Baroness Deech's House of Lords speech on the move for an independent Palestine

Scientist Offers to Build Nuke Bomb Targeting New York

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  — A disgruntled, former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist promised to build 40 nuclear weapons for Venezuela in 10 years and design a bomb targeted for New York City in exchange for "money and power," according to secret FBI recordings released Wednesday.  

In the recordings, Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni tells an agent posing as a Venezuelan official that the bombs would prevent the United States from invading the oil-rich nation and brags to his wife that the passing of secrets would make him wealthy.  

"I'm going to be the boss with money and power," the naturalized U.S. citizen from Argentina is heard saying. "I'm not an American anymore. This is it."...

Pat Condell's Holocaust Remembrance Day Message

A Snickers Commercial Recasts ‘The Brady Bunch’ With Steve Buscemi and an Ax-Wielding Danny Trejo

find out about it HERE

h/t Kathy S.

Andrew Klavan: Attack of the But-Heads!

See also this insightful article by Wyatt Shorter,  a very bright young friend of mine:
The Real Islamophobes: The Importance Of Charlie Hebdo

Poll says majority of Torontonians think the TDSB is doing a poor job of running schools

A “strong majority” of Torontonians think the Toronto District School Board does a poor job of running the city’s schools, a new poll says.  

More than 6-in-10 of those polled (61%) think the TDSB is not doing a good job, while only 19% think the board is doing positive work, a Forum Research poll released Thursday said.  

A full 20% of those polled did not have an opinion.  

Nearly half of respondents (45%) said they did not think that trustees are necessary to run the schools, while only 31% said they are...

Mark "Cassandra" Steyn charmed his fans with dire warnings at Indigo

Those familiar with their Greek mythology will recall that Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam of Troy, was cursed by Apollo when he gave her the gift of foresight, but without the ability to convince Troy's rulers of it.

Which brings to mind the case of Mark Steyn who, nine years ago in 2006, warned that Muslim growth demographics and an Islamist strategy of a form of colonization through immigration combined with weak, lazy western leadership meant that the future will belong to Islam.

Steyn, a staunch advocate for free speech was, along with the article's publisher Macleans Magazine, immediately hauled before a Human Rights Commission by aggrieved Muslim activists outraged at the perceived offense given to Islam. Fortunately for Steyn and Macleans, 2006 was a kinder, gentler time compared with now, when aggrieved Muslim activists in the west outraged at perceived offense given to Islam are prone to seek recompense through the barrel of an AK 47 or the business end of a dagger.

The crowd at Indigo (via Blazing Cat Fur)

Though great trouble and expense, Steyn eventually prevailed in the Human Rights case and through it, helped set in motion a sequence of events that led to the demise of the Thought Crimes provisions of Canada's Human Rights Commission Act. However, his predictions about the effect of Islam on western countries, which proved themselves true, remain largely unheeded by the vast bulk of our politicians and media.

It was that subject and other components of the decline of modern western civilization that a crowd of about five hundred of Steyn's fans came to hear him discuss at a crammed session at Indigo Books in Toronto last night. My pal Mitch Wolfe, a writer for Canada Free Press, mentioned to me that he arrived at 4 pm for the 7 pm start. Even so, it was so crowded he was still only able to watch in a densely packed standing section at the rear of the large seating section made up of line after line of occupied folding wooden chairs.

Fortunately, the wonderful blogger Laura Rosen Cohen, and Mark's charming, beautiful assistants Melissa Howes and Kathleen Sweetapple used their influence and I was able to squeeze a seat in just a few feet away from the stage where Indigo's CEO Heather Reisman engaged Steyn in an hour-long discussion. The evening was a stop for Steyn on his book tour for The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, a collection of articles and essays by the provocative pundit spanning the last few years.

