The mosque is the heart of Islam, shut down the mosque to shut down Islamocrimes.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Trump: ‘Absolutely no choice’ but to close mosques
Closing Mosques: Dishonest DC Media Blasts Trump For … Agreeing with European Socialists
Manhattanite Dan Friedman sent an email to his list today with a famous quote on Islamic fanaticism from Sir Winston Churchill’s engrossing chronicle, The River War: an account of the Reconquest of the Sudan. It prompted me to do something I had wanted to do after reading the book this summer, given the shambles of the U.S. war strategy against the Islamic State. A strategy now upended by the Islamic State massacre in Paris on November 13, 2015 that took the lives of 129 innocent civilians, injuring more than 352, 99 critically.
Today’s battle between French riot police and military against Islamic State holdouts in the predominately Muslim suburb of St. Denis, with 2 killed, 8 detained, four police wounded and the destruction of an apartment building followed a virtual declaration of War by French President Hollande. What followed was swift retaliation in Russian and French air raids against targets in Raqqa, Syria, the alleged capital of the self-declared Caliphate, the Islamic State.
I sent out to my email list a comment on the relevance of Churchill’s chronicle of the long battle to reclaim the Sudan from the Mahdi, and his followers, the Islamic State of fin de siècle 19th Century. Brig. Gen. (ret.) Ernie Audino, former U.S. Army Combat Adviser to the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq said it was, “well put”. American Israeli, Dan Diker wrote from Jerusalem, “this is so relevant”. Diker is Fellow and Project Director, Political Warfare, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Research Fellow, International Institute for Counter Terrorism. Then there was this from former Canadian Forces member, who spent time in the Middle East and Latin America, counterterrorism expert, Royce de Melo:
We just need the same resolve like they had in the 19th century to do the job we need to do today. We in the West have been neutered in every aspect of our society, politics, foreign policy, work, behavior, attitudes, empathies, sentiments, way of thinking, etc. has resulted in the situation we have today.
There’s something I wrote to some friends today and my closing line has now become a favorite quote for some of these friends, “…appeasement, denial and complacency are the allies of evil.”
“We can keep ignoring the warnings of great people, but at some point it doesn’t matter because history won’t bend to the will of the fools who deny it.” – Dan Friedman
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.” – Sir Winston Churchill; (Source: The River War, first edition, Vol II, pages 248-250 London).
Dan: Have you read Churchill’s The River War: An Account of The Re-conquest of the Sudan? You should. It illustrates what the British with assistance of the Egyptian Khedive did to eliminate the Mahdi (Ahmed Mohammed) and his 19th century version of ISIS in the Sudan. It is a fascinating tribute to the herculean tasks overcoming logistical hurdles that included shipping for Britain armored river steamers, railway engines, rails and ties and railway engineering troops down the lower to build a railroad skirting the Upper Nile to supply British, Egyptian and Sudanese units with arms, food, water to crush the Mahdi’s forces at the keystone battle of Omdurman on September 2, 1898. Churchill, as a journalist participated in that critical battle armed with his trusty German Luger pistol. The River War victory against the Mahdi fanatics also settled the spheres of influence between the French, Belgians and British in equatorial Africa. However, it took the British almost 13 years following the collapse of the year long siege at Khartoum on January 26, 1885 and the unfortunate death and beheading of my last name sharer, Maj. Gen. Sir Charles Gordon aka “Chinese” Gordon, the Governor General of Sudan appointed by the Khedive. Gordon had earlier achieved fame when he and British officers put down the Taipeng Rebellion in Imperial China in 1862 with nothing more than his fabled walking stick and a host of Chinese warriors. The wildly popular Gordon among the British polity was sent to put down a rebellion and free Sudanese slaves, only to be virtually abandoned by British Prime Minister William Gladstone. Think of Obama as the equivalent of Gladstone.
Go watch the 1966 epic film, Khartoum, on-line starring the late Charleton Heston as Gordon and Sir Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi, Ahmed Mohammed. Or better yet, pick up Churchill’s River War for his view of the long tough slog to victory and the vanquishing of the 19th Century version of the Islamic State. Proves that with resolve, discipline and splendid field generalship of Field Marshal H.Herbert Kitchener, abetted by modern technology, in that case ,Maxim machine guns, Sunni Salafists were defeated. It is a different time now, with different war making technology. However, the lesson from re-reading of Churchill’s River War, is if you don’t resolve to lead a war against jihadists, whether the Mahdi at Khartoum or ISIS at Raqqa,, you will fail as a world power.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.
The format of the Democratic debate was altered at the last minute to give each candidate time to give a statement about the Paris terror attacks at the beginning of the debate.
Speaking first, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said that, “Together, leading the world, this country will rid our planet of this barbarous organization called ISIS.” However, it remains to be seen how Sanders would lead this fight since he advocates a non-interventionist approach and says that theU.S. should only have a very limited supporting role in the fight in Syria. Sanders believes that the fight against the Islamic State can only be effectively waged by Muslims.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly identified the enemy as jihadists, rejecting the non-descript terminology used by the Obama Administration who calls them “violent extremists.” Clinton made no sweeping promises as Sanders. Rather she said she would be laying out “in detail what I think we need to do to with our friends and allies — in Europe and elsewhere — to do a better job of coordinating efforts against the scourge of terrorisim.” She stressed that “all the other issues we want to deal with depend on us being secure and strong.”
In his opening statement, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley said that the events in Paris spoke to the new face of “conflict and warfare” in the 21st century, and as such, required “new thinking, fresh approaches.” O’Malley remarked that “we have a lot of work to do to better prepare out nation and to better lead this world into this new century.”
Polling shows that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dominated last night’s Democratic presidential debate, particularly on national security.
Public Policy Polling came out with the first post-debate poll that showed 67% of Democratic primary voters declaring Clinton the overall winner of the second presidential primary debate and 75% saying they most trust her on national security of the three candidates. The following is a summary of the national security positions taken by each candidate during the debate:
Hillary Clinton
She aligned herself closely with President Obama throughout the debate but presented three areas of difference on Islamist extremism: Identification of the enemy; support for Syrian rebels and an implicit criticism of President Obama for suggesting that “containment” of the Islamic State is a sign of success.
Right off the bat, Clinton repeatedly used Islamic terminology to define the enemy as “jihadist.” She also seemed to understand that the root of violent jihad is in the Islamist ideology, which she emphasized is not subscribed to by most Muslims. She described the adversary as “Islamists who are jihadists,” but she did not discuss whether she believes that “moderate Islamists” like the Muslim Brotherhood should be embraced as allies against “jihadists” like the Islamic State.
The second point of difference came when she was asked about President Obama’s claim that the Islamic State is “contained” shortly before the Paris attacks. While Clinton avoided criticizing the president directly, she rejected containment as a measure of success, saying it is impossible to contain a group like the Islamic State and only its defeat is acceptable.
