Another day, another Iranian threat: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The two-day Iranian conference on the issue of “Palestine” can be resolved if everyone just goes home, says Mad Mahmoud. Really? So the 750,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim lands should return to Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and other lands can all go home again? The Arabs won’t have a problem with that? Because the reason they left in the first place were government-sponsored pogroms, lynchings, mob attacks, and murders. It was a population transfer, not unlike the many post-WWII population transfers. Funny how only the Arabs haven’t gotten over it yet. Oh, by the way—the Ayatollah made it plain that having a Jewish state on “Muslim land” is unacceptable. Anyone who thinks this isn’t a religious war isn’t being honest.

Maybe now the AP will stop calling him a spy: Egypt is now admitting that Ilan Grapel is not a spy, just a poor schlub that they arrested for no reason whatsoever. Well, they’re not admitting the latter, but by admitting he isn’t a spy, they may as well be. Maybe now the AP will stop calling him a “suspected” spy. Not even “alleged”? Yeah, the AP double standard for Israel is on, 24/7.

Another day, another anti-Semitic trope in mainstream newspapers: Let’s see… Misinformation on the UN partition of the Mandate of Palestine, check. Mentioning the Israel Lobby’s sway over Western nations, check. Apologies for terrorism, check. Blaming Israel for everything? But of course. Eff you, Malcolm Fraser, prime minister of Australia from 1975 to 1982. Best be careful. Your Israel-hatred is showing.

Don Lapre isn’t selling this strategy: Looks like he stopped dreaming. Now, people. I love watching informercials on all cooking gadgets. And I mean ALL of them. But don’t pick up that phone! (You can get it cheaper at a flea market. That’s how I got my Super Slicers.)

“One of the biggest falsehoods in the world is more cops equal less crime,” said Hay, a former city police officer. “We have to go one step further. We have to invest in curing the social, economic and political ills that people face.”

Woo! They’re going to cure the social, economic, and political ills facing their citizens. What, the wrong party being in power is causing a high murder rate? Awesome analysis there, Mr. ex-cop.

It reminds me of a Stephen Sondheim song. I’m guessing the ex-cop never saw West Side Story.

My daddy beats my mommy,
My mommy clobbers me.
My grandpa is a Commie,
My grandma pushes tea,
My sister wears a mustache,
My brother wears a dress,
Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess!

But that’s not the only theory. The subject of the article was stabbed in the heart during a fight at an event with lots of young people. Here’s what a professor at Edmonton University thinks is the problem.

Pitt compares Edmonton to Dodge City in the 1880s because of the access its residents have to alcohol and weapons and the lack of laws to prevent individuals from carrying knives.

He said the access to weapons and alcohol, the numbers of marginalized people, the lack of health care and particularly mental health services have combined to make Edmonton “a really, really bad place.”

Gasp! People drink! They can buy knives! Make them both illegal, and Edmonton’s murder rate will drop, right?

Wrong.

There’s been few common threads in the deadly attacks. Some were stabbings, some were shootings, some were beatings.

Twenty-three victims were men, five were women. Nine occurred in the downtown.

(By the way, Edmonton Journal copy editors? The correct grammar is “There have been few common threads.”)

Finally, we have the opinion of an actual police officer.

Edmonton Police Association president Tony Simioni said he believes the difference between Edmonton and Calgary homicide numbers is an aberration -”a temporary spike where ours is abnormally high and Calgary’s is abnormally low.”

Oh. Anything else?

Edmonton has more blue collar workers, including many who work in the oilpatch and related service industries, and more men between the ages of 16 and 24 who are most likely to be either victims or perpetrators of crime, he said.

The capital also has a higher jail population, where some of the murders occurred, more parolees and more low income residents and a much higher population of aboriginal residents than Calgary, he added.

But Chris Hay, John Howard Society of Alberta executive director, rejected the notion that aboriginal people or poor people or immigrants disproportionately contribute the crime and violence.

“Most crime in Canada is committed by young, white males.”

This is a textbook example of the writer framing the debate by using two disparate quotes to make it appear that they are talking about the same question, when in fact, they are not. One is answering the question “Why is the murder rate so high?” The other is answering the question “Do you think the murder rate is high because of these elements?” It’s the way reporters get to slant stories to say what they want them to say.

The murder rate is up in Edmonton. Edmonton has a high rate of young men. Young men commit crime. I think they really need look no further. But hey, I’m not a liberal, PC reporter, professor, or ex-police officer who thinks that the answer to stopping crime is making more laws that forbid more things. Because laws banning things have always worked; society doesn’t have issues with, say, drugs, guns, or even alcohol.

Shyeah.

