RUTHFULLY YOURS

The current government seems not to believe that Islamic terrorism in Canada even exists.

The RCMP guide is premised on the belief that radicalization occurs because of perceptions of “injustice” (not because of perceptions of jihad). Islamic groups are not mentioned. The message is that terrorism is “diverse” and has nothing to do with Islam. However, Public Safety Canada’s list of terrorist entities contains 54 terrorist groups, 46 of which are Islamic terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, the war on free speech in Canada grinds on: Ottawa Public Library cancelled the screening of “Killing Europe”, a documentary about, ironically, among other things, the death of free speech in Europe. Ottawa Public Library deemed this content not suitable for Canadians — apparently snowflakes, not allowed to know about the rise of migrant rape crime, anti-Semitism, far-leftist violence and other irritants in Europe.

While worried about graffiti, Canadian authorities appear far less concerned about deterring Canadian imams from preaching jihad, Jew-hatred and the murder of Jews to their Muslim congregations, despite Jews being approximately twelve times more likely to be targeted for hate crimes than Muslims are. For anti-Muslim graffiti, you go to jail for five months, but inciting an entire congregation to kill Jewish citizens does not even merit prosecution.

In September, the Canadian parliament began its study on how to combat “Islamophobia” as decided upon in the M-103 motion. A parliamentary committee, the M-103 committee, was established for that very purpose. Although motion M-103 was not binding, Samer Majzoub, a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate of the Canadian Muslim Forum, tellingly advertised:

“Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning… so that condemnation is followed by comprehensive policies.”

Majzoub’s statement presumably meant that the next steps would be to make M-103 binding.

Part of the problem, however, with any study of “Islamophobia”, as with any motions about it, is that it is never clearly defined.

Now fresh statistics released at the end of November 2017, showed that in Canada, hate crimes against Muslims actually fell in 2016, but those against Jews increased:

Hate crimes against Muslims:

2015, there were 159
2016, there were 139

Hate crimes against Jews:

2015, there were 178
2016, there were 221

In Canada, with a population of 36 million people, approximately 330,000 are Jews and slightly more than 1,000,000 are Muslims.

London, Paris, Rome—cities that are familiar to most Americans. And even if you can’t find them on the map, you know that it only takes a few clicks to learn all you need to know about them. (Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives. The Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889. Three coins in the Trevi Fountain.)https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/20/jerusalem-is-the-capital-of-israel/

If you do look at the map—Siri has probably found one for you by now—you’ll notice that all three cities are the capitals of their respective countries.

You may wonder how cities get to be capitals. Stop. Don’t ask Siri. It’s very simple. The countries just pick a city, and the word out gets out. That’s it. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Unless the city is Jerusalem. Yes, Jerusalem is Israel’s capital city. It’s not something new, and it has nothing to with anything President Trump said. Remember the rule: A country gets to name its capital. No other country or individual has any say in the matter. Pretty simple, right?

But if you find it surprising, you’re in good company. Israel chose Jerusalem as its capital almost 70 years ago. Yet most of the press and political leaders worldwide are just now getting up to speed.

To his great credit, President Trump was not constrained by whatever handicap prevented so many others from stating the obvious. “Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital,” said Trump

In May 1948, the State of Israel declared its independence, and Israel’s founding fathers chose Jerusalem to be the fledgling state’s capital. It was an easy choice. In fact, it was a fait accompli. When you have a city that was good enough to be the capital for King David some 3,000 years earlier, and that city is where Solomon chose to build the Holy Temple, you don’t need to look elsewhere.

As clear a choice as this was for Israel, it didn’t go over well with most countries, including the United States. They had their reasons: bad ones. But, of course, nothing really mattered. The choice was Israel’s to make, and Israel would not be deterred.

And the United States and other nations, what did they do? They took a very diplomatic approach: they punted . . . all the way to Tel Aviv. Nice city—restaurants, beaches. But it wasn’t Israel’s capital.

That’s why, just the past week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a “read my lips” moment, had to state the obvious to the visiting French President Emmanuel Macron: “Paris is the capital of France. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.”

According to a 2007 study by the Rockwool Foundation, after ten years in the Danish school system, two-thirds of students with an Arabic background remain functionally illiterate. In Bradford, Yorkshire, 75 per cent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins, many of whom are themselves the children of first cousins. In the new west, why even bother worrying about IQ? Professor Bates says he wants to get to the bottom of the “why” and the “what”. But as I wrote eleven years ago in America Alone:

Stick a pin almost anywhere in the map, near or far: The “who” is the best indicator of the what-where-when-why.

Which is why a gay bathhouse got nixed in Luton: The mosque has more muscle.