The third point of difference was on Syria. She explained that she urged President Obama to equip moderate Syrian rebels in the beginning of the civil war to prevent jihadists from creating a safe haven. Clinton believes that developing allies on the ground in Syria would have given us a valuable ally today.
Clinton also suggested a tougher approach towards the Gulf states and Turkey. She said it is time for them to “make up their mind about where they stand” on the fight against jihadism.
On the topic of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq that preceded the rise of the Islamic State and the collapse of Iraqi security forces, Clinton said that the withdrawal was in compliance with a U.S.-Iraqi agreement signed by the Bush Administration. After U.S. forces left, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki decimated the Iraqi security forces with his sectarianism and cronyism. This, combined with the civil war in Syria and other regional variables, enabled the Islamic State to seize large parts of Iraq.
She defended the NATO military intervention in Libya to topple Gaddafi by pointing out the large amount of American blood he had on his hands from supporting terrorism. Clinton also mentioned how the Libyans elected moderate leaders after he fell. She addressed the civil war in Libya by saying the U.S. should provide more support to the current moderate Libyan government.
On the topic of Syrian refugees, Clinton said she agrees in principle with bringing 65,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. (as O’Malley advocates) but only if they are completely vetted. Her tough language on vetting suggested that she envisions overhauling the process to become stricter, but she did not present a specific proposal.
Unlike Sanders, she would not commit to cutting the defense budget but promised to closely review military spending. She cited Chinese moves in the South China Sea and the increased aggressiveness of Russia, such as its broadcasting of a new drone submarine that can be equipped with tactical nuclear weapons.
Clinton is currently the frontrunner by a mile. She leads nationally with 55% in an average of polls; leads Iowa with 54%; is in second behind Sanders in New Hampshire with 43% and leads in South Carolina with 65%. You can read our factsheet on Clinton’s positions related to Islamism here.
Bernie Sanders
As we mentioned in our coverage of the recent Democratic forum, Sanders views the threat as being rooted in an Islamic ideology but—unlike Clinton—advocates a non-interventionist approach. His argument is that the U.S. should only have a very limited supporting role because the fight against the Islamic State can only be effectively waged by Muslims. He again stated that the fight with the Islamic State is part of a “war for the soul of Islam.”
Sanders rejected a strategy of pursuing regime change, apparently referring to the Syrian dictatorship and the removal of the Gaddafi regime in Libya when Clinton was Secretary of State. He cited U.S.-backed regime changes in places like Chile and Guatemala as counterproductive mistakes.
He spoke out in favor of cuts to the defense budget. He argued that U.S. military spending is far too high and that much of the excess costs are not even necessary for fighting terrorism.
Sanders is currently in second place overall. He is the runner-up nationally with 33%; is in second place in Iowa with 30%; leads in New Hampshire with 44% and is in second place in South Carolina with 17%. You can read our factsheet on Sanders’ positions related to Islamism here.
Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley
At the recent Democratic forum, O’Malley embraced the camp that believes Islamic terrorism is a byproduct of political grievances against the U.S. He did not repeat his ludicrous claim that U.S. troops overseas and the operation of Guantanamo Bay are the chief reasons for the strength of the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.
However, during the Saturday night debate, he acknowledged that the threat comes from an Islamic ideology. Unlike Clinton who defined the enemy as “jihadism,” O’Malley defined it as “radical jihadists”—which begs the question: What is a “non-radical jihadist?”
In describing where the Islamic State threat emerged from, O’Malley pointed to the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and especially the disbanding of the Iraqi army. He said that many of ISIS’ current members used to be a part of the Iraqi military until we fired them. There is truth to that statement, but it seems to suggest that O’Malley remains committed to the belief that the “root cause” of the Islamic State and other Islamist terrorists are mistreatment and political grievances, rather than ideology.
O’Malley continued to embrace a non-interventionist strategy, saying that the U.S. should not be trying to overthrow dictators. He then seemed to contradict himself when he said the U.S. should take the lead in fighting “evil.” He said his “new” foreign policy would be one of “engagement” and “identifying threats” as they gather.
On several occasions, O’Malley cited the need for human intelligence sources as part of his strategy—but that’s nothing new and it’s not a strategy. Everyone agrees that more human intelligence is needed.
He reiterated his support for bringing 65,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S., up from the current 10,000 that President Obama plans to bring in. He did not address how they would be vetted and taken care of, especially when a poll of Syrian refugees found that 13% feel positively or somewhat positively towards the Islamic State.
O’Malley is in last place among the three remaining candidates. He is in last with 3% nationally; last in Iowa with 5%; last in New Hampshire with 3% and last in South Carolina with 2%. You can read our factsheet on O’Malley’s positions related to Islamism here.
You can read the Clarion Project‘s comprehensive factsheets on each party’s presidential candidates’ positions related to Islamism by clicking here.
ABOUT RYAN MAURO
Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio. Read more, contact or arrange a speaking engagement.
RELATED ARTICLES:
No-Fly Zones, Military Spending, Confronting Putin: GOP Debate
Democrat Candidates: Wide Differences on Islamist Terror
In the wake of the terrorist attacks which killed at least 129 in Paris on Friday, people are asking why France in particular was targeted by the Islamic State. The Islamic State detests the entire Western world and seeks to destroy it and replace it with a global Islamist caliphate. Yet it prioritizes which countries to attack and when.
The reasons listed here are by way of explanation from the Islamic State’s point of view, to help our readers understand. They are not to be taken as a justification of the Islamic State’s actions, which ultimately are caused by their hateful extremist ideology.
Here are the top five reasons why the Islamic State attacked France and Paris in particular.
France has been fighting the Islamic State and other Islamists.
French President Francois Hollande led his country into airstrikes against the Islamic State, bombing targets in Syria for the past two months. It was the first country in Europe to join America in bombing ISIS targets in Iraq and has so far been the only European country to join airstrikes against ISIS in Syria.
France also led the fight against Islamists in North Africa, it was French soldiers that liberated Timbuktu from Islamist insurgents belonging to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali.
The Islamic State is therefore fighting those who fight it the most, in an effort to persuade the civilian population of France that the war is about French foreign policy and not about a global Islamist Caliphate and to cow them into submission through terror.
France has specifically named the Islamist ideology as the problem.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after the Charlie Hebdo attacks France is at war with radical Islam. The French Ambassador to America clarified afterwards, saying, “We are at war with radical Islam. It means that right now… Islam is breeding radicalism which is quite dangerous for everybody.” Not only has France named the problem but they are taking active steps against the Islamist ideology within France, not just against groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, but also against groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which promote the ideology of Islamism that leads to violent extremism.
