VIDEO: "Allahu akbar!" at Niagara Falls??? Questions arise

One of Walt's agents says that nothing ever happens in Niagara Falls NY. All the action, he claims, is on the pretty side of the river. Today was different. For those who missed it, we have some video from security cameras at the US side of The World's Longest Undefended Border (TM) crossing, timestamped about 1120 EST today.

What, dear reader, was your initial reaction to that video. Did you think it was probably just an accident? No biggie! Nothing here to see, folks!

That's the official party line [the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party. Ed.], which was rushed into print and onto the Web within a couple of hours of the "serious incident". The Powers That Be had to start the gaslighting PDQ because "right-wing" media had already starting using the T-word -- T as in Terrorism.

The T-word has been scrubbed from all the early reports in the lickspittle media, because in recent years people in Europe and North America have, for some strange reason, come to associate terrorism with the Religion of Peace (TM), Muslim jihadis, and, since last October 7th, Hamas. 

In Canada, the bought-and-paid-for media have been enjoined (by Bill M-106) from saying or writing anything that would stoke the fires of Islamophobia. See "If Canadians are Islamophobic, perhaps there's a reason", WWW 27/7/21. Most of the American media are no better.

But I digress. Here's what is known [admitted? Ed.] about what happened. The vehicle came from U.S. side of the border, travelled along Main Street at speeds estimated at 100 MPH, then became airborne and crashed into a US Customs and Border Patrol booth before bursting into flames. 

Two people in the vehicle that exploded were declared dead at the scene, and officials have said a third person believed to be a border employee was injured and taken to hospital, but has since been released. One of the occupants of the vehicle has been identified (but not named) as "a resident of western New York." 

Karen Kathy Hochul, the Democratic Governor of the Empire State, had this to say about that, "At this time there is no indication of a terrorist involved attack here at the Rainbow Bridge in Western New York." (My emphasis. Walt)

Later, Governor Hochul amplified her analysis. "If you can imagine this vehicle basically incinerated. Nothing is left but the engine. The pieces are scattered over 13, 14 booths. So it is a large scene, and it's going to take a lot of time… to be able to piece together the real story... It has not been determined to be an accident. You don't know whether the driver was intentional in how they drove… All I know is there was a horrific incident. A crash, an explosion, loss of life, but at this time, no known terrorist connection." 

I have some questions I'd like to ask.

* If the car wasn't "packed" with explosives" (as a law enforcement officer said before being silenced), what caused it to burst into flame? Even an EV wouldn't do that.

* How did police identify the "resident of western New York" whose body parts were "scattered over 13, 14 booths" by the force of the blast? And if his identity is known, why hasn't his name [not "Mohammed", surely! Ed.] and other information been released? 

* First reports said the vehicle was trying to get into the USA. It's clear from the videos that the opposite is true. So, if the occupants of the vehicle were trying to get out of the USA, why was that? 

* Were they on the run? From what? Or were they trying to get into Canada, to terrorize its famously Islamophile prime minister?

* Is it possible the deceased weren't Muslims, but Jews? (Just kidding.)

That's enough questions for today. Fortunately for Governor Hochul and all the other Authorities, whose ability to secure the World's Longest Etc border now seem even more suspect, the promised investigation will now have to wait until after the holiday weekend. Happy Thanksgiving, everone!

No country for queers!

His Royal Highness Hassanal Bolkiah, sultan of the tiny but oil-rich state of Brunei, in southeast Asia, is a good Muslim, very keen to follow as closely as possible the moral code of Islam, the basis of Sharia law. Being the ruler, Sultan Hassanal has not just the will but the power to impose his strict beliefs on his country. And so it comes to pass that new Islamic criminal laws take effect in Brunei today, punishing gay sex and adultery by stoning offenders to death.

The penalties were provided for under new sections of Brunei's Shariah Penal Code, instituted by Sultan Hassanal in 2014 to bolster the influence of Islam in the oil-rich monarchy of around 430,000 people, two-thirds of whom are Muslim. Even before 2014, homosexuality was punishable by a jail term of up to 10 years. The first stage of the Shariah Penal Code included fines or jail for offences such as pregnancy out of wedlock or failing to pray on Fridays. The second stage raises the bar considerably.

Those found guilty of gay sex could be stoned to death or whipped. Adulterers risk death by stoning too, while thieves face amputation of a right hand on their first offence and a left foot on their second. The new laws apply to everyone, including children and foreigners, even if they are kafirs (read: non-Muslims = infidels). So if you're into deviant sex of any kind, or even normal sex outside a marital relationship, you'd do well to take Brunei off your list of the 100 places you want to visit before you die.

The usual gang of non-Muslim celebrities are in full cry against the new laws. Ignoring the fact that the law of Brunei is none of the business of Westerners, the likes of George Clooney, Elton John and (of course) Ellen DeGeneres have been vocal in opposition to the new laws, calling for a boycott of hotels in the USA and Europe with ties to Sultan Hassanal. Mr Clooney asks, "Are we really going to help fund the murder of innocent citizens?" While you can't shame "murderous regimes", he wrote in Deadline Hollywood, "you can shame the banks, the financiers and the institutions that do business with them."

Pro-queer politicos in Germany, France, the UK and (of course) Canada -- even the USA -- expressed "deep concern" about Brunei's new laws. In Brunei itself, there has been no vocal opposition to the new penalties. That could be because the sultan rules as head of state with full executive authority to do whatever he thinks is right. And what he thinks is right is pretty clear. Sultan Hassanal, who has reigned since 1967, has previously said the Penal Code should be regarded as a form of "special guidance" from God and would be "part of the great history of Brunei."

Moroccan girl writes about "the moral collapse in Islamic societies"

Ed. here. There are 1000s of blogs out there, some with their own websites, some who post on Blogspot, as we do. Checking them all out would take forever. In fact, you'd never get done because new ones pop up every day, like mushrooms after a spring rain. So we're grateful to our agents and readers who alert us to blogs that stand out from the general run of drivel and insanity.

