Friday 27 May 2016

"Australia's Offshore Cruelty" May 23

Letter to International New York Times:
Roger Cohen bemoans Australia's migrant policy, specifically that of sending "boat people" to offshore holding camps. ("Australia's Offshore Cruelty", May 23)
In this criticism he is joined by many -- perhaps most -- of my fellow Australians.
But the solution is not to process those in the offshore camps to see if they are eligible for migration to Australia either as economic migrants or refugees. Reverting to that policy will only reintroduce the "pull factor". (The "push factors" are economic and war conditions in the source countries).
European leaders now admit that they underestimated the power of pull factors -- like the "refugees welcome" signs tweeted and Facebooked throughout the Middle East.
Australia recognised the danger of pull factors earlier than Europe and so stopped the lethal human trafficking.
Australia is a generous recipient of migrants and refugees. Whatever changes are made to our current imperfect system they must not be along Cohen's lines. That would only worsen things for Australians and migrants alike.
Peter F

etc..

Monday 23 May 2016

New Survey: Majority of Britons Do Not Think Islam is Compatible with British Values

Yet another poll showing that the people, if not the governments, in the west have clocked Islam for what it is. Horrid anti-democratic ideology.

Islamic extremism now a problem in Kosovo --- NYT

Yes it is indeed a fascinating article in today's International New York Times. I read it this morning. At once fascinating and deeply troubling. How could the US have let this happen under their noses? Answer in part is that some Kosovan Leaders did warn about the increasing influence of the horrid Saidi Arabia, but were rebuffed by EU bureaucrats who said not to worry, it was all part of freedom of religion.
Saudi should not be allowed to fund any mosques anywhere. That's what Lee Kwan-yew did in Singapore and it helped keep extremism out of that country.
Dump Saudi. Pernicious horrid country.
Another report.


Critics add fuel to Pope Francis' Islamic controversy | Communities Digital News

Thursday 19 May 2016

The Saudi Solution: Accommodations are plentiful in the kingdom for Sunni Muslim migrants :: Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes makes a good point, one I've seen mentioned only a few times before, which has gained no traction, but which should: why doesn't Saudi Arabia take more Syrian refugees?
Yet another example of Saudi being treated with kid gloves as an "ally", when they need to be brought to account for their promotion of violent jihad around the world (Wahhabis support of Talibani madrasas), in addition to their parsimony -- completely wiping their hands -- on this refugee issue.

Censorship in China Also Blocks Business Growth - WSJ

Tuesday 17 May 2016

Saturday 14 May 2016

Doublespeak on Islam | City Journal

This is a good article on London Mayor Sadiq Khan's troubling links with Islamic extremists.