If there are any astronomers out there who can explain to me why the telescope shoots out a laser from time to time, I’d love to know. Or any other facts you’d like to share. Via the Instapundit, of course.

Time to head to my local planetarium, I think. It’s been too long.

“I could see just her head sticking out of the water,” DeMatteo said, according to the New York Post. “I was nervous that we’d both go in, but I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. When you see her in the water, you’re going to do whatever you can to help her.”

But after he got her out of the water and they headed for land, the ice gave way again, sending them both briefly into the frigid water.

Chris Gonzales, first assistant chief of Sayville Community Ambulance, threw them a rope and pulled them ashore. They were taken to a hospital for observation, though neither was seriously injured.

At a news conference at Stony Brook University Medical Center, Sarah and DeMatteo sat side by side in wheelchairs, both wrapped in gray blankets.

“I’m better, just my hands feel all tingly,” Sarah said, according to the New York Daily News.

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She pulled one hand out of her blanket to shake her rescuer’s hand. “Thank you,” she said, receiving a big smile back from DeMatteo.

Multiculturalism, in many feverish progressive minds, was supposed to become an unending festival of mutual enrichment, poetic meeting of different cultures under the benevolent watch of the government sponsor, where foodstuffs, music, language, dance, love (don’t ever forget love) and other ethnic delights flow every each way unimpeded. In the grim reality of thousands so called European “projects” it turned out to be just lots of newly erected ghettos bringing alienation, lack of common language and, indeed, common culture. Well, lack of common culture was built into the idea of  multikulti to start with, you would say, and you will be right. Of course, this is precisely the point. This is what ghetto tends to do to its inhabitants – a majority of them just don’t see any need to make an effort and integrate into the host society. And the host society hardly cares – as long as the streets remain clean, the cars are produced on schedule, the garbage removed etc.

But over time the source of cheap workforce becomes a source of troubles. The confession “We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn’t stay, but that’s not the reality” came at a cost to be paid by many generations to come. The newly born kids of the people who were supposed to be temporary (and paying) guests grow up as alienated from the life outside the ghetto as their parents are. As a result, ghettos become a major source of unemployed, idle and discontented youth or, in other words, excellent breeding ground for recruiters of extremist ideologies and/or religions.

In short the multikulti parents’ dream was about the natural solution to immigrants’ issues by just seeing them off to the “projects”, giving them low-paying menial jobs and waiting to enjoy the rich fruit of multiculturalism in action. The dream appeared to be just that – a dream. And Angela Merkel was only the first to voice the inescapable conclusion. 

Absorption (an Israeli term for successful assimilation of a new immigrant) is a long and difficult process that requires a lot of attention, patience and investment from the government, from volunteers, from neighbors. When it is substituted by just settling the immigrants with common ethnic background together and hoping for the best, the results are always the same: poor to non-existent assimilation, lack of language, lack of understanding of local culture and customs. And the problem doesn’t go away with the first immigrant generation, it stays with the children. Israel (to take one example) is full of examples of successful and failed integration. All follow the same pattern.

Why do I refer to Israel, you may want to ask? For two reasons. One is already mentioned: Israel has a lot of experience – good and bad – with absorbing huge (compared to the size of its population) waves of immigration. Second reason is rather different: The rising wave of xenophobia in Europe is bad for all European minorities. It may start with Muslims, but Roma, Jews, Poles, Russians etc. are not far behind on the list. In fact, Roma may be the first on the European xenophobia list at the moment.

What else? Yes, it’s impossible not to mention the response to Merkel’s thunder from some “progressive” commentators. First there was silence for a day or two: the gurus just couldn’t believe their eyes and ears, apparently. Then the responses started trickling in. Like this rather pathetic one by Philip Oltermann, a German guy, full of good intentions, who tries to dispel the clear message of Merkel by anecdotal examples of his multikulti family and friends. Of course, population osmosis happens even in generally unsuccessful cases. People do leave ghettos, no argument about it – but what about the ones who stay there? Of course, Philip doesn’t have an answer.

Another way of attacking the message and the messenger was found quite quickly: according to many (too many to mention by name or to link), Merkel is anti-immigration in general, feeding the base instincts of the right wing (or worse) German electorate. And it’s patently untrue. Stephen Evans hit the bull’s eye saying:

In other words, her basic message is that integration has not worked – but it needs to.

And, of course, the august voice of UN didn’t hesitate for too long a time, warning Europe against “stereotyping that closes minds and breeds hatred“. Whatever that means and whatever it contributes (nothing would be my guess). And of course, we are being reminded how many neo-Nazis and their sympathizers there are in Germany, as if the problem of failed multiculturalism will be resolved once neo-Nazis disappear…

But what about Merkel’s own diagnostics of the problem? If indeed, as it is quoted here:

She stated that too little had been required of immigrants in Germany, and that they should learn German so they can better succeed in school and in the labor market.