One such is Moroccan Girl, written by Hafida Bouhmid, who is... well... you geddit, right? She has some controversial things to say about the society in which she lives, and its predominant religion, which is Islam. Here, edited for grammar (English is not Ms Bouhmid's first langauge), is her essay on "The Moral collapse in Islamic societies", 29/8/18.

Many people consider religion the basis or source of what we call ethics. They believe that without this systematic organization human beings would never recognize civilization or achieve everything they have today. Thus, these people cannot see the possibility of having another ethical source apart from religion. Moreover, they brutally fight any attempt that starts in this direction or any thought that supports this idea even if it's all for their personal/social benefit and could save the future of the coming generations.

This is basically the core of the underdevelopment of Morocco and the majority of countries with an Islamic background. It's a genuine crisis here since we know that secularism is the solution. As well, we have western societies as a great example, since they're morally, economically, politically and culturally more advanced.

The problem with Islam is that it is considered to be a totalitarian system, seen by Muslims as a perfect exception that everybody else is incapable of understanding, and which therefore must be enforced. [Islamists] reject and attack any criticism, even if it is constructive! These creatures believe they can advance by reviving the past. They turn societies into uncivilized groups that sanctify ignorance and see violence and segregation and hate as a solution for their problems.

Thanks to Salafism, which dominates our societies, the concept of morals has become completely formal in our society. For this movement, it doesn't matter if you are completely despicable or a criminal or a hooker, as long as you have a huge beard, praying at the mosque, wear the hijab, etc. Here, ethical standards are more about what you show people rather than what you actually think and consider to be right.

Muslims go further actually as they do not respect the rejection of this thought by some minorities -- women, for instance -- and they take it upon themselves to make everyone behave in the same way through guardianship. They actually attribute their success or their failure and even the weather to how women wear their clothes. This makes people do things in secret, while claiming virtue, which can make them unconscious hypocrites.

The problem that we are facing lately is that anyone can defraud people (politically speaking) by using religion. For instance, anyone can grow a beard and promise people that if they vote for him, he'll shut down bars and cut off thieves' hands, or force all women to wear the hijab. Since democracy is a system of government where the citizens exercise power by voting, these people will easily win elections, but of course they won't do as promised.

Instead, they continue ruining the economic/political system by corrupting, embezzlement and restrictive laws that can keep media and general opinion confined. These same people use the "divide and conquer" policy, stirring up the majority against minorities in order to keep them busy.

These politicians are not stupid, since they always defend their religious beliefs by enacting laws that penalize those who criticize religion. It's always the same. People are led by their religious passion and always vote for anyone who plays the "religion card" without questioning his plans or his party platform. For them, it is enough that he said he will work according to the law of God.

Morocco today is undergoing massive transformation. The internet and globalization have enabled thousands of young people, including me, to study and to enlighten themselves despite the social differences, economic difficulties or geographical boundaries. Now everything is available for free, and it's also safe, since we can benefit from the easy access to information without anyone knowing about it.

We now understand that the ethical or moral system in our country is completely destroyed due to poverty and ignorance. To say so, however, triggers those who benefit from this common retardation, and they are now using their last weapons against us. We accept difference. I can even say that we welcome it! And we are hoping to convince other people to separate ethics or morals from religious beliefs or political orientation in order to co-exist without harming one and other.

RIP V.S. Naipaul: he said what white men couldn't

So, farewell then, V.S. Naipaul -- racist, misanthropist and Nobel Prize winner. Another Trinidadian writer, C.L.R. James, said that his views on the world -- "The world is what it is" -- and its human inhabitants simply reflected "what the whites want to say but dare not." That explains why I, being Whiteman by name and white man in fact, have underlined so many passages in his books, of which I've read (and recommend) almost all.

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born five days shy of 86 years ago in Trinidad, a descendant of impoverished Indians shipped to the West Indies as coolies -- bonded labourers. "I was born there, yes," he told an interviewer in 1983. "I thought it was a great mistake." In 1950, Mr Naipaul was awarded a scarce government scholarship to study in Britain, and left his family to study English literature at University College, Oxford. He never really returned.

Mr Naipaul saw himself as a lone, stateless observer, free of ideology, politics and illusion. From his base in England, he travelled for extensive periods to pen journalistic essays and travel books. He flew three times to India, the land of his ancestors, to write about its culture and politics, which he disliked intensely. He spent time in Buenos Aires to write about Eva Peron, the former First Lady of Argentina. And he went to Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia to research and write books about Islam, which he condemned.

That Sir Vidia Naipaul (knighted in 1990) was a great writer -- a master stylist and story-teller with a cold, clear eye for the ironies, tragedies and sufferings of mankind -- is beyond doubt. But he is one of those authors who one either loves or hates. To his detractors, he was essentially political, bearing witness against the post-colonial world with great writing but shielded from criticism by virtue of being "one of them". His many critics called him "troubling", even "bigoted". They saw him as a "hater", a purveyor of stereotypes, wallowing in loathing of the world from which he came.

His supporters, however, found in his fiction merciless comic clarity, and in his travel writing a terrifying honesty. He refused to glamorise or idealise the developing world, but delivered original, scorching critiques, devoid of political correctness. He was fearless and unbiased in his criticism, attacking the cruelty of Islam, the corruption of Africa and the self-inflicted misery he witnessed in the poorest parts of the globe. The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk said that Mr Naipaul represented third-world people "not with sugary magic realism but with their demons, their misdeeds and horrors -- which made them less victims and more human."

"There probably has been no imperialism like that of Islam and the Arabs", he once declared. He was scornful of the Caribbean, predicted that Africa would revert to bush (as indeed it has, IMHO) and often veered towards unapologetic misogyny. Indian women, he once wrote, wear a coloured dot on their foreheads to say "My head is empty."

V.S. Naipaul had little time for idealistic westerners who romanticised India and looked to it for a spiritual awakening. In the land of his ancestors, he saw only ugliness and a smug refusal to recognise the horror of the "narrow, broken lanes with green slime in the gutters, the chocked back-to-back houses, the jumble of filth and food and animals and people, the baby in the dust, swollen-bellied, black with flies, but wearing its good-luck amulet."