It would follow to reason to assume that a night filled with dire warnings and pessimistic prognostications that naturally arise from Steyn's areas of attention would be terribly depressing, yet it was nothing of the sort. Beyond his sharp insight, the secrets of Steyn's success and his great gifts are his sardonic wit, caustic humour, and ability to cheerfully whistle through the graveyard of Anglo-European culture.

One of the first subjects of discussion to come up was that of welfare, with Steyn castigating a system which perpetuates not just dependence on the state, but also encourages an attitude of defeat. It created, said Steyn, an environment that incentivizes (a word that's existence and applicability Heather Reisman paused to verify with Conrad Black, who was seated in the audience) people not to work.

Heather felt compelled to challenge Steyn on that, insisting that most people want to work and of the need for welfare as a springboard. In retort, Steyn offered the example of parts of England where there are generations of the same family on welfare who have grown up without seeing an immediate relative having to go to work in the morning. According to him state policies encourage, rather than help put a stop to that phenomenon.

Inevitably the discussion turned to the influence and dangerous effects of Islam on western society. We now have, as Steyn pointedly observed, schools in Denmark that won't accept Jews because it is unsafe for them, due to the rise of an antagonistic Muslim student population. In France, things are somewhat better, where they will take Jews but on the condition that if they have a Jewish sounding name, they change it to something less likely to provoke the followers of The Prophet.

Steyn noted that in Canada, we have the notorious public school mosqueterias, where Islam alone is accorded the rights to religious services in common spaces during school hours, and where gender discrimination is openly practiced. That information came to light only because the intrepid blogger Blazing Cat Fur, who was in attendance at Indigo last night, exposed it on his blog.

Steyn's assessment resonated with his admirers at Indigo, and the many beyond who listen to his broadcasts, read his published articles and blog, and the many who scoop up his books, which rapidly climb the best-seller lists for non-fiction. But reasserting his position as a modern day Cassandra is the aftermath of recent terror attacks in France and here in Canada, aside from the many many others in an unending stream of Islamist violence. Because despite them and their obvious cause, we still have most of the media, along with political leaders like Barack Obama, David Cameron, and here in Toronto, our own new mayor John Tory, contorting themselves to deny that Islamist fanatics explicitly acting in the name of Islam, with the approbation of a number of Islamic leaders, have anything to do with Islam.

This profoundly bizarre denial and political cognitive dissonance would be comical if it weren't so suicidal. A phrase Steyn used that resonated strongly with Heather Reisman, and she had him repeat, was that "a society that is prepared to tolerate extreme intolerance in the name of liberalism has signed its own death warrant."

That indeed has happened to us. Islam has become more extreme in the last few years with the influence and influx of proponents of that extremist aspect of their religion, particularly Saudi Arabian Wahhabi and Khomeinists from Iran who have come to our shores.

The tragedy of that is that most western Muslims, particularly those who immigrated prior to 1990, are admirable citizens who came to escape such deplorable religious totalitarianism, and now find it has chased them to their adopted homes. A disgusting irony is that Muslim reformers, like my friend Tarek Fatah, have a more difficult time of confronting the vicious aspects of Islam when every time another atrocity inspired by it happens, we get white, western politicians falling over themselves to deny Islam plays any role in Islamic extremism.

There is a crucial element that people who are so quick to decry people like Steyn and others who raise the alarm about the destructive influence of Islamist ideology on the west as mere "Islamophobes" fail to recognize. It's that most of us doing it have the least to lose should Islam eventually win out here.

Speaking for myself, living in an Islamic caliphate would be a practical paradise on Earth.

One thing in favor of Islam is that it's not a race, it's a belief culture and one that's incredibly easy to join. All you have to do is say, "Allah is the one true God and Mohammed is his messenger," out loud and abracadabra, you're in.

You might think I'd miss the drinking, but as someone fortunate enough to sometimes move in rarefied circles, including some very charming Gulf royalty on occasion,  I can assure you that well-placed Muslims, in even the strictest religious environs, can booze it up to their heart's content as long as it's done behind closed doors.

