Barbara Kay is a prominent Canadian journalist and columnist known for her work with the National Post, often focusing on social and political issues from a conservative viewpoint. She has also contributed to other outlets like Rebel News and The Post Millennial, both of which are on Walt's reading list. She is Jewish.
Canada’s post-October 7 antisemitism crisis mirrors Australia’s. It’s small wonder that the Bondi Beach Hanukkah pogrom is perceived by numerous Canadian observers as a bullet dodged.
If it had happened here, we would be sifting through the same forensic breadcrumbs that helped pave the road to Bondi: principles bent for Muslim votes, calculated tolerance for criminal activity directed against Jews and the demonization of Israel in high political and cultural places.
The question now is: what can we do to prevent such a tragedy in Canada?
We should start by believing what Islamists say. Hamas has stated that, "Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah." We should also acknowledge that the phrase "Globalize the Intifada" is incitement to violence against Jews. We should prosecute, imprison or, when feasible, deport those who preach it.
Second, we must remove the cone of heresy over debates about multiculturalism and immigration. Following the massacre, former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott told Sky News that, "Some versions of Islam are not really compatible with life in a liberal, democratic, pluralist society." He said it and the sky didn’t fall. Fear of radically anti-semitic jihadists is rational.
As former Alberta premier and federal immigration minister Jason Kenney said in a recent debate Andrew Coyne about immigration, "Social cohesion (is) hard to measure, hard to quantify and sometimes a dangerous thing to discuss. But we damn well should." He’s right. Mental comfort on this file is a luxury we can no longer afford.
Four police employees were killed in a knife attack at Paris police headquarters on Thursday, according to city prosecutor Remy Heitz. The three policemen and a female police administrative worker were killed by a fellow member of staff, who was later shot dead, authorities told CNN. The incident took place inside the building, which is located near Notre Dame Cathedral on the Île de la Cité in central Paris. One victim is undergoing surgery, said French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner. He did not elaborate on the victim's condition or injuries. Castaner said the assailant was a 45-year-old man and had been an employee at the police station since 2003. There is no indication of a motive yet.
What M Castaner actually said, in a hastily-called presser, was that the attacker "n'avait jamais présenté de difficultés comportementales" ("had never shown any behavioural difficulties") or "le moindre signe d'alerte" ("the least warning sign").
But wait... there's more. Here's a brief clip from BFM-TV.
For those who don't speak the language of Molière, the newsreader said investigators told reporters they are exploring the possibility of a personal conflict, and anti-terrorism prosecutors were following the dossier. Why? Because the attacker (now dead of lead poisoning) had converted to Islam 18 months ago. For the moment, she said, it is not known if there is any connection between the man's new-found religion and the attack. But Inspector Clouseau is working on it. Allahu akbar!? Voyons!
UPDATE ADDED 5/10/19: Suspicions confirmed! Jean-François Richard, the Paris prosecutor in charge of the investigation, told the press today that the perpetrator of the deadly knife attack "had likely contacts with members of the Salafist movement."
Salafism is a fundamentalist branch of Islam that has become tied to violent extremism through jihadist attacks and groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS which adhere to its belief that Islam has strayed from its roots and must return to traditionalist teachings and practices. Such as? Well, the killing of "infidels", for one!
It's been an intense week here in Lake Woebegon. [Don't forget about the Copyright Act. Ed.] OK... It's been an intense week all over the world, what with global warming (Maybe there is something to that!), #MeToo (Helloo dere, Les Moonves!), and Islamic jihadists killing scores of people (mostly Muslims, to be sure) in the usual shitholes. And that's not even counting outbreaks of Trump Derangement Syndrome over some meeting in some Tower. One of Walt's assiduous (and sometimes acidulous) agents thinks we need a bit of humour to get us through Sunday, and has submitted the following stories, which for some reason all involve kindly family doctors.
A doctor was addressing a large audience in Saint Petersburg (God's waiting room). "The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. "However, there is one thing that's the most dangerous of all, and we all have eaten, or will eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?" After several seconds of quiet, a 75-year-old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said, "Wedding cake."
The mother of a 17-year-old girl was concerned that her daughter was having sex. Worried the girl might become pregnant and lower the family’s in the community, she consulted the family doctor. The doctor told her that teenagers today were very willful and any attempt to stop the girl would probably result in rebellion. He then told her to arrange for her daughter to be put on birth control and until then, talk to her and give her a box of condoms. Later that evening, as her daughter was preparing for a date, the mother told her about the situation and handed her a box of condoms. The girl burst out laughing and reached over to hug her mother, saying, "Oh Mom! You don't have to worry about that! I'm dating Susan!"
A mother took her six-year-old son to the doctor. With some hesitation, they explained that although their little angel appeared to be in good health, they were concerned about his rather small penis. After examining the child, the doctor confidently declared, "Just feed him pancakes. That should solve the problem." The next morning when the boy arrived at breakfast, there was a large stack of warm pancakes in the middle of the table. "Gee, Mom," he exclaimed, "for me?" "Just take two," Brenda replied. "The rest are for your father."
Thanks to our esteemed agent (so called on account of he travels on an esteem train) and all the good doctors out there.
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (1870-1953) was known as an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, man of letters, soldier, political activist, historian and one of the most prolific writers in England during the early 20th century. He was President of the Oxford Union, and later a Member of the British Parliament from 1906 to 1910.
Dr. Belloc wrote on a vast range of subjects, from warfare to poetry to history to current affairs. He ranks among the "Big Four" of Edwardian Letters, along with the free-thinker H. G. Wells, the atheist George Bernard Shaw, and the traditional Catholic G. K. Chesterton. His Catholic faith had a strong impact on his works, and his vision into the heart of Catholic history is incisive and succinct. The year just past has proven him a great prophet, unheeded in his day and desperately needed now, as his vision of the future is played out in Europe and America.
