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December 2018

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How Canada Protects Sharia Christine Williams shares how the Canadian government fired her for criticizing Islam.

By on December 23rd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272320/how-canada-protects-sharia-frontpagemagcom

[Below is a review by Fergus Hodgson in Epoch Times of Fired by the Canadian Government for Criticizing Islam, which is Frontpage Associate Editor Christine Douglass-Williams’ account of how she was fired by the Canadian government for criticizing Islam. Get Fired! Here.]

If you denounce Sharia law in a public fashion you will suffer. Outside of the arab world, this also holds true in Canada, where a member of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation board was fired over comments on Sharia law.

Such intimidation elicits self-censorship and an incremental downward spiral for Canada’s proudly modern, liberal society.

Christine Douglass-Williams was a director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) from 2012 to late 2017, and she has documented her story in a courageous new book: Fired by the Canadian Government for Criticizing Islam. Published in September by the Center for Security Policy—a neoconservative-leaning think tank in Washington—this 103-page story leaves no doubt about the swift enforcement of political correctness under the Liberal Party government.

A mulatto migrant from Trinidad and Tobago and self-described “visible minority,” Williams is an accomplished journalist and expert on Islam, author of The Challenge of Modernizing Islam. As a widely read contributor to Jihad Watch and sought-after speaker, she became a victim of her own success. Her profile rose to include engagements throughout Canada and abroad, notably in Iceland alongside Robert Spencer, author of The Truth about Muhammad and a fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back

Her concerns about the nature of Sharia law, particularly its implications for women and migrant integration, were right out in the open and never kept a secret. However, as her perspective garnered traction, murmurings grew.

At a May 2017 event in Reykjavik, titled “Everything You Wanted to Know about Islam but Were Afraid to Ask,” she offered a “personal warning to Icelanders.” She believed the Icelandic population was “being duped,” and she warned that “Westerners need to be street smart as citizens of a culture that idolizes multiculturalism.”

To be fair, she didn’t mince words. Consider the following excerpt from her message to Icelanders:

“Islamic supremacists will smile at you, invite you to their gatherings, make you feel loved and welcome, but they do it to deceive you and to overtake you, your land and your freedoms. … [Sharia] stipulates—among other abuses—death for apostasy, death for gays, a lower value to women, and the full covering of women.”

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No Room in the Inn for Asia Bibi this Christmas The door of Theresa May’s Intersectional Inn remains shut to a persecuted Pakistani Christian. December 24, 2018 Jules Gomes

By on December 23rd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272313/no-room-inn-asia-bibi-christmas-jules-gomes

Like Joseph, Mary and Jesus fleeing the murderous King Herod, Asia Bibi and her family will spend Christmas dodging murderous Muslim mobs in Pakistan. Not a single Western country has made room in the immigration inn for the world’s most famous persecuted Christian.

Theresa May, Britain’s Christian PM, has opened Britain’s Intersectional Inn to Syrian Muslims, hate preachers, returning jihadis and gays hounded for being homosexual. But the door of May’s Intersectional Inn remains shut to a Pakistani Christian who has spent eight years on death row for the crime of blasphemy.

Intersectionality is the West’s new religion. Your value depends on how many victim groups you belong to. A one-eyed, black, lesbian, Palestinian, Muslim woman gets the gold medal. A heterosexual, black, woman, is awarded silver. A white, gay, American male is at the bottom with a bronze medal.

The religion of identity politics has a great commandment—love your neighbor depending on their position on the totem pole of intersectionality.

The high priests of this religion are innkeepers holding the keys to the doors to the Intersectional Inn. On merit alone, Asia Bibi should be accorded a red carpet welcome in the Intersectional Inn. Bibi is a colored (20 points) woman (20 points), who has been brutalized by Pakistan’s patriarchy (25 points). She is a low-class (10 points) and low-caste (20 points) farm laborer (15 points). She has rotted on death row facing the death penalty (30 points) for eight years for a crime she did not commit (15 points).

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Withdrawing from Syria Implements the Trump Doctrine That’s what it takes to actually win. Daniel Greenfield

By on December 23rd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272337/withdrawing-syria-implements-trump-doctrine-daniel-greenfield

“We need to be more unpredictable to adversaries,” President Trump had declared.

In the spring of the year, he pounded Syria with air strikes after chemical weapons were used, obliterating Obama’s red line disgrace, and restoring American deterrence and credibility.

But the day before the strikes happened, he had tweeted, “Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all!”

Now, in the last wintry days of the year, he suddenly announced a pullout of American troops from Syria. But the move only took those by surprise who hadn’t been paying attention all along.

When our first major airstrikes began, Trump had warned, “America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria… under no circumstances.”

Politicians usually say things like that. But Trump remains unpredictable by actually saying what he means in a business where everyone assumes that you mean the opposite of what you say.