France is standing up for its values and seeking to integrate Muslims
Prime Minister Manuel Valls explicitly stated, “We seek to establish a model of Islam that is fully integrated, fully compatible with the values of the Republic.” This is anathema to ISIS as they cannot countenance an integrated Islam which operates peacefully within a broader society. France is proactively attempting to integrate Muslims, which, if successful, would destroy the “Islam vs the world” narrative peddled by the Islamic State.
Paris represents the Enlightenment values of Western civilization.
The Islamic State decried the city as “the capital of prostitution and vice, the lead carrier of the cross in Europe — Paris.” Paris is at the center of European and Western fashion, culture and literature and one of the great historical cities of European civilization.
France is where much of the enlightenment took place and where modern ideas about citizenship, human rights and the separation between religion and state were first articulated and formed.
For an Islamic State obsessed with symbolism, an attack on Paris is an attack on European/Western enlightenment values.
The Islamic State is obsessed with history and honor.
France is an old country with a long history. The Islamic State has a laundry list of grievances against France going back a thousand years. ISIS also hates Europe in general for its colonial past.
It blames France, in particular, for the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate following the First World War. France was one of the leading countries involved in the crusades in the 11th century, and it is where the early Islamic Caliphate’s advance into Europe was halted by French ruler Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732.
The Islamic State is obsessed with seeing itself as the revived Muslim Caliphate. It is therefore essential to its worldview that Europe’s old colonial powers are defeated. For similar reasons, ISIS has long threatened to conquer Rome, which would represent a symbolic victory over the long defunct Roman Empire.
Without that, the Islamic State cannot claim to avenge the centuries old grievances with which it is obsessed and thus cannot fulfil its claims to restore the ‘lost honor’ of the immah.
RELATED ARTICLES:
50,000 Europeans Fighting for ISIS, Says Counter-Terror Chief
Belgian Government Admits It Has Lost Control of No-Go Zone
Gates of Vienna reports that a petition in the wake of the Paris terror attack seeking the halt of all refugee resettlement to the US from Middle Eastern countries has been placed on the White House ‘We the People’ petition site. Please go to GoV, see comments and follow links!
And, don’t forget that a sure fire way to stop the influx is to persuade Congress to use the POWER OF THE PURSE. Go here for our post yesterday on that effort. We must make our voices heard in a big way!
And, then call your members of Congress and U.S. Senators and tell them to pull the plug on the funding! (Remember that U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Lindsey Graham are pushing for $1 billion to be ADDED to a funding package to reach the Senate floor on or before December 11th to increase the Syrian flow to America).
I’m happy to report that our readers are more up on the news than I have been these last few days. Thanks to all of you who are sending me hot-off-the-press news on the roiling controversy about Syrian refugee resettlement AP (After Paris). I just don’t have the time to post it all!
Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority leader McConnell will be the ones who determine the fate of resettlement of Syrian refugees in the US this year (not the governors!). Kentucky is gradually becoming an important resettlement target and it’s been a mystery to me why McConnell has let it happen. I can only assume McConnell gets campaign contributions from industries, including the chicken processing industry, which needs cheap reliable laborers. For ambitious readers, we have a very large archive on Kentucky extending back many years (with many problems) here.
LOL! I did take a break today as Rush Limbaugh held forth for what I assume was much of his show and every time I turned on the TV I heard the “R” word (refugee). Heck, everyone is covering it, I reminded myself.
Here, at Politico, is a story from yesterday I’ve been meaning to get to.
Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful that governors across the country are speaking up, but even if you wish them to have the power to stop the resettlement (unless there was a Constitutional challenge which does need to get underway, but will take years!) there is really only one place it can be done quickly with any finality (for this year) and that is in Congress where the FUNDING MUST BE CUT OFF.
See our post on Saturday where I said just that—CONGRESS MUST USE ITS POWER OF THE PURSE!
The refugee resettlement contractors know that very well or they wouldn’t have had an emergency press conference call today!
Here is Politico telling us what the stakes are and informing us that what happens next will be the first crisis for new House Speaker Paul Ryan.
A cascade of Republicans on Monday implored the Obama administration to scrap plans to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States next year, saying they pose an unacceptable security risk in the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.
And, in a dramatic twist, the sudden standoff is raising the possibility of a government shutdown next month.
Throughout the day a host of Republican governors around the country, wary that refugees could end up in their home states, blasted President Barack Obama’s plans. But those governors lack real sway over the process, andsome are asking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to insert a provision in the Dec. 11 spending bill that would bar more Syrian settlers.
Did you see this? Lindsey Graham has backed off his earlier proposal to ADD funding for Syrian resettlement!
The politics are moving fast: The Democratic governor of New Hampshire, a Senate candidate, is siding with conservatives, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is reversing his support for a $1 billion spending bill intended to allow in more Syrian refugees after touting the measure just weeks ago. GOP leaders are keeping their options open as they mull whether to try to block new Syrian refugees by adding language to the must-pass spending bill.
[….]
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), one of the leading immigration hard-liners in the Capitol, sent a letter to colleagues calling for provisions in the omnibus spending bill that would give Congress more oversight over Syrian refugees.
[….]
Ryan and McConnell will have to decide quickly on a course of action as they confront the first potential legislative crisis since Ryan became speaker.
Please everyone, starting tomorrow call your Washington elected representatives and call the leadership—Ryan and McConnell—and let them know how you feel. And, keep calling through the Thanksgiving recess.
By the way, the resettlement contractors*** are ginning up their grassroots and the most maddening part of that is that they get to use your tax dollars to do it!
***Nine major federal contractors which like to call themselves VOLAGs (Voluntary agencies) which is such a joke considering how much federal money they receive:
RELATED ARTICLES:
Huckabee: Speaker Ryan should reject Syrian refugees or resign7
House Immigration Subcommittee to hold hearing on Syrian resettlement on November 19th
AP (After Paris) two Governors say don’t send Syrian refugees to my state
Guest post: Disillusioned Refugee Resettlement Worker Unloads
Breaking news: Michigan Gov. now says “no thanks” to Syrian refugees
White House Petition: Moratorium on all Middle Eastern refugee resettlement to America; sign it!
Arkansas U.S. Senator Tom Cotton “broke news” today that the U.S. “inadvertently” discriminates against Christians among Syrian Refugee Admissions.
At least that is the impression lent by the Washington Times, report this morning, “U.S. ‘discriminates’ against Christian refugees, accepts 96% Muslims, 3% Christians:”
Less than 3 percent of the Syrian refugees admitted to the United States so far are Christian and 96 percent are Muslim, the result of a referral system that Republican Sen. Tom Cotton says “unintentionally discriminates” against Christians.
State Department figures released Monday showed that the current system overwhelmingly favors Muslim refugees. Of the 2,184 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States so far, only 53 are Christians while 2,098 are Muslim, the Christian News Service reported.
Mr. Cotton and Sen. John Boozman, both Arkansas Republicans, called Monday for a moratorium on resettlements, a White House report on vetting procedures, and a re-evaluation of the refugee-referral process.