He was even more contemptuous of Islamic fundamentalism, which he decried long before 9/11 in The Believers (1981). One New York Times writer observed that it bore an antipathy to Islam so naked "that a book taking a comparable view of Christianity or Judaism would have been hard put to find a publisher" in America. An academic, Edward Said, said he found it hard to believe any rational person would attack entire cultures on such a scale.

Sir Vidia Naipaul will be remembered as a magical craftsman of English prose. He leaves behind a complex, challenging library of work which captures the complexities of the modern world in a unique blend of imagination, travel writing and autobiography. RIP.

All in the family: Islamic honour = "barbaric cultural practices"

From the Islamic Republic of Pakistan comes news of what local police are calling an "honour crime" -- the "revenge rape" of a 16-year-old girl in retribution for her brother's rape of another girl. (Reuters) - Pakistani police have arrested 25 members of an informal village council accused of ordering the rape of a 16-year-old girl as revenge for her brother's alleged sexual assault of another girl. But wait (as Vince Offer used to say), there's more. The first assailant's father is a brother of the second assailant's grandfather. So that's two rapes in two days, all in one extended family.

The rapes took place in a small village called Muzaffarabad, a suburb of the city of Multan, in Punjab province. Ahsan Younus, chief of Multan's police department, told the meeja, "They are victims and accused at the same time.... It’s barbaric."

As indeed it is. But the case is far from shocking. Such honour crimes still take place in some parts of Pakistan and India, and are not unknown in the USA and Canada, where "refugees" and other immigrants have brought the barbaric customs and practices of their native lands -- female genital mutilation, for example -- with them.

Earlier this month, a local council, known in local languages as a panchayat or jirga, was called after a family accused a 16-year-old boy of raping a 13-year-old neighbour. The council ruled that the sister of the boy should be handed over to the victim's brother to be raped. An eye for an eye, or in this case... well, never mind. The girl was duly handed over by her family, and the punishment was carried out on July 17th.

The case came to light a couple of days later, when both families filed criminal charges with police, each accusing the other family's son of rape. Questioning both sides in the cases soon revealed the role of the informal village council, according to Chief Younus. "All the village council elders who ordered the revenge rape have been arrested," he said. "A total of 29 people were involved in this ghastly crime, and we have 25 of them in our custody." Both the victims and their mothers have been sent to a women's protection center, he added, without explaining what would happen when the women eventually return to their village.

VIDEO: Inch by inch, our enemies take over the civilized world

Mark Steyn again. Ed. found this while getting the embed code for the video we posted a few minutes ago. This is just under 11 minutes, and is an excerpt from Mr Steyn's speech to a conference of The Free Press Society on the topic of the infamous cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. We lose, Mr Steyn says, by surrendering our liberties one by one, inch by inch.

Latest despatches from the Muslim civil war

Ever wonder what happened to those cool German army helmets from WWII? The ones that inspired the design of present-day American military and police headgear? Well, the originals -- the ones that didn't get holes in them -- are still in use by the Pakistani army, as witness this picture of Pakistani troops watching each others' backs after a shootout with Islamic militants on the outskirts of Peshawar today. Security forces raided a militant hideout in the city before dawn, triggering a shootout in which three Pakistani Taliban were killed.

The raid on the Taliban hideout (of which the government was obviously aware) seems to have been in retaliation for a wave of suicide bombings and shootings which swept the border region next door to Afghanistan yesterday -- the last Friday of Ramadan. Twin blasts in the northwestern town of Parachinar had sent another 55 Muslims to Paradise, with many others in critical condition. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni Muslim extremist group, claimed responsibility for the bombings at a crowded market in the Shia-dominated town, linking them to the main theatre of the Muslim civil war in Syria.

Meanwhile, near the office of the provincial police chief in the southwestern city of Quetta, another 14 people were killed Friday in a suicide car bombing. That attack was claimed by ISIS and a breakaway Taliban faction. But wait (as Vince Offer used to say), there's more! In Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, gunmen attacked police officers at a roadside restaurant, killing four of them before fleeing, according to Inspector Mohammed. That brings the total death toll for one to... let's see... 55 + 14 + 4... carry the 1... 73! Quite something for a day of fasting and prayer.

The scene shifts now to Saudi Arabia, where (the Grauniad reports) Saudi security forces have foiled an Islamic terror plot targeting the Grand Mosque in Mecca and pilgrims heading there to celebrate the end of Ramadan.

An Interior Ministry spokesthingy told the meeja that security forces exchanged gunfire with one of the suspects, who blew himself up inside a home. Five security force members and six "other people" were injured, according to the state-owned Al-Arabiya website. Five people were arrested, including a woman suspected of attempting to drive a car.

Inspector Mohammed said the ministry "confirms that this terrorist network, whose terrorist plan was thwarted, violated, in what they would have perpetrated, all sanctities by targeting the security of the Grand Mosque, the holiest place on Earth. They obeyed their evil and corrupt self-serving schemes managed from abroad whose aim is to destabilize the security and stability of this blessed country."

The ministry did not name the group involved in the attack. The ultraconservative Sunni kingdom battled an Al-Qaeda insurgency for years and more recently has faced attacks from a local branch of ISIS.

Further reading: "The great Muslim civil war — and us", by Charles Krauthammer, in the Washington Post, 23/6/17.

Pope Francis needs to be reminded that Islam is a false religion

More fallout from the Charlie Hebdo atrocity and the reactions of Western politicians, "Christian" religious leaders and the lamestream media. Provoked by "Must free speech include the freedom to offend?", posted here yesterday, seldom-heard-from Agent 12 (welcome back!) sent us a link to "Pope Francis, blasphemy, Charlie Hebdo, and the punch".

The article, from a blog for Dallas-area Catholics -- real Catholics -- argues that there can be no real understanding of the whole controversy until there is an acknowledgement that Islam is a false religion -- one that is to be tolerated, to be sure, but false all the same.

With the last few popes -- JPII, Benedict XVI and Francis -- visiting and even praying in mosques, and generally pushing the enormous lie that is false ecumenism, we shouldn't expect any such statement from anyone except the remnant of traditional Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants.

