Tag Archive for: terrorism

It Begins: Young Muslims ‘Invade’ Suburban Neighborhood, Terrorise Homeowners

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I first read a story about this a couple of days ago and wondered if the scary incident involved Somalis, but the word ‘Somali’ was absent in the written account and it wasn’t until a reader, Dede, directed people to watch the video that we learned our first instincts were correct.

I’m telling you, the lengths to which the media goes to hide the truth when it involves refugees of a certain ‘religious’ persuasion is stunning.  Why on earth leave the key piece of information people need out of the written news report!

Here is the story (do you see the word “Somali” in the text?). Now watch the video (this is a screen shot in case they remove this from the video).

I guess we should be grateful that at least the broadcast version of the story used the ‘S’ word!

This should be on the national news!

Just envision this happening in your neighborhood!

How are Americans ever going to be prepared and proactive if we don’t even know what is happening in the next city, let alone the next state!  You know, I tell people in Maryland what is happening in Minnesota and they don’t believe me because they haven’t seen it on Fox News!  Ahhhhhh!

This is exactly what Phyliss Schlafly has pointed out here:  the second generation Muslim migrant to America isn’t assimilating!

For new readers: We probably have a hundred posts here at RRW on Minnesota as the state which has ‘welcomed’ thousands and thousands of Somali refugees.  Here is just one post from last year to help you get up to speed on ‘Little Mogadishu!’  Just remember! Somalis didn’t “make their way” to Minnesota, they were resettled there for two decades by the US State Department and three major contractors: Catholic Charities, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and World Relief (additional contractors have moved in since).

The ‘youths’ harassing homeowners were born here or came as very small children!

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Global Airline Security Threat: ‘Fraudulent Travel Documents’

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We posted on the illegal identities trade involving Syrians and Palestinians in Honduras and Mexico  in a NatSecDaily Brief this Memorial Day, weekend in the US, “Does Illegal Identities trade in Mexico and Honduras threaten US National Security?” How problematic that is to global airline security is illustrated by this Air Travel World report on the concern raised by security specialists this week at the Barcelona SITA Air IT Summit, “Fraudulently obtained travel documents a growing security challenge .”  The author, Ms. Anne Paylor, wrote:

Matthew Finn, managing director at independent security consultancy AUGMENTIQ, told the SITA Air Transport IT Summit in Barcelona this week that there had been a shift away from people trying to falsify travel documents, but an increase in identity fraud involving genuine but fraudulently obtained passports.

“You can’t assess the risk of a person if you don’t know who they are,” Finn said.

He cited one European Union government as having recently declared that it issued some 6 million passports in 2015. However, it estimated that of these, as many as 650,000—or roughly 10%—were issued to false identities.

Finn of AUGMENTIQ  noted how daunting  the verification problem is:

“They were genuine documents, but issued to someone who doesn’t exist. The weak link in the chain is the breeder documentation used to establish identity,” Finn said. He  pointed out that in many states, particularly failed or fragile states, fake birth certificates and other “breeder” documents are relatively easy to obtain. The integrity of breeder documentation, he said, should be considered as important as the integrity of travel documents themselves.

Finn pointed out that governments and industry need to be able to verify the identity of passengers in order to address security and other challenges.

According to AUGMENTIQ, identity fraud is increasing dramatically and the share of fraudulently obtained genuine travel documents accounts for a growing share—as much as 23% in 2009 (the most recent figures available).

“Our challenge now is more about determining that the document truly belongs to its holder rather than whether the document itself is a forgery or counterfeit,” Finn said.

He also urged much greater collaboration between all stakeholders, pointing out that Interpol holds a database of 57 million lost and stolen ID documents that, if more widely distributed, could help flag cases of ID fraud.

“Where vulnerabilities exist, they will be exploited,” he said. “If there is no confidence in the integrity of the document issuance process, there cannot be any confidence in the authenticity of the document being presented or the veracity of the holder’s identity.”

Finn concluded:

 If we cannot establish a person’s identity, we cannot ascertain the risk he or she may pose to the aviation industry or, indeed, to the countries they are traveling to along the way.

We don’t  know  whether EgyptAir and the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry has availed of the opportunity to run checks of the passenger manifest on Flight 804 against the Interpol data base cited by Finn of AUGMENTIQ.  Nor do we know how complete that data base is and the process for updating it.  Surely the proportion of false identifications since 2009 has grown with the mass flight  from hot spots in the Muslim Ummah since 2011 and the rise of the Islamic State in 2013. The magnitude of false identities using legitimate passports, birth certificates and driver licenses has soared given the Middle East refugee crisis. This has exacerbated the infiltration of Islamic terrorists, among the stream of refugees and migrants, whether in the EU or in the Western Hemisphere.  This ATW report illustrates the huge problems confronting the TSA and the DHS ICE in  the  US given what is already a hot air travel season with massive travel delays and failures to vett screeners, let alone detect possible terrorists.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the NatSecDaily Brief.

VIDEO: Is Opposition to Islam’s Holy War [jihad] ‘Bigotry’?

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This morning I was interviewed by Dr. Gad Saad on his The Saad Truth program.

It was a wide-ranging conversation, in which we answered numerous Leftist objections to resisting jihad terror.

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Canada Must Hold Iran Accountable!

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The Islamic Republic is a state sponsor of terrorism—That’s why Canada shut down the Iranian embassy in Ottawa in September 2012 . However, I would like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to some of the more-particularly inhuman and nefarious activities of the Iranian regime.

The Islamic Republic started with an officially-approved massacre of all sorts of dissidents. Along with the functionaries of the former monarchy, thousands of revolutionaries whose views differed from that of the Islamic Republic, were either hanged or shot dead after sham trials – or even without them.

Later, the Islamic constitution that was established in Iran effectively brought a fundamentalist Islamist regime to power which systematically suppressed all other voices and sociopolitical constituencies like liberals, socialists, women, and religious and ethnic minorities. This has led to a vicious process of violation of human rights in Iran since the establishment of the Islamic regime; a process that still vigorously continues, even after the presumably “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani took office.

As a matter of fact, the violation of human rights in Iran has skyrocketed since Rouhani became president in 2013. Over 2,000 Iranians have been hanged under this “moderate” president’s watch, the largest scale of executions in Iran in the past 25 years. Indeed, the execution spree in the first half of 2015 was not overlooked by Amnesty International, which noted that “death sentences in Iran are particularly disturbing because they are invariably imposed by courts that are completely lacking in independence and impartiality”.

Amnesty International also added: “[Death sentences] are imposed either for vaguely-worded or overly-broad offences, or acts that should not be criminalized at all, let alone attract the death penalty. Trials in Iran are deeply flawed, detainees are often denied access to lawyers in the investigative stage, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation.” As a result, Iran has become the top country committing executions per capita, under Rouhani’s watch.

One of the “legal” pretexts of the Islamic regime for executing dissidents is the common charge of “muharebeh” or “enmity towards God”, routinely used against all sorts of human rights activists and dissidents; and which invariably receives the death penalty, sometimes administered in public by mass hangings by cranes – although even stoning is not ruled out legally. Many of those hanged take up to 20 minutes to die slowly and painfully from strangulation. The victims’ bodies are typically left hanging for some time before being removed as a way of intimidating the public into silence.

Many of those who are executed come from minority communities such as the Ahwazi Arab-Iranians – who are predominately Shia – as well as Kurdish and Baluchi Sunnis. The targeting of minorities has not changed since Rouhani’s assuming office. Over the past decade, many Ahwazi Arab political prisoners, ranging from poets and teachers to bloggers and human rights activists, have been executed on trumped-up charges in kangaroo courts.

Rather than finding reasonable evidence for the committing of a crime, judges rely on “confessions” which have been extracted from the accused through physical and psychological torture. Meanwhile, friends and relatives of the accused are kept in the dark, often not informed of where their loved ones have been imprisoned, executed or even buried. Again, NOTHING has improved under Rouhani.

Never mind that Iran is one of the few countries that continue to execute juvenile offenders, where according to the UN at least 160 are languishing on death row for crimes committed under the age of 18. The number of child offenders executed in 2014-15 – under Rouhani’s watch – is higher than at any time during the past five years. According to an Amnesty International report released a few days ago, Iran’s authorities have sought to “whitewash their continuing violations of children’s rights and deflect criticism of their appalling record as one of the world’s last executioners of juvenile offenders”.

Such kinds of reports, however, have failed to prevent Rouhani from receiving a warm welcome on his European tour, as top politicians as well as the Pope were eager to meet him. Surprisingly, these days, even the prominent opposition voices in the West, who often complain about their own governments’ disregard of human rights, don’t see a necessity to voice any substantial criticism against the abuses of human rights by the regime of Iran.

That is because much of the world wants do business with the Iranian regime, and they don’t want any fuss over rather “trivial things” such as the violation of human rights by that regime. Indeed, it seems that the rush to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran has twisted and bound all tongues in the West.

How can we possibly improve the condition of human rights in Iran by holding the Iranian regime accountable when at the same time the Liberal government of Canada is going to implicitly legitimize that regime’s violation of human rights by reestablishing diplomatic relations with it?

PODCAST: On the Islamic State’s Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Threats

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This week witnessed the gathering of 50 heads of state at a Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. President Obama’s concluding speech only briefly addressed the threat of so-called dirty bombs and necessity of controlling the distribution of radioactive materials widely used in industry and cancer health treatment in hospitals and clinics throughout the world. The stated objective is prevent such materials from falling into the hands of  ISIS, whether North Korea, or Iran’s  terrorist proxies,  Al Qaeda, or the self declared Caliphate of the Islamic State in conquered areas of  Syria and Iraq.  The problem of dirty bombs and more lethal CBW Weapons of Mass Destruction will be discussed by Dr. Jill Bellamy, United Nation’s Counter terrorism Task Force adviser and founder of Warfare Technology Analytics  on The Lisa Benson Show, Sunday, April 3rd.