“[T]he United States’ reliance on the United Nations for referrals of Syrian refugees should also be re-evaluated,” said Mr. Cotton in a statement. “That reliance unintentionally discriminates against Syrian Christians and other religious minorities who are reluctant to register as refugees with the United Nations for fear of political and sectarian retribution.”
The current system relies on referrals from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Syria’s population in 2011 was 90 percent Muslim and 10 percent Christian, CNS said.
Mr. Cotton and Mr. Boozman called Monday for a temporary moratorium on resettlements and “a requirement that the President certify the integrity of the security vetting process as a condition of lifting the moratorium.”
“The American people have long demonstrated unmatched compassion for the world’s persecuted and endangered. But when bringing refugees to our shores, the U.S. government must put the security of Arkansans and all Americans first,” Mr. Cotton said. “No terrorist should be able to take advantage of the refugee process to threaten the United States.”
This confirms what Mike Bates and I reported in our June 2015 New English Review with Ann Corcoran. See: Trojan Horse Federal Refugee Program. Note this exchange:
Gordon: Ann, one of the most disturbing parts of this U.N. controlled program is the patent discrimination against endangered Christian refugees, legitimately, from places like Syria, Iraq and other locations. What is the evidence of that?
Corcoran: Let’s just take the Syrian refugee issue. So far the State Department has brought in a small number of Syrians, relatively speaking, into the country. One would think that we would be choosing first and foremost the Christians who are in real danger. But we are bringing mostly Sunni Muslims. There were about 800 Syrians who have been brought into the country in the last few years. Now the State Department and the U.N. have 11,000 in the pipeline waiting to come into the U.S.
But of the 800 that have come in so far, approximately 700 are Sunni Muslims, there were only 43 Christians among the Syrian refugees that have come in so far. That translates to approximately 92 percent of refugees coming in from Syria are Muslims.
I’m told that that is mostly because we are bringing them in from U.N. camps, where the Muslims are found. Christians do not go to the U.N. camps, but to Turkey if they get out of Syria at all, where they’re taken care of by the Syriac church.
That pattern of Christians avoiding UN refugee camps was also cited in our interview with Joseph Kassab of the Iraqi Christian Advocacy and Empowerment Institute in the November NER, Iraqi Christians Face Extinction:
Gordon: What are the current conditions of Iraqi Christian refugee camps in the Kurdish Region and what kinds of assistance are they receiving?
Kassab: The current conditions for Iraqi Christian IDPs are very chaotic and horrific. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) is doing its best to provide for them. However, they are unable to absorb more than 3 million refugees from Syria and Yazidis in their region. The Iraqi government has done nothing for its citizen IDPs. Corruption is very high among the Iraqi government officials and that by itself makes distribution of relief to its IDPs very poor. The UN and humanitarian local and international NGOs are unable to function properly due to lack of coordination and efficient capacity. Therefore people are losing hope and are availing of any opportunity to escape abroad. Christians are urban refugees-IDPs meaning that they do not live in UN refugee camps. Instead they seek shelter with relatives, in unfinished buildings, parks and churches. Overall, this support can be very short lived because volunteering always has a sunset.
Nina Shea of the Washington, DC-based Hudson Institute Center for Religious Freedom in a separate Fox News.com report added:
The UN is basically unloading; it’s emptying out its camps. It’s not seeking those who are outside its camps, much less giving affirmative action for those who are facing genocide. It’s just an expedience measure for those who are in their own camps, so non-Muslim minorities are poorly represented among them.
What is confounding was the petulant response of President Obama at his Antalya G20 Summit press conference on this matter. His remarks were allegedly directed at US Texas Senator Ted Cruz for having the effrontery to suggest that Syrian Christians and other threatened non-Muslim minorities be granted some preference for Refugee Admissions and Muslims sent to Muslim majority countries. The Washington Timesreported that, “at his G20 news conference Monday in Turkey, President Obama described as ‘shameful’ the idea of giving religious preferences to refugees.”That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,’ Mr. Obama said.”
We would suggest that the President bone up on how the UN controls who gets admitted as humanitarian refugees in America. That American taxpayers are funding this plenary program run by executive fiat under the Refugee Act of 1980 co-authored by Vice President Biden and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. It is time for Congress urged on by more than 27 Governors concerned about admission of possible terrorist refugees to do something. That is why US House Speaker Pat Ryan proposed a “pause” in the Syrian Refugee Program. If you listen to Deputy National Security Adviser, Ben Rhodes, Anne Richards, assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, they would have you believe that the 10,000 Syrian Refugees bring brought here in the current fiscal year were all vetted.
This morning I listened to a news conference convened by Voluntary Agencies and NGOs to combat the concerns of the more than two dozen governors. They represented that the UNHCR has an advanced retina scanning biometric system capable of capturing information to track the millions of displaced Syrian refugees in their camps. That DHS is capable of checking the records of these Syrian refugees despite evidence that documents may either not exist or are forged. Further, that if the Governors of states do not participate in resettlement programs that these very same Voluntary agencies stand ready to make more money to distribute them. Moreover, that if states deny those benefits to refugee clients, the clients with their green cards can simply pick up like any other US citizen and move to another state. To top things off, they represented that no terrorists have been admitted as refugees. They obviously forgot about the refugee Tsarneav brothers who perpetrated the bloody Boston Marathon bombing. Or the two Iraqi asylees, caught in a 2011 FBI sting in Kentucky purchasing weapons to be sent to Al Qaeda. Then think of the dozens of Soimali emigre youths recruited by radical Imams to fight and die for Al Shabaab in Somalia. Consider the Somali emigre aircraft cleaner who had the run of the Twin Cities airport who left to fight and die for ISIS in Syria. Listen to this Syrian Refugee Admissions press conference.
Yesterday, we reported that Florida Governor Rick Scott sent a letter to US House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggesting that for all intent and purposes state governors have no legal standing to contest the Refugee Admissions Program, but that Congress does. He wrote:
It is our understanding that the state does not have the authority to prevent the federal government from funding the relocation of these Syrian refugees to Florida even without state support. Therefore, we are asking the United States Congress to take immediate and aggressive action to prevent President Obama and his administration from using any federal tax dollars to fund the relocation of up to 425 Syrian refugees (the total possible number of refugees pending for state relocation support at this time) to Florida, or anywhere in the United States, without an extensive evaluation of the risk these individuals may pose to our national security.
As the federal elected body that exercises oversight and authorizes federal spending, please take any action available through the powers of the United States Congress to prevent federal allocations toward the relocation of Syrian refugees without extensive examination into how this would affect our homeland security.