The blogger writes: The Church used to know these truths: you cannot blaspheme against the Church and the Lord, because both are true. The second is, error has no rights. Thus, both Charlie Hebdo and the Islamic maniacs who attacked them are both violently wrong and to be repudiated.

I, for one, have been sickened by this outpouring of support for a magazine few had heard of and few cared about. Our modern culture likes to pretend that freedom of speech is a sacred right, but when the knife comes to the throat, vague notions about liberty are not enough to sustain a person in resistance.

Liberals will inevitably fall before religious conviction, and that is why the West is in collapse: the West has rejected the religion that built her. Dark ages seem to loom ahead.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Walt's post "West reacts to Islamist killing of Westerners... ONLY Westerners" seems to have attracted the attention of the CBC's Rex Murphy. [Either that or great minds think alike. Ed.] Like Walt, Mr. Murphy has difficulty understanding why the killing of a dozen cartoonists and four Jews has caused such furious breast-beating and rending of garments, yet the massacre of thousands of Nigerian Muslims by Islamic fanatics has resulted in... crickets... Check out "Why isn't the world rallying against Boko Haram?", as aired on CBC's The National last night.

Have we forgotten the Black Muslims?

Just one more thing before we close down WWW for the weekend.

It may have escaped the attention of a lot of people -- because the PC lamestream media don't like to draw attention to it -- but the fact is that Amedy Coulibaly, the accomplice of the Kouachi brothers who executed a policewoman on Wednesday as well the hostages taken in what France's president called an anti-Semitic attack on a kosher market on Thursday, was black. And Muslim. Yes, a black Muslim, and that's the truth.

According to a police source, he and the Kouachi brothers were all members of the same Paris jihadist cell that sent French fighters to Iraq a decade ago. France's L'Obs reports that Coulibaly spent time with Chérif Kouachi when they were both in prison in Fleury-Mérogis between 2005 and 2006.

Politicians and the lamestream press have been pissing and moaning about how this kind of thing could happen anywhere, which justifies the need for greater security, as well as greater efforts to integrate the self-segregating Muslims into the mainstream Western society, yada yada yada.

Indeed, there have been murderous attacks on innocent people, Muslims as well as non-Muslims, within the ten weeks last past in Canada, Australia, and France, not forgetting Nigeria, where a 10-year-old suicide bomber blew herself to Paradise along with 19 others, just today. And the trial of another Islamist fanatic for the Boston marathon bombing is about to get under way. So yes, it can happen anywhere, including the Paranoid States of America.

Oddly, though, there has been no mention, so far, of the Black Muslims. Have we forgotten about them? Several groups of "Afro-American" Muslim brothers are encompassed by the term "Black Muslims", but the one most people should remember -- especially in light of this week's events -- is the self-styled "Nation of Islam".

The Nation of Islam is a religious movement founded in Detroit by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad on July 4, 1930. Its stated goals are "to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African Americans in the United States". However, its critics accuse it of being black supremacist and anti-Semitic.

After its founder mysteriously disappeared in June 1934, the Nation of Islam was led by Elijah Muhammad, on whose watch it split into a number of splinter groups. The most notable departure from the ranks was that of Malcolm X, who left to become Sunni Muslim. After Elijah Muhammad's death, his son Warith Deen Mohammed changed the name of the organization to "World Community of Islam in the West".

In 1977, Louis Farrakhan rejected Warith Deen Mohammed's leadership and re-established the Nation of Islam on the original model. He took over the Nation of Islam's headquarter Temple, Mosque Maryam, located in Chicago. The ultra-liberal, ultra-PC Southern Poverty Law Center designates the Nation of Islam as a hate group for its "racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-gay rhetoric".

Walt wonders what Louis Farrakhan has to say about this week's events in France and Nigeria. The silence from Chicago has so far been deafening.

The religion that must not be satirized... on pain of death!

In yesterday's second post on the assassination of Charlie Hebdo, Walt drew attention to the craven refusal of the lamestream media to draw attention to the fact that the terrorists being hunted for the murders of a dozen people are Muslims of North African ancestry. Instead, all we hear is calls for brotherhood and unity, as if the massacre had nothing to do with the perps' ethnicity or religious motivation.

Why is the fact that the murderers are Islamic extremists being downplayed? Political correctness, of course! The Taliban, al-Qaeda and now IS have bullied Western politicians -- including Francis the Party Pope -- and media into fearing to say, let alone do anything which might possibly give offence to followers of the Prophet.

Such is the post-Christian, post-religious Western world today. It's OK to make fun of Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church and fundamentalist Protestants. Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons have all been satirized in South Park and other TV comedies. Even Judaism is fair game. The Eastern religions -- Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism -- don't even get a laugh. But the one religion that can't be touched, or even mentioned, is... dare we name it... Islam!

Islam is untouchable because our "leaders" and chattering classes have got The Fear. This goes back at least as far as 1989 (before the word "Islamophobia" was coined), when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (an order to Muslims to kill someone) against Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. English writer Hanif Kureishi called the fatwa -- which is still in effect -- "one of the most significant events in postwar literary history."

The controversy over The Satanic Verses may be said to have divided Muslims from Westerners along the fault line of culture. The core Western value of freedom of expression -- that no-one "should be killed, or face a serious threat of being killed, for what they say or write" -- is now confronted by the Islamic fundamentalist commandment that no-one should be free to "insult and malign Muslims" by disparaging the "honour of the Prophet" Mohammed.

"Death to those who insult the Prophet!" is what the Islamists preach, and their followers -- including the two North African Muslims who killed the journalists of Charlie Hebdo -- are walking the talk. With a vengeance. Literally!

These thoughts have occurred not just to Walt but to others, including numerous cartoonists, commentators, journalists and writers. But so far I've heard only one make the point that political correctness to the point of fear has silenced public discussion of the issue. The CBC's senior correspondent, Neil Macdonald, spoke out on last night's edition of The National. Click here to watch "Religion, satire, and where we draw the line". Bravo, Neil, for breaking the politically correct silence.