As Tarek Fatah will tell you, racism is endemic in Islamic society dominated by "the guardians of the two holy places," with a racist fervor as bad as one would expect from the American south in the 1920's. But I'm a white male, so that won't be my problem.  Women may only have half the worth of a man in Islam, but hey, that'll just make me twice as good than I was in decadent, secular western culture!

Things would actually be great for me in an Islamic caliphate. While I'd miss pepperoni on pizza because of Islamic dietary laws, there would be more than adequate compensation in my four Islamic wives taking turns pleasuring me. When that becomes insufficient, I could always increase the size of my harem with slaves, who are still kept in places like Saudi Arabia and Mauritania. And if any of my wives or concubines gave me any guff, I'd have religious license to give them a taste of the old Sean Connery to shut them up and keep them in their proper place.

The Islamic approbation of gays being thrown to their deaths off rooftops and lesbians being raped to straighten them out is something I find rather distasteful. But I'm not gay, so when the caliphate rules, it's not like any of that will affect me directly.

And even the free speech thing isn't going to be a serious problem. People like me will get to say pretty much what they want in the Caliphate with the exception of insulting Mohammed. But really, at that point, why would I want to insult the Islamo Supremo, considering all the privileges his ideology will have bestowed on me?

But the strange thing is that even with all the benefits and privileges that hard-core Islam would give to someone like me and Steyn, we're the ones who speak out about it. Because we don't want to live in a world where women are property that can be controlled and abused by men, where those deemed racially inferior are second-class citizens, and where gays will be discriminated against and even killed because of their sexual orientation.

Another odd paradox of our world is that the stupid, leftist, moral relativists who would suffer most were Islamism to triumph are among its staunches defenders. It should not come as a surprise that idiots of the kind who run the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education are so quick to dismiss concerns about Islamism as "Islamophobia."  Useful idiot secular leftists were the first ones that were killed by the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime in Iran after the revolution when they no longer served any useful purpose. But OISE stands as a wonderful reminder of the truth of the quip that if there's one thing we learn from history, it's that we don't learn anything from history.

OISE is relevant to Mark's discussion last night because as an example of the hijacking of our culture by radicals, he used the example of the new Ontario Sex Ed curriculum incubated at that dreadful institution by one of its professors. That professor, Ben Levin, was Kathleen Wynne's hand-picked Deputy Minister of Education and he is, according to published reports, going to plead guilty in court next month to charges related to his creating and distributing child pornography.

The curriculum of which Levin was the architect is the one that Wynne is pushing hard to reintroduce, and it's chock full of material that will turn six and seven year olds into sexual beings; something Steyn finds deplorable.

A friend of mine asked me about that curriculum today and she wondered aloud how a politician could be so horrible as to want such material to be introduced to children so young. My instinct was to say that it's because we're being governed by morons, but that's not the case at all.

In fact we're governed by smart people who want their ideology to stay in power, They figured that the best way to do that is not to teach our children the important works of literature or to make them truly literate in history, but to brainwash them with politicized nonsense while telling them they're all "critical thinkers." We are governed at the provincial and municipal level by manipulative scoundrels and preached to by a vacuous mainstream media who throw out terms "racist" and "bully," in inapplicable instances, at people with whom they disagree in order to silence dissent. And they want a school system to reinforce that. Because the stupider we make the next generation, the better the chances for future governments as bad as Kathleen Wynne's to retain power.

Mark Steyn's ability to predict the future is impressive but not unique. He is well-versed in history, and since history does truly often repeat itself, what comes next can often be anticipated from looking back at what has been.

The challenge ahead is for Steyn's admonitions to heard by those in positions of authority who should listen, and that he ceases to be a Cassandra. But considering so many among us are ignorant of the real nature dangers that face us in the present, expecting them to learn from history may be more than can be expected.

But for those wanting to have a chuckle while appreciating how our society is torn down from within, The [Un]documented Mark Steyn will come as a very entertaining and highly informative, if slightly perverse, distraction.