Note what my Florida State House Representative, Mike Hill, a graduate of the US Air Force Academy and veteran said in a Pensacola News Journal article on the Governor’s action:
If they come from a country that fosters, supports or defends terrorism as a legitimate activity to achieve a goal, then it doesn’t matter if there is a small number or large number of refugees coming from those nations. We must refuse them entry without a robust vetting process, which we currently do not have.
The first test of that may come on Thursday at a House Immigration Sub Committee Hearing Chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy. The lineup of witnesses includes:
‘Ms. Anne C. Richard (Invited)
Assistant Secretary
Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, United States Department of StateMs. Barbara L. Strack (Invited)
Chief, Refugee Affairs Division, Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations Directorate
United States Citizenship and Immigration ServicesMr. Seth Jones
Director
International Security and Defense Policy Center, RAND CorporationMr. Mark Krikorian
Executive Director
Center for Immigration StudiesMr. Mark Hetfield
President and Chief Executive Officer
HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, one of nine federal resettlement contractors)
Let’s see if the US Refugee Admissions Program executives at the State Department and DHS/ICE show up for this House Immigration Committee hearing. Stay tuned for developments.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.
It is like the death of a loved one. The death of our city that we love despite its failings, misdeeds, and particular misbehavior that I have been chronicling over the past fifteen years. A city is more than its current events. And today the heart of our city is broken. We do not have the fibre of Israelis who live with miraculous vitality in a permanent state of war & peace, but Parisians are not entirely devoid of courage and sharp instincts in the face of utmost danger. Anecdotes and eyewitness testimony are slowly emerging. The hard facts are at a minimum.
A soft spoken young man in an elegant overcoat describes the scene at the café on Rue de Charonne. He was present, he saw people picked off like sitting ducks. “They didn’t have a chance.” And yet he himself cannot believe what he saw. The Public Prosecutor delivers official information in an appropriately neutral tone. A hundred shell casings are left at each of the cafés attacked. No one was spared. Those who are not dead are in desperate condition.
It was to be expected, but it is shocking, unreal. Friday night it seemed that the whole city was screaming with sirens. As you followed events on television you could hear the broadcast sirens echoing the wails that came from the streets and boulevards. Who doesn’t have a friend who was in the Bataclan music hall or looking down from his apartment at dead bodies that only a short while before had been eating, drinking, laughing, enjoying life?
In the global village, grieving families just a few days ago witnessed the massacre in Beirut or sobbed with the bereaved of the Sharm el Sheik-St. Petersburg flight. And now it is on their doorstep and has ripped apart their lives forever. We don’t have to tell Israelis how it feels. But Europeans must wake up to the kinship they so earnestly tried to ignore. Last week a French jihadi was arrested before going into action. He had ordered an army knife and two face masks from a firm in China. I suppose, in his infinite intelligence, he thought an order from a Chinese company would be undetectable. Or maybe he was attracted by the discount price? Well, the cheap packaging fell apart in transit, or so we are told, and a postal employee informed the police of the delivery of the killer knife. The young man intended to slaughter sailors at the Toulon naval base. A smartass TV commentator, implying that the police had over-reacted, shrugged it off. He said it was la guerre des boutons which, freely translated, means kids playing cops and robbers. “Like what’s happening in Israel right now,” he added.
The knifings, firebombings, car rammings, and rock bashings… child’s play to this snide observer. I honestly can’t remember which anchor or expert it was, there are so many of the same stripe. Plentiful as the punk jihadis that poison our lives. The widespread consistent errors of appreciation on all that touches Israel and the Jews did not cause the November 14th Paris massacre; it was waiting to happen and nothing could have prevented it or another, similar one. But the massacre may well lead to the long awaited recognition that jihad strikes in Israel and in Europe with same genocidal hatred from the same source. The cold indifference to the wave of knife attacks in Israel this fall, the perverse reverse chronology that made Israeli forces guilty of gunning down Palestinians that (admitted in a whisper) had in fact tried or perhaps in some cases succeeded in stabbing…well, you know, a colon, or ultra-religious deserving victim… The tally of dead Palestinians was brandished with the righteous indignation that has been digging into our souls since the dawn of the 21st century. No gory details of the suffering inflicted on Jews in Israel were ever given in French media. Nothing that could make you taste the blood and feel the blade digging into your spine, your heart, your guts.
Now blood has been spilled in the streets of Paris. Except for the misfired explosive vests outside the soccer stadium, all the other attacks took place in the 10th and 11th arrondissements, on streets and boulevards that converge at Place de la République. Sébastien Selam was slaughtered and mutilated in the 10th arrdt, Ilan Halimi worked in a cell phone shop on boulevard Voltaire in the 11th arrdt. The first recorded public cries of Death to the Jews were heard in October 2000 at Place de la République in a pro-Palestinian demonstration focused on the “death” of Mohamed al Dura. Last week a small clutch of Salafists shimmied one of those huge parallel-to-the-ground Palestinian flags and chanted “Arms for Hamas, Arms for Jihad.” In the summer of 2014 pro-Hamas caliphators brandishing the black flag of jihad massed around the statue of Marianne in the Place de la République, screaming for Jewish blood and.
Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, was defiled. The way Swedish women and forlorn British girls are defiled. Now, French people doing what French people do on a Friday night were mowed down. The way Jews in the Hyper Cacher were executed. Daesh has proudly signed the massacre of the “Crusaders,” and promised more of the same if France does not cease and desist from meddling in Iraq and Syria. Ha! Sounds familiar. Muslims would stop stabbing Jews to death in Israel if the Zionists ended the Occupation. Don’t bet on it. Cease and desist is the first in a long line of orders that will be barked at us in the coming months. Or years. Until we decide to go on the offensive.
The otherwise ineffectual President Hollande has promised a no holds barred fight against Daesh at home and abroad. French media, as far as I could see, have not dared to dissociate the massacre from the Islam that inspires it. The same media that were gushing over the refugees a few weeks ago are now reporting that one of the shahids who jumped the gun outside the Stade de France was carrying a Syrian passport stamped with a passage through Leros in Greece on October 3rd. Exactly what we expected.
A walk through the Marais early Saturday afternoon. Most of the shops were closed. Shabat, for some, the bloody events for others. So few cars in the streets, so few people strolling where on a normal Saturday afternoon the sidewalks would be overflowing. We had taken to joking about it: looking down the rue des Francs Bourgeois at the never-ending crowd, we would say “the refugees are coming.” It looked so much like the human chain snaking through Slovenian fields. No soldiers, no police in the Marais this Saturday. So strange. Is it ominous? Does it mean there’s no one left to protect the Jews now that the “Crusaders” are targeted?