And the more demographic transformation transforms, the more ill-advised it becomes to mention it. Before 9/11, even the BBC was happy to discuss whether the resurgence of rickets in the United Kingdom is due to Muslim dress. Sixteen years later, when UKIP bring it up, it’s cited as proof they’re a laughingstock. A question for Professor Bates and his colleagues is whether a society in which more and more subjects are ruled out of public discourse should expect its measures of intelligence to do anything other than head south – for native and non-native alike. Thus:

The quality of what we called the student “clientele” had deteriorated so dramatically over the years that the classroom struck me as a barn full of ruminants and the curriculum as a stack of winter ensilage… The level of interest in and attention to the subjects was about as flat as a fallen arch. The ability to write a coherent English sentence was practically nonexistent; ordinary grammar was a traumatic ordeal. In fact, many native English-speakers could not produce a lucid verbal analysis of a text, let alone carry on an intelligible conversation, and some were even unable to properly pronounce common English words.

A man rammed a car into pedestrians and Christmas shoppers in a bustling area of Australia’s second-largest city on Thursday, injuring more than a dozen people, in an act that police said was deliberate.

Police in Melbourne said they arrested the male driver of the vehicle at the scene, along with another man, and that several of those injured were in critical condition.

“At this stage we believe that it was a deliberate act. However, we do not know the motivation,” Commander Russell Barrett of Victoria Police told reporters.

Witnesses said a white sport-utility vehicle accelerated after running a red light and plowing into pedestrians at high speed adjacent to Flinders Street Station, one of Melbourne’s busiest transportation hubs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/car-plows-into-pedestrians-in-central-melbourne-1513842409?cx_testId=17&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=related?cx_campaign=poptart&mod=cx_poptart#cxrecs_s

The incident occurred near the location of a similar incident in January, when a driver plowed through a pedestrian mall, killing four people and injuring 20 others. That incident wasn’t terrorism-related.

The January incident, coming after terrorist attacks in Europe and the U.K. in which attackers used vehicles to mow down pedestrians, prompted Australia’s government and police countrywide to strengthen defenses in an effort to guard against vehicle-based attacks. Concrete or metal poles were erected at popular locations and more armed police have been patrolling the nation’s streets.

Earlier this month, police in Sydney began patrolling with military-style rifles for the first time. Other deterrent measures have included fences and additional installations of CCTV cameras, as well as improved screening procedures across the country.

Heavily armed officers had parts of central Melbourne locked down after Thursday’s incident, which occurred at the start of rush hour at about 4:30 p.m. local time, during the busy Christmas shopping period.

An ambulance-service spokesman said at least 13 people had been transported to hospitals, while two others were being assessed by paramedics at the scene.

“The intersection was full of pedestrians and he just plowed through,” one bystander, who gave his name only as Jim, told Australian television, describing the car as a white Suzuki traveling fast. CONTINUE AT SITE

Dec. 20 marks the fourth anniversary of what will, in my life, always be a day of rebirth: my release from a Russian prison, where I had been jailed for 10 years by Vladimir Putin for crimes I did not commit. I remember my police escort, as he walked down the boarding ramp of the plane that was to take me to Berlin, telling someone on his walkie-talkie that I was on board. I remember the door closing.

Later I learned how many governments and people had applied pressure for my release. Among them was Amnesty International, which added me to its “prisoners of conscience” list in 2011.

On this, the anniversary of my freedom, I again thank AI—and I am urging it to put its weight behind Russia’s longest-serving political prisoner, Alexei Pichugin, who is stuck in the same vortex that entrapped me.

Mr. Pichugin, a former midlevel supervisor in the security office of Yukos Oil, was arrested in 2003 and has been convicted of multiple murders based on “evidence” fabricated by the Kremlin’s minions. Western democracies and even Interpol have decreed his case to be political and devoid of real evidence. In short, Russia holds Mr. Pichugin hostage, in hope that he will buy his freedom by giving false testimony against me.

There are protocols, I know, for determining who is a prisoner of conscience, as well as academic debate on the precise meaning of the term. I can tell you the simple test I apply. For 14 years and counting—more than 5,000 days—Mr. Pichugin has held in his hands the key to his freedom: All he needs to do is bear false witness against me and other Yukos executives. Lie, and walk free.

Every day, he wakes to that invitation. Every day, he refuses. There is only one way to describe his condition: Mr. Pichugin is a prisoner of conscience.

Hamas called for a “Day of Rage” — as opposed to the days of peace and harmony the terrorist group ordinarily calls for — but this did not spill out very far.

In Stockholm, meanwhile, the new “locals” contented themselves with setting light to the Star of David rather than to real live Jews as their compatriots in Gothenburg had tried to do.

The fabled “Arab Street” had been meant to rise up. And it did rise up. But not in the Arab world… instead it lit up in Europe.

It is now a fortnight since President Trump made his historic announcement about the status of Jerusalem. The speech which announced that America would drop the pretence that Jerusalem is not the capital of the State of Israel was relayed live around the world. Across the major networks and the world’s front pages the response was almost unanimous. They proclaimed this a major foreign policy blunder which would lead to any number of problems including — many predicted — an immediate “third intifada.”

