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Canada: Obsessed with “Islamophobia” by Judith Bergman

Posted By on December 21st, 2017

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.

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Egypt’s Paper-Peace with Israel by A. Z. Mohamed

Posted By on December 21st, 2017

“The greatest obstacle to the expansion of peace today is not found in the leaders of the countries around us. The obstacle is public opinion on the Arab street, public opinion that has been brainwashed for years by a distorted and misleading presentation of the State of Israel.” — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Today, in spite of the lasting peace treaty between Cairo and Jerusalem, much of the media in Egypt continues to demonize Israel. Even under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, with whom Netanyahu has been developing mutually beneficial security relations, prominent figures in the state-run press disseminate anti-Israel conspiracy theories.

El-Sisi now has a genuine opportunity to spread to his populace his own increasingly positive relations with a neighbor that could significantly benefit his people and his country.

The 40th anniversary of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to the Knesset took place on November 21. There, Sadat had announced:

“I have come to you so that together we might build a durable peace based on justice, to avoid the shedding of one single drop of blood from an Arab or an Israeli.”

To commemorate the occasion, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an address, saying:

“The greatest obstacle to the expansion of peace today is not found in the leaders of the countries around us. The obstacle is public opinion on the Arab street, public opinion that has been brainwashed for years by a distorted and misleading presentation of the State of Israel.”

Netanyahu had a point. Today, four decades later — in spite of the lasting peace treaty between Cairo and Jerusalem — much of the media in Egypt continues to demonize Israel. Even under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, with whom Netanyahu has been developing mutually beneficial security relations, prominent figures in the state-run press disseminate anti-Israel conspiracy theories.

Former MP Mustafa Bakri, for instance, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Al-Osboa and the host of the “Facts and Secrets” talk show on Sada El Balad TV. told the Egyptian daily Al Youm 7, as recently as November 20th, that Egypt must force the “Israeli enemy,” the “Zionist entity,” to return antiquities that it had supposedly smuggled out of Egypt into Israel.

Earlier in the month, when it was announced that Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri had resigned (he has since suspended his resignation), Bakri said on his talk show that Israel — which he referred to as the “State of Israeli Occupation” — was the only party that would benefit from a new war breaking out in the Middle East. He also alleged that Israel was conspiring against Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Egypt and Lebanon.

During a different segment of his show in the beginning of November, Bakri denounced the 1917 Balfour Declaration as a sinister act — a crime committed by Britain that enabled Israel to extort Palestine (which did not exist in 1917) — and backed the Palestinian Authority’s threat to sue Britain in the International Criminal Court.

In a 2016 study — “Peace with Israel in Egyptian Textbooks: What Changed between the Mubarak and el-Sisi Eras?” — Ofir Winter, an Egypt specialist at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, found that although the Egyptian government had revised the way in which the Egypt-Israel treaty was presented and taught to ninth-graders in the 2015-2016 academic year, the change had little effect on the Egyptian public. Winter writes:

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Obama’s Presidential Library Is Change Chicagoans Can’t Believe In In fact, it’s not even really a ‘library’ at all. By Philip H. DeVoe

Posted By on December 21st, 2017

Something fascinating is happening in Chicago. When Barack Obama became president, the city was ebullient; he was, after all, a favorite son, and he’d promised to deliver the liberal policies beloved by Chicagoans. But now, nearly nine years later, city residents find themselves at odds with Obama over the plans for his presidential library.

In its initial bid for the right to host the library, put forth on behalf of the city, the University of Chicago offered large tracts of idyllic land in Washington Park and Jackson Park as two potential sites. Almost immediately, the people of those parks’ districts began scratching their heads. “Why not build it in one of the many blighted areas?” they asked. “Why are you taking a huge chunk of our parks?” Obama’s response was essentially an ultimatum: If the library couldn’t be built in a Chicago park, he’d take it to Honolulu or New York City.

After Obama selected Chicago and the Jackson Park site, protests began to grow. Residents of the park’s district, Woodlawn, took to local government and the op-ed pages of the city’s papers to express their fear that the project would rapidly gentrify the minority-majority area, force out longtime residents, and ruin the park’s role as a community gathering place.

In May of this year, protesters began a campaign to implore the Obama Foundation, the group overseeing the library’s construction, to sign a community benefit agreement (CBA), which would commit the Foundation to setting aside jobs for residents around the library, protecting low-income housing, supporting black-owned businesses, and strengthening neighborhood schools. The Foundation refused, and when a resident asked Obama himself to sign the agreement at a September public meeting about the library, Obama refused as well.