“I would not go into Syria, but if I did it would be by surprise and not blurted all over the media like fools,” Trump had tweeted five years ago.

Trump’s actions in Syria encompass his preference for flexibility, quick strikes or withdrawals with no long term commitment. And that’s exactly what frustrates a national security establishment whose watershed moment was still the post-war reconstruction of Germany and Japan. They foolishly misread Trump by confusing commitment with consistency, and unpredictability with inconsistency,

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The Mueller delusion Matthew Walther

By on December 23rd, 2018

https://theweek.com/articles/813343/mueller-delusion?utm_source=ntnlreview&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=nationalreview_partnership

It’s December, and you know what that means. It’s Mueller time!

Michael Flynn, the moderately distinguished ex-lieutenant general who served for all of 24 days as Trump’s national security adviser and said some rude things on the campaign trail, narrowly avoided being sentenced to community service on Tuesday after pleading guilty to lying about a perfectly normal conversation with a Russian diplomat in late 2016. Judge Emmet Sullivan was in fine form, accusing Flynn of having “arguably” sold out his country, which is code for “getting caught in an obvious perjury trap.” Flynn’s sentencing will now be delayed until next year so he has more time to cooperate with Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe into Russian election interference. So far his assistance has led to the indictment of two former business associates who are accused of having illegally lobbied for the extradition of a Muslim cleric on behalf of the Turkish government. Turkey and Russia share a sea border, folks.

We don’t know why Flynn lied, but we also have no idea why the FBI was asking him gotcha questions in the first place. It wasn’t authorized by James Comey, the FBI director at the time. There are really only two possible reasons. One is that sentient adults considered indicting Flynn under the terms of the Logan Act, which is the prosecutorial equivalent of announcing a snipe hunt. Another is that Andrew McCabe, then the deputy director at the bureau, went rogue, the way law enforcement officers at every level do every day. I’ll let readers decide which is more likely.

It is possible to be of two minds about Flynn’s brief political career. His “Lock her up!” chants during the 2016 presidential campaign were unbecoming of a military man. But these antics concealed a frequently thoughtful perspective on foreign policy. In a 2015 interview with The Intercept, he blamed the war in Iraq for the rise of the Islamic State and dismissed the Obama administration’s use of drones as a “failed strategy.” “When you drop a bomb from a drone,” he said, “you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good.” What a comfort to think that he has been replaced by John Bolton.

Meanwhile Mueller is doing a good impersonation of a delusional power-crazed middle-school librarian. “Did you ever have a conversation with Rob and Pat in this library? Did you use your library voice? Okay, was it on a Tuesday? No, it was actually a Wednesday, and you, sir, are getting detention. Oh, what’s that? You happen to know that Kev and Phil were smoking cigarettes on the loading dock back in the seventh grade? Thank you, thank you so much! No, that’s all right, I can ring their employers.”

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More Syria Thoughts: The Case for Intervention Was Never Made By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on December 23rd, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/more-syria-thoughts-the-case-for-intervention-was-never-made/

My weekend column was about Syria, a topic that is raging because President Trump is pulling out, and because this seems to have been the last straw for General Jim Mattis, who resigned as secretary of defense.

I’ve been discussing this on Twitter and find myself on the other side of people with whom I normally agree — no surprise since, in my column, I am in disagreement with David French, with whom I am normally in lockstep on these kinds of issues.

And no surprise, then, that I am very sympathetic to the denunciations of President Trump for the impulsiveness of the pull-out. There is a lot to be said for this. As I observed in the column, it is especially shameful if the president decided to pull out in response to a threat from Turkey’s Islamist despot, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Even though I was against intervention in Syria, and even though I think it was playing with fire to ally with the Kurds under the circumstances (more on that in a moment), I would rather the president seek an authorization for use of military force (AUMF) to protect the Kurds than leave them to Erdogan’s tender mercies. I don’t think we should be in Syria, but I’d support it in order to show the world that we don’t let those who bleed with us get pushed around, much less annihilated.

On that subject, I’d note that the president is not the only one in this system who may seek an AUMF or a declaration of war. This is a power the Constitution vests in Congress.

While I have my differences from time to time, I like Senators Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton, as well as some others who are complaining about the president’s rashness. But I object to the cynical game they are playing. They well know that their diva routine for the media is not the option the Constitution gives them. They could, at any time, have proposed an AUMF that would legitimize combat operations against whoever they believe are our enemies in Syria — not just those who would ravage the Kurds, but those they keep saying (with great persuasive force, by the way) are our geopolitical enemies: Assad’s regime, Iran, and Russia. They still could. If they were right, it would be a great way to show how wrong Trump is.