Recent actions by ISIS Paris and Brussels terror cells murdering a security guard at a Belgian nuclear facility and filming the offices of Belgian Nuclear research director’s office are an indication of a longer term strategy to unleash dirty bomb as a panic driven wave of terrorism in Europe. A front page story  in the weekend  edition of the Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2010 illustrates the ISIS strategy that Dr. Bellamy will discuss, “ISIS Turns College Lab into Bomb School:”

Gen. Hate Magus, Iraq’s top explosives officer, said the facilities at the University of Mosul have enhanced Islamic State’s ability to launch attacks in Iraq and to export bomb-making know how when its fighters leave the so-called caliphate and return to their home countries. Dirty bombs are easily made, and so are biological agents as Weapons of Mass Destruction as Dr. Bellamy will reveal on the April 3, The Lisa Benson Show that airs at 4:00 PM EDT in the U.S.

Watch  this 2003 WGBH/BBC co production on The Dirty Bomb originally aired on NOVA on PBS and Horizon on BBC in the UK.:

The documentary contains Interviews with nuclear materials research and counterterrorism experts from the UN International Atomic Agency, The U.S. Department of Energy, the CIA and the Federation of Atomic Scientists take the viewer through the scientific basis for radiation effects and actual occurrences of accidental releases.  Overall, it  illustrates the ease by which a terrorist with training  could obtain radioactive materials like Cesium Chloride from industrial gauges,  medical isotopes and the history of massive use of heavy radiation emitting Strontium 90 developed into  thousands  of standby generators  and mobile seed generators, the latter using Cesium chloride.,

The documentary reveals a terrorist dirty bomb attempt in Moscow in 1995, discovery of high radiation Strontium containers in the mountains of the Republic of Georgia in 2001, as well as the panic effects of release of a handful of Cesium Chloride in Brazil in 1987 affecting 100 percent or over 100,000 of the city’s population.  The documentary addresses the plausible risk of Al Qaeda and now ISIS obtaining these radioactive materials and the risk of contracting radiation sickness and cancer as the fallout from a dirty bomb explosion spreads.  That is reflecting in two scenarios; one is a large dirty bomb explosion in Central London equivalent to the Cesium chloride in one of the Soviet seed generator that produces perhaps 10 killed from the explosion but increases the risk of cancer rapidly as the radius from the explosion increasing. Such a large dirty bomb blast would require enormous displacement of populations and economic decontamination requiring the virtual abandonment of the city center for a decade or longer. Think of the spread Strontium 90 with the Chernobyl reactor meltdown in 1986 in the Ukraine and the radiation sickness and cancer effects. A smaller explosion scenario depicts the explosion using a handful of Cesium Chloride in the Washington, DC Metro with the Metro carriages and the system’s ventilation system distributing the powdery Cesium flakes over a broader area; panic breaks out. That was not unlike the Anthrax attack on the US Senate Office Building in late 2001 that cost hundreds of millions in decontamination costs in US Postal Service sector centers and five deaths across the US from the biological agent sent via mail.    Now read these excerpts from the Nuclear Regulation Commission from their Fact Sheet on The Dirty Bomb:

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT DIRTY BOMBS & RDDs

What is an RDD or “Dirty Bomb”?

A “dirty bomb” is one type of a “radiological dispersal device” (RDD) that combines a conventional explosive, such as dynamite, with radioactive material that may disperse when the device explodes. It is not the same as a nuclear weapon. If there are casualties, they will be caused by the initial blast of the conventional explosive. The radioactive particles that are scattered as a result of the explosion cause the “dirty” part. The explosives in such a bomb would still be more dangerous than the radioactive material.

What is radiation?

Radiation is a form of energy that is present all around us. Some of the Earth’s background radiation comes from naturally occurring radioactive elements from space, the soil, and the sun, as well as from man-made sources, like x-ray machines. Different types of radiation exist, some of which have more energy than others, and some of which can be more harmful than others. The dose of radiation that a person receives is measured in a unit called a “rem.” A rem is a measure of radiation dose, based on the amount of energy absorbed in a mass of tissue. For example, an average person gets about 1/3 of a rem from exposure to natural sources of radiation in one year, and approximately 1/100th of a rem from one chest x-ray.

Are Terrorists Interested In Radioactive Materials?

Yes, terrorists have been interested in acquiring radioactive and nuclear material for use in attacks. For example, in 1995, Chechen extremists threatened to bundle radioactive material with explosives to use against Russia in order to force the Russian military to withdraw from Chechnya. While no explosives were used, officials later retrieved a package of cesium-137 the rebels had buried in a Moscow park.

Since September 11, 2001, terrorist arrests and prosecutions overseas have revealed that individuals associated with al-Qaeda planned to acquire materials for a RDD. In 2004, British authorities arrested a British national, Dhiren Barot, and several associates on various charges, including conspiring to commit public nuisance by the use of radioactive materials. In 2006, Barot was found guilty and sentenced to life. British authorities disclosed that Barot developed a document known as the “Final Presentation.” The document outlined his research on the production of “dirty bombs,” which he characterized as designed to “cause injury, fear, terror and chaos” rather than to kill. U.S. federal prosecutors indicted Barot and two associates for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against persons within the United States, in conjunction with the alleged surveillance of several landmarks and office complexes in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Newark, N.J. In a separate British police operation in 2004, authorities arrested British national, Salahuddin Amin, and six others on terrorism-related charges. Amin is accused of making inquiries about buying a “radioisotope bomb” from the Russian mafia in Belgium; and the group is alleged to have linkages to al-Qaeda. Nothing appeared to have come from his inquiries, according to British prosecutors. While neither Barot nor Amin had the opportunity to carry their plans forward to an operational stage, these arrests demonstrate the continued interest of terrorists in acquiring and using radioactive material for malicious purposes.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Do European Labor Laws Lead to Terrorism? by Alex Tabarrok

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Why are there poor Muslim ghettos in Europe but not in the United States?

In Belgium, high unemployment and crime-ridden Muslim ghettos have fomented radicalism, but as Jeff Jacoby writes:

Muslims in the United States … have had no problem acclimating to mainstream norms. In a detailed 2011 survey, the Pew Research Center found that Muslim Americans are “highly assimilated into American society and … largely content with their lives.”

More than 80 percent of US Muslims expressed satisfaction with life in America, and 63 percent said they felt no conflict “between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.”

The rates at which they participate in various everyday American activities — from following local sports teams to watching entertainment TV — are similar to those of the American public generally. Half of all Muslim immigrants display the US flag at home, in the office, or on their car.

Jacoby, however, doesn’t explain why these differences exist. One reason is the greater flexibility of American labor markets compared to those in Europe.

Institutions that make it more difficult to hire and fire workers or adjust wages can increase unemployment and reduce employment, especially among immigrant youth. Firms will be less willing to hire if it is very costly to fire. As Tyler and I put it in Modern Principles, how many people will want to go on a date if every date requires a marriage?

The hiring hurdle is especially burdensome for immigrants given the additional real or perceived uncertainty from hiring immigrants. One of the few ways that immigrants can compete in these situations is by offering to work for lower wages. But if that route is blocked by minimum wages, or requirements that every worker receive significant non-wage benefits, unemployment and non-employment among immigrants will be high — generating disaffection, especially among the young.

Huber, for example, (see also Angrist and Kugler) finds:

Countries with more centralized wage bargaining, stricter product market regulation and countries with a higher union density, have worse labour market outcomes for their immigrants relative to natives even after controlling for compositional effects.

The problem of labor market rigidity is especially acute in Belgium, where the differences between native and immigrant unemployment, employment and wages are among the highest in the OECD. Language difficulties and skills are one reason, but labor market rigidity is another, as this OECD report makes clear:

Belgian labour market settings are generally unfavourable to the employment outcomes of low-skilled workers. Reduced employment rates stem from high labour costs, which deter demand for low-productivity workers…

Furthermore, labour market segmentation and rigidity weigh on the wages and progression prospects of outsiders. With immigrants over-represented among low-wage, vulnerable workers, labour market settings likely hurt the foreign-born disproportionately. …

Minimum wages can create a barrier to employment of low-skilled immigrants, especially for youth. As a proportion of the median wage, the Belgian statutory minimum wage is on the high side in international comparison and sectoral agreements generally provide for even higher minima. This helps to prevent in-work poverty … but risks pricing low-skilled workers out of the labour market (Neumark and Wascher, 2006).

Groups with further real or perceived productivity handicaps, such as youth or immigrants, will be among the most affected.

In 2012, the overall unemployment rate in Belgium was 7.6% (15-64 age group), rising to 19.8% for those in the labour force aged under 25, and, among these, reaching 29.3% and 27.9% for immigrants and their native-born offspring, respectively.

Immigration can benefit both immigrants and natives but achieving those benefits requires the appropriate institutions especially open and flexible labor markets.

This post first appeared at Marginal Revolution.

Alex TabarrokAlex Tabarrok

Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He blogs at Marginal Revolution with Tyler Cowen.

Twitter ‘Not’ taking down Islamic State accounts, but banning users who report terrorists

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What illness has overtaken the people who run Twitter — and Facebook? What illness has overtaken mainstream media reporters and so much of the Western intelligentsia? Why are they so willing to abet evil?