Sick Soul Mates: David Duke and Glenn Greenwald

From Professor Werner Cohn:

To David Duke, Glenn Greenwald is a great source of wisdom.  He cites him, he quotes him, he basks in the reflected prominence of this apparent soulmate.  Offhand there would seem to be a problem  for someone like Duke,  the very Duke who is unashamedly a hater of Jews and is often considered “extreme right.”  Yet here Duke is  drawn to  Greenwald, yes the Greenwald who is openly gay, Jewish, and conventionally considered “extreme left.”  No, as we shall see, there is no anomaly here.  “Left” or “right,” we are dealing here with figures on the lunatic fringe where the logic of ordinary life plays little role.  Among a slew of other affinities, Greenwald and Duke both see the American government as wholly evil, and not coincidentally, both see Israel as the great scourge of our time...

Mark Steyn at Indigo tonight

Tonight at 7 pm is your chance to see and hear Mark Steyn being interviewed by Chapters/Indigo CEO Heather Reisman.

It's at the Indigo bookstore in the Manulife Centre at Bay and Bloor in Toronto!

And it's free!

Kathleen Wynne pushes the Ben Levin Kiddie Porn Curriculum - wants Grade 1 kids to learn about sexual consent

Seven year old children don't have a sex drive, despite what the minds of pedophiles and their advocates may project onto them.

So it is beyond reason or comprehension why Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, who had previously tried to introduce a Sex Ed curriculum shepherded by her Deputy Education Minister Ben Levin, whom she hand picked to run the Ministry of Education while she held that portfolio in the McGuinty government.

The same Ben Levin will be pleading guilty to some of the criminal charges he faces, among which were the production and distribution of child pornography, and counselling to commit sexual assault.

So does Kathleen Wynne fee children need to learn about consent because kids need to know how to say "no" to one of her Deputy Ministers or some instructors from the wretched Ontario Institute for Studies in Education?

TORONTO – Premier Kathleen Wynne says Ontario students should start learning how to read facial expressions and emotions as early as Grade 1 to give help them understand consent in sexual relations. 

Wynne says under the updated sex ed curriculum due this fall, kids in Grades 1 to 6 will learn listening skills and how to tell if friends are happy or sad by paying attention to their expressions and body language...

h/t Subway to Damascus 

Union shills and professional public trough-feeders answer call to support corrupt Toronto District School Board

Nothing but union shills in the lineup to depute at #TDSB so far tonight. Everyone so far, including the parents are union activists #ONpoli
— by Sam Sotiropoulos (@TrusteeSam) January 26, 2015

The Globe and Mail should have looked into the background of some of the speakers who showed up to support the incompetent, corrupt Toronto District School Board and reject the Ontario Ministry of Education's demand that they clean up their act.

Having dealt with some of Toronto's education reporters while I ran for trustee, my experience was that they either had their own agendas that they were pushing in the guise of "journalism," or were completely inept.

An embattled Toronto District School Board faced a supportive crowd Monday as speakers at a public meeting largely rejected a recent report’s recommendations to scale back trustees’ powers and reduce the number of schools with low enrolment...

A feminist discusses hysteria from lame-assed "concernocrats" about video game misogynosexviolencism

Some of the smartest observations you're likely to hear about part of what has come to be called #Gamergate :

See Mark Steyn for free this Wednesday at Indigo @ Bay & Bloor

The wonderfully acerbic, insightful Mark Steyn will be at Indigo Books in Toronto at Bay and Bloor Streets this Wednesday at 7 pm, for an interview with the book chain's CEO, Heather Reisman.

It's a free event so make sure you get there to hear Mark's cheerful description of how our civilization will be coming to an end, thanks to "panzified" western politicians and the political correctness and moral relativism that has become ingrained in our culture.

You'll also be able to pick up an autographed copy of Mark's new book, The [Un]documented Mark Steyn.