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What the Bishop Bell Case Reveals about Our #MeToo Moment An uncomfortable truth is that false accusations can and do happen. By Douglas Murray

Posted By on December 21st, 2017

In a tense exchange earlier this month between Dustin Hoffman and John Oliver, the HBO talk-show host said something remarkable. Responding to Oliver’s set of questions about claims of harassment against the actor, Hoffman pointed out that Oliver seemed not to be keeping “an open mind” but instead appeared to believe whatever he read in the press. To which Oliver replied about one claimant in particular, “I believe what she wrote, yes. Because there’s no point in her lying.” It was a fascinating exchange which unwittingly illustrated a problem that is roiling through every aspect of our societies, with no signs of abatement.

Any reasonable person not engaged in mob justice should be able to imagine a number of reasons that someone might falsely make an accusation against someone else. These range from the accidental (false or mistaken identification) to the deliberate (avarice, revenge). It is no more the case that everybody who makes an allegation against somebody else must be telling the truth than it is that they must be lying. A small but important case from the United Kingdom seems capable of shedding some caution on the furor occurring everywhere.

It relates to the former Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, a much-admired clergyman who died in 1958. Two years ago — in 2015 — an allegation of child abuse by the bishop was made public. The accuser (who remains anonymous) alleged that Bell repeatedly abused her more than six decades ago. No other similar charges have been made.

What was remarkable was not just the allegation, but the way in which it was reported. In Britain, the story was splashed across many of the national and local newspapers and prominently relayed on the BBC. It was given fuel by the Sussex Police, who (ever-keen on pursuing people who died decades ago) issued a statement stating the charges and editorializing that “the information obtained from our enquiries would have justified, had he still been alive, Bishop Bell’s arrest and interview under caution, on suspicion of sexual offences.”

Even more surprising was that the institution to which Bishop Bell had dedicated his life — the Church of England — also appeared to accept that the bishop had been guilty of the terrible crime of which he had been anonymously, posthumously accused. Despite a number of Bell’s living associates protesting that the claims could not be true, and a number of inconsistencies in the accuser’s own account, the Church said that it had “found no reason to doubt” the claims and made a financial offer to the accuser. No defense of the accused was heard. None of the evidence contradicting her testimony appears to have been sought out. While the accuser remained anonymous, the reputation of the man she had accused looked like it would be posthumously destroyed for all time.

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Christmas Lessons from California Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on December 21st, 2017

Rarely has such a naturally rich and scenic region become so mismanaged by so many creative and well-intentioned people.

In California, Yuletide rush hours are apparently the perfect time for state workers to shut down major freeways to make long-overdue repairs to the ancient pavement. Last week, I saw thousands of cars stuck in a road-construction zone that was juxtaposed with a huge concrete (but only quarter-built) high-speed-rail overpass nearby.

The multibillion-dollar high-speed-rail project, stalled and way over budget, eventually may be completed in a decade or two. But for now, California needs good old-fashioned roads that don’t disrupt holiday shopping — before it starts futuristic projects it cannot fully fund.

California’s steep new gasoline tax — one of the highest in the nation — has not even fully kicked in, and yet the cash-strapped state is already complaining that the anticipated additional revenue will be too little.

Now, some officials also want to consider taxing motorists for each mile they drive on the state’s antediluvian roads.

Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California.

In most areas of the Sierra Nevada, the state’s chief source of stored water, there is not a drop of snow on the ground. The High Sierra so far this year looks more like Death Valley than Alpine Switzerland.

The last two months of California weather were among the driest autumn months on record. Unless 2018 is a miraculously wet year, California will find itself on the cusp of another existential drought.

Yet California politicians are currently obsessed with the usual race/class/gender agendas, as Sacramento broadcasts that California is a sanctuary state exempt from federal immigration laws.

Periodically, Governor Jerry Brown, in prophetic Old Testament style, offers rebukes of President Donald Trump, as Brown tours the globe as commander in chief of California.

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Nazi Mosques in America “I’m shocked there’s Jihad going on here.” Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 21st, 2017

It was another Friday night in the Islamic Center of Jersey City. And its imam, Sheikh Aymen Elkasaby, had some thoughts about the Jews.

“So long as the Al-Aqsa Mosque remains a humiliated prisoner under the oppression of the Jews, this nation will never prevail,” he screamed belligerently in the World Trade Center bomber’s old mosque.

“Count them one by one, and kill them down to the very last one. Do not leave a single one on the face of the Earth.”

“Kill the Jews” is as much a standard at Friday night mosque services as Springsteen’s Born to Run is on Friday night in bars well downwind of the Islamic Center of Jersey City. But the politicians who stop by the mosques before elections have to pretend that they’re shocked at all the gambling going on.

The Islamic Center of Jersey City’s president had been a member of the New Jersey Homeland Security Interfaith Advisory Council. Senator Cory Booker had invited him as a guest to the State of the Union and praised him as an example “of how the diversity of America makes us all better.”

Was his imam calling the Jews “apes and pigs” really making us all better? And if the Islamic Center of Jersey City wasn’t making America better with its diversity, then just maybe neither was Senator Cory Booker, the Democrats and their entire Islamic immigration program.