Walt also recommends: "Terrorists have cowed us all into a ridiculous self-censorship", by the deliciously un-PC Crusty Blatchford ["Christie", surely. Ed.] in the Notional Post. ["National Post", surely. Ed.] Sample: You want to talk about common or "shared values", as just about every Western leader has done since the attack? The value most shared in the West, and perhaps in this country in particular, is timidity.

Canada -- the greatest hotel on earth!

Walt has just finished reading The Unfinished Canadian, by Andrew Cohen (McClelland & Stewart, 2007), and can't resist passing along -- without editorial comment [Who? Me? Ed.] -- this passage from the chapter entitled "The Casual Canadian".

Canada is becoming "a community of communities" -- the vision of Canada expressed by former prime minister Joe Clark -- though surely not as he imagined it....

Yann Martel, the award-winning novelist, calls Canada "the greatest hotel on earth. It welcomes people from everywhere." A perceptive and apt description, it imagines a Canada in which everyone is a visitor, occupying a room, a floor, or even a wing, depending on the means. No one stays for very long because no one wants to make an extended commitment.

A hotel is impermanence, by its very nature the most tenuous of loyalties. People come and go. In point of fact, this is actually true of Canada; some 30 per cent of immigrants are thought to return home after getting citizenship....

This compartmentalization of Canada emerges in unsavoury ways: in the grim, urban corridors where Jamaican, Haitian and other street gangs fight each other; in the high-rise housing projects filled with Somalis and other struggling minorities; in the epidemic of violence against women in the Indo-Canadian community; in the desire of some Muslims in Ontario to use Sharia law; in the arrests of eighteen suspected terrorists, all of them Muslim, whom no authority would identify as such....

There are reasons for worry. Michael Valpy, the journalist and author, sees trouble among second-generation minorities who are not entering mainstream society and risk becoming part of the underclass.

Tarek Fatah, a broadcaster, warns of fundamentalist Islamists who use multiculturalism to present themselves as moderates to "hide their misogynist, homophobic and segregationist agenda." He warns that if Canadians don't redouble their efforts to integrate and promote a secular society, "we risk creating a fragmented nation, divided into twenty-first-century religious and racial tribes, suspicious of each other and longing for the home we left behind."

Walt agrees with and endorses every word, except for the second part of the quote from Tarek Fatah (last sentence in the preceding paragraph) which is hopelessly idealistic and downright naive. The damage has been done, and I can't think of any politically acceptable way to undo it. Can you?

Footnote: Americans and Britons needn't feel smug or safe. Citizenship of the UK and/or USA is harder to get than Canadian -- Canucks are just stupid about this -- but the description of the minority ghettos of Toronto could just as easily apply to New York, or London, or just about any "Western" city.

Christians attacked every day in Mid-East, Africa and Asia

News from "the cradle of civilization" continues to be depressing, at least for Christians. All the other "belief systems" -- fanatical Muslims, Hindus, even Jews ("our fathers in faith", as the mainstream Church calls them now) -- keep killing and otherwise persecuting those who hold to the True Faith. Here are three items from yesterday's Catholic World News. We'll include the links so you can read for yourself.

2 Christians shot in Libya after refusing to convert to IslamTwo Coptic Christians were shot in northeastern Libya after they refused to convert to Islam, according to Morning Star News, a news service that reports on the persecution of Christians. . . .

Attack on Catholic mission outpost in Central African RepublicSudanese members of the Séléka rebel coalition, which assumed power in the Central African Republic in March, have ransacked the Catholic mission in Bouar, a city of 40,000 in the western portion of the nation, according to the Fides news agency. . . .

Tombstones smashed in Christian cemetery in JerusalemFour young men whom the Jerusalem Post described as “Jewish nationalists” smashed tombstones and broke off crosses in a Christian cemetery in Jerusalem, according to a story that appeared on the newspaper’s website. . . .

Assassination attempt against Coptic bishop in EgyptA Coptic Orthodox bishop survived an assassination attempt as he was traveling to console the family of a murder victim, according to multiple media reports. . . .

This kind of thing is reported every bloody day! (I chose that adjective deliberately.) And yet the Church and Francis the Party Pope keep telling us that we must love the heathens and the heretics, keep reaching out to them, invite them into our places of worship, not to mention out countries. DAFT, isn't it?

Confession from Ed.: I borrowed the graphic from the cover of this week's Economist because I thought it was about right for this story. Look for the mag at your newsstand. Oh... no more newsstands in your neck of the woods? Walt will keep you posted!

"Kaffirs!" Muslim extremists ARE out to get you!

Those who know (or think they know) something of the history and culture of South Africa may think that "kaffir" was an Afrikaans derogatory term for blacks -- like the N-word in the USA. In fact, it's a much older Arabic word for a non-believer, someone who is not a follower of the Prophet Muhammad. That's what the Muslim terrorists call the rest of us.

The politically correct apologists for al-Shabaab, the armed Somali Islamic extremist group that attacked a shopping mall in Kenya, are up in arms [Bad rib! Ed.] over portrayals of the terrorists as, errr, Islamic extremists out to murder non-believers. Some lamestream pundits are saying that, oh noooo, they're just Somali patriots fighting against the evil Kenyans who've invaded their homeland.

Well, that's not what the Islamic extremists themselves are saying. In an e-mail exchange with Associated Press, reported today in HuffPost, a spokesthingy for al-Shabaab said that foreigners were a "legitimate target" and confirmed witness accounts that gunmen tried to let Muslims go free while killing or taking the others captive.

AP quotes the terrorists as saying "The Mujahideen carried out a meticulous vetting process at the mall and have taken every possible precaution to separate the Muslims from the kaffirs before carrying out their attack."

Eye-witnesses have said the gunmen rounded up people, asked questions about Islam that only a Muslim would know how to answer, and told the Muslims to leave the mall. Out of 72 dead counted so far, at least 18 were foreigners, including six Brits, and nationals of France, Canada, Trinidad, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, India, Ghana, South Africa and China. The current death toll is 67 and is likely to climb with uncounted bodies remaining in the rubble of the Nairobi mall.