Ms Merkel is barking up a wrong tree. There was nothing and nobody to encourage the immigrants to learn the language and to integrate. Now Europe is reaping what it saw for many years of carefree import of cheap workforce. As correctly (to my utter surprise) summarizes this Indy leader:

If integration is now to be the focus, however, the effort will have to be two-sided. As well as requiring migrants to do more, governments and the indigenous population will have to try harder, too. And this will take funds – for language tuition, better schooling and homes – at a time when money is in very short supply.

While this post languished in its draft form, something useful happened. A few days ago I’ve tried to take to task one Adrian Hamilton, an Indy scribe, who is denying Israel its right to be “a uniquely Jewish state”  in the midst of “Muslim majority Middle East”. This, uniquely moronic and racist statement, is uttered by a person who surely considers self progressive. I have said about Mr Hamilton in that post:

A member of multi-cultural progressive British elite who in any other situation will risk his life for your right to express your personal ethnic “I”…

And here Mr Hamilton comes out swinging, in a spirited, albeit moronic, defense of multikulti.

Multiculturalism was once a term of tolerance, an acceptance of difference in an increasingly cosmopolitan and urbanised western world.

No, it wasn’t, dear Adrian. It was rather a surrender to the necessity to bring all these black, brown and otherwise colored heathen into the country for jobs you and your brethren didn’t want to do. It was also a good cover for unwillingness or inability to do what should have been done, once the people were brought in: invest money, time and good will into their real integration. But of course, our Mr Hamilton is not done yet. He anticipates criticism in his vacuous way, and succeeds, in two consecutive short paragraphs, to contradict himself in a brilliantly stupid (OK, what can I do?) manner:

It [Multiculturalism] wasn’t a policy of letting everyone do their own thing so much as a counteraction to the suspicion and hostility to difference that immigration was bringing.

Then:

Its assumption was that immigrants, just as the Huguenots and the Jews of the late 19th century had, would integrate through generations, that over time their children would grow up much like everyone else in their society.

So, on one hand, “do nothing” wasn’t exactly a policy of multikulti. It has just happened so, exactly as with them Huguenots and the Jews… over generations… oh boy…

In short: Europe is looking into abyss. And the only good thing is that some more courageous leaders are willing to face the facts, instead of hiding behind the mental paralysis of the “progressives”.

And if you want to know more about the extremes that failed multiculturalism leads to in some cases, you can do much worse than reading Terrorism and the British Academy (via Just Journalism). And connect the dots…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

There you go, Jay. Another state down.

The $100 million gift to Human Rights Watch from billionaire George Soros announced last week will extend the overseas presence of the influential American rights champion and ensure its financial health for years to come.

But the goal of the gift is more ambitious still: to alter the way human rights are promoted in the 21st century, making rights advocacy less of an exclusively American and European cause.

The donation, the largest single gift ever from the Hungarian-born investor and philanthropist, is premised on the belief that U.S. leadership on human rights has been diminished by a decade of harsh policies in the war on terrorism. Soros said he hopes the money will cultivate a much broader constituency of foreign policymakers and philanthropists who embrace the notion that human rights should be observed universally.

Except as the prinicipals interviewed for this article acknowledge later, HRW isn’t likely to make much headway in China. HRW can make a difference in many countries which have functioning governments with independent judiciaries and a culture of freedom. Against despots, HRW doesn’t have much of a chance. There’s no traction for their agenda.

This is a point that former board member Robert Bernstein made last year in an op-ed published in the New York Times.

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.

Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.

Given the insurmountable challenge of actually changing closed societies, HRW has chosen to villify Israel, a much easier goal.

And thus the Post reports:

Human Rights Watch regularly comes under attack from governments around the world, including China, Russia, Israel, Iran, Syria, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

The criticism that comes from Israel is nothing like what HRW has to put up with from the other countries listed. The criticism from Israel is about HRW’s methods and biases. And HRW operates freely in Israel.

The Human Rights Watch gift will consist of $10 million annual grants over the next decade. Human Rights Watch is expected to find funding to match that grant. It is also seeking to cultivate a new generation of foreign donors to fund the group’s activities. Today, Human Rights Watch receives 30 percent of its funding from abroad, mostly from Europe and some from Japan. It has a target of raising 40 percent of its funding from abroad within five years and 50 percent within a decade.