125000 accounts suspended

“Hackers Say Twitter Isn’t Telling the Whole Story About Anti-Terror Fight,” by Joshua Philipp, Epoch Times, March 4, 2016:

Online activists have added fuel to the controversy over the effectiveness of Twitter’s attempts to fight ISIS supporters who use its services to spread terrorist propaganda and recruit new members.

While Twitter says it is making strong efforts to shut down terrorist accounts, activists say that not only is the microblogging company not taking down the accounts that matter, but it has even been shutting down accounts of users trying to report terrorists.

In January, a Florida woman, Tamara Fields, filed a lawsuit against Twitter, alleging that it breached the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act by “spreading extremist propaganda,” which caused an attack in Jordan that killed her husband, a private contractor, Lloyd “Carl” Fields Jr.

Facing bad press and a lawsuit, Twitter published a blog post on Feb. 5, saying that since mid-2015 it suspended 125,000 accounts for “threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to ISIS.”

Members of the online anti-terrorist community were quick to fire back, however. They say that Twitter is taking credit for their work, and there are still many holes in its efforts to keep terrorist recruiters off its services.

Several hacker groups, including Anonymous, have rallied against ISIS under an online campaign they call #OpISIS. While most participants keep their identities hidden, most of their activities are public. They often publish lists of ISIS supporters and recruiters, and call on the community to report the accounts.

Through this campaign, Anonymous claims by Nov. 23, 2015 to have taken down more than 11,000 Twitter accounts linked to ISIS, according to a tweet from OpParisOfficial.GhostSec, another hacker group, claims it has reported 19,568 Twitter accounts promoting terrorism.

GhostSec was credited with helping prevent a terrorist attack in Tunisia, and may have helped stop another attack in New York City in 2015, according to Michael Smith, principal of national security company Kronos Advisory. Smith was GhostSec’s go-between for law enforcement and intelligence officials.

“Who suspended 125,000 accounts? Anonymous, Anonymous affiliated groups, and everyday citizens,” says a statement from WauchulaGhost, an anti-terrorist hacker with the hacker collective Anonymous, but was formerly with GhostSec.

“You do realize if we all stopped reporting terrorist accounts and graphic images, Twitter would be flooded with terrorists,” WauchulaGhost says.

Who Suspended 125,000 Twitter accounts? #OpISIS #Anonymous #GhostOfNoNationhttps://t.co/BR44Ie1mP6 pic.twitter.com/kIa8mabJQd

After Twitter made its announcement claiming to have shut down ISIS accounts, many participants in #OpISIS saw a very different development. Twitter began banning accounts of users who were trying to report online terrorism.

Members of the community have taken this as a slap in the face. While Twitter is telling the public it’s working to stop ISIS recruitment on its services, it has been suspending accounts of the community who are doing the actual footwork.

Sometimes the accounts get hit one-by-one, other times in groups. Members of the community sometimes rally behind account holders, and Twitter gets them back up and running quickly. Other times, the accounts may stay suspended.

For instance, on Feb. 28 close to 15 Twitter accounts of users involved in the anti-terror campaigns were suspended, including some of the top accounts involved in #OpISIS, including WauchulaGhost’s. Their supporters barraged Twitter with tweets, and most of the accounts were back online about two hours later.

WauchulaGhost said he’s still not sure what happened, noting, “I never received an email from Twitter.”

After one week, Twitter had not responded to an email inquiring why it banned the anti-terror accounts.

Some members of the community say Twitter is suspending accounts in its new campaign to stop online bullying—but that explanation has raised the question of why calling out users spreading terrorist propaganda and trying to recruit terrorists is categorized as “harassment.”

“I can say they are suspending a lot of accounts for harassment. Good accounts not Daesh accounts,” WauchulaGhost said in an interview on Twitter. “Even a lot of our (Anonymous) accounts are being suspended for harassment.”…

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Islamic Terrorism Not A Problem In Japan

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It is hard to find a country in today’s world that isn’t experiencing an uptick in violent Islamic terrorism. Surprisingly Japan is not one of those countries having to deal with the aftermath of mass shootings, beheadings, or other known-wolf attacks on their citizens.

According to the authors of Immigrants of Doom, and their research on The National Counterterrorism Center’s unclassified report,

“In 2011, Sunni Muslims accounted for the greatest number of terrorist attacks and fatalities for the third year in a row. Over 5,700 incidents were committed by Sunni Muslims, responsible for nearly 56 percent of all attacks and about 70 percent of 12,533 fatalities. Another 24 percent of the fatalities are on Shi´a Muslims. So in 2011, Muslims were responsible for 94 percent of the fatalities in terrorist attacks. Since 2011, with ISIS on the scene, the number of the fatalities –victims of the Muslim terrorist attacks- sharply grew, together with Muslims´ share in the world terrorism that is steadily closing in on 100%.”

Even with those statistics Japan has been able to stay above the fray, and the reason is their immigration policy towards Muslims. Japan is a country who is proud of their heritage, and would like to see it remain intact. Understandably the only Muslims they allow in their country are for business purposes. The article goes on to state,

“And Japanese society expects Muslims to pray at home: no collective “prostrating” in the streets or squares; in Japan, for such “shows” the actors can get pretty high fines, and in those cases Japanese Police consider “serious”, the participants can be deported.”

There is only one Imam in all of Tokyo. The few thousand Muslims that do live among the roughly 127 million Japanese are encouraged to worship in their homes versus being allowed to build huge mosques throughout the country.

Incidentally when Muslims build mosques it is a way for them to declare victory in the area in which they have colonized. This is happening all across Europe and now in America, silent and stealthily our government works to bring new Islamic immigrants into our midst while forbidding anyone of the Christian or Jewish faith to dare mention the thought or idea of a loving God to them.

Quietly, but surely, they build their barracks and battalions among our neighborhoods. It is from these mosques that most, if not all, of the terrorists get their teaching from the Quran to go out into our communities and kill or maim the non-Muslim.

But, our government knows best and anyone who speaks out about curbing the number of Islamic immigrants is called unfeeling, a racist or a bigot. The Japanese see the Islamic ideology as strange and one that doesn’t make sense. They simply do not want Islam to play any part whatsoever in their rich culture. And what is wrong with wanting to keep your nations culture alive?

In America, we now have teachers who have their students practicing Arabic writing by copying the Shahada in class, which is the  Muslim conversion prayer. Our students are also being told to throw a burka and/or a hijab on for good measure too, just so they can feel like what it is to be a Muslim woman.

Excuse my language, but what the hell are we doing here? Japan has no problem saying to the Muslim, “Your ways are not our ways, and don’t think for a second your kind is going to come into our country and change it.” Why aren’t we screaming this from our rooftops? Have Americans lost their voice? At what point are we going to make our legislators understand the peril in which they have placed the country, all in the name of multi-culturalism.

Trump made a statement several months ago about barring Muslims from this country, and people all over the world practically had an aneurism over it. This policy  makes perfect sense in a climate where practically 100% of terrorist attacks are attributed to Muslims.

Japan obviously couldn’t care less what the world says about their policy. Apparently they aren’t swayed by the political correct crowd that our leaders bow to. They can sit back and enjoy their sushi, sake, and plum wine while the rest of the world burns.

Maybe with a new administration, schools would once again be encouraged to teach the historical truth about our country and we could start to instill a sense of pride in a country that once respected God and celebrated the traditional family.

I believe we are all ready to find out who that one nominee will be for the presidential race. Regardless of who it is, we better all be ready to stand behind them 100%. Hopefully the next president could look at Japan’s stance on immigration and glean some wisdom from it.

RELATED ARTICLE: Canadian Iranian: “I feel betrayed”; waves of migrants endanger Western societies

The Counter-Terrorism Impasse in Afghanistan, Israel and the United States

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by Jerry Gordon, Lisa Benson and Richard Cutting…

The New Year marks the 14th year in the conflict in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan with the Taliban. Following 9/11, a victory against the Salafist Taliban was achieved in less than six months with special operators of the US and cadres of Afghan war lords. Fast forward to the fall of 2015, the Taliban has undertaken stunning attacks against NATO-ISAF forces. There was the brief Taliban takeover of the northern regional capital of Kunduz in September 2015 culminating with the mistaken USAF bombing of a Medicins sans Frontiere hospital with 26 dead. There was the instability of local regional police and Afghan security failing to prevent the Taliban from regaining control over Helmand province. An explosives laden motorcycle attack on December 22, 2015 on a joint NATO-ISAF Afghan patrol took the lives of six Americans, including a 15–year veteran of the NYPD, John Lamm. Stratfor in an analysis of the situation in Afghanistan commented:

Without local support and adequate resources, the Afghan government will not be able to keep crucial areas from falling to the Taliban. Winning public support domestically and securing international aid, important in any counterinsurgency, will remain vital components of Kabul’s fight for survival in the Afghanistan conflict.

A serious emerging threat was the rise of ISIS in Afghanistan and the eruption of a barbaric internecine war between the two extremist Islamic groups. That was graphically portrayed in a PBS Frontline report in November 2015, ”ISIS in Afghanistan.” In neighboring Pakistan, the Taliban have spread havoc beyond their bastion in Northwest Waziristan conducting terror attacks in Islamabad and Lahore. Emblematic of that was an attack that killed 22 on January 20, 2016 by the Pakistani Taliban at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Pakistan.

