, without a clear idea of who you are fighting. 

Mr. Obama’s refusal to speak of “radical Islam” also betrays his failure to understand the sources of Islamic State’s legitimacy and thus its allure to young Muslim men. The threat is religious and ideological. 

Islamic State sees itself as the vanguard of a religious movement rooted in a literalist interpretation of Islamic scriptures that it considers binding on all Muslims everywhere. A small but significant fraction of Muslims agree with that interpretation, which is why Western law enforcement agencies must pay more attention to what goes on inside mosques than in Christian Science reading rooms...

I dunno. I hear that some of the stuff that goes on in those Christian Science reading rooms is positively incendiary.  ;)

Toronto Launches Anti-"Islamophobia" Campaign That's a Huge "Insult"

That second "I" word was employed by Tarek Fatah re this poster for the city's new PR campaign:


Comments Fatah, who sees the fingerprints of manipulative Islamists here:

In a press release on Tuesday, OCASI revealed, “The City of Toronto and OCASI [Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants] are launching a Toronto public education campaign to address xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments.” 

It quoted Councillor Joe Cressy of Trinity-Spadina saying “OCASI has an extensive history of working with refugees and understand the barriers they face to integration. We appreciate their insights.” 

One of the first outcomes of OCASI’s “insights” was a poster that shows a white man confronting a black Muslim woman in hijab, telling her: “Go back to where you come from,” to which the black hijabi woman replies, “Where, North York?” 

In one sweep the City of Toronto depicted every white man as a racist bigot and perpetuated the victimhood of Muslims, a goal of all Islamists worldwide who hate the West. 

The question to Cressy is this: If you had to show a white male, then why didn’t you put your own face on the poster? Why leave it to an actor? 

Or perhaps OCASI could have asked Mayor John Tory to do the honours of being the white racist male?

Had they bothered to ask, I'm sure Mayor Tory would have been delighted to "check" his white male privilege by being the poster boy for this insulting effort.

As for me, I can't wait to see all the Muslims who "are part of Toronto" (although some may be bussed in from other nearby Ontario burgs such as Kitchener) at the Ayatollah's annual Israel-hate fiesta at Queen's Park.

And this year the "Allahu Akbars" will be hollered during Canada Day weekend--how awesome is that?

Update: The official press release reveals that NCCM, formerly known as CAIR-CAN (whose American branch, CAIR, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holyland terrorism financing case), is involved:

“OCASI has the experience and reach to implement an effective educational campaign,” said Debbie Douglas, Executive Director of OCASI. “It is important that Torontonians from all walks of life take responsibility for not only welcoming refugees but also examining assumptions and stereotypes they may hold about Muslims, racialized communities, refugees in general, and refugees from the Middle East and Africa in particular. We hope this campaign will start to shift some of people’s erroneous and harmful assumptions,” stressed Douglas. 

“Racism hurts our communities in so many ways,” says Amira Elghawaby, Communications Director at the National Council of Canadian Muslims, a partner on the public awareness campaign. “It’s uplifting to see several key national and provincial organizations come together to encourage Torontonians to unite against discrimination. We all have a responsibility to speak out against all forms of racism, including Islamophobia. We must work together to ensure our cities are welcoming for all.”  

“Toronto is one of the most diverse cities in the world ─ this diversity contributes to our strength,” said Councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21 St. Paul's), Toronto's Newcomer Co- Advocate. “Our goal with this campaign is to get people thinking, talking and challenging the assumptions they may be making about others, not just new Torontonians.” 

The campaign, created in coordination with social impact agency Public Inc., includes out of home advertising as well as a digital and social media strategy aimed at sparking conversation. 

The overarching long-term goal is to create a Toronto that says “No” to all forms of discrimination and racism.

Great. When can have a conversation about--and say "NO" to--the discrimination and racism on display at the Queen's Park Al Quds Day?

Update: As I recall, the last time NCCM collaborated on a snooker-the-infidels campaign, it didn't go so well.

Ken Livingstone, Israel-Hater, Barks, "I Could Be Jewish"

Ken's in the doghouse for saying that Hitler was a fan of Zionism and thinks that this, his latest blood libel, could get him out:

Ken Livingstone has claimed he might have Jewish roots.  

The former Mayor of London, who has been suspended from the Labour Party for arguing that Hitler supported Zionism, told the JC he might have Jewish ancestry on his mother's side.  

Asked to name a Jewish friend, he cited the late Lord Janner, a one-time fellow Labour MP.  

He said: "Greville Janner used to drive me home from the House of Commons at night. We would chat away about the Middle East. He would speculate about whether or not I was Jewish because my grandmother's name was Zona."