Doublespeak on Islam

Say what you will about newly minted London mayor Sadiq Khan, but the man has chutzpah. When likely Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that he would make an exception to his hypothetical Muslim travel ban and welcome Khan to the United States, Khan demurred. "Donald Trump and those around him think that Western liberal values are incompatible with mainstream Islam," the Muslim mayor said. "London has proved him wrong."
Khan's assurances about "mainstream" Islam in Britain are undermined by the findings of an extensive recent survey of British Muslims. The study, conducted in connection with an April 2016 documentary, "What British Muslims Really Think," shows that hundreds of thousands of Khan's countrymen hold views utterly incompatible with those of free societies on matters of jihadism, politics, and culture. Consider that, of the 1,081 individuals surveyed to represent the views of Britain's more than 3 million Muslims:
Only 74 percent completely condemn "suicide bombing to fight injustice";
Only 66 percent completely condemn stoning those who commit adultery;
Only 53 percent completely condemn violence against those who mock Muhammad;
Only 34 percent would contact police if they believed someone close to them was involved with jihadism;
23 percent believe Sharia law should replace British law in areas with large Muslim populations;
52 percent believe homosexuality should be illegal;
31 percent believe polygamy should be legal;
39 percent believe women should always obey their husbands;
35 percent believe Jews have too much power in the UK.
These indicators only confirm how seeds of Islamist supremacism have spread throughout British society; chilling episodes over the last decade have made the dangers clear. Britons remember, of course, the 7/7 jihadist attacks in London in 2005, but much more recently, at least 1,500 British Muslims have emigrated to join ISIS, and outspoken Islamist cleric Anjem Choudary has been charged with supporting the group. In 2014, the Rotherham Borough Council released a report detailing a sexual-abuse scandal in which at least 1,400 children from 1997 to 2013 were "raped by multiple perpetrators, abducted, trafficked to other cities in England, beaten and intimidated." Reportedly, those who knew of the crimes remained silent for fear of being called racists, as the perpetrators were Muslim immigrants.
Also in 2014, a government investigation uncovered Operation Trojan Horse, an organized effort to Islamize Birmingham schools. Such episodes would not have come as a surprise to anyone who read British journalist Melanie Phillips's 2007 book, Londonistan.
As Daniel Johnson writes of Sadiq Khan's hometown:
Here in London, which is home to about a third of British Muslims (including thousands of migrants who live below the radar of the authorities), we have already seen the assertion of power by political Islam. The takeover of Tower Hamlets by a corrupt Islamist politician, Lutfur Rahman, may be a harbinger of things to come. Last year he was removed from office by special commissioners, but for five years Rahman and his cronies ran a borough of nearly 300,000 people, distributing a budget of more than £1 billion. . . . The Muslim "block vote" is such a formidable electoral force that for Islamists to dominate a city it does not need to have a Muslim majority.
Khan, Johnson writes, "has worked hard at projecting a moderate image as a modern, liberal Muslim with no sectarian baggage. He no longer protests, as he did in 2004, that Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi perhaps the most influential preacher in the whole Islamic world—is 'not an extremist'. . . . He has carefully distanced himself from Babar Ahmad, who was later convicted of terrorist offences, and other extremists with whom he was once associated." Khan's other dubious associations are worth noting. He reportedly shared a platform on at least nine occasions with alleged Islamic State-supporting South London cleric Suliman Gani; attended a 2006 rally against the publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad, headlined by Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood-linked Dr. Azzam Tamimi, who threatened "fire . . . throughout the world" if publishers failed to cease running such cartoons; represented anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in an attempt to overturn the U.K.'s ban on his entrance to the country; and consulted with the defense team for Zacharias Moussaoui, the would-be twentieth hijacker of 9/11.
Johnson chronicles Khan's extensive record as a solicitor representing Islamic extremists. Most notoriously, he spoke in favor of incorporating Sharia law into the British legal system in 2004, saying, "There are some . . . uncontroversial areas of Islamic law which could easily be applied to the legal system . . . in the UK." One of these uncontroversial areas was polygamy, the recognition of which would allow Muslim husbands in the U.K. to enjoy tax exemptions on inheritance for multiple spouses. Khan also spoke out against laws stopping forced marriages. And in a 2009 interview with Iran's English-language Press TV, Khan referred to so-called moderate Muslims as "Uncle Toms."
Does all of this reflect compatibility between London's "mainstream" Islam and Western liberalism? The most charitable interpretation of Khan's words and actions would be similar to that taken by the Obama administration regarding Iran's jihadist leaders—that their words are "merely for domestic political consumption to appease the hardliners." Yet, even if one accepts such rationalizations,  the existence of such a powerful contingent of "hardliners"—in Khan's case, in the heart of the West—is hardly reassuring.
Khan has spoken of how he will back Britain's Jews "when it comes to the challenges the Jewish community will face," and reportedly believes his disgraced anti-Semitic Labour Party colleagues ought to "undergo training on tackling anti-Semitism." Khan also previously voted for gay marriage, which puts him further at odds with the Islamists with whom he has interacted in the past. Could it be that his liberal words and gestures are the ones meant "for domestic political consumption"?
Either way, Khan's response to Trump was telling, especially when he said: "Trump's ignorant view of Islam could make both of our countries [the U.S. and Great Britain] less safe—it risks alienating mainstream Muslims around the world and plays into the hands of extremists." Here, he uses the same rhetoric as other Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups in the West, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which paints Westerners as aggressors who incite jihadism with their words, instead of holding jihadists responsible for their own savagery.
If Sadiq Khan truly wishes to separate himself from Islamists and establish himself as a Western liberal, he would proclaim that words and cartoons don't kill people, jihadists do, and that totalitarian Islamist ideology has no place in Western democratic societies. And if Khan's London really is the bastion of liberalism that he claims, he will be joined by thousands of Muslims in support of such words and efforts. We probably shouldn't hold our breath.
Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) has written for The Federalist, PJ Media, and Conservative Review. He is founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media LLC, a media consulting and publication advisory firm. You can find his work at benweingarten.com.
Photo by Rob Stothard/Getty Images