The Obama Administration was poised at the start of its final year in office with less than 9,800 US forces in Afghanistan winding down to less than 5,500 engaged in primarily advisory and training roles. That was supplemented by a few thousand NATO forces under the ISAF Command.  During hearings in the fall of 2015 before the US Senate and House Armed Services, in testimony by US Amy General John Campbell, he called for the equivalent of a surge in Afghanistan. In a USA Today interview he said: “My intent would be to keep as much as I could for as long as I could. If that means more people, it’s more people.” In response to his and other military experts’ testimony, Senate Armed Services Chairman, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain commented:

We have made significant and steady progress in Afghanistan. But as U.S. military officials and diplomats have warned for years – I repeat, for years – these gains are still reversible, and a robust and adaptive U.S. troop presence based on conditions on the ground is essential to ensuring that these gains endure.

Failure to adopt such a conditions-based plan, these experts have warned, would invite the same tragedy that has unfolded in Iraq since 2011. If we have learned anything from that nightmare, it is that wars do not end just because politicians say so.

An additional burden has been placed on Gen. Campbell. On January 20, 2016, the White House announced that the U.S.-led ISAF could now undertake operations against the growing ISIS threat in eastern Afghanistan.

The Pakistani counterterrorism effort has been brought into question given the announced retirement on January 25, 2016 of Armed Forces strategic thinker, Gen. Raheel Sharif, who will leave in November 2016. The popular General Sharif had led the tough counterterrorism campaign against the Pakistani Taliban and other Islamist terror groups.

Embattled Israel was confronting a low-intensity wave of violence that the media has labeled, a “knife intifada.” It has been waged daily since September 2015 by Palestinians and some Israeli Arabs allegedly incited by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian and Israeli Arab violence has claimed 29 Israeli, US and foreign migrants dead. Dozens were injured from knifings, car rammings and shootings. 149 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security. In one troubling case, in January 2016, an Israeli Arab using a semi-automatic weapon at a Tel Aviv café killed three persons. He fled the scene and was eventually tracked by Israeli security forces to his home area in Northern Israel and killed.

In June 2015, the Palestinian Authority in an apparent “diplomatic Intifada” brought charges before the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands. The PA alleged that the IDF had committed “war crimes” during the 50 day summer rocket and tunnel war in 2014  waged cross border by the terrorist group Hamas. The ICC released preliminary findings which brought this reaction from Israel’s Justice and Foreign Ministries according to a Jerusalem Post report, “Israel has an engagement with the ICC over competence issues.”

 “Competence” is a code word for trying to convince the ICC that there is no state of “Palestine” and that the ICC cannot investigate IDF personnel, because the IDF’s own investigations of its personnel meet international law standards.

An International Military Tribunal presented testimony at the UN Human Rights Council probe chaired by former New York Supreme Court Justice Mary McGowan Davis in mid-June 2015. The Tribunal, composed of former generals and diplomats, concluded that ”the IDF acted within the bounds of international law during its war with Hamas in Gaza.” Further, the group’s report concluded:

During Operation Protective Edge last summer, in the air, on the ground and at sea, Israel not only met a reasonable international standard of observance of the laws of armed conflict, but in many cases significantly exceeded that standard.

We saw clear evidence of this from the upper to the lower levels of command. A measure of the seriousness with which Israel took its moral duties and its responsibilities under the laws of armed conflict is that, in some cases, Israel’s scrupulous adherence to the laws of war cost Israeli soldiers’ and civilians’ lives.

One of those who presented testimony was former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, Col. Richard E. Kemp (ret.), CBE.  In a New York Times op-ed, Kemp disputed the ruling by UNHRC Special Rapporteur Judge Davis, saying:

It pains me greatly to see words and actions from the United Nations that can only provoke further violence and loss of life. The United Nations Human Rights Council report on last summer’s conflict in Gaza … will do just that.

[…]

The former British commander wondered why the commission refused to incorporate a 242-page report commissioned by Israel after it declined to cooperate with the U.N. Commission, which included findings by 11 senior military officials from seven nations, including Kemp and Chairman of the Unites States Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. That report said Israel’s actions were “lawful” and “legitimate” and rejected claims the IDF intentionally targeted civilians.

Kemp also noted several internal contradictions in the U.N. report, such as acknowledging that Israel Defense Forces tactics saved lives while indicting “decision makers at the highest levels of the government of Israel of a policy of deliberately killing civilians.”

He accused the U.N. commission of endorsing “Hamas’s anti-Israel narrative.”

Kemp said he was in Israel for much of the 50-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza last summer.

When the Paris and San Bernardino massacres occurred in November and December 2015, with large mass casualties, the worst since 9/11 in the California jihad attack, questions were raised about both fraudulent passport and questionable Visa screening procedures. This was especially the case as the US DHS was responsible for vetting Iraqi and Syrian refugees being admitted  under the authorized US Refugee Admissions Program.

Given the infiltration by ISIS operatives in the stream of Syrian asylees flooding into Europe, including jihadis killed in the Paris attack, Congress created legislation – the Security Against Foreign Enemies or SAFE Act, H.R. 4038. The SAFE Act required additional clearances by the FBI and unanimous consent by the DHS, FBI and Director of National Intelligence before Iraqi and Syrian refugees could be admitted. It was passed by the House on November 19, 2015 by a vote of 239 to 137, including 47 Minority Democrats. The SAFE legislation was rejected from consideration by the US Senate on January 20, 2016. The bill was “provisionally dead due to a failed vote for cloture required to move past a Senate filibuster or the threat of a filibuster that required a 3/5th vote.” The measure couldn’t be considered as Senate Republicans could only muster 55 votes. That still left the dual questions of how we could stem the flood of Iraqi and Syrian conflict refugees into the US.

Against this background, The Lisa Benson Show convened a discussion about these issues in a January 10, 2015 broadcast with guests Counterterrorism experts Col. Richard E. Kemp (ret.) CBE, and Dr. Sebastian Gorka.

Listen to the podcast of the Lisa Benson Show broadcast with Kemp and Gorka.

Lisa Benson

Lisa Benson: Welcome, America. Welcome, everyone. And good evening to our friends listening from around the world tonight. Shalom to our friends joining us from Israel, and we thank them for staying up. It’s 10:00 PM in Israel. This is your host, Lisa Benson. Our broadcast today has two distinguished guests, very highly qualified counterterrorism experts. They are Dr. Sebastian Gorka, often seen on FOX News, andColonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan.

There are several breaking stories we are watching today. As you heard this week, the insurgency of ISIS sympathizers in the United States is on the rise. This is evidenced by the attacks in San Bernardino and Philadelphia. ISIS sympathizers were arrested in Sacramento, Rochester, New York, and Houston, Texas. At the same time, we are learning that the New York Police Department is being curtailed on profiling Muslimsunder suspicion, and an award of $11 million has been made to Muslim advocates. That story was in the Wall Street Journal weekend edition. We are going to discuss that with Dr. Gorka today. Adding to the nexus of international geopolitics, the Saudi Arabians are cutting their ties with Iran. North Koreans are claiming detonation of an H-bomb. ISIS and Hezbollah are on the northern Israeli border. Sanctions are to be lifted on Iran this week or next. Transfer of $100 billion to Iran, and still we do not have a signed agreement on the Iran deal that our lawmakers handed them on a silver platter. All the while, Iran continues to violate the agreement, but we will lift our sanctions. You know full well what will happen to those released funds. The Taliban, ISIS and Al-Qaeda are on the rise in Afghanistan. Those are just a few of the stories we have been following this week.  Jerry Gordon, are you with me?

Jerry Gordon

Jerry Gordon:  I am with you.

Benson:  Thank you so much. Jerry Gordon, senior editor, New English Review, our honorary, board member, and co-producer of this show.

Gordon:  Thank you.

Benson:  It is quite an honor to have once again back with us, Col. Richard Kemp. Col. Kemp, are you there?

Colonel Richard Kemp

Col. Richard Kemp:  I’m here, and it’s a real pleasure to be with you.

Benson:  Richard Kemp is the best-selling author of Attack State Red and a regular columnist for the Times of London. He frequently writes for other national and international newspapers, and is a prolific contributor to television and radio news and current affairs programs. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. Col. Kemp was a front-line observer in three IDF operations against Hamas in Gaza in 2009,2012, and 2014. He has presented expert testimony on IDF counterterrorism operations in Gaza before the tribunals of the United Nations. Richard, I was reading your Facebook page, and one thing that strikes me is you think the Royals should pay a visit to Israel.

Kemp:  Yes, I go there as often as I possibly can. It’s an absolutely brillian country. The only democracy in the Middle East. They have been at war constantly since, the modern State of Israel was founded in 1948. They have been attacked many times, both by conventional armies and by terrorists using rocket attacks from Gaza. Yet they manage to not only to maintain their country, to develop their country, which has produced major benefits, inventions and technical advancements for the world. I think it’s a fantastic country. I do think the British royal family should go there. They haven’t.

The Queen hasn’t visited Israel. She is the head of the Church of England. The Church of England, of course, owes its origins to Jerusalem. I think it is time that the royal family should visit in 2017 which is the anniversary of the re-conquest of Jerusalem by General Allenby, who headed British Empire forces, liberating Jerusalem from the Turks. Many British and Empire soldiers, particularly Australians and New Zealanders, died in that, in Palestine. I think that it is the time for the Queen to commemorate the deaths of those brave soldiers.

Benson:  I hope you can make that happen. Your Prime Minister Cameron should be whispering into our president’s ear on why exactly he deemed the MuslimBrotherhood a terrorist organization. We just can’t seem to make that kind of headway here. The president of the United States believes that the Muslim Brotherhood in America is a moderate entity. Would you like to tell the listeners why that was important for you in Great Britain to deem them a terrorist organization that follows suit with the United Arab Emirates?