That vision is contained in Dr. Belloc's 1938 book The Great Heresies, in which he saw almost a century ahead into the current day. He was convinced that Europe and America had forgotten about Islam to their own peril, and were unaware that the Muslim religion could rise again and pose perhaps the greatest threat of any enemy of the Western World. "It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable," he wrote in 1938, "that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent."
In the chapter titled "The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed", he predicted the re-emergence of Islam as a global force and unparalleled foe of Christian civilization. "Less than a hundred years before the American War of Independence," he wrote, "a Mohammedan army was threatening to overrun and destroy Christian civilization." Thus there was no reason to think that Islam would not return to its former power, to become once again "the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had... as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past."
Dr. Belloc saw in his own time what is even more true nearly a century later, that European Christianity had sold out to "temporal things". He wrote, "There is no reason whatever why [Islam] should not learn its new lesson and become our equal in all those temporal things which now alone give us our superiority over it -- whereas in Faith we have fallen inferior to it."
And that's exactly what has happened. We have turned our backs on the Christian Faith that made the Western world strong. Meanwhile, the Muslims grow ever stronger, ever more fanatic, in their false and heretical religion. And, following the commands of Mohammed and the Holy Qu'ran, they are waging jihad -- holy war -- in our own lands.
They do not send whole armies against us, as they did centuries ago. Instead, they infiltrate our countries disguised as refugees and asylum-seekers, to wreak havoc, take over our cities and destroy us and our way of life. And what do we do? Welcome them with open arms! Surely it's time we heeded the warnings given to us by Hilaire Belloc, Enoch Powell, Charles de Gaulle and others who God blessed with the ability to look into the future.
WHOA! Hold `er Newt! This is not a new story. Rather, it's a look at something that happened 30 years and 3 days ago -- the biggest airplane crash (by number of casualties) ever to occur on Canadian soil. Walt presents it to make the point that radical Islamic terrorism -- the phrase the Prez can't say -- is not a new thing. The jihadists have been waging war on us for decades.
Just yesterday Egyptian authorities released their report into the crash of Metrojet flight 7K9268, which disintegrated over the Sinai at the beginning of November. The Egyptians persist in their assertion that the Russian plane was not brought down by Islamic terrorists. However, the Russians and the American military believe that an ISIS affiliate did it. And it wouldn't be the first time.
Rewind to 12 December 1985. A DC8-63F operating as Flight 1285 by Arrow Air, under contract to the US Army, takes off just before dawn from Gander, Newfoundland, after a refuelling stop of about 90 minutes. It is carrying a crew of 8 and 248 pax -- US servicemen going home to the 101st Airborne base at Fort Campbell KY after a tour of duty in Lebanon.
The weather is misty and cool, close to the freezing point. The flight engineer does a walk-around but apparently sees nothing that would make him call for de-icing. The plane taxis down Runway 04, lifts off but fails to gain altitude. Seconds later it crashes into the forest and burns, about half a mile from the end of the runway, killing all aboard.
Initial reports from the scene include eyewitness accounts of an explosion and fire before the plane hit the trees. Not a day later, all mention of fire has disappeared from news reports, and the probable cause is put down to icing.
The crucial evidence that could have pointed to the cause should have been found in the so-called "black boxes" which were recovered intact. However, investigators said, the Cockpit Voice Recorder was defective and failed to record anything. And, unfortunately, the Flight Data Recorder was an older model that only recorded four parameters. It was scheduled for replacement a few weeks later.
The accident (???) was investigated by the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, which found that on Flight 1285's approach to Gander -- no more than two hours before the crash -- precipitation conditions were favourable for the formation of ice on the aircraft's wings. After landing, the CASB said, it continued to be exposed to "freezing and frozen precipitation capable of producing roughening on the wing upper surface" in addition to the freezing temperature. They also found that prior to takeoff the aircraft had not been de-iced.
Five out of nine members of the CASB signed the final report. In the Probable Cause section, they wrote:
The Canadian Aviation Safety Board was unable to determine the exact sequence of events which led to this accident. The Board believes, however, that the weight of evidence supports the conclusion that, shortly after lift-off, the aircraft experienced an increase in drag and reduction in lift which resulted in a stall at low altitude from which recovery was not possible. The most probable cause of the stall was determined to be ice contamination on the leading edge and upper surface of the wing. Other possible factors such as a loss of thrust from the number four engine and inappropriate take-off reference speeds may have compounded the effects of the contamination.
No fewer than four members of the CASB disagreed. In an unusual and controversial move, they issued a minority opinion asserting that there was no evidence presented proving that ice had been present on leading edges such as the wings. And, they speculated, "An in-flight fire that may have resulted from detonations of undetermined origin brought about catastrophic system failures."
The five-to-four opinion caused so much debate that the Canadian government appointed Willard Estey, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, to review the findings. Nearly four years later, he ruled that the available evidence did not support either conclusion.
Two years after that, in 1991, Les Filotas, one of the four CASB board members who dissented in the final report, published Improbable Cause, an exhaustive argument for the opinion that a possible in-flight explosion doomed the aircraft.
Mr. Filotas demanded that attention be paid to a call made on the day of the crash to a French news agency in Beirut -- the point of origin of the Flight 1285. According to United Press International, "Hours after the crash the Islamic Jihad – a Shiite Muslim extremist group – claimed it destroyed the plane to prove [its] ability to strike at the Americans anywhere." As noted above, the jihadists' claim was dismissed by both the American and Canadian governments within 24 hours.
20/20 revisited the story in April 2014. Here's the video, running time 30 minutes.