Friday 13 May 2016

Jacobinism: Labour's Impoverished Expectations [on London's new Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan]

In the left of centre Jacobinism
The new mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, does indeed have strong and indefensible links to extremist, murderous, anti-Semitic coreligionists, the likes of Jew-hater Yusuf al Qaradawi and the Hitler-loving fascist pastor Louis Farrakhan. 
Maajid Nawaz also wrote about Khan recently. Khan's not an extremist, but shows bad judgement in who he's hung out with; shorter Nawaz. 
It didn't go well for Zac Goldsmith, Khan's opponent, when he raised these connections during the campaign. He was called a racist and islamophobe (of course). 
But the facts, and history, don't go away. 
What are Khan's true allegiances?  He went to the holocaust memorial, this week, as his first mayoral duty. Good stuff. But is he just biding time till his inner Louis or his inner Yusuf emerges?
/Snip
Sadiq Khan's extravagant recent claim that "I have spent my whole life fighting extremism" is entirely false. On the contrary, he has supported extremists, he has aligned with extremists, he has shared their platforms, he has circulated petitions advancing their arguments and interests, he has euphemised their blood-curdling incitement as mere "flowery words", and he has repeatedly used his position as a human rights advocate and an MP to lend extremists' arguments a spurious legitimacy. And while he has energetically defended the rights of Al Qaeda sympathisers and operatives like Babar Ahmad and Shaker Aamer, Khan has had precious little to say about a campaign of incitement - exposed in the Wimbledon Guardian as far back as 2010 - by the sectarian organisation Khatme Nabuwwat to boycott and ostracise peaceful Ahmadi Muslims, conducted for years on his own south London doorstep, and supported by the imam of the mosque he attends. 

The Arab Withering - NYTimes.com

Roger Cohen in the New York Times considers Robert F. Worth 's book on the failures of the so-called Arab Spring, "A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS". 
/ Snip
Who should be blamed for this epic failure? The Muslim Brotherhood for reneging on its promise not to contest Egypt's first post-uprising presidential election? The Egyptian army and corrupt "deep state" for never giving the Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi ("the country's first democratically elected president in six thousand years of history") the means to govern? Morsi himself for his foolish power grabs, inept rigidity and inability to realize that he had to demonstrate he was everyone's president, not merely the Brotherhood's? Egyptian liberals for so quickly abandoning the idea of democracy to side with the military strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his bloody coup that the United States never called by its name?
Or was it Syria's Bashar al-Assad for burying the Syrian uprising in rivers of blood? Or Saudi money cynically deployed against every agent of liberalizing transformation? Or a wavering Obama administration that, as in Iran in 2009, and Syria since 2011, has wrapped itself in righteous caution as the winds of change coursed through the Middle East? Or the feckless West that intervened in Libya only to abandon it? Or, simply, the impossibility of delivering more liberal, representative societies to a region where political Islam invokes not the power of the people but the all-pervasive authority of God?