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Silicon, Not Steel, Will Win the Next War America needs a domestic supply of military technology. By Henry Kressel and David P. Goldman

By on December 23rd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-not-steel-will-win-the-next-war-11545598669

The Trump administration this year imposed tariffs on steel, claiming that imports “threaten to impair the national security of the United States.” But the age is long past when steel was the most important input in a nation’s military arsenal. The modern military depends more on digital technology—semiconductor chips, sensors and software—than it does on steel.

The U.S. pioneered the technology that made today’s advanced weapon systems possible. But America’s competitive advantage in the digital economy is eroding at an alarming pace, along with its domestic high-tech manufacturing capacity. The majority of electronic systems first invented in the U.S. now are designed and made overseas, mainly in Asia. With few and dwindling exceptions, the U.S. no longer makes things like flat-panel displays, memory devices, light-emitting devices, lasers, imaging chips for digital cameras, and computer system packaging software.

As the manufacture of these component technologies has migrated offshore, so have many key systems suppliers. Intel is the only remaining U.S. company capable of fabricating high-density, high-performance computer chips in America. International Business Strategies estimates that investors are pouring $50 billion a year into advanced chip production facilities in Asia, more than 10 times the level of domestic spending. A state-of-the-art chip-fabrication plant can cost $20 billion to build and must be continuously upgraded.

The national-security implications of this industrial migration are dire. Without a domestic capability in critical electronic technologies, the U.S. may find itself unable to translate innovation into effective weaponry. Overseas supply chains are inherently insecure. Unless the manufacture of critical technology remains under domestic control, American systems are vulnerable to espionage and sabotage.

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Left Brain, Right Brain, No Brain Tim Blair

By on December 23rd, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/12/left-brain-right-brain-no-brain/

By their own estimation, so-called progressives are kind, caring and awash with empathy for all mankind. Meanjin scribbler Patrick Marlborough must have missed that memo, given his aren’t-I-smart slagging of the late Bill Leak.

It was famously said of the British and Americans, most likely by George Bernard Shaw, that they are divided by a common language.

To a lesser extent, possibly because we don’t have Britain’s regional accent distinctions, the same is true of Americans and Australians. When an American friend dropped by a few years ago, for example, he was utterly puzzled by frequent references in the press of people claiming to be “chuffed”.

One morning he found about three such references in the one newspaper. “What the hell does this word mean?” he asked, so I invited him to figure it out by considering the context.

He studied each sentence with scholarly concentration: “I was completely chuffed”, “I am absolutely chuffed”, and so on. Finally, my friend delivered his definition verdict.

“It means ‘drunk’,” he said.

Well, no. But it did for the rest of his trip.

The right and left sides of politics have lately arrived at a similar language gulf. Or maybe it isn’t so lately. Back in 2001, newly-elected US president George W. Bush vetoed a last-minute regulation on maximum arsenic particulate levels in water supplies that had been signed by his predecessor, Bill Clinton.

This move caused outrage among leftists, who raged that Bush’s veto exposed the nation’s children to risk of horrible death and furthermore proved that Republicans care not at all for innocent, water-craving families.

There was a logical flaw to those arguments, and they were quickly identified by Minnesota columnist James Lileks. “For all these accusations to work, you have to believe that Republicans want poisoned water,” he wrote. “You have to believe they drink different water than everyone else.”

“And, of course, they do,” Lileks continued, warming to this absurdity. “Doubt it? Switch parties. Join the GOP, and see what happens: cheerful clean-cut uniformed men show up the next day, and take you off the city water lines. They’ll connect you to the special Republican water system that crosses the nation, supplying pure clean perfect water to GOP households.”

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Confessions of a ‘Soulless Troglodyte’: How My Brooklyn Literary Friendships Fell Apart in the Age of Trump written by Lester Berg

By on December 23rd, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/12/18/confessions-of-a-soulless

I became friends with Jamie when I was 13, a few years after my family fled the Soviet Union and settled in what was then one of the most diverse neighborhoods of south Brooklyn. When we first met, Jamie (not his real name) told me that he was a genius—that his Catholic school teachers said so after he wrote a poem about vaginas and read it aloud in front of the whole class. He told me he wanted to be “an author.” In the 1990s, our street was a spontaneous symphony of the working poor, a place where kids bonded by trading ethnic insults in a dozen languages. I had mastered this crude local vernacular. Jamie’s ability to step outside of our street language, speak freely and dream about something larger was transfixing.

Unlike Jamie, I churned through the city’s public schools without attracting much notice. My teachers did not seek genius. In high school, they were too busy keeping us from killing each other. I learned nothing and barely graduated. After Jamie went off to a university in Manhattan, we lost touch. I attended a local public college and came out with degrees in Business and Philosophy, graduating shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The business major was a concession to my immigrant parents. But Wall Street was in ruins. And philosophy obviously wasn’t much help. I worked a string of odd jobs, ultimately landing a writing gig for a consumer magazine that paid less than what I’d earned parking cars.