Why, that would make him a "ben Zona," which--I kid you not--is Hebrew for "son of a bitch."

Red Ken a real S.O.B.?

I could get behind that one.

Two Good Op-Ed Pieces in the Toronto Sun

I'd advise you to take a gander at Lorne Gunther's "Let's stop appeasing radical Islam" and Tarek Fatah's "The media's apologetic coverage of Islamic terror."

New Doc Makes Heroine of Hannah Arendt and Her Bogus "Banality of Evil" Theory

The theory, borne of Arendt's conflicted feelings about Judaism and her own Jewishness, as well as her love of German intellectual thought and an enduring fondness for her former lover, Martin Heidegger (who embraced Nazism), has been thoroughly debunked. Despite that, however, there are those--especially Jews--who are still intent on making this awful woman (who, in her book Eichmann In Jerusalem, laid equal blame for the Holocaust on the Jews and the Nazis) into a plaster saint.

They are fools--and so, despite her much-vaunted intellectual brilliance, was she.

Hugh Segal's Big, Fat, Idiotic "Instinct" Tells Him It's Possible To Do Business With Iran

This is from Segal's interview with Paul Lungen in this week's Canadian Jewish News (link not yet available online). Lungen asks, "What should be our policy vis-à-vis Iran?" To which Segal replies:

I don't disagree with the present government view that it's time to talk about re-opening the doors and talking about the relationship.

We have to be able to walk and chew gum here. It's one thing to be able to say good luck on the nuclear thing, let's open up our relations, let's do trade. We have some problems on which we are not going to relent. We're not going to relent on Iranian support of Hamas and Hezbollah, and we're not going to relent on the Revolutionary Guard activities and how they're trying to foster terrorism around the world. We're not going to relent on what appears to be the official anti-Semitism of large parts of the regime. Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom have to deal with one set of issues constructively and also make sure constraints are in place and new sanctions, if necessary, deployment, on these other sets of issues.

My instinct is [Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau gets the balance and will be looking to find it.

"We have to be able to walk and chew gum here"?

I think not.

I think we have to be able to tell Iran, whose regime is wicked through and through, to kish mir in hinten.

Of course, I didn't use that colourful Yiddish expression (translation, more or less: kiss my buttocks) in this letter to the CJN:

Try as I might, I cannot make sense of Hugh Segal's argument for wanting to restore ties with Iran. On the one hand, Segal wants Canada to pursue business opportunities there. On the other hand, however, he acknowledges that there's an enormous stumbling block: the fact that Iran sponsors such terrorist entities as Hamas and Hezbollah, that its Revolutionary Guard is engaged in deadly activities aimed at keeping the Grand Ayatollah's fanatical theocrats in power, that anti-Semitism is woven into its "revolutionary" doctrine, and, most perturbing of all, that Iran wants to put the finishing touches on its nuclear weapons, one of which could obliterate Israel.

And yet, Segal claims that his "instinct" tells him that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can somehow get "the balance" right; that it is somehow possible, and even desirable, to surmount the stumbling block and do business with a country that pursues such evil goals.

Sorry, Mr. Segal. Something tells me that your "instinct" is out to lunch.

Shu-Shu-Shulich, Goodbye!

It's almost a month old, but since my letter to the editor of the Canadian Jewish News has finally shown up online, I thought I'd go ahead and post it. Here it is:

Schulich misses the point 

Seymour Schulich claims that if only Jews shunned the accoutrements that made them look overtly and obviously Jewish, they would be able to “fit in with the majorities” as he did, and all would be well at York University, as well as in the wider world (“Jews should stop ‘whining’ about York U, benefactor says”). 

His reasoning reminds me of the thinking that was prevalent among German-born Jewry prior to the Nazis’ rise. German Jews, who were very assimilated, were alarmed when the Ostjuden, Jews from eastern Europe, started showing up in Germany. These Ostjuden, who were fleeing pogroms and other forms of oppression, tended to be far more observant, and therefore looked the part, a sight that prompted the assimilated Jews to fear that they would be lumped in with their more “backward” brethren. 

We all know the horrific story of what came next. The tyrant who took over Germany didn’t much care whether you were a fine, upstanding German Jew who knew how to “fit in” or you were one of the more Jewish-looking Ostjuden. As far as he was concerned, a Jew was a Jew, and all were deserving of eradication. 

It is shocking, and I must say, more than a little saddening, that a man of Schulich’s eminence seems oblivious to that lesson.

Has an Ontario Court Just Derailed Justin Trudeau's Suckuppery to Iran?