Thursday 12 May 2016

All Muslim Terrorists are Crazy | Frontpage Mag

"And what is mental illness anyway?"
Indeed. In fact, reading, and then *believing* the contents of the Koran, *makes* you mentally ill.
A crazily amusing (if it weren't so dangerously silly) take, by David Greenfield, on the first reaction of the Left in the West at learning of every new atrocity by the votaries of Muhammad: "It's nothing to do with Islam; it's the mental illness wot done it".

Homo Kaplanensis: “Europe Was Defined By Islam. And Islam Is Redefining It Now.” > Hugh Fitzgerald

An article about Europe and Islam in the Atlantic.
Interesting that The Atlantic should be so soft in this article as they've been sound in the past. Eg Graeme Woods' excellent "What ISIS really wants"
Hugh Fitzgerald's does a good critique in The New English Review. He's a bit long winded, but worth the time. He knows his stuff.
His two main points: (1) Europe was not defined by Islam. And (2) it will define Europe's future only if Europe lets it, in which case the outcome cannot be good.
Looking around at Islam in practice there's nothing positive it can add to Europe's modern enlightenment values. At least I can't think of anything. All I can see are Islamic values that will drag Europe back centuries. There's growing alarm at that realisation. See Trevor Phillips in the post this morning.

What British Muslims really think

The ICM Research was done for the Channel 4 Documentary, which aired on April 13.  I've posted before about it, but herewith the direct link.
Summary from Gatestone Institute:

  • The 615-page survey found that more than 100,000 British Muslims sympathize with suicide bombers and people who commit other terrorist acts. Moreover, only one in three British Muslims (34%) would contact the police if they believed that somebody close to them had become involved with jihadists.
  • 23% of British Muslims said Islamic Sharia law should replace British law in areas with large Muslim populations.
  • 52% of the Muslims surveyed said they believe homosexuality should be illegal, compared to 22% of non-Muslim Britons. Nearly half believe it is unacceptable for a gay or lesbian to teach their children. At the same time, almost a third (31%) of British Muslims think polygamy should be legalized. Among 18-to-24-year-olds, 35% think it is acceptable to have more than one wife.
  • Thirty-nine percent of Muslims surveyed believe women should always obey their husbands, compared to 5% for non-Muslims. One in three British Muslims refuse completely to condemn the stoning of women accused of adultery.

And James Delingpole in the Speccie: "Trevor Phillips's documentary on Muslims was shocking -- but not surprising".
That's true.  At least for those paying attention.  Which means those who have followed various blogs critical of Islam(ism).



Liberals can no longer ignore mass migration and threat to Britain by TREVOR PHILLIPS  | Daily Mail Online

Trevor Philipps is a man of the left and a primary promoter over the years of immigration and multiculturalism. So when even he warns of the divisive effects of Muslim immigration you know you've got a real problem.
I just wish he'd run it in something like the Guardian, the Independent, or even the Times. Because the Daily Mail is rather associates with the right and some certified loonies. Still , it's got huge audiences, including online. (I guess The Guardian, at least, would not run such an article. Too much outside their fixed world view).
Question is, what to do now? Is it too late? Knowing, as we do, that Phillips is spot on with his warnings.

Wednesday 11 May 2016

The "Shocking Document" that Shaped the Middle East Turns 100 :: Daniel Pipes

Interesting history of western perfidy in the Middle East with some thoughts that the war way forward is not rests listing the failed states into something approachinggoverna Le, but to allow the formation of micro states in religious and ethnic grounds, at least in Iraq and Syria: Sunni areas, Shia areas and Kurdish areas.

Free Speech and Islam — The Left Betrays the Most Vulnerable | Quillette

Tuesday 10 May 2016

"Clash of values a thorny issue in immigration", May 9

LATER: published in SCMP, on 14 May, here

Mike Rowse is spot on, when he points out that Europe's concerns about immigration are not simply about numbers, but specifically that the immigrants are overwhelmingly Muslim. "No use beating about the bush", he says.  Quite. (Clash of values a thorny issue in immigration, May 9).