The world’s cameras immediately turned to Bethlehem where a small group of enterprising Palestinians burned an American flag for the cameras. This picture went around the world. Otherwise, not very much appeared to be happening. Hamas called for a “Day or Rage” — as opposed to the days of peace and harmony the terrorist group ordinarily calls for — but this did not spill out very far. The Friday immediately following the announcement might have been a flashpoint, tempers being famously frayed after the act of afternoon worship. And yet, as the BBC’s veteran reporter Jeremy Bowen tweeted from the scene, “At Damascus Gate in Jerusalem press pack outnumbering demonstrators.” The fabled “Arab Street” had been meant to rise up. And it did rise up. But not in the Arab world.

In London, the American Embassy was the scene of a protest called for by a number of prominent left-wing and Labour party activists as well as a some Muslim groups. The Labour MP Andy Slaughter was among those who addressed the crowds. This swiftly arranged protest soon degenerated into the usual anti-Semitic rally, with the crowds chanting “From the Rivers to the Sea Palestine will be free” (that is “There will be no Israel at all, not even a sliver of the land”). And the crowd also chanted “Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud”. That is, “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.” For the crowd outside the American embassy in London, threatening Jews with the memory of the seventh century obliteration of a Jewish community near Medina was clearly an entirely appropriate move.

A recent Associated Press probe provided accounts of the rampant pedophilia, allowed to go unchecked due to a combination of factors, among them the fact that most of the victims are from poor and vulnerable families. Those who do try to complain are often bribed or threatened into silence.

Islamic judicial officials, and even civil court judges, usually urge those accused of sexual abuse to offer “blood money” to the victim or the family in exchange for withdrawing the complaint and “forgiving” the perpetrator.

Well-connected violators reach out to community leaders, particularly in rural areas, and persuade them to pressure parents of victims into keeping silent by accusing them of bringing shame to their villages or warning them that they will be subject to counter-charges of blasphemy.

Sexual abuse of young boys and girls in Pakistan’s madrassas (Islamic schools) continues to be both pervasive and suppressed, according to the latest “Cruel Numbers” annual report by Sahil, a child-protection NGO operating in four of the country’s main provinces.

A recent Associated Press (AP) probe provided accounts of the rampant pedophilia, allowed to go unchecked due to a combination of factors, among them the fact that most of the victims are from poor and vulnerable families. Those who do try to complain are often bribed or threatened into silence. As a result, the head of Sahil said, the 359 cases reported by the media over the past decade are “barely the tip of the iceberg.”

A mere fraction of sexual-abuse allegations has reached the court adjudication stage, and only a handful of the perpetrators in those cases have been indicted; very few have been convicted. Islamic judicial officials, and even civil court judges, usually urge those accused of sexual abuse to offer “blood money” to the victim or the family in exchange for withdrawing the complaint and “forgiving” the perpetrator.

If you read through a few U.S. State Department reports on living conditions in various countries, and then peruse the charter of United Nations, you’ll see that there’s a hell of a lot of horrible things going on around the world that the UN is supposed to be doing something about. Inconceivable levels of poverty, an almost total absence of human-rights protections, armed forces and police departments and courts that operate without any respect whatsoever for due process and the rule of law, primitive sanitary conditions, deadly infectious diseases that have spread widely and that go almost entirely untreated, whole regions in which everyday life is marked by the most extreme kind of tribal or gang or police violence, outright slavery, slave camps, women whose families treat them as little better than slaves, children whose families sell them into prostitution, and so on: such conditions can be found in scores of undeveloped nations.

How does a responsible UN official begin to address all these crises? Where does he start?

Why, in the United States, of course.

Yes, in every unfree or semi-free country on earth, every place where poverty is the norm and human rights unheard of, the great dream is to emigrate to the U.S. Innumerable Cubans have drowned while trying to make their way on rafts across the Florida Straits from the Castros’ island prison to the land of the free. Citizens of Mexico and points south have died of dehydration in the desert while seeking to cross into Arizona or New Mexico. Almost 46 million of America’s current inhabitants originally came from abroad, putting the U.S. at the top of the list of immigrant destinations; the #2 country on the list is Germany, where around 12 million people are foreign-born. So much of the world’s population is desperate to make it to America that the current president won election largely on the basis of his promise to build a wall on our southern border.

Yet if you believe the UN, the U.S. is a cesspit of Third World-style poverty. On December 8, the Alabama news site al.com quoted Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, as saying that he’s seen sewage conditions in that state that are “very uncommon in the First World….I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this.” Alston’s visit, reported al.com, was “part of a 15-day tour of the U.S. that Alston and his team are conducting to gather information for a report on poverty and human rights abuses in America that they expect to release in spring.” This crew have already visited California; from Alabama, they were planning to move on to Atlanta, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.