The diversity bus had taken a wrong turn on the road to Utopia and ended up in Nazi Germany

Senator Booker demanded that the mosque disavow its imam and the mosque’s president gaslit the media by claiming that his imam had the wrong idea about Islam and had been misunderstood.

It’s a commonplace misunderstanding.

On another Friday this year, in the Islamic Center of Davis, Imam Ammar Shahin implored, “Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews.”

“Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one.”

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‘Paris is the Capital of France. Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel’ By Steve Lipman

Posted By on December 21st, 2017

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.”

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The Great Brain Drain by Mark Steyn

Posted By on December 21st, 2017

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.

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December 23, 1783 A great day in U.S. history is all but forgotten Phil Kadner

Posted By on December 21st, 2017

It is probably the most important date in United States history, but to most people Dec. 23 signifies only that there are two shopping days left until Christmas.

On that date in 1783, however, a remarkable event occurred.

After victoriously leading an army for more than eight years against the mightiest military force on the planet, Gen. George Washington walked before the Continental Congress and announced, “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of action …”

He had commanded an army clothed in rags, its soldiers so hungry they ate tree bark to fill their stomachs. They died from dysentery and starvation.

Here’s how author Ron Chernow describes it in his biography of the general: “There was scarcely a time during the war when Washington didn’t grapple with a crisis that threatened to disband the army and abort the Revolution. The extraordinary, wearisome, nerve-racking frustration he put up with for nearly nine years is hard to express. He repeatedly had to exhort Congress and the 13 states to remedy desperate shortages of men, shoes, shirts, blankets and gunpowder.”

Each year his army would simply disappear as their enlistments expired meaning Washington had to start training them from scratch.

After the fighting had ended and before the peace was signed, King George III of England asked an acquaintance whether Washington would remain in charge of the army or become the new nation’s monarch. When told Washington’s aim was to simply give up his power and return to his farm, the king replied, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

He resigned in Annapolis, Maryland, and immediately set out for home. For the first time in eight years Washington returned to Mount Vernon for Christmas. It would be six years before he was elected the nation’s first president and once again called away from home.

In the history of the world there are a multitude of heroic military leaders who have led successful revolts against oppressors only to seize power themselves, becoming dictators and despots.

Put simply, this government of the people and by the people exists only because George Washington voluntarily gave up his power, first as the military leader and later as its chief of state.

Yet, there is no national holiday marking the occasion. No fireworks light the skies. The calendar does not even designate Dec. 23 as a day to fly the flag.

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Sources: McCabe’s Memory Was Foggy, His Testimony Conflicted With Other Witnesses By Debra Heine

Posted By on December 21st, 2017

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s closed-door interview with House Intelligence Committee investigators on Tuesday did not go well for him, Fox News’ James Rosen reported in an exclusive on Wednesday.

According to congressional sources, McCabe’s answers during his seven-hour interrogation conflicted with the testimony of previous witnesses, prompting one House investigator to tell Fox News, “It’s hard to know who’s telling us the truth.”

The discrepancies have spurred Republican majority staff of the intel committee to issue fresh subpoenas next week for other Justice Department and FBI personnel.

Fox News reports that those personnel are likely to be “demoted DOJ official Bruce G. Ohr and FBI General Counsel James A. Baker, who accompanied McCabe, along with other lawyers, to Tuesday’s HPSCI session.” Ohr — whose wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016 — is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee later this week, as well.

The questioning on Tuesday was led by Rep. Trey Gowdy, (R-SC) with several other lawmakers participating, according to Fox News. Gowdy, in particular, has been very keen to find out whether the FBI relied on the anti-Trump dossier to secure a FISA warrant to spy on President Trump and his associates. “I want to know whether the nation’s premier law enforcement agency relied on a document that looks like the National Enquirer prepared it,” Gowdy said in October.

In what has to be a blow to the #RussiaGate crowd, the number two official in the FBI was apparently unable to cite which specific details in the dossier had been actually corroborated, after he told investigators that the bureau had verified some of the allegations. He also seemed to suffer from an attack of amnesia when asked about the Democratic funding of the dossier.

Sources close to the investigation say that McCabe was a “friendly witness” to the Democrats in the room, who are said to have pressed the deputy director, without success, to help them build a case against President Trump for obstruction of justice in the Russia-collusion probe. “If he could have, he would have,” said one participant in the questioning.

Investigators say McCabe recounted to the panel how hard the FBI had worked to verify the contents of the anti-Trump “dossier” and stood by its credibility. But when pressed to identify what in the salacious document the bureau had actually corroborated, the sources said, McCabe cited only the fact that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow. Beyond that, investigators said, McCabe could not even say that the bureau had verified the dossier’s allegations about the specific meetings Page supposedly held in Moscow.

The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall – despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe’s own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and provenance. CONTINUE AT SITE