The reason that so many parties of the right are rising in Europe now is that mainstream political parties have failed to address their publics' concerns about this awkward reality.  Instead they have studiously avoided grappling with the immigrating cultures, with values often inimical to open, tolerant, democratic societies.  And they have done this in the name of multiculturalism, an implicit belief that all cultures are equal.

If the rise of the far-right is to be halted, then mainstream parties need to take a much more robust approach to the beliefs and practices of those Muslim immigrants who try to reverse hard-won gains of western societies.  They need to staunchly defend freedom of speech (even if it offends), freedom of conscience, and the equal treatment of women and minorities.

This in turn requires belief in the basic decency of western values, not kowtowing to bogus cultural equivalence: "all cultures are the same".  No they are not.

Well said, Mike.

Peter F etc....

Monday 9 May 2016

A U.S. Admiral’s Bluntness Rattles China, and Washington - NYTimes.com

Note the nasty, brutish racism of China's official mouthpiece Xinhua, in speaking of Admiral Harris' Japanese mother. 
He speaks clearheaded, blunt words about China's expansionism in the South China Seas. 
Some grinds say the Australia should not get involved in supporting US pushback to China. I don't agree. Now, more than any time post war, we need to counter China's naked hegemony. 
/Snip
HONOLULU — He has called China "provocative and expansionist," accusing it of "creating a Great Wall of sand" and "clearly militarizing" the disputed waters of the Western Pacific. "You'd have to believe in a flat earth to think otherwise," he said in one appearance before Congress.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/07/world/asia/us-admiral-harry-harris.html?referer=


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Sunday 8 May 2016

Exxon Mobil Backs FuelCell Effort to Advance Carbon Capture Technology - NYTimes.com

/Snip
considered a company to watch. Its technology promised to help economically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, which could help combat climate change. The Danbury, Conn., company might be able to make a difference, experts said, if only it had a partner with really deep pockets.
Now it has one.
In an agreement announced on Thursday, Exxon Mobil said it had tightened an existing relationship with FuelCell in hopes of taking the technology from the lab to the market.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/science/exxon-mobil-backs-fuelcell-effort-to-advance-carbon-capture-technology.html?referer=


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Thursday 5 May 2016

Sunni Islam’s Strategy In The On-Going 'Clash Of Civilizations' - Right Side News

The GOP Gets What It Deserves - WSJ

Another insightful Bret Stephens article.
Note that "America First", Trump's strapline for his foreign policy, such as it is, is the same as that before WW2, which would have had America stay out of that war entirely. (As it was, late as they were, they were critical to allied victory).
Do we really want a solitary US?
No. In a word.
The world would have been and would be a much worse and more dangerous place without the world's de facto policeman. (Sorry, policeperson).
Major reason not to vote Trump.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-gop-gets-what-it-deserves-1462231897

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Monday 2 May 2016

Ignoring the Politics of Bad News - NYTimes.com

An interesting corrective to the Cassandras and Chicken Littles.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/us/politics/us-elections-economy.html?referer=https://www.google.com.hk/


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How China is building the future in sub-Saharan Africa – and why the US needs to rethink its approach | South China Morning Post

Congo's mineral wealth is estimated at US $24 trillion. As the article here says, it's a rich country with poor people. And the economic model they prefer is China's over America's (or the West's).
I saw with mine own eyes when I drove from Cape Town to Cairo in 2011 the difference that China's roads and bridges have made to Africans. Wherever there's a road there you have increased wealth.
/Snip
Roads, schools and hospitals built by the Chinese have transformed the country's economic prospects. Indeed, Congo has posted a respectable annual average economic growth rate of close to 8 per cent since 2010, well above the average for Sub Saharan Africa.