A good time is guaranteed for all (except those taking umbrage at unflattering descriptions of The Prophet or whose blood pressure is inclined to rise due to politically incorrect mockery).

Rick McGinnis: Elite ideology as class warfare

I blame Karl Marx for a lot of things, but after inspiring some of the most destructive and blood-thirsty governments in modern history, his most abidingly destructive legacy is hobbling our understanding of the word “class.” For as long as I’ve been alive, when almost anyone talks about the class system they end up invoking images frozen somewhere in the middle of the European 19th century. 

Arrogant entitled aristocrats and heartless mill owners; upright bourgeois, dispirited workers and peasants. It’s a world of frock coats and cloth caps and sunless terraced slums under smoke-filled skies, and while it’s a useful image if you want to start a discussion about the Industrial Revolution, it doesn’t do much to help describe the fluid, amorphous, endlessly adaptable way that class works in the modern world – and probably always has, even if one writer managed to fix the word to a tether at a spot roughly between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens...

Today in WTF!!??!! Pentagon creates essay contest to honor Saudi king

My instinct was to think this was lifted from the satirical, The Onion, but as it should by now be expected from the Department of Defense under Obama, nothing is so absurd so as to be unbelievable. 

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey has established an essay competition to honor the late Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, the Pentagon announced Monday. 

The competition, to be hosted at the National Defense University over the next academic year, will focus on issues related to the Arab and Muslim worlds, according to the official DOD News. 

"This is an important opportunity to honor the memory of the king, while also fostering scholarly research on the Arab-Muslim world, and I can think of no better home for such an initiative than NDU," Dempsey said in a statement...

In a bad development for the West, Putin's Russia signs military alliance with Iran's ayatollahs

On January 20, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his Iranian counterpart, Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, signed an intergovernmental agreement on “long term and multifaceted” military cooperation in Tehran, Iran. It is the first time in 15 years that a Russian defense minister has visited Iran and underlines the growing military and diplomatic ties between both countries united by their joint opposition to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle Eastern region and beyond...

More HERE 

h/t Skippy Stalin

What happens when a 3rd wave feminist meets a real feminist

h/t The People's Cube via Shoe

Promotion of terrorism to be proscribed in Canada's new Anti-Terrorism Legislation

The proscription against the promotion of terrorism in Canada's new anti-terrorism legislation, which will be introduced on Friday, could have serious ramifications for Islamists currently advocating for listed terrorist groups.

Activities by Toronto's Palestine House, and the anti-Semitic, Islamist rallies supporting terror groups like Hamas, such as those organized by the Khomeinist hatemonger Zafar Bangash, the Imam of the Islamic Society of York Region, under the wording of the new Bill, possibly could be violations of the Criminal Code and subject them to anti-Terrorism prosecution.

At events conducted by those groups and at the anti-Israel hub, Beit Zatoun in Toronto, speakers have said, in support of Hamas, that "all resistance is legitimate," and at an al Quds Day rally have even gone so far as to advocate the actual shooting of Jews.

OTTAWA The Conservative government's overhaul of anti-terrorism legislation will be introduced by the end of week and will make it a crime to promote terrorism, Stephen Harper told party faithful on Sunday.

The measures, which are also expected to give police greater ability to restrict the movements of purported extremists, will not be an assault on civil liberties, the prime minister said.

"These measures are designed to help authorities stop planned attacks, get threats off our streets, criminalize the promotion of terrorism, and prevent terrorists from travelling and recruiting others," Harper told a campaign-style event in the Ottawa-area.

"To be clear, in doing so, we shall be safeguarding our constitutional rights of speech, of association, of religion and all the rest."

Restricting the movement of suspected radicals can be done by lowering the threshold for obtaining a peace bond, a federal source who asked to remain anonymous told The Canadian Press last week.

In addition, the government wants to retool Canada's no-fly list procedures to make it easier to stop a suspected terrorist from boarding an airplane.