Let's hope so. The court's ruling, which didn't go Iran's way, has Ayatollahville in a real snit. The supremacist Shias are so p.o.'d, in fact, that they're threatening to put the brakes on further diplomatic negotiations aimed as restoring official Canada-Iran relations--as if that's a bad thing:

TORONTO — An Ontario court decision that holds Iran financially accountable to victims of the terrorist groups it sponso usrs is threatening to complicate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s attempts to mend diplomatic ties with the Islamic republic. 

Through its state-controlled media, Iran reacted angrily over the weekend to the judge’s ruling and seemed to make the resumption of diplomatic relations conditional on overturning it, something Ottawa is unlikely to consider. 

“The move by the Canadian government contradicts claims about the normalization of relations between the two countries and compensation for the extremist policies of the country’s former government,” the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said. 

Hossein Jaberi Ansari called the decision by Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice a “political ruling” and “a new step in the direction of the hostile policies of the former extremist government of Canada, which was felled by popular vote,” Press TV reported...

As opposed to Iran, a totalitarian entity which is in the process of building nukes with which to obliterate Israel, and which cannot be felled by any vote.

BTW, I believe Iran's threats not at all. This is merely bluster that aims to score points with stupid Canadian negotiators, and you can be sure that a statement ballyhooing restored relations will be issued soon enough.

In Wake of Savage Attack on Orlando Gay Night Club, Local Jews Get All Interfaithy--But Are They "Bridge Building" With the Right Imam?

Given the following, consider me dubious (my bolds):

ORLANDO — Central Florida’s Jewish community started laying the groundwork for interfaith cooperation with Muslims Monday as the nation reeled in grief and anger after an anti-gay gunman killed 50 people in the worst-ever mass killing in recent U.S. history. 

Rabbi Steven Engel of the Congregation for Reform Judaism, the largest synagogue in Orlando, and Imam Muhammad Masri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, spoke by phone to plan a joint memorial service for the victims at the Pulse nightclub attack, which was carried out by an American Muslim with roots in Afghanistan. 

“(We want) to support each other, to support the whole community,” Masri said outside the bullet-scarred club on a busy Orlando artery.

Like Jewish leaders, Masri emphasized that suspected gunman Omar Mateen was an American who would not have been affected by proposals spearheaded by Donald Trump to bar Muslims from entering the U.S. 

“He came from two hours away. You can’t put a border to stop someone like this,” Masri said, adding that he did not consider the gunman to be a Muslim.

Well, that's helpful, don't you think? Donald Trump is responsible for pushing Mateen over the edge, a crackpot idea that usefully idiotic Official Jews have supposedly embraced, too.

The reason I wouldn't want to go ahead and link arms with Imam Masri is this: he seems incapable of telling the truth about the jihad and its roots in Islam's core religious writings, as this piece on Allen West's website reveals:

Imam Muhammad Musri said police have determined there has been no connection to anyone else. No, police have not said that, they said they are still investigating. Now he’s saying we have to look to issue of mass shootings, ‘we must do something to stop the mass shootings that are happening all the time’. On the other hand, he said people should not ‘jump to conclusions’ as to blame, that we must ‘come together.’...

What we must do is wake up to the evidence that is in front of us, which by all indications point to Islamic extremism having played a role here — and seeming to take root right here in our homeland, from coast to coast.

At a time when peaceful Muslim leaders could play a role in supporting the fight against Islamic extremism, the last thing we need is someone perpetuating a false narrative about guns and trying to deflect from the reality of the cancer that is growing and metastasizing. Guns, sir, are not the problem; the problem here is the ideology of Islamic jihadism. And, sadly, Imam Musri — rather than inspiring a sense of we’re in this together — has just done more to divide and anger with his statement. 

I don't know about that. Orlando's Official Jews don't seem to be in any way upset or deterred by the imam's false narrative. No surprise there, though, considering that, as Democrats, they have long bought into Obama's magical thinking on the subject.

Face It, The West Is Clueless, Exhausted and In Its Death Throes

That's my cheery take-away from Thomas Sowell's latest:

The recent wave of refugees flooding into Europe include Muslim men who have been haranguing European women on the streets for not dressing modestly enough, not to mention their sexual molestation of those women. 

Smug elites in Europe, like their counterparts in America, are not nearly as concerned about such things as they are about preventing "Islamophobia." 

Legal restrictions on free speech in some European countries make it a crime to sound the alarm about the dangers to the culture and to the people. 

In the lofty circles of those who see themselves as citizens of the world, it is considered unworthy, if not hateful, to insist on living according to your own Western values or to resist importing people who increase your chances of being killed. 

But if you don't have the instinct for self-preservation, it will not matter much in the long run whatever else you may have.

I think our self-preservation instinct is a casualty of the "diversity"/"multiculturalism" machine.