Sunday morning shopping in an open market is almost a religion in France. This morning, heartbroken television cameras panned the dark empty alleys of the Marché Richard Lenoir where the ordinary cheerful bustle always impresses me as a model of peaceful coexistence. People of all origins and classes mingle and brush up against each other in the narrow aisles, all with the same goal of filling baskets and carts with good things to eat. Whether selling their own produce or stock that comes from the giant wholesale market at Rungis, salt-of-the-earth vendors, up since the break of dawn, exposed to the elements, lugging crates and arranging the merchandise with loving care, sell at a fast clip without a pause and never a complaint. The Richard Lenoir market is located in what we could call the massacre neighborhood, not far from theCharlie Hebdo offices, now vacated, and the modest restaurants targeted Friday night.
Eagles of death Metal, the American band that was playing at the Bataclan, has performed in Israel. The Bataclan was owned by Jews who sold it only two months ago. But let us take the mass murderers at their word: this time they were aiming at the Crusaders, the Christians. Most of the victims will turn out to be young people. Quite a few journalists enjoying a night out found themselves in “civilian garb” at the center of the action. It will change their world view and their discourse.
Though many French journalists (or is it coming directly from the infamous Agence France Presse?) have taken out of mothballs their al Aqsa Intifada misnomer, kamikazes, they are fostering no illusions about the legitimate aspirations of the shahids who have wreaked havoc in Paris. What a pity that it has taken so much bloodshed to ignite the spark that could bring together the decent citizens of the free world. Prime Minister Manuel Valls promises to annihilate, here and abroad, the forces that are attacking us. Public gatherings are prohibited at the moment, because of the security risk, but people come to city squares to light candles, shed tears, leave bouquets and messages of grief and defiance. Handmade signs declare Même pas peur (not even afraid), adding “We are Paris” to the “Je suis Charlie” stickers pasted to the base of the Marianne in January. “Pray for Paris” signs with the same funereal Je suis Charlie graphics are posted on the gates of churches.
The facts, as I said, are still at a minimum. The media have finally pronounced the name of the French shahid identified at the Bataclan by his severed finger: Ismael Omar Mostefai. A petty criminal convicted eight times but never sent to prison. Flagged but obviously not followed by security services. He went to Turkey in 2014 and, presumably, from there to Syria. Three alleged accomplices have been arrested in Molenbek (near Brussels), headquarters of some of our famous Islamic killers, platform of the weapons trade, cornucopia of Kalachnikovs. The thwarted Thalys train shahid set out on his mission with a suitcase full of weapons from his sister’s apartment in Molenbek.
Flagged radicals, networks, cells, Daesh nomads, hate preachers, and manifestos of jihad conquest…it’s all out there, all so familiar, so hotly active, toying with the soft underbelly of our democracies. Barbarians. And why are they getting away with it? We are not a decadent empire that deserves to be destroyed. They are not a daunting invulnerable gigantic monster gobbling us up like peanuts. Much is made today, by experts and commentators, of the military prowess of the three teams that shot up Paris Friday night. They’re not bumbling amateurs like the Thalys jerk whose Kalachnikov jammed (but he managed to do quite a bit of damage with his handgun and box cutter). They’re not clumsy fumblers like Glam who shot himself in the leg and only managed to kill one young woman but never made it to shoot up the Crusaders in the church at Villejuif. These guys were organized! It took planning. Nerves of steel to mow down people having a drink at a sidewalk café and pick off one by one almost a hundred in a concert hall. And the courage to blow themselves up for an encore.
I submit that there is hardly any difference between the bungling fools, the successful mass killers of Friday night in Paris, the Daesh savages spreading their caliphate like an oil spill in the Middle East, and the hordes that followed the enraged medieval prophet of Islam. When this light dawns on Europe the spirit of la résistance will speak its mind. Instead of labeling products from the “colonies” like a snippety schoolteacher giving zeroes, Europe could begin to mobilize its resources and face the challenge intelligently. An enlightened Europe, battered by bitter experience, could draw the United States back into the concert of free nations where its indispensable military resources would finally weigh in the balance.
No, this is not the Third World War. This is the ongoing jihad conquest. And every magnificent European square is the gates of Vienna.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.
Florida Governor Rick Scott requested a halt to federal funding of the scheduled resettlement of 425 Syrian Refugees in the Sunshine State. This follows similar actions by Republican gubernatorial colleagues in Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts Michigan, and Texas. He sent a letter this afternoon to U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell and all members of the Florida U.S. Senate and Congressional delegation outlining his concerns.
He adds his concerns regarding the ability of the Administration to vett Syrian refugees to prevent the possible infiltration of ISIS jihadis as occurred last weekend in Paris. The Syrian passport of a suicide bomber or shahids (martyr) was found at the Paris soccer stadium a check of which revealed his entry into the EU via Greece in early October, 2015
In his letter to House Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader McConnell, Governor Scott expressed his concerns:
Several organizations have requested that our state Department of Children and Families support the relocation of 425 possible Syrian refugees to Florida, as they receive federal funding to house these refugees in our state. Following the terrorist attacks by ISIS in Paris that killed over 120 people and wounded more than 350, and the news that at least one of the terror attack suspects gained access to France by posing as a Syrian refugee, our state agency will not support the requests we have received.
More importantly, however, it is our understanding that the state does not have the authority to prevent the federal government from funding the relocation of these Syrian refugees to Florida even without state support. Therefore, we are asking the United States Congress to take immediate and aggressive action to prevent President Obama and his administration from using any federal tax dollars to fund the relocation of up to 425 Syrian refugees (the total possible number of refugees pending for state relocation support at this time) to Florida, or anywhere in the United States, without an extensive evaluation of the risk these individuals may pose to our nationalsecurity.
As the federal elected body that exercises oversight and authorizes federal spending, please take any action available through the powers of the United States Congress to prevent federal allocations toward the relocation of Syrian refugees without extensive examination into how this would affect our homeland security.
My office stands ready to provide any available information regarding this request for your immediate action.
RELATED ARTICLE: Do governors have any power when it comes to resettlement of third-worlders to their states?
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.
I chanced to watch a Fox and Friends interview with UK Daily Mail Senior Reporter Nick Fagge who revealed how be bought forged Syrian documents in Southern Turkey for $2,000 in less than four days. For Fagge this was a reprise of a mid-September interview onFox and Friends. It was prompted because of the Syrian passport found at the scene of a suicide bombing at the French soccer stadium last Friday. The passport purportedly belonged to an alleged Syrian refugee who entered the EU via Greece in early October 2015 as an alleged ISIS jihadi who infiltrated the refugee flood from Turkey. Fagge noted that a German security expert who asked to inspect his documents said that the forged identity card and driver’s license were easy to detect because of errors. However, the German expert indicated that the Syrian Passport was an authentic one but clearly forged with Fagge’s new identity. This raised a question about the representations by White House Deputy National Security Director, Ben Rhodes. Speaking from the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, he suggested that Syrian refugees admitted to this country were capable of being ‘thoroughly” vetted. Note this New York Post report:
The Administration is going ahead with its plan to admit thousands of Syrian refugees into the US despite the horrific attack in Paris — where at least one of the attackers is believed to have posed as a Syrian migrant to get into the country.