In 2009, I joined Facebook and looked up Jamie online. He had graduated from a prestigious Master of Fine Arts program in fiction. He also was awarded a coveted fellowship that came with a brief mention in one of the country’s finest literary magazines. He was married, and had a toddler son. Though surprised at first, he seemed happy to hear from me.

I was eager to catch up. We hadn’t spoken or seen each other in more than a decade. But the conversation invariably steered itself toward our young new president, Barack Obama. I’d voted for him and felt a swell of emotion when he spoke at his 2008 inauguration. Like Jamie, Obama was bi-racial, raised by his white mother, with a penchant for rhetorical flight.

Jamie and I would speak on the phone, discussing how refreshing it was to finally have a man of eloquence and grace in the White House. We railed against obstructionist Republicans who undermined Obama—like Joe Wilson, who shouted “you lie!” during the 2009 State of the Union address. We were living in momentous times. At last, the nation had elected its first black president, and Jamie and I were friends again.

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American Universities’ China Problem written by Robert Precht

By on December 23rd, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/12/23/american-universities-

According to a report released last month by a group of distinguished China scholars, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses vague threats to induce US professors and students to avoid topics that might offend Chinese government sensitivities—research or discussions on Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, human rights, and Chinese politics, for example. It denies visas to scholars who criticize the regime, uses Chinese students in the US to inform on one another, and punishes universities for hosting controversial speakers. After a university hosted the Dalai Lama, Beijing retaliated by banning Chinese students and scholars with funding from the Chinese government from attending the university. When the institutions we entrust to pursue the truth start avoiding the truth—particularly academic research that few of us can do on our own—we all suffer.

The importance of universities’ truth-seeking role cannot be overstated. Medical researchers produce data on effective and ineffective therapies. Economists measure the impacts of different policy options. Sociologists study how public institutions and individual experiences affect education and its outcomes. Political scientists analyze governments. The integrity of American universities has rarely been questioned because it was assumed scholars enjoy academic freedom.

In contrast, Chinese scholars inhabit a very different world. When I worked in Beijing 10 years ago, I frequently met scholars who had to be careful about what they said. In 2010, I co-hosted a program with a well-respected professor at Peking University—China’s finest. He became agitated and angry when one of the speakers just mentioned the name of a critic of the regime, Liu Xiaobo. The professor feared he would be demoted or have his salary cut. The incident gave me renewed gratitude for the freedom on US campuses.

Ten years later, fear of offending the Communist regime has spread to American campuses Some of the blame belongs with China, but much of it belongs with the US universities themselves. By becoming ever more reliant on Chinese money they have placed themselves in a profound conflict of interest: adhere to academic freedom or please Beijing. Economic reliance on China has increased vastly in the last decade. Universities recruited Chinese students in record numbers. Enrollments soared by 400 percent. Chinese pay tuition worth an estimated $12 billion per year, according to the US Department of Commerce.

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Daniel J. Flynn Characters in Search of An Exit A gritty new novel dramatizes the human toll of America’s longest war.

By on December 23rd, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/war-in-afghanistan

And the Whole Mountain Burned, by Ray McPadden (Center Street, 288 pp., $26)

And the Whole Mountain Burned—a novel about our war in Afghanistan—tracks the adventures of Sergeant Nick Burch, Private Danny Shane, and their platoon on its hunt for “the Egyptian,” an antagonist as elusive as Moby Dick. In their quest, Burch and Shane encounter a soul-buying soldier, a local witch whose magic packs a powerful bite, and pagan cultists devoted to an orange rabbit. The characters speak in jargon (“mailbird,” “every swinging dick,” “drop your cocks and grab your socks”) that marks one as part of the military for readers and as, at least when indulged in to overuse, one trying to fit in to the point of caricature for those in uniform. Ultimately, they come across as Americans thrust into an alien environment.

The characters speak in often-profane military jargon—“mailbird,” “drop your cocks and grab your socks”—reflecting the real-life experience of the author, who served in the infantry from 2005 through 2010.

Afghanistan’s native folkways, weather, and terrain strike the novel’s American characters as dreary and inhospitable. “Jesus, this place is a drag,” Private Shane explains. “I wish we could fight in a place where the natives weren’t so uptight. We should start a war in Brazil.” Shane, the proud beau of a stripper girlfriend, fights a long way from home.

Imagining Afghani culture as American civilization in embryo is a dangerous illusion. An officer’s notion that the Americans would defeat the enemy by imposing our model of civilization seems as quixotic as the hunt for the Egyptian. The Afghans devote themselves to their civilization, the Americans to theirs—and never the twain shall meet.

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