An internal federal review of last fall's deadly attacks on Canadian soldiers concluded there is a lack of suitable laws to crack down on radicals who openly encourage others to wage terrorism...

See also in the Globe and Mail: Harper's anti-terror bill to criminalize the ‘promotion of terrorism’

My last 18 hours, perfectly described by one of my coffee mugs

Last night, I went to The Wicket on Bloor Street.


My old friend Sephera Giron, who gave me this mug years ago, was there, and it occurred to me that it describes my last 18 hours or so in a perfectly concise way.

"I sometimes wake up in the morning
and try to get out of my bed
but it feels like my tongue
has been dipped in some dung
and a rhino's charged into my
head"

Thousands of Palestinians protest Charlie Hebdo Mohammad cartoon

(Reuters) - Thousands of Palestinians rallied in the occupied West Bank on Saturday to protest against the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad in French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

Simultaneous demonstrations were held in the cities of Ramallah and Hebron less than three weeks after Islamist gunmen shot dead 12 people in the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, which has repeatedly featured cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

The magazine returned to the newsstands the following week with a cartoon of the prophet on its front page.

"France is the mother of terrorism. America is the mother of terrorism," the protesters chanted. They carried black-and-white banners which read "There is only one God and Mohammad is his messenger."

The protests were called by the Islamist Tahrir Party, which advocates the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Muslim countries...

For those interested in formal wear, The Suits of James Bond

There's a great little website combining movie trivia with wardrobe tips I happened upon the other day called, The Suits of James Bond.

It describes the various outfits worn by James Bond in the film series as portrayed by the different actors who played the world's most famous secret agent, with a particular emphasis on Sean Connery, who was undoubtedly the most stylish of them all.

Not only is Bond's fashion fashion style described in great detail, but also that of the villains, supporting characters, other on-screen spies, and occasionally the wardrobe of the Bond actors in some of their non-Bond films.

It contains wonderful, gem-like tips such as this:

"A brown dinner jacket lacks the elegance of a black or ivory dinner jacket, but on the other hand it flatters Goldfinger’s warm autumn complexion more than the more traditional colours would. The gold shantung silk lapels bring Goldfinger’s favourite colour into the dinner jacket, and gold metal—or likely brass considering it’s only a film costume—buttons add another level of gaudiness to the jacket. Metal buttons would ordinarily make any jacket look like a blazer, but Goldfinger’s dinner jacket still looks like a dinner jacket since the gold buttons somewhat match the colour of the lapels."

 I heartily recommend the site, which you can find HERE.

Bill Maher: "You're not even a proper liberal because you don't get free speech."

..."Yeah, liberals hate bullying alright but they're not opposed to using it when they causally through out words like bigot and racist," Maher said. 

"It does cower people into avoiding this debate. And if you're doing that, you don't get to wear the "Je suis Charlie" button; the button you wear is 'Je suis part of the problem.' And that goes for everybody," he added...

...Ironically you're not even a proper liberal because you don't get free speech. You're just a baby who can't stand to live in a world where you hear things that upset you... 

h/t Kathy S.

BRIAN LILLEY: Trudeau shows he's no leader

...For months the Conservatives have been saying Trudeau is "in way over his head." After initially choosing not to attack Trudeau, the NDP have also begun to target the Liberal leader saying Justin doesn't have the experience to lead.

This week he proved both parties right...

There is no low too low for anti-Israel activists

From Legal Insurrection:

Anti-Israel activists in New York City have started a campaign as part of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement to try to prevent City Council members and other politicians from visiting Israel. A coalition of 40 groups, most of which are quite small but including the usual suspects like the inaccurately named Jewish Voice for Peace are leading the effort.