“We’re still planning to take in Syrian refugees,” White House national Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told “Fox News Sunday.”
Rhodes, who is traveling with President Obama in Turkey, said there would be “very robust vetting” to “sort out that foreign fighter flow.”
Referring to refugees, he said: “They are tragic victims of this conflict. They are women and children and orphans of this war.”
Rhodes said the “careful” vetting would rely on input from “our intelligence community, our national Counterterrorism Center, the Department of Homeland Security, so we can make sure that we’re carefully screening anybody who comes to the United States.”
He made those statements on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Rhodes’ representations caused immediate pushback from eight Republican governors about halting and funding of Syrian refugees admissions that were announced by President Obama.
We have also seen reported the Assad regime was literally issuing millions of passports to promote the flight of Syrians abroad. Clearly many of those authentic passports have ended up in the hands of forgers and can be purchased by ISIS operatives and families and even non-Syrians.
The Fox and Friends interview with Fagge noted:
Nick Fagge traveled to Turkey to meet with the forger, and paid him $2,000 for the documents.
Fagge reported in September:
The genuine documents were stolen from Syria when they were blank. The forger added our reporter’s picture and gave him the identity of a Syrian man from Aleppo killed last year.
[…]
The passport book MailOnline acquired is genuine, made from a batch seized from one of the many Syrian government offices captured by advancing opposition forces.
The forger explained that the militias fighting the forces of Assad make a beeline for government offices when they over-run a town. They know the value of the documents there and steal the passports, papers and even the printers that are used to create identity cards and driving licenses.
Fagge said today that it is “impossible to say” how many fake passports are floating around, adding that he doubts European border officials can put a figure on it either.
He said that the problem isn’t just Syrians coming to Europe, but also Europeans who travel to Syria, become radicalized, and then return to Europe.
Fagge said after his story was published, he met with a forgery expert from the German police force, who wanted to look at the documents he obtained.
The expert explained that it was tricky verifying documents presented by refugees from Syria.
“He said he found this very difficult because he couldn’t compare their documents with a real or a forged one,” said Fagge.
Fagge recalled that the expert could tell the driver’s license and ID card were forgeries, but said the passport looked “genuine.”
“He said, this is a real passport,” Fagge said.
Watch the Fox and Friends reprise interview with UK Daily Mail journalist Fagge
RELATED ARTICLES:
Syrian passports found at Paris jihad attacks scene were fakes made in Turkey
As governors decry migrants, Obama holds line
Lawmakers Demand Answers About Illegal Immigrant Gang Member Who Assaulted Police Officer
What Michelle Malkin Thinks Is Wrong With the Current H-1B Visa System
In first six weeks of FY2016 we resettled 827 Somalis; all but one are Muslim
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.
New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan becomes the first Democrat to want an opt-out on Syrian refugee resettlement. Of course, we wonder if the U.S. State Department will be honoring their requests, but you can be sure we will be watching with great interest! The governors may be soon get an unwelcome message on states rights.
Those blue circles represent where Syrian refugees have been resettled so far (since 2012) and the states whose governors are now saying NO, are in yellow. Go to the original map because the cities are on it as well.
Democrat New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan
From The Hill:
Fifteen Republican governors and one Democrat have announced plans to block Syrian refugees from resettling in their states in the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley issued statements Sunday saying that they wanted to prioritize the safety of the residents in their states.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott; Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a GOP presidential candidate; Arkansas Gov. Gov. Asa Hutchinson; Indiana Gov. Mike Pence; Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant; Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner; Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker; Florida Gov. Rick Scott; North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory; Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican presidential candidate; Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; and Maine Gov. Paul LePage joined them on Monday.
New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, who is challenging Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) for her Senate seat, became the first Democratic governor to call for halting the acceptance of refugees until the vetting process is reviewed.
I don’t want to diminish this major breakthrough in garnering attention for this here-to-fore secretive refugee program, but tomorrow, when I get a minute I am going to have to remind readers about the thousands and thousands of Iraqi, Afghan, Burmese and Somali Muslims pouring into the US through the RAP (Refugee Admissions Program) every year as we fixate on the small number of Syrians so far.
I’m telling you they can’t screen most of those any better (especially those Somalis who have left Africa and traveled illegally to places like Malta in Europe where we scoop up their illegal aliens, call them refugees, and fly them to America—including to South Carolina as we learned earlier this year).
RELATED ARTICLES:
Tennessee GOP leader: Round up Syrian refugees, remove from state
NYT: Eight governors (so far) have said they don’t want Syrians resettled in their states
TO: The Right Honourable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
Cc. The Honourable John McCallum, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, The Honourable Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety, The Honourable Jane Philpott, Minister of Health, The Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change-
Dear Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,
Your election promise to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees into Canada by the end of 2015 may not be attainable, and no decent, security-loving Canadian will be upset – in fact we will all understand – if you need to postpone this laudable goal to help the truly downtrodden, by supporting them with food, medications, education and other infrastructure systems – in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
We all understand how impossible it is properly to screen for health and security – such a vast population within an unrealistic and overly-ambitious time-frame. You will not lose face with your electorate if you revise your stated “election goal”, notably based on Friday’s atrocities in Paris, that included at least one bogus Syrian refugee terrorist-murderer, who arrived – with a Syrian passport – via Greece.
EVEN ONE BOGUS REFUGEE – a jihadist – is a formidable and horrific danger to the health and safety of Canadians. Improperly screened, we may very likely experience horrific terror issues in short order, making the murders of Nathan Cerillo (22 October, 2014) and Patrice Vincent (20 October, 2014) look mild by comparison.
PLEASE KEEP US SAFE IN CANADA.
Unscreened refugees to Germany are bringing with them whooping cough, chicken pox, measles, syphilis, gonorrhea, and other diseases that compromise health and safety systems to the disadvantage of all.
We must be fully prepared in Canada to help every refugee as required, so that they properly and realistically settle and integrate into Canadian society in a comfortable, safe and secure way for all concerned – both in the short- and longer terms.
25,000 represents but a small fraction of people who are suffering from the war in Syria and its attendant displacement. We could help many more than this number if, instead of trying to wade through a bureaucratic and logistical quagmire on both sides of the ocean, we increased our humanitarian aid and helped to set up schools and hospitals in the refugee camps where these people are now located. Surely if you do pull out our current aerial campaign, that money alone could be redirected toward on-the-ground assistance without having to move a huge population into our cities?
We already have affordable housing issues in Ottawa and elsewhere, First Nations residents still living in squalor, and a dreadful homeless problem of our own – that has gone on for decades. Surely it is time to attend to our own, before looking to add severely to our problems on the ground.