The large injection of money from Soros highlights a reversal of fortune from 2008, when the recession eliminated 7 percent of the organization’s funding. Last year, Human Rights Watch raised $45 million, its most in a single year. It plans to increase its annual budget to $80 million within five years.

Bernstein’s critique is absent from the Post article. So too is mention of numerous scandals that have emerged from the organization that have hurt its fundraising ability. The only problem that HRW suffered from is the recession.

The Washington Post didn’t take a close look at HRW or Soros, but the New York Post did, in the form of an op-ed by Gerald Steinberg.

The bias is indisputable: HRW’s publications on “Israel and the Occupied Territories” made up 28 percent of its total Mideast output in 2009.

Which makes it a fine fit for George Soros, whose own biases are well-established. In the Middle East, for example, his Open Society Institute exclusively supports advocacy groups that campaign internationally to undermine the elected governments of Israel — organizations such as Adalah, Peace Now, Breaking the Silence, Gisha and Yesh Din.

In extending his control over HRW, Soros seeks to increase its staff by 40 percent, reposition it as a major international player and restore its influence as an arbiter on universal human rights. But while his grant will alleviate the crisis caused by HRW’s declining income, it only deepens the moral crisis.

And while the Washington Post describes George Soros in the most benign of terms, he has a pretty sordid history. (h/t The Razor)

If there’s any value to the Washington Post article, it is an unguarded statement at the end.

“I don’t know that Human Rights Watch is going to be able to establish a presence in China to make China a force for promoting human rights,” Neier said. But he noted that there are important human rights promoters in Brazil, South Africa and other countries that may have a greater impact on their own national debates.

This isn’t about human rights, but about “national debates,” or politics. Just as Soros has used his money to influence the political process in the United States (unsuccessfully in 2004; successfully in 2008) he sees HRW as a means to extend his reach into other countries.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

This seems like such an obvious point, but it is apparently not obvious to the many people who oppose the Cordoba Initiative’s planned mosque in lower Manhattan, so let me state it as clearly as possible: The Cordoba Initiative, which is headed by an imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf, is an enemy of al Qaeda, no less than Rudolph Giuliani and the Anti-Defamation League are enemies of al Qaeda. Bin Laden would sooner dispatch a truck bomb to destroy the Cordoba Initiative’s proposed community center than he would attack the ADL, for the simple reason that Osama’s most dire enemies are Muslims.

Goldberg insists that since Imam Rauf is a moderate, Bin Laden would fear him. Thus by showing understanding to Rauf, we are helping to fight Bin Laden.

The problem is that however slickly Imam Rauf presents himself he has a troubling history. Yes he talks about interfaith cooperation but he somehow can’t bring himself to condemn Hamas.

How do you know someone really isn’t a “moderate” on the question of Islamic radicalism? When he endorses a double standard for terrorism — appearing to condemn it when it is directed against Americans, refusing to condemn it when directed against Israelis.

Feisal Abdul Rauf, a self-styled champion of moderate Islam, was recently asked whether he thinks Hamas is a terrorist organization. “The issue of terrorism is a very complex question,” he replied. When pressed, he insisted that “I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary or as an enemy.”

But surely there should be no middle ground when it comes to Hamas, just as there can be no middle ground when it comes to Al-Qaeda.

Or as Charles Krauthammer noted the other day Imam Rauf told Ed Bradley of “60 Minutes” that the United States was an accessory to the terror of 9/11.

Perhaps there’s some poetic justice in that Imam Rauf can’t condemn Hamas, for yesterday (via memeorandum) Hamas endorsed the idea of the Islamic Center near ground zero.

A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero — insisting Muslims “have to build” it there.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.

But if an Islamist terror organization approves this mosque doesn’t that refute the idea that Bin Laden would seek to destroy it. Yes, I know that the mosque’s developers say that Hamas doesn’t speak for them. But if you are going to argue that extremists would oppose the mosque and then they actually endorse it, it should be obvious that extremists do not see it as a threat.

One other reason I doubt Imam Rauf’s moderation is the name of his initiative. As I blogged last week, Cordoba doesn’t represent peaceful coexistence. At least it doesn’t represent tolerance in any 21st century understanding of the word. Jennifer Rubin yesterday noted Michael Lame’s observation:

The idea of an Andalusian golden age, when Christians and Jews lived contentedly under Muslim rule, has become a fixture of Western historical thinking over the last hundred years. But is it true?