Walt's advice to fellow kaffirs: don't go to Kenya or Egypt or Syria or [Ed., please insert another dozen or so north African and Middle Eastern countries]. Stay somewhere safe, where there are no Muslim terrorists. Like, say, Boston. [Ed., maybe that wasn't a good choice. Please insert name of a country or city where there's no threat from the jihadists.]

Canadians follow American policies, provoke same terrorist response

The burden of Walt's recent posts about the Boston Marathon bombing and now the alleged plot to blow up a VIA Rail train has been that Islamic extremists -- homegrown as well as imported -- are doing their damnable thing to protest American policies and actions in the Middle East.

As American presidents from Teddy Roosevelt onwards have not yet learned, if you keep on playing the bully -- trying to impose your ideas of what's right and good on other countries and other cultures by force of arms -- the 97-pound weakling will eventually fight back.

Walt doesn't know all his readers and followers by name [but he knows where some of you live! Ed.] but notes with delight sympathetic comments that appear on the Net and in the Twitterverse. One such was released into the ether yesterday by a possible "Waltist" -- Max Depontailler, a staffer for Céline Hervieux-Payette, former leader of the Liberal opposition in the Canadian Senate. Here's a screen grab of a comment M. Depontailler immediately regretted making.

This was posted yesterday, following news of the arrest of two Muslim fundamentalists who were allegedly plotting to blow up a VIA Rail train at the Whirlpool bridge near Niagara Falls.  M. Depontailler thought he was tweeting from his own account. Too bad for him he was still on the account of his boss! He deleted the post almost immediately, but it still appears on a number of cached sites.

Mme Hervieux-Payette hasn't commented publicly, nor is she likely to, since in times past she has expressed similar sentiments herself. In 2006 she wrote to American critics of the seal hunt that what she finds horrible is ”the daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners – mainly blacks – in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, and the destabilization of the entire world by the American government’s aggressive foreign policy, etc.”

Which brings us back to Walt's (and Max's) point. As Americans (and Canadians) search for the root causes of the terrorist attacks on their countries, they might well start by looking in the mirror.

"Call me Steve" Harper might well ask himself why he would choose to ally Canada so closely with the USA, given the ROTW's resentment of American political and cultural imperialism. He might just as well sew a great big red-and-white target on the maple leaf flag.

The friend of mine enemy is likewise mine enemy

The Boston Marathon bombing has provoked a fit of "terrorist target envy" in the Great White North. Canada's Prime Minister, "Call me Steve" Harper, is seriously vexed. He and his bumboy John "Nancy" Baird have been so vocal in their attacks on the enemies of Israel, yet the Islamic extremists keep targetting the Excited States of America. Tain't fair!

Sergeant Dudley Dooright of the RCMP and Col. Beau Gosse of CSIS (Canada's feckless "intelligence" agency) were duly summoned to Ottawa and told they'd better discover ["manufacture", surely. Ed.] some kind of Islamic fundamentalist threat to the Land of the Maple Leaf and Home of the Bieber right sharpish.

Right on cue, Canuck police and intelligence services arrested two men with beards yesterday, accusing them of plotting to attack a VIA Rail passenger train "with the intention of inflicting mass casualities and causing terror on Canadian soil". All this with the "direction and guidance" of "al-Qaeda elements in Iran", of course.

"Had this plot been carried out, it would have resulted in people being killed or seriously injured," a Mounted Police spokesthingy told the press yesterday. He was apparently referring to VIA's passengers -- Tyler and Tracy Luney of Pickering ON -- and innocent people passing the train on bicycles and skateboards.

The RCMP said the suspects had scouted railroads in the Toronto area as part of their preparations. The pair had been under investigation for an extended period of time and investigators said they were ready to act if they went into action. [I know it's early, but can you try to write more coherently? Ed.]

The Mounties also said that the suspects "are not Canadian citizens". Doubtless someone -- perhaps Immigration Minister Jason Kenney -- knows where they came from and how they got into Canada, but this information has, errr, not been forthcoming.

Yesterday's arrests come at an auspicious time for the Harpoon government, as Canada's House of Commons gets set to debate a bill that would strengthen Canada's anti-terrorism laws.

The timing of the debate is more than a little suspect. The "new" bill S-7, which will authorize such things as arrest without trial, was introduced in Canada's Senate a year ago. That august body (Hello, Senator Puffy!) gave it some quasi-sober thought and sent it to the Commons, errr, four months ago.

Why the sudden urgency to proceed with it now? Well, Monday was supposed to be an "opposition day" on which newly-crowned Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was to introduce a motion to limit the powers of the party whips to control which MPs could speak and on what issues. Since the governing Conservatives are grappling with a backbench rebellion on that very issue, the draconian anti-terrorism bill suddenly took priority.

Speaking from behind his moustache, Canada's Public Safety Minister Vic Toews averred that, "Today's arrest shows that terrorism continues to be a real threat to Canada. The success...is due to the fact that Canada works very closely with its international partners to combat terrorism."

Walt says it's the "international partners" that are the problem. The threat of terrorist attacks on Canada and Canadians increases proportionately as the Harper government's support of Zionism and American adventurism in the Middle East. If, when al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists point their guns at the USA, Canada is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Uncle Sam [and Uncle Bibi. Ed.], Canada is bound to get hit. Call it "collateral damage".

Further reading: "Don't call in an air strike just yet!" (WWW 19/4/13) and "Walt's solution to the threat of terrorism" (WWW 16/4/13).

Walt's solution to the threat of terrorism

Walt would like to see the latest annual report of the Department of Homeland Security. (It may be available online somewhere, but Ed. is too lazy to look. Or maybe not. Maybe it's "classified", or even "top secret".) Walt would like to know how many terrorists -- imported or domestic -- they've apprehended in the last year. Walt would like to know how they spend billions of taxpayers' dollars and yet are unable to prevent incidents like the Boston Marathon bombings.

Here is my offer to the Department. For just a small fraction of one year's allocation -- let's say 10% -- I will show you how to drastically reduce the likelihood of further attacks on America and Americans.

Later...
Ed. tells me I should present my plan for free, for the common good, and trust the Prez to compensate me once the benefit of my foolproof strategy is realized. OK then...

What America should do, to get the Islamic extremists off our backs, is leave them alone.