Kemp:  Our prime minister has many failings and faults, as do every prime minister, every other human being. However, one thing that you can say for him is that he is a strong supporter and friend of Israel. He made a speech two years ago in the Knesset in which he spelled out very clearly the, the United Kingdom’s support for Israel. Not perfect by any means, but it is there. We enjoy very, very close relations, particularly on the intelligence front with the upper levels of Israeli military. Israeli battlefield and medical technology have saved the lives of British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, as it has American soldiers. The Muslim Brotherhood is an evil organization. It is an organization that wishes to spread the Islamic caliphate into Europe. That wishes to effectively take over all governments in the Middle East and in Europe as well. It would run them along Islamic lines. And, that also includes Israel. The terrorist organization Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. They are very closely linked.  They wish to destroy the state of Israel. They wish to drive Israel into the sea. They want to see all Jews out of not only Israel, but the world as well. That is in their charter. The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas have very similar objectives. In some respects, similar also to the Islamic State, which of course, is involved in the worst depravity we are seeing in the world today.  Witness the torture, murder, massacre, abuse that takes place throughout the Middle East under their dispensation. So I think our prime minister, our government, is quite right to outlaw and brand the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. And I think that President Obama should take the same steps.

Benson:  We hope so.

Gordon:  Col. Kemp, it is a pleasure to have you back on the program. And I want to return to your days in Afghanistan as Commander of British Forces in HelmandProvince. Why was the Taliban, vanquished in the first months following 9/11, able to return as a significant threat in Afghanistan in what is now a 14-year war?

Kemp:  I think one of the problems that we experienced in Afghanistan was that we, we were fighting two campaigns at the same time. We were fighting Iraq and we were fighting in Afghanistan. I think we took our eye off the ball a little bit in Afghanistan after initially vanquishing the Taliban. We then ended up with a resurgentTaliban. That does not need to continue.  It has been curbed to an extent. However, we must actually maintain our military presence, and support for the government of Afghanistan, to try and stop the spread of the Taliban and the Islamic State which is gaining increasing traction there as well.

Benson:  I am now going to bring on Richard Cutting, actor, film and, TV writer, producer and counterterrorism commentator. Welcome back, Richard.

Richard Cutting

Richard Cutting:  Thanks for having me back. ISIS and the Taliban are now at each other’s throats in Afghanistan. ISIS is having a presence of some note along the Pakistani border. What is the relative probability of ISIS gaining significant traction in Afghanistan long-term? What is the Afghan government doing to fight any ISIS advance? How are they getting, involved with Pakistan? How, are they gaining access to the theater in Afghanistan?

Kemp:  I think one of the issues here is the support that Pakistan has given to the Taliban over many years. If it had it not been for the support of the Pakistani government, in particularly their intelligence services and their army for the Taliban, then their insurgency would not have been as powerful and successful as it has been. That is one area that remains a concern as the Taliban continues its encroachment. The Islamic State is, um, gaining strength in Afghanistan.  They are gaining recruits from the Taliban. There are some whole units of the Taliban moving across to the Islamic State. In some cases, individual recruits are crossing over. They are gaining power; they’re gaining strength.

They are still not as strong as the Taliban; they’re fighting the Taliban. That is a good thing, of course, because the Islamic State members are killing Taliban people and Taliban are killing Islamic State forces, which we should encourage. We should hope that will continue because they’re both evil groups. They’re both enemies ofthe West. They’re both enemies of the Democratic Republic in Afghanistan. We need to see that continue. One of the problems is, that Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state. The Islamic State wishes to gain control in Pakistan. There is a risk of them gaining more traction in Pakistan. And the Pakistani Taliban is trying to seize control in Pakistan. We have Al-Qaeda, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The two theaters in some ways, I think, need to be seen as one. The difficulty is that they are enemies of each other. Pakistan hates Afghanistan, and vice versa. So this rivalry and animosity feeds and enables the growth of the Taliban and the Islamic State in both of these countries. It is an area that we need to be very concerned about. We certainly need to keep military engagement in Afghanistan. And we certainly need strong political engagement and pressure put on the Pakistani government.

Benson:  Col. Kemp: Do you see Al Qaeda and ISIS threatening the United States and its European allies?

Kemp:  As we all know 9/11 was spawned in Afghanistan. There is a very strong risk that if significant areas of Afghanistan or even the whole country, is again taken over by Islamic jihadists, we could see a scenario where they’re able to plan, organize and launch attacks against the U.S. and the West. However, it is not simplyAfghanistan today. We have very strong issues in Syria and Iraq, where the Islamic State has gained power. Admittedly, some of the areas are being taken back. We also have problems in Libya, in many parts of the Middle East, and in North Africa. There is territory that is being gained by the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and the jihadists. All of these areas are areas that we need to monitor closely. I know the CIA is doing that. The U.S. military is doing that as well. Wherever ISIS raises its head, it has to be hit. It has to be knocked off. The problem is not going away. It is a generation’s long problem that we are facing and fighting for a very long time. We need to be constantly vigilant. We need to be aggressive in the way that we deal with it. We cannot afford simply relax our guard and hope that it is going to die down; it is not. The US has to be very politically active in the Middle East. The U.S. actually is backing the wrong horse. They are supporting one of the world’s most dangerous powers – Iran. They are abandoning their allies in the region. Their allies include Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the US is not providing backing for those powers which have been effective stalwarts and bulwarks against Islamic jihad throughout the region and the world.

Benson:  I hope we can last another year with less than 10,000 combat forces in Afghanistan and soon to be reduced. We cannot imagine what will happen.

Gordon:  By the end of the Obama presidency, which is now a year away, are the Afghan security forces under the status of forces agreement, capable of defendingthe country against both the Taliban and ISIS?

Kemp:  They are not, unfortunately no. That is not without strong U.S. and Allied assistance. Britain is providing some assistance, but not as much as it should be. The problem with the Afghan security force is that they are working for a corrupt government. Corruption is endemic in Afghanistan. It started, under President Karzai and is continuing. What armed forces can be expected to fight for a corrupt regime that doesn’t support them, that does not pay them properly, that does not put a priority on giving them the resources they need? That is why U.S. forces need to retain a presence there. If they don’t, then we risk the same situation occurring in Afghanistan, perhaps on an even worse scale as we saw when President Obama pulled virtually all U.S. forces out of Iraq in 2012 as part of his domestic political agenda, which helped him to be reelected for a second term.

Benson:  As we wrap up this segment with Col. Richard Kemp, I would like to have. Richard Cutting summarize.

Cutting:  What occurs to me in listening to the Colonel is, simply this: we are in a new world. We really have to integrate that in our daily thinking. Just as you go out to hear your candidates and in your local political arenas, talking about taxes and your local issues, we must now begin to listen to our friends in the military. Col. Kemp’s message couldn’t have been clearer today. As a citizen of this country, we are in a generational battle, and we need to start acting that way. We need to think about these theaters of war as part of our everyday lives, and support the people who are intelligently analyzing this, and leading this fight. We are not in episodic wars like World War II anymore. This is going to be, unfortunately, something we pass on to our children. There must be a continuum of intelligent political discussion, that is precise, and based on the good efforts and fine work of people like Col. Kemp. Thank you, Colonel, for putting in that generational aspect. It has to start becoming normalized.

Gordon:  Col. Kemp is a man who has also put his finger on what the problem is here in the West. He calls it the “amoral revolution.” He, however, has been an exemplar of defending those common Judeo-Christian values, coming to the assistance of the Israel Defense Force.  The IDF has been unfairly castigated in international forums. It has been unjustly accused of war crimes. Kemp also put his finger on whom in the Muslim world, are backing the Taliban and ISIS, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa, and even South Asia.

Kemp:  I think it’s very important that Americans realize the war that we’re in. The two commentators there made it absolutely clear, and rightly, that this is agenerational struggle. It’s a struggle between the West and radical Islam. This is not a war sought by the West. This is a war that has been sought by radical Islamists. They want to dominate the Middle East. They want to deny any access to the Middle East by the West. They also want to dominate areas of the West, perhaps the whole of the West. We have to fight them. We have to stand up and fight them. We are not going to fight them by pretending that the struggle doesn’t exist, by pretending that they are not our enemies, because they are our enemies.

I am not suggesting that all Muslims are our enemies. Those who wish to see us destroyed, those who wish to change the way of life in countries like Britain and the United States of America that have been responsible for the vast majority of good that’s been done in this world. We just cannot allow them to destroy us. We have to stand up against them and fight them. We should not deny that this problem exists. We need to find ways of dealing with it.  Our politicians are too enthusiastic about understanding and wanting to embrace cultures that simply don’t work in our countries. They cannot work in our countries unless we wish to see our countriesdescending into the kind of violence and amorality that exists in so many parts of the Middle East. Let us support Israel. Let us do everything we can to support the outpost of civilization, the outpost of Western values that exists in the Middle East. It is a very valuable country. It is a magnificent country from which we all benefit. We must support Israel as we support our own civilizations.

Benson:  I’d like to bring on my next guest, Dr. Sebastian Gorka. Welcome, Dr. Gorka.

Dr. Sebastian Gorka

Dr. Sebastian Gorka:  Thank you so much, Lisa.

Benson:  Dr. Gorka, You are advisor to the Department, the Department of Defense in its irregular warfare joint operation concept. You currently serve as the Major General Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at Marine Corps University. Previously you were Associate Dean of Congressional Affairs and Relations to the special operations community at the National Defense University.