At a NY City Council meeting today, anti-Israel activists disrupted a vote commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, shouting for one of the council members not to travel to Israel, as reported by Jacob Kornbluh at Jewish Political News & Updates website, which has video:

Pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activists disrupted the City Council’s stated meeting on Thursday while members were voting on a resolution commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

The protesters started yelling, “shame on you, Melissa”, “why are you supporting an apartheid” and “Palestinian lives matter.”

After five minutes of yelling and screaming, the some 40 protesters were ordered to leave and escorted out the balcony.

Council member Cory Johnson called it “incredibly disrespectful and offensive. Simply awful.” Councilman Mark Weprin added, “The State of Israel has never supported the killing of innocent people, and they want to love in peace.”

“I am still shaken, upset and angry,” Councilman David Greenfield. “Shame on them for hating Jews.”

“But I’m pleased, because we can stop pretending that this is about Israel. What we saw here was blatant antisemitism, good old fashioned antisemitism,” Greenfield roared. “They were angry, you know why? because Hitler did not finish the job.”...

More HERE 

Thomas L. Friedman: The problem is Islamism

In National Post:

...Last week the conservative columnist Rich Lowry wrote an essay in Politico that contained quotes from White House spokesman Josh Earnest that I could not believe. I was sure they were made up. But I checked the transcript: 100% correct. I can’t say it better than Lowry did:

“The administration has lapsed into unselfconscious ridiculousness. Asked why the administration won’t say [after the Paris attacks] we are at war with radical Islam, Earnest on Tuesday explained the administration’s first concern ‘is accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism, and they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it.’

“This makes it sound as if the Charlie Hebdo terrorists set out to commit a random act of violent extremism and only subsequently, when they realized that they needed some justification, did they reach for Islam.

“The day before, Earnest had conceded that there are lists of recent ‘examples of individuals who have cited Islam as they’ve carried out acts of violence.’ Cited Islam? According to the Earnest theory … purposeless violent extremists rummage through the scriptures of great faiths, looking for some verses to cite to support their mayhem and often happen to settle on the holy texts of Islam.”

President Obama knows better. I am all for restraint on the issue, and would never hold every Muslim accountable for the acts of a few. But it is not good for us or the Muslim world to pretend that this spreading jihadist violence isn’t coming out of their faith community. It is coming mostly, but not exclusively, from angry young men and preachers on the fringe of the Sunni Arab and Pakistani communities in the Middle East and Europe.

If Western interventions help foster violent Islamic reactions, we should reduce them. To the extent that Muslim immigrants in European countries feel marginalized, they and their hosts should worker harder on absorption. But both efforts will only take you so far.

Something else is also at work, and it needs to be discussed. It is the struggle within Arab and Pakistani Sunni Islam over whether and how to embrace modernity, pluralism and women’s rights. That struggle drives, and is driven by, the dysfunctionality of so many Arab states and Pakistan. It has left these societies with too many young men who have never held a job or a girl’s hand, who then seek to overcome their humiliation at being left behind, and to find identity, by “purifying” their worlds of other Muslims who are not sufficiently pious and of Westerners whom they perceive to be putting Muslims down. But you don’t see this in the two giant Muslim communities in Indonesia or India.

Only Sunni Arabs and Pakistanis can get inside their narrative and remediate it. But reformers can only do that if they have a free, secure political space. If we’re not going to help create space for that internal dialogue, let’s just be quiet. Don’t say stupid stuff. And don’t hold airy fairy conferences that dodge the real issues, which many mainstream Muslims know and are actually eager to discuss, especially women.

The Arab journalist Diana Moukalled, writing in the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat last week, asked: “Don’t all these events now going on around us and committed in our name require us to break the fear barrier and begin to question our region and our societies, especially the ideas being trafficked there that have led us to this awful stage where we are tearing at one another’s throats — to mention nothing of what as a result also happens beyond our region?”

And a remarkable piece in The Washington Post Sunday by Asra Q. Nomani, an American Muslim born in India, called out the “honour corps” — a loose, well-funded coalition of governments and private individuals “that tries to silence debate on extremist ideology in order to protect the image of Islam.” It “throws the label of ‘Islamophobe’ on pundits, journalists and others who dare to talk about extremist ideology in the religion...