Follow Ron Paul's advice* and put an end to our foreign adventurism and entanglements. Bring the troops home. All of them. Let the USA get out of the Middle East and the ROTW entirely. Let the Shites and Sunnies and Wasabis fight each other, if they get off on that kind of thing, and good luck to them.

Do I hear objections? Yes, you wrapped in the Stars and Stripes... "Americans can't run from a fight!" I hear you bray. My dear patriot, Walt is not talking about running from a fight. Walt is talking about running to a fight!

If America is attacked, certainly she must defend herself. But there has been no attack on the landmass of the USA in nearly 200 years. [Don't mention the War of 1812! Ed.] It's the bellicose United States that keeps invading such threats -- to "world peace", not America directly -- as Grenada, Cuba, Mexico, the Philippines, Libya [That's enough. We get it. Ed.]

Another cavil? "What about the security of our [sic] oil supply?", asks the gentleman from Texas. "What if there isn't enough gas for my Hummer?"

Dear guzzler, do you really believe that Iran or Iraq or Libya, if left to themselves, would refuse to sell any more oil to their biggest customer? And even if they did, there are other sources. Canada, for instance, has all kinds of oil it would be happy to ship south if the econazis would cease their sky-is-falling squawking about the Keystone pipeline. Getting oil is never going to be a problem for the USA. (Lifetime pct .980.)

So there you have it, gentle readers. Leave them alone and they'll stay home. And Americans can stop living in fear. You're welcome.

* Recommended reading: "Ron Paul to John Kerry: Foreign Interventionism Bankrupts America and Turns the World Against Us".

Peace and love on St. Valentine's Day

Ah yes, St. Valentine's Day... Or just "Valentine's Day" to all you modern Catholics and non-believers. A day when we celebrate love, peace and tolerance for those of other races and creeds. Here are two items from today's news.

Lots of Westerners don't know this, but the largest Muslim country in the world is actually Indonesia. The huge archipelago [there's that word again! Ed.] has significant Christian and Hindu minorities, whom the Muslim extremists in and out of government keep trying to suppress. They can't help it -- or won't help it -- because that's the nature of Islam.

Anyway, on Wednesday Indonesian officials and Muslim clerics called for young people to skip Valentine's Day, saying it's an excuse for couples to have forbidden sex. Not to mention buying gifts for persons of the opposite sex, which was also banned in the province of Aceh.

The deputy mayor of a town on the outskirts of Jakarta called on parents not to give their children any chance to celebrate Valentine's Day "because they may be expressing love to their lovers more freely.… It could lead to forbidden sexual relations."

He called on residents to make their children take cold showers. When told that almost no-one in his town had hot running water, he advised taking the children to Islamic religious activities instead.

OK, premarital sex is forbidden (in theory, at least) by the Church too. But what's wrong with giving gifts? Well, a prominent cleric of the Aceh Ulema Council says, "It does not reflect love in accordance with Islamic teachings.… It's the same as promoting faiths other than Islam." So there.

Meanwhile, Father Raymond de Souza reports from the Promised Land on the struggle between ultra-Orthodox Jews and the rest of Israeli society.

You don't have to be religious to be Jewish. One can be a Jew, culturally, and yet be an atheist or an agnostic. And amongst religious Jews there is a broad spectrum of faith and observance, ranging from the the ultra-liberal Reform branch of Judaism all the way to the ultra-Orthodox -- the ones with the hats and lots of kids.

That's fine in America, but in Israel, Father de Souza tells us, many people feel that while there are many Jews, there are too few synagogues. That is, there is a lack of pluralism. There is only the ultra-Orthodox Judaism which meshes with political Zionism.

The norms that regulate prayer and deportment at Jerusalem's Western Wall are set by its chief rabbi. The rabbinate of the Western Wall is controlled by the ultra-Orthodox and, over the past years, the regulations have become increasingly reflective of ultra-Orthodox practice. For the large majority of Jews, both in Israel and globally, who are not ultra-Orthodox, how they are permitted to pray at the Western Wall has become a priority both practical and symbolic.

On Monday, Father de Souza goes on, a group called Women of the Wall held a prayer service. The service was in reality a demonstration against the ultra-Orthodox strictures imposed upon them there, including the space allocated to them and the prohibitions on women praying aloud and wearing prayer shawls. The Women of the Wall did both of those things, and for their pains, got themselves arrested.

The dispute at the Western Wall touches a deeper issue in Israeli society: should Judaism in Israel be defined by the ultra-Orthodox? Israel desires to be a Jewish state, but for which kinds of Jews? As noted above, there are many streams of Judaism, but the only official synagogue belongs to the minority ultra-Orthodox.

The issue can thus be seen as one of basic religious freedom. How can it be that Jews (who happen to be women) can be arrested at the Western Wall for praying as they do at synagogues in London or Los Angeles? Yair Lapid, leader of a party which one 19 Knesset seats in last month's election, asks, "Can it be that the only place in the Western world that Jews do not have religious freedom is at the Western Wall?"

So, outside of politically correct North America, it would appear that prospects for religious pluralism and the celebration of diversity are as dim as ever.
Memo to "Peter the Roman" (or whatever the next pope will call himself): All paths of faith do not lead to the One True God.

Catholic commentator on Obama's dangerous attitude to Islam

Last week, in "It's not 'the film', stupid! It's just anti-Americanism, is all", Walt explained that the stupid little video clip -- maybe there is no full-length film -- is not the cause of the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi which resulted in the death of Christopher Stevens. The cause, as any fule nose, is rabid anti-Americanism, the fires of which are being constantly stoked by Islamic fundamentalists.

Does the Obama administration admit this? Does the Prez concede that his policy of dialogue and reconciliation with the Muslims is a complete failure? In the middle of an election campaign? Not bloody likely! Walt's opinion is shared, it seems, by Phil Lawler, whose articles are a mainstay of the generally fair and unbiased CatholicCulture website.

Mr. Lawler's topic this week is "The truth about Benghazi, and Obama's dangerous attitude toward Islam". And here's part of what he has to say.