Gordon:  Dr. Gorka, in early December we had the San Bernardino, California terrorist massacre. This weekend we had a shooting of a police officer in Philadelphia by a former convicted felon. Were these crimes by Muslims inspired by loyalty to the pure Islam of ISIS?

Gorka:  The most important thing we have to do is jettison a phrase that is used so regularly in the media, of “lone-wolf terrorism.” This is a phrase that was invented to make the listener disconnect the dots. There is this idea that there has to be some kind of operational link between the perpetrators and Al-Qaeda central, or ISIS headquarters in Iraq or Syria. The fact is that, whether it’s the Boston Bombers whether it’s the Chattanooga shooter, whether it is the two in San Bernardino or this new, attempted murder of this police officer in Philadelphia, it’s very clear that the connective tissue for all of them is the ideology of global jihad. We have to understand that all of these actors from 9/11 down are connected, share the same concept that we are the infidel; America is antithetical to Islam, and as a result we must be destroyed. This is the big picture. This is the strategic understanding that the current administration doesn’t want your listeners to have.

Cutting:  Dr. Gorka, two Iraqi refugees, one in Sacramento and the other in Houston, were arrested this past week. One had joined ISIS in Syria and returned toCalifornia as a trained jihadi, influencing the other to join ISIS. How deficient is our system for vetting refugees, in light of the Administration’s resettlement of thousands of Syrian refugees in the United States?

Gorka:  It is not just deficient; it’s actually, impossible to do the vetting that would be required. So, if you want to vett somebody, from the national securityperspective, who’s coming into the country as a refugee, there are really only two ways to do it. This is very personal to me; my parents were refugees. They escaped the Communist country during the Cold War, and they were vetted. They escaped Hungary in the revolution of 1956. They arrived in a refugee camp in Austria. For the next few weeks, they were persistently and repeatedly interviewed by counterintelligence professional who would make the determination after dozens of interviews, whether or not the individual was truly a refugee and should be supported and given succor? Or whether they were an agent of a hostile power – in that case, a Communist regime? So that’s the first way you do it. Right now America does not have the manpower to do that. Remember, the president has just declared that his priority is to provide more agents to the FBI to do background checks for firearms purchases. I doubt this would be a priority.

The second way to vet is to compare that individual’s story and the data they are providing you, against an objective, confirmed database – a source that you know is true. You check that against their presentations to the individual who’s interviewing them. As Director Comey of the FBI, has testified on the Hill, we do not have that database to check refugee data against. It doesn’t even exist. Even if it existed in Syria, the Assad regime would not give us access to that information. So when it comes to the very basic 101 of national security, we don’t have the manpower, nor do we have the objective data – the verifiable data – available to do a proper refugee screening as the U.S. national security would require.

Gordon:  Dr. Gorka, you were in both Israel and Jordan during the Christmas/New Year’s holiday. You visited a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. What did you take away from that experience about Administration policies regarding the conflict in Syria and the strategy combating ISIS?

Gorka:  There were two big takeaways after we visited the biggest refugee camp in Jordan. The first one is the fact that Jordan is doing an incredible job with minimal assistance from either the United States or the, very wealthy Gulf states. So think about this; Jordan has a population of 6 million Jordanians, and they’ve absorbed atleast one and a half million refugees from Syria. This is a nation that doesn’t have oil; that is not wealthy. They are doing an incredible job absorbing the aftermath of the murderous war that is occurring in Syria. So they need support, and fundamentally they need support from the Gulf States that are in a position to assist them. Secondly, I think the biggest take-home is what the Jordanian authorities shared with us after we had seen everything, and after we asked them, so what’s the long-term scenario here? And they were very candid with us. Remember, Jordan is a Muslim country. It is a Sunni Muslim country; it headed by King Abdullah II, who is descended from Mohammed. That is why it’s called the Hashemite Kingdom. They were very explicit; they said, look, these are Syrians from Syria. We don’t want them to stay in refugee camps. Nor does it make sense for them to move further north into Europe, nor does it make sense for them to travel across the Atlantic to be accepted into countries like the United States. The long-term answer is for the crisis in Syria to be resolved, and for these Syrians to go back to Syria. So when a, a Muslim nation right next to the Syrian conflict tells you that, I think we should listen.

Benson:  Dr. Gorka, New York City concluded a settlement ending the NYPD Muslim community profiling program imposing a civilian monitor on the policedepartment. Do you think this puts New York City at greater risk for Islamic terror?

Gorka:  Absolutely. I was actually briefing a House Committee about this Friday. One of the Congressmen asked me, “So what’s the good news?” Because I gave them a very depressing presentation on how we are losing the war with the jihadists. At the end of the briefing, one of them said, “So, Dr. Gorka, give us some good news about what works. What have we done right in the last 15 years?”  I said, “You know what? Our federal government really hasn’t done very much right in the last 15 years. But if you want a model of how to make America secure or part of America secure, it’s the NYPD.”

The NYPD after 9/11 made a very simple decision. They said, “The feds have let us down. The Big Apple was the key target. and, they didn’t do their jobs. So we’re not going to ask, we’re not going to expect Uncle Sam to protect the citizens of New York again, but we’re going to do it ourselves.” New York went from having six counterterrorism intelligence analysts, to building probably one of the world’s best counter-jihadi intelligence capabilities, with amazing human intelligence networks. People who were trained to go into the communities to monitor the radical Imam, the radical mosques. This is way to do it to protect Americans. But that only lasted until Mayor de Blasio. So now you have in New York, a, another version of what’s happening here in Washington with the White House. You have politics getting in the way of national security. And you’ve got ideology undermining American lives.

Cutting:  Dr. Gorka, you cover such a range. The one thing that didn’t get factored into this is the Persian Gulf, situation with Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Gorka:  I’m going to steal somebody else’s words here. There is no better summary than Netanyahu’s, description before Congress recently, when he said, “If you want to understand what’s going on in the Middle East now, you have to understand that it is a game of thrones for the crown of the caliphate.” We’re obsessed with Al-Qaeda, with ISIS; but we have to understand that it is actually a war between the Shiite version of the Caliphate, as, designed by the Mullahs in Tehran, and the Sunni version of the Caliphate, as exemplified by Al-Qaeda and, ISIS. So this, this is the war that we are caught up in. Two versions of the Caliphate and Iran is potentially even more dangerous than ISIS, because of their nuclear capabilities.

Gordon:  Dr. Gorka has basically told us that we can forget about the administration’s famous program combating violent extremism. If you don’t focus on theunderlying Islamic Koranic doctrine, you will not succeed in combating either domestic terrorism or ISIS and settling the problems in the Middle East. Furthermore, you’ve got a sectarian divide rising between Iran – which is potentially going to be nuclear-powered – and Saudi Arabia.

 Benson:  Thank you, Jerry Gordon. Thank you, Richard Cutting. Thank you Dr. Gorka.

Gorka:  You’re very welcome.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Pope’s envoy warns of ‘silent genocide’ and ‘biggest terrorism in the world’

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“A silent genocide” and “the biggest terrorism in the world.” Did Charles Maung Bo mean the Muslim persecution of Christians that has eradicated ancient Christian communities in Iraq, while Catholic bishops in the West stand by silently afraid to harm their precious and utterly useless “dialogue” with Muslim leaders? Did he mean the terrorism that has claimed committed over 27,000 jihad terror attacks worldwide since 9/11, and more every day, and boasts about its imminent conquest of Rome and the entire West?

No, of course he doesn’t mean that silent genocide or that terrorism. He means poverty and injustice — in other words, he means that the West needs to give more money to Third World nations. That the West might collapse utterly from jihad activity, Muslim migration, Sharia supremacism, etc., well, Catholic prelates don’t speak of such things. To do so would be to “provoke” Muslims and “poke them in the eye,” when they know that “respect” (i.e., cringing, shivering fear combined with appeasement) is the order of the day.

Catholic bishops today are failing their people, failing the Church, failing the world, and helping pave the way for a catastrophe of proportions they will find unimaginable when it engulfs them, but at that point it will be far too late.

Charles Maung Bo and Francis

“Pope’s envoy warns of ‘silent genocide’ and ‘biggest terrorism,’” by Nestor Corrales, Inquirer.net, January 24, 2016:

CEBU CITY – “A silent genocide” and “the biggest terrorism in the world.”

The Pope’s envoy at the 51st International Eucharistic Congress (IEC) made that analogy to describe starvation, poverty and injustice in the world.

Citing a data from the United Children’s Nation’s Fund (Unicef), Charles Maung Cardinal Bo of Myanmar said 20, 000 die of starvation and malnutrition everyday, totaling to more than seven million a year.

In a powerful homily on Sunday, Cardinal Bo urged Catholics to declare a “third world war” against poverty and break the “chains of injustice.”

“In a world that continues to have millions of poor, the Eucharist is a major challenge to humanity,” he said.

“What is the greatest mortal sin? Seeing a child dying of starvation,” the cardinal added.

In a press conference on Monday, Bishop Mylo Hubert Vergara said the papal legate’s homily was a challenge to the Catholic faithful to make fighting poverty and injustice “a priority.”

“To make it as urgent, to become a priority in us,” Vergara told reporters.

He said social justice is a responsibility of everyone.

“We want to make social justice realized, to live it out. And it is a responsibility for all of us.” he said.

Vergara said Cardinal Bo’s statement was an urgent call “just to make us realized that we really have to fight for poverty, graft and corruption.”…

Maybe it would be better to fight against them, but whatever you say, Mylo — who am I to question a bishop?

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The Islamic State vs. the Laffer Curve by Daniel J. Mitchell

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Based on my writings, some people may think I’m 100 percent against higher taxes.