Professor [Richard] Fletcher weighs in on the question: “Early medieval Spain was multicultural in the sense of being culturally diverse, a land within which different cultures coexisted; but not in the sense of experiencing cultural integration. Toleration for Christians and Jews as ‘Peoples of the Book’ is enjoined by the Koran. But in practice it was limited – Christians under Islamic rule were forbidden to build new churches, to ring church bells, to hold public processions – and sometimes it broke down altogether. In 1066 there was a pogrom in Granada in which its Jewish community was slaughtered. Thousands of Christians were deported to slavery in Morocco in 1126. Thoroughly dismissive attitudes to Christians and Jews may be found in the Arabic literature of al-Andalus. It is a myth of the modern liberal imagination that medieval Islamic Spain was, in any sense that we should recognize today, a tolerant society.”

So in addition to Imam Rauf’s failure to condemn extremism, the name of his institute hardly evokes the toleration he says it does.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer’s approach is correct.

The most apt comparison between the debate surrounding the planned ground zero mosque is with the one which surrounded the planned Nazi marches in Skokie, a Chicago suburb inhabited by a large number of Jewish holocaust survivors. The US constitution guarantees the right of American Muslims to disregard the pain they will cause the victims of the Islamist terrorist attack on 9/11 just as the constitution guaranteed American Nazis the right to disregard the pain of the victims of the Nazi holocaust.

Legally, there may be nothing we can do to stop the Islamic Center from being built but we certainly have every right to protest it as an affront to those killed and targeted on 9/11. Those who argue that protests against the mosque are somehow acting against freedom of religion, are saying that we must show toleration to a religion that doesn’t tolerate others. If Imam Rauf’s efforts are constitutionally protected surely too are those who oppose his plans. There is nothing un-American about protesting insensitivity.

Finally this is breaking mostly along partisan lines as Robert Avrech observes:

The Ground Zero Mosque is a stark political issue that divides Democrats from Republicans.

If you support the Ground Zero Mosque vote for the Democrats.

If not, vote Republican.

This scares Mark Halperin:

Yes, Republicans, you can take advantage of this heated circumstance, backed by the families of the 9/11 victims, in their most emotional return to the public stage since 2001.

But please don’t do it. There are a handful of good reasons to oppose allowing the Islamic center to be built so close to Ground Zero, particularly the family opposition and the availability of other, less raw locations. But what is happening now — the misinformation about the center and its supporters; the open declarations of war on Islam on talk radio, the Internet and other forums; the painful divisions propelled by all the overheated rhetoric — is not worth whatever political gain your party might achieve.

The ground zero mosque is a potent issue for many voters. Halperin isn’t asking the Republicans to be noble. He’s asking them to surrender.

Finally, will those defending Imam Rauf, defend Glenn Beck too?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Two Republican members of Congress, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Peter T. King of New York, called government sponsorship of Rauf’s trip “unacceptable” in a joint statement. They said he had suggested in at least one interview that the United States was to blame for the 2001 attacks.

I love the qualifications: “They said” and “he had suggested.” Why not just write Imam Rauf made the charge? It’s right here:

Bradley: Are you in any way suggesting that we in the United States deserved what happened?

Faisal: I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but united states policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.

As I noted earlier, the Post also is ignorant of the meaning of “Cordoba.”

With a major newspaper failing to exercise any sort of oversight over the intentions of the leaders of the Ground Zero mosque effort, it’s funny to read in the New York Times that For Mosque Sponsors, Early Missteps Fueled Storm. In a nutshell:

The organizers built support among some Jewish and Christian groups, and even among some families of 9/11 victims, but did little to engage with likely opponents.

With a media that has been incurious about its organizer’s motives or the sources of its funding, the effort to build the Islamic center in lower Manhattan, has faced only grass roots opposition. The building has been cast in simple terms of freedom of religion with opponents being characterized as intolerant and bigoted. But the real issue is sensitivity. True, there may be no legal grounds to prevent Imam Rauf and his organization from building. However, in Sacrilege at Ground Zero, Charles Krauthammer makes a strong case for fighting the mosque on sensitivity grounds.

Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history — perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.

Of course that strain represents only a minority of Muslims. Islam is no more intrinsically Islamist than present-day Germany is Nazi — yet despite contemporary Germany’s innocence, no German of goodwill would even think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka.

Which makes you wonder about the goodwill behind Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s proposal. This is a man who has called U.S. policy “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 and, when recently asked whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, replied, “I’m not a politician. . . . The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.”

(It is through Krauthammer, that I found the interview of Imam Rauf by Ed Bradley.)

Krauthmmer concludes:

The governor of New York offered to help find land to build the mosque elsewhere. A mosque really seeking to build bridges, Rauf’s ostensible hope for the structure, would accept the offer.

The city may not have the legal means to block the building, however it is up to Imam Rauf to show that he understands what an affront it would be for him to build in lower Manhattan, so close to the scene of the Islamist attack on America.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.