The attack on the US consulate was not an angry reaction to an anti-Muslim film, President Mohamed Magarief told NBC News. If the Islamic radicals had been incensed by scenes from the amateur film, The Innonence of Muslims, they would have reacted 6 months earlier, when those scenes first became available. They chose this date, 11th of September, to carry a certain message,” Magarief said. If only President Barack Obama could be equally candid!

What is particular appalling about the killings in Benghazi is the flat refusal of the Obama administration to tell the truth about the tragedy. For days the administration pretended that the grenade attack on the consulate was the result of a demonstration that got out of control. Eventually the burden of evidence forced the White House to change its story, and acknowledge that the attack had been premeditated. Still even today, in his speech to the UN, President Obama conveyed the impression that the main problem is the understandable outrage of Muslims over a provocative film.

Nonsense! The real problem is Islamic violence. The film is a distraction, a pretext for aggression. By refusing to acknowledge that reality, the Obama administration is playing into the hands of the Islamic radicals.

The disciplined agents of Al Qaida are trying to create the impression that the Islamic world is simmering with barely-suppressed outrage, ready to explode at the slightest sign of provocation from the West. President Obama’s speech to the UN reinforced that impression.

Here's what Walt can't figure out.

• Obama's make-nice-with-Islam foreign policy is a disaster. (Phil Lawler says so. Charles Krauthammer says so. Walt says so.)
• The economy is on life support and Obama has no plan to get it off the critical list.
• The Prez's vaunted health care plan looks like being both unconstitutional and unworkable.
• His administration's attacks on Christian values are the very work of the devil.
• And the silent majority of Americans are sick, sore and tired of having diversity, gay rights, multiculti, eco-correctness and other left-wing nonsense shoved down their throats

And yet Obama has a huge lead in the polls. Is this because Romney is the most unattractive Republican candidate since, ummm, Bob Dole? Or are the American people really so stupid as to be hell-bent on re-electing a president who's famous mainly for managing to get elected in spite of being black?

The meaning of Libya

Western-style liberal democracy finds no favour in the Middle East. Never has, and, Walt says, never will. (Lifetime pct .990.) It is repugnant to the Arab culture and the Muslim religion. Until the "Arab spring" you couldn't find one true democracy in the whole region. Some would say you still can't.

But that's OK, the great leaders of the free world said. We'll help you bring about régime change in the worst of your dictatorships -- Egypt and Libya -- because we know what's best for you. We'll fight for you, to give you the democracy we know you really want.

And so, as if Iraq and Afghanistan weren't enough, the West inserted its meddlesome self into the Libyan brouhaha. Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron told us we had to. Why? Because Daffy Gadhafi supported terrorists and posed a threat to world peace, even if he had been pretty well minding his own business of late. If that excuse ["reason", surely. Ed.] weren't enough, well, there was our "responsibility to protect" the Libyan people, since they were obviously unable to protect themselves from their own ruler.

So Western planes bombed the excrement out of Tripoli and the surrounding countryside, killing a few of the "good rebels" and hundreds of innocent bystanders along the way, but yet another altruistic mission was accomplished. The Mad Colonel was overthrown and, incidentally, an important source of oil for the West was made secure. The price of gas went down and all were happy once again.

Or maybe not. Questions were raised by Walt and others about who would fill the power vacuum which would be created by the overthrow of Gadhafi, Egypt's Mubarak and others. The "good rebels" seemed to be a rather ragtag lot of chancers, Islamic fundamentalists, criminals, Rambo wannabes, maybe even Al-Qaeda terrorists. Don't worry, our leaders told us, we can handle them, just like the Germans handled the Nazis in the dying days of the Weimar Republic.

Again, maybe not. This year, the anniversary of 9/11 was the occasion for anti-American demonstrations in Egypt (first) and Libya, now spreading to Tunisia and Yemen. US flags were burnt and American diplomats were killed. After all the US of A did for those people! Where's the gratitude?

Paul Heinbecker, former Canadian ambassador to the Disunited Nations, told the Globe and Mail, "I don’t think the mob in the street give a damn about what [we have] done." (Yes, the Canucks took part in the beating up of Libya too.)

According to Mr Heinbecker, two forces contributed to the violence against US missions in Cairo and Benghazi. The first is the so-called clash of civilizations multiplied by the speed of the Net. An Israeli-American posts a video calculated to insult and provoke Muslims. Social media amplify its effect, sending people into the streets.

A day later, more and more doubt is being expressed as to the identity of the film-maker, and whether a complete film actually exists. "Innocence of the Muslims" may well be a hoax, perpetrated by Islamic -- or Protestant Christian -- extremists to inflame passions and start riots which Al-Qaeda could then use as cover for planned attacks.

The second contributor to the violence, Mr. Heinbecker says, is the decline of the autocrat in the Muslim world. Whatever one could say about Colonel Gadhafi and President Mubarak, mobs didn’t burn embassies unless they wanted them burned.

It's worth noting that Egypt's new president, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, hasn't said a word about the attacks in Cairo. Walt suggests that either his government, like that of Libya, is unable to control the howling mobs, or... it approves of or at least acquiesces in their actions.

If I were President Obama -- and I was not born in the USA -- I would be wondering about the risks involved in getting in my country into another Middle Eastern imbroglio. Like Syria, for instance. Or Iran.

There's the risk of death to Americans who are sent into the middle of the maelstrom. And there's the risk of political death for those who send them. Unless, of course, American voters don't make the connection between their country's "good deeds" and the not-so-goodwill they are now reaping. "No good deed goes unpunished."

Muslims on the march in Britain -- scary stuff!

In "Islamization of Ontario schools still part of government agenda" I mentioned a video, recently forwarded by Agent 6, showing Muslim fanatics marching through the streets of Luton, England. Their message: British police should go to hell! So should all "non-believers", meaning not Christians, Jews and... well... everyone except devout Muslims.

Ed. has located the file, so here it is. Turn the sound down if the voice of a shrill female with a horrible accent bothers you, but do have a good look and listen closely to the faces and voices of "the Muslim community" in a typical British city today.



So, gentle reader, how is it in your city? Still think we should all be tolerant and make nice with our newly-arrived Muslim neighbours?