But that’s not exactly true. In some cases, I like punitive taxation. Or, to be more precise, I sometimes take pleasure when punitive tax policy backfires on bad people.

Here’s an example. An interesting article in Slate, authored by Adam Chodorow of Arizona State University Law School, looks at how a terrorist group’s attempt to form a government is being stymied by an inability to collect taxes.

Revolution is easy. Governing is hard. And there are few things more difficult than taxes. Operating a country requires money, and that typically requires taxes. … 

The population in this area is estimated to be between 7 million and 8 million, about the same as the population of Washington state. While ISIS currently collects about $1 billion annually, countries of similar size collect about $16 billion, suggesting that ISIS has a long way to go if it wants to operate like a real state.

But the comparatively low levels of tax revenue are not because of a Hong Kong-type commitment to limited government.

Instead, the terror group is discovering that people don’t like giving their money to politicians and bureaucrats, even ones motivated by Islamic fundamentalism.

Taxes aren’t a great way to ingratiate oneself with the governed. … More than one government has fallen because of its tax policy. ISIS must face these challenges just as any emerging polity does… ISIS may have displayed prowess on the battlefield, but it has revealed that it is as stymied and constrained by the complexities of taxation as the rest of us. …

ISIS’s taxes appear to be … no more popular in the territory it controls than they would be here in the U.S. As the Times reported, ISIS’s taxes are now so onerous that large numbers of people, who were apparently willing to tolerate ISIS’s religious authoritarianism, are fleeing Syria and Iraq to escape them. At some point people will either rise up or leave, threatening ISIS’s internal revenue source.

So taxes are becoming so onerous that taxpayers (and taxable income) are escaping.

Hmm… excessive taxation leading to less taxable economic activity. That seems like a familiar concept — something I’ve written about one or two times. Or maybe 50 or 100 times.

Ah, yes, our old friend, the Laffer Curve!

ISIS is … constrained by a lack of administrative resources and the simple reality once sketched on the back of a cocktail napkin by the economist Arthur Laffer: that tax rates can only get so high before they actually drive down government revenues.

Given current conditions, ISIS may be near or at the limits of its ability to tax, even if it can recruit jihadi tax accountants to its cause. Thus … it’s not clear how much room the group has to grow internal revenues. More important, its efforts to do so may do more to damage its prospects than outside forces can accomplish.

This sounds like the tax equivalent of War of the Worlds, the H.G. Wells’ classic in which alien invaders wreak havoc on earth until they are felled by bacteria.

Tom Cruise was the star of a 2005 movie adaptation of this story, but I’m thinking I could rekindle my acting career and star in a movie of how the Laffer Curve thwarts ISIS!

But to have a happy ending, ISIS has to be defeated. And Professor Chodorow closes his article with a very helpful suggestion.

Rather than send in ground troops … view our tax code as a weapon of mass destruction. … We could make full use of it in the war on ISIS, perhaps by translating it into Arabic in the hopes that the group adopts it.

Sounds like the advice I once gave about threatening Assad with Obamacare.

A version of this post first appeared at Dan Mitchell’s blog International Liberty.

Daniel J. MitchellDaniel J. Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.

U.S. State Department: 9,500 foreigners whose visas were revoked for terrorism go missing

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The solution: bring in hundreds of thousands of refugees whose ties to jihad terror will be impossible to vet.

“Feds can’t say whereabouts of those whose visas were revoked over terror threat,” Fox News, December 19, 2015 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

The Obama administration cannot be sure of the whereabouts of thousands of foreigners in the U.S. who had their visas revoked over terror concerns and other reasons, a State Department official acknowledged Thursday.

The admission, made at a House oversight hearing examining immigrant vetting in the wake of major terror attacks, drew a sharp rebuke from the committee chairman.

“You don’t have a clue do you?” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Michele Thoren Bond, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Consular Affairs.

Bond initially said the U.S. has revoked more than 122,000 visas since 2001, including 9,500 because of the threat of terrorism.

But Chaffetz quickly pried at that stat, pressing the witness about the present location of those individuals.

“I don’t know,” she said.

The startling admission came as members of the committee pressed administration officials on what safeguards are in place to reduce the risk from would-be extremists….

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Syed Farook and San Bernardino: MSM narrative fails, Muslim CAIR steps in

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mass-shooter-syed-farook-islam-in-america-religion-of-peace-933x445

As America reacted to Wednesday’s horrific mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, in which 14 people were killed and 17 wounded, some mainstream media were racing to craft their preferred narrative.

That narrative creation process was in high gear throughout the early afternoon, while the situation was still quite “fluid,” as some would say. At about 3:20pm, MSNBC was reporting that a Planned Parenthood clinic was “only a few blocks away.” After Twitter erupted with ridicule once people began checking their Google Maps, Bloomberg Business tweeted at 4:29pm,”San Bernadino [sic] shooting happened less than two miles from a Planned Parenthood health clinic.”

Bloomberg’s “less than” qualifier was “less than” sufficient to convince anyone the attackers were somehow targeting PP. Aren’t all map apps and GPS more accurate than within a two mile radius?

Calls for gun control from President Obama and Hillary Clinton failed to address why San Bernardino’s gun-free zone status did not prevent the shooting.

By mid-afternoon EST, the Liberal narrative had failed, and details were beginning to leak out.

The facts released thus far present a complex scenario with the main suspect, Syed Farook, having possible connections to a person investigated for terrorism a few years ago, and having travelled recently to Saudi Arabia.

RT France was first to report the chief suspect’s name, Syed Farook. NBC followed a few hours later, citing multiple sources. Soon after, the New York Daily News had interviewed Syed Farook’s father, who described the suspect to be a “very religious” Muslim.

Over at CNN, ex-CIA analysts were describing the assault as having “the hallmarks of the sort of attacks you see in the Middle East,” multiple shooters, IEDs, etc.

The Daily Beast seems to be the first news organization to locate and approach the Farook family’s home in Corona CA:

Farook lived at a home with his wife and children in Corona, California. The Daily Beast knocked on the home’s door and was met by a man who said, “My name is Farook.” When asked if he knew Sayed, the man said, “Of course I know him but I have nothing to say.” When asked about Syed being named as a suspect, he said, “I have nothing to say.” […]

Five minutes after he answered the door, Farook got into a white car and drove away, answering questions again with, “I have nothing to say.”

The Daily Beast contacted Farook’s sister, Saira Khan, by phone on Wednesday shortly after the shooting. She said the media was jumping to conclusions on identifying the suspect and said that her brother was at work. Khan said she would try to get in touch with her brother and pass along his contact information.

Some additional pieces to the puzzle have emerged:

CNN reports that Farook had “abruptly left” the holiday event for county employees. And from the Wall Street Journal: “Government records show Mr. Farook, a U.S. citizen, traveled to Saudi Arabia last year.” (Thanks to Breitbart News for these links.)

The NY Times reports on possible international connections:

One senior American official said that Mr. Farook had not been the target of any active terrorism investigation, and he was not someone the bureau had been concerned about before Wednesday’s shooting. Other officials said the F.B.I. was looking into a possible connection between Mr. Farook and at least one person who was investigated for terrorism a few years ago.

There were also accounts by investigators that one of the attackers had recently had a dispute with fellow employees, according to law enforcement officials who did not want to be identified.

Chief Burguan confirmed that someone left the party after a dispute, “but we have no idea if those were the people that came back.”

This last assessment seems at odds with CNN’s reporting cited above.

At the late evening press conference, however, Fox News reports, “I’m now being told…[police] are going on the premise there wasn’t a disagreement…he was there to case the location.”

MSNBC relates a survivor’s account:

The shooters who opened fire in a conference room at a California center for the developmentally disabled Wednesday didn’t say anything before they started spraying the room with bullets, the husband of a woman who was shot but survived said.

Salaheen Kondoker’s wife, Annie, an environmental engineer who works for San Bernardino County, was inside the conference room when gunfire erupted at around 11 a.m. local time.

“They just started shooting … they didn’t yell or say anything beforehand,” Salaheen Kondoker said his wife told him.

News reporting continued late into the evening at a San Bernardino police press conference, with tantalizing bits of evidence being tweeted. From Raheem Kassam at Breitbart:

20-21 officers in shootout with suspects, both dead. First suspect Syed Rizwan Farook, 28. Second is Tashfeen Malik, 27.

“There was a relationship” between Farook and Malik…
“It really looks like we have 2 shooters…”
“We have not ruled out terrorism…”
“Based upon what we’ve seen… how they were equipped… there had to be some level of planning”
Journalist asks if any connection to ISIS: “I’m not gonna weigh in on that one” says police spox
“We have multiple addresses for [the suspects]…”

Did political correctness enable the shooter’s plot to be carried out? Will Carr of Fox News tweeted this:

@KNX1070 reporting a neighbor did not call authorities about suspicious activity bc she did not want to racially profile

CAIR steps in

Once Syed Farook’s name was released as one of the suspects, CAIR-LA immediately scheduled a press conference. The full text of CAIR-National’s press release can be read here. The key statement reads:

“We condemn this horrific and revolting attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured,” said CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush. “The Muslim community stands shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Americans in repudiating any twisted mindset that would claim to justify such sickening acts of violence.”

Breitbart reports Farook’s family was “in shock”:

At the CAIR press conference, Syed Farook’s brother-in-law Farhan Khan is present and delivers a statement. “I have no idea why he would he do something like this. I have absolutely no idea. I am in shock myself.” Khan does not answer questions from reporters. Executive Director of CAIR-LA says “We unequivocally condemn the horrific act that happened today.”