Tarek Fatah: The Left has failed to confront Islamism

As the world struggles to understand and cope with the rise of pan-Islamism and international jihadi terrorism within western countries, one thing is becoming increasingly clear.

The success of the Islamists is partly due to what I believe is a grand betrayal of civil society by the political left in the western democracies.

Instead of leading the fight against the fanatics’ religious obscurantism, they have embraced it.

The refusal of social democrats, liberals and leftists to stand up to Islamofascism in the democracies of Europe, North America, India and South Africa, has also had an unintended consequence.

It has paved the way for an anti-immigrant backlash against all non-whites, in which the left are portrayed as apologists for religious fanaticism.

An unnecessary rise of xenophobia that could have been avoided, had the left led the struggle against Islamofascism, is now entrenched.

Imagine if Labour in the UK, Democrats in the U.S., the Congress and CPM in India, socialists in France and the left in Canada had not catered to Islamists, but instead drawn a line in the sand on such issues as gender apartheid.

Think how different things would be today.

Instead we’ve had more than a decade of appeasement...

See also:  Jihadists Are Calling for New Attacks in Canada, Some on Oil and Media Companies

The same al Qaeda offshoot claiming responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo shootings is calling for lone-wolf attacks against other western nations—among them Canada—according to a private intelligence company, while an online jihadist calls for similar operations on western oil and media targets.

Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Intelligence—an American outfit monitoring global jihadist movements online—posted a report to its website showing a video of Nassar bin Ali al Ansi, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), encouraging terrorist actions in the West...

Obama's 'ordinary American' was Democratic Party staffer

The woman whose story of economic recovery was showcased by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address is a former Democratic campaign staffer and has been used by Obama for political events in the past.

Rebekah Erler has been presented by the White House as a woman who was discovered by the president after she wrote to him last March about her economic hardships. She was showcased in the speech as proof that middle class Americans are coming forward to say that Obama’s policies are working...

Andrew Lawton Vs Justin Trudeau

“Insults in general are not allowed for anyone" say Saskatoon Islamic idiots who want Sharia free speech restrictions for Canada

And special thanks to Pope Francis for giving incredibly stupid support to these Islamo-fascists:

SASKATOON – Some members of Saskatoon’s Muslim community say there is no true right to free speech. Holding signs that said “Freedom of speech has limits” and “Insults aren’t freedom of speech,” the group rallied Sunday outside of city hall.

While they say they condemn the recent attack in Paris against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for publishing depictions of the prophet Muhammad, rally-goers said the magazine’s cartoons went too far.

“We have to stop it, and we have to come to an intellectual debate,” said organizer Mustafa Mustaan.

“Whoever defends this insult has to know that they are accepting intellectual defeat because we, as human beings, are not to insult, but to intellectually debate each other.”

The group says Islam continues to face an unfair onslaught of insults daily.

“The insult is when my beliefs are made fun of, that’s when I’m insulted,” said Mustaan...

h/t Kathy S

Palestinians celebrate terrorist attack on innocents on public bus in Tel Aviv

Liel Suissa, an 8th grader from Bat Yam, was on his way to his new high school Wendesday morning, when a Palestinian terrorist armed with a knife began to attack people on the number 40 bus in central Tel Aviv. 

"The terrorist suddenly began stabbing," the 13-year-old recalled. "We all ran back. Most people came flying towards me.

"I was sitting on the bus and I heard people shouting. The terrorist had suddenly gone to the driver and stabbed him. He was shouting things, but I couldn't hear clearly. I saw him stab the driver, and I ran to the back with the others to get away from him. He approached us, I broke the window and got out."...

 Plus:  'I am knife' sweeps Twitter as people PRAISE Palestinian who stabbed 11 people on Israeli bus