From a strictly practical point of view, even if we bring in a few thousand refugees, there are literally hundreds of thousands more who are in dire need of help, especially with winter coming. It makes more sense to help as many as we can where they are instead of bringing only a relatively small number here.
And if we are to bring in refugees, we must first bring in Yazidis, Coptic and Chaldean Christians from Egypt, Kurds and others who are truly under siege and being savagely butchered, such as those women and children in Sinjar, Iraq. They are even refused entry into the very refugee camps that will give them some “measure of safety”. They are also refused applications as refugees by the Shia and Sunni who control their regions. It is these particular groups who most need our protection at this time.
Please reassure all very concerned Canadians that you have our health, safety and security of paramount concern.
“They decided to walk two miles to the U.S. Embassy, hoping they could take shelter there. But, her husband said, they were turned away.” Why? Would letting them in have been tantamount to admitting that there is a jihad threat?
“Passengers arrive at Atlanta airport safely after Paris ordeal,” by Carrie Teegardin, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 14, 2015 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):
Travelers arriving in Atlanta from Paris on Saturday afternoon described extraordinary long lines in Paris to get through security.
Claudio Merloni, who lives in Paris and was arriving in Atlanta for business, said it took more than two hours to go through a security line that usually takes him 10 minutes. Merloni said there was nobody on the streets in Paris when he left for the airport today.
“It’s two attacks, both in France in the same year,” he said. “You start to feel really targeted.”
In the midst of the chaos that erupted in Paris Friday night, Rebecca Hill-Bogle started to wonder how she and her husband, Will Bogle, were going to get back home to Georgia.
They were in Paris to celebrate Will’s birthday and were having dinner when Will looked at his phone and realized something was going on. The server at their restaurant told them they were about 10 minutes away from one of the deadly explosions that occurred during Friday night’s wave of terrorist attacks in the heart of the city.
“We saw a lot of police and ambulances; they were scurrying through the streets,” Will Bogle said.
The Macon couple tried to get a cab to get back to their hotel, but all the taxis were full.
Hill-Bogle is six months pregnant and she was starting to panic. They decided to walk two miles to the U.S. Embassy, hoping they could take shelter there.
But, her husband said, they were turned away.
“I was pretty disheartened that we weren’t allowed to get in,” he said….
RELATED ARTICLES:
The time for this suicidal idiocy is long past. Graham is a presidential candidate? He ought to be laughed off the presidential debate stage, made to resign from the Senate, and barred from ever holding public office again. And if he succeeds in expanding the “refugee” program, he ought to be made to house the increased numbers of “refugees” in his home and Senatorial office.
“Forget Paris: Lindsey Graham to double funding for ‘refugees,’” by Leo Hohmann, WND, November 15, 2015:
In the wake of the deadly Paris attacks by ISIS, some GOP presidential candidates such as Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and even Marco Rubio are calling for an end to Syrian refugee resettlement in the U.S.
Most of the others have been silent or vague on the issue of Syrian refugees – about 2,000 of whom have already arrived in the U.S. despite warnings from the FBI that it’s impossible to vet their backgrounds.
But there is one candidate who is clearly on the record wanting more Syrian Muslims to pour into American cities and towns as “refugees,” despite the fact that at least one of the seven attackers in Paris had a Syrian passport and entered France as a “refugee.”
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who positions himself as a war hawk against ISIS, is co-sponsoring legislation with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to nearly double the amount of funding Washington spends on resettling refugees from Syria.
On the day after the multi-pronged shooting and bombing attacks on Paris, which killed 129 civilians and injured 352, Graham pounced again on the theme that ISIS must be attacked at its core in Syria and destroyed, or there would be more attacks on Western cities.
One of Graham’s favorite talking points is, “If we don’t stop them over there, they are coming over here just as sure as I stand here in front of you.”
It’s curious, then, say his critics, that he would be pushing for escalating the importation of more Islamic refugees into U.S. cities and towns from the world’s most notorious hotbed of jihadist activity – Syria.
Graham’s press secretary did not respond to requests for comment from WND.
Without giving a number, Graham has said the U.S. should accept its “fair share” of Syrian refugees.
His bill provides some insight on what that number might be.
According to the Hill, the legislation doesn’t specify how many Syrian refugees should be accepted into the United States but the amount of funding requested would allow for the resettlement of up to 100,000 Syrian refugees over two years, Leahy’s office said.
Even President Obama has never explicitly said this many Syrians should be allowed into the U.S, although that could be his plan given the vague nature of his statements. Obama’s State Department has called for 10,000 Syrians to be admitted in 2016 and “many more” in 2017….
RELATED ARTICLES:
In first six weeks of FY2016 U.S. resettled 827 Somalis; all but one are Muslim
U.S. Embassy in Paris turned away Americans who sought shelter there during jihad attacks
Dan Kimmel has withdrawn from the race, and for that we can be grateful, but his statement, with all of its moral equivalence and toleration of evil, is a succinct expression of what hamstrings our ability to face the Islamic State and defeat it. This is why the Islamic State will be plaguing free people worldwide for years to come.
“Minnesota State Representative Candidate Withdraws From Race After Saying ‘ISIS is Not Evil,’” by Kaitlyn Schallhorn, Daily Caller, November 15, 2015:
A Democrat candidate for a state representative seat in Minnesota has withdrawn from the race after he drew ire from many — including those in his own party — with a controversial tweet following the Paris terrorist attacks.
“ISIS isn’t necessarily evil,” Dan Kimmel, a candidate for a Minnesota state representative seat tweeted Saturday. “It is made up of people doing what they think is best for their community. Violence is not the answer, though.”
ISIS isn’t necessarily evil. It is made up of people doing what they think is best for their community. Violence is not the answer, though.
— Dan Kimmel (@KimmelDan) November 15, 2015
The Islamic State has taken responsibility for the terrorist attacks in Paris Friday that claimed the lives of more than 120 people and injured hundreds of others. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, French President Francois Hollande said he viewed the attack as an “act of war” and promised a “pitiless” response.
Kimmel, 63, asserted in a follow-up that he “deplores” the Islamic State’s actions and was not defended them. However, the candidate still drew the ire of many on social media, including the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party leaders.
In a post on his campaign website, Kimmel said his tweet was “poorly worded” and thus announced the end of his candidacy.
“I am folding up my campaign tent,” Kimmel said, adding an apology for those who volunteered or donated to his campaign.
“I do think the attacks in Paris yesterday, along with other ISIS terrorist actions, are cowardly and despicable. My heart breaks for the people of France, of Paris, the families of those wounded or killed and the casualties themselves,” Kimmel said. “My thoughts are with them. I condemn the attacks, as I condemn all violence.”…
RELATED ARTICLES:
Two of the Paris jihad murderers came into Europe as refugees
In the wake of the Paris jihad attacks, France says it’s “essential” to combat…climate change
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Dan Kimmel. Kimmel is the one on the left..