The reaction of some to the CAIR presser is that it seemed odd:

Toby Harnden: Weird weird weird @CNN right now. No mention of Islam & then live to CAIR presser w multiple people saying it’s nothing to do with Islam.

toddstarnes: Not quite what to make of that CAIR presser….Odd.

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CNN Always Blames Conservatives for Terrorism

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John Nolte tells the truth. But it isn’t just CNN: numerous people who are putatively on the right, including Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham and others who should know better but clearly don’t, lined up after our free speech event in Garland, Texas last May to blame us for the jihad terror attack on the event.

“Planned Parenthood & Pamela Geller: CNN Always Blames Conservatives for Terrorism,” by John Nolte, Breitbart, November 30, 2015:

Chris Cuomo: “Now we get into why did it happen? The man charged with Friday’s murderous attack on a Colorado Planned Parenthood is probably a crazy extremist who did something sick and negative and wrong. But isn’t killing babies primarily for purposes of convenience provocative?

Alisyn Camerota: “What people are saying is that the business you are in, aborting innocent unborn children primarily for convenience purposes, is incendiary and provocative.”

Erin Burnett: “Is being caught on video talking so cavalierly about dismembering innocent babies and selling their parts stoking the flames? Do you think on some level, Planned Parenthood relished this attack?”

Carol Costello: “Is Planned Parenthood’s belligerent insistence on taxpayer funding a deliberate attempt to provoke and taunt?”

The questions above are fabricated. Not a single one of CNN’s left-wing anchors raised anything close to the idea that Planned Parenthood’s horrific abortion practices provoked last week’s violence.  Which is appropriate. What happened at a Colorado Planned Parenthood Friday afternoon was indefensible and evil. The only person responsible is the person who committed those three murders.

Throughout Monday, though, and on too many occasions to count, like the rest of the DC Media, CNN did attempt to blame conservative pro-lifers for provoking the Friday attack, this includes the Center for Medical Progress, a group that exposed Planned Parenthood’s ghoulish cottage industry involving the dismemberment of dead babies and the selling of those tiny body parts to the highest bidder.

And yet, if it means the left-wing network can blame conservatives, this very same CNN does see cartoons as a provocative taunt that makes the intended victim in some way responsible for the terrorism. (Donald Trump said the same thing, by the way).

Back in May, after Islamic terrorists tried to murder everyone at a Texas free speech event organized by Pamela Geller, CNN relentlessly attacked Geller for wearing a short free speech skirt. According to CNN, the bitch was begging for it.

Believe it or not, these quotes are real:

Chris Cuomo to Pam Geller: “Now, we get into, why did it happen? They’re crazy extremists. They bought into an ideology that is sick and negative and wrong, that’s fact. But what you did was calculated in a way that would be provocative.”

Alisyn Camerota to Pam Geller: “What people are saying is that there is that there is always this fine line of being intentionally incendiary and provocative.”

Erin Burnett to Pam Geller: “I mean, are you stoking the flames? Do you on some level relish being the target of these attacks?”

Carol Costello: “She can say whatever she wants but if this [cartoon] contest was set up to deliberately taunt or provoke, is that responsible?”

At CNN, no matter what happens, the political Right is always to blame.

Even for train crashes.

Today’s reminder of just how good Democrats got it … especially at CNN.

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Why Muslim Migrants Always = Terrorism

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What’s the point in the West sending troops to the Middle East if we bring the Middle East to the West? The preceding is a money line, one that should be used by Islam realists from Germany to Georgia.

The Paris terror attack has inspired much debate, from conservatives saying we need to confront ISIS aggressively overseas to liberals wringing their hands over rising anti-Islam sentiment that they claim will exacerbate the jihadist problem. And while I’m more sympathetic to the former sentiment than the latter, nothing should distract us from what must be our number-one priority: stopping the Muslim influx into the West cold.

Many say this is a cold position. And, unfortunately, their prescription for (misguided) compassion is seldom sufficiently refuted.

In an attempt to salvage a failing multicultural model and strategy for importing left-leaning voters, we hear that the Muslim migrants must be “vetted” better. A practical problem with this notion is that Syria’s and other Middle Eastern countries’ databases are woefully inadequate, making accurate information on many migrants impossible to obtain. This confronts us with a simple matter of probability: if 1 million migrants enter a nation over time and just 1/10th of 1 percent are terrorists, that’s 1000 dangerous jihadists. Is this acceptable? Note that my estimate may be conservative.

Yet there’s also a fundamental problem with vetting that goes unmentioned: even with complete information, it only tells you about the past.

It cannot tell you about the future.

In other words, even if those one million migrants have “clean records,” how many will become terrorists in the future? Again, 1/10th of 1 percent is 1000.

And what of their children? How many of them will become terrorists? No point repeating best-case-scenario percentages.

One response here is that the children will be more integrated and thus the problem should diminish over time. This is logical, but, unfortunately, also apparently untrue.

Studies have shown that young Muslims in Europe are actually more radical than their elders. This certainly is counterintuitive, but only because the average Westerner’s cranial database also doesn’t contain accurate information. For example and related to this, moderns take as a given that religion is declining in our “enlightened times.” Yet religious belief is actually increasing worldwide, a phenomenon poised to continue. Islam’s adherents are growing in number, and Catholicism’s are, too, slightly in excess of the increase in world population. Religious belief is only declining in the West — and, most significantly, among Westerners in the West.

Another common argument was expressed by Charles Grant, director of pro-E.U. think-tank Centre for European Reform. He said that ratcheting up the anti-Islamic rhetoric would serve ISIS’ ends and that “Europe’s game must be to resist that and not repeat the mistakes we made after September 11 which played right into al-Qaeda’s hands. We must hold our nerve and embrace our values of tolerance of faith and religions which we share in common and against the Islamic State,” reported the Telegraph. Many leftists echo this, the idea being that we must not further “alienate” Muslim communities. This overlooks that you can only alienate those who aren’t already alien.

Note again that the pattern evident is for younger Muslim generations to become more alienated from the West, not less. Some would blame this on the West itself, saying that — despite indulging multiculturalism, outlawing anti-Muslim rhetoric and offering generous government benefits — we still aren’t opening our arms and hearts to these newcomers. Kill ‘em with kindness, the thinking (feeling?) goes.

Of such people ask a simple question: can you cite one time in history in which large numbers of Muslims have willingly assimilated into a non-Muslim culture?

Just one?

While there may be some exception, I can’t think of any. Note here a recent poll showing that a slim majority of U.S. Muslims prefer living under Sharia law to American civil law (and how many wouldn’t admit such a thing to pollsters?). The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and the historical record informs that “Muslim assimilation” is a contradiction in terms.

In fact, I don’t know of even one instance in which large numbers of Muslims were ever shaken from Islam other than by the sword, and that wasn’t done very much, if at all. There was an attempt by a group of medieval Christian missionaries to peacefully convert Middle Eastern Muslims, but the effort was found futile and abandoned after a short time.

Then there’s the myth of “assimilation.” The term is thrown around thoughtlessly much as is “diversity,” and seldom mentioned is that assimilation is often never complete. For while large groups who immigrate to a nation often do change, they also are agents of change. Did the large waves of Irish, Italian and German immigrants not alter America somewhat? This might have been a good, bad or neutral thing, but it’s assuredly a real thing.

There are also those who don’t assimilate markedly, if at all. Have the Amish or Hasidic Jews assimilated noticeably into the wider culture? Again, I’m not here making a value judgment on their particular different-drummer walk. The point is merely that assimilation is, foolishly and dangerously, taken as a given when there’s great precedent proving it’s not.

And this also is a numbers game. The rare Muslim who contemplated going to the West many years ago had to be a different kind of Muslim, one who understood he was entering a Christian culture that wouldn’t cater to his desires. He and his co-religionists would be so few and far between there’d be no prospect for “Halal” groceries, Islamic interest-free financing or Muslim schools for his children. So he’d be forced to assimilate by having to work within the established institutions of the host nation. But great numbers of Muslims form their own enclaves and their own institutions; this reality not only makes the journey west more inviting to pious Muslims, but also enables them to reinforce each other’s beliefs.

There’s another problem with assimilation: a prerequisite for it is providing something attractive to assimilate into. The communist political activist Willi Munzenberg once reportedly said, “We will make the West so corrupt that it stinks.” This has been accomplished. Decadence is everywhere, and we no longer even know what marriage is or what boys and girls are. French president Francois Hollande recently canceled a dinner meeting with the Iranian president because he refused to bow to a demand to serve Halal meat and no wine. It’s good he took at least that stand, but one could just imagine his hurling accusations of “intolerance” at Christians who refused to refrain from saying the Lord’s Prayer before a meal with Muslims. It’s an example of how Western Europe has been hollowed out, how it has the superficialities of its culture but not the substance. What are foreigners today supposed to assimilate into in today’s France, Italy, Germany and U.S.? Bread and wine; pasta fagioli; Wiener schnitzel; and baseball, hot dogs and reality TV, all lathered in moral relativism? Are they really going to follow the lead of a dying anomaly in a world of growing religiosity? Heck, I’m a Westerner, and as a believing Christian I refuse to assimilate into my country’s wider culture (although I save my cutting off of heads for broccoli). Thus, with assimilation, even if Muslim migrants were buyin’, they wouldn’t be buyin’ what we’re sellin’.

Of course, none of this means we should toss the post-Christian West from the frying pan into the fire. If you want to destroy liberalism, though — both the suicidal modern ideology and the extant remnants of the classical variety — Islamization is a sure way to do it.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

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