"...Under the guise of letting go of the Christian holidays, this text provides Muslims with a waiver to add Islamic holidays…. Six Belgian senators introduced a draft resolution in the Belgian Parliament that would make "Islamophobia" a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment. A person would be guilty if he "considers Islam to be violent, threatening or supportive of terrorism…" or "considers Islam to be a political ideology, used for political and military purposes to establish it hegemony." If passed, the law would pose a devastating blow to the exercise of free speech in Belgium."
"...The survey, which was published by the daily newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen on April 19, shows that 60% of Muslim youth believe that they will never be integrated into Belgian society. One in three of those surveyed say that he or she has been discriminated against at school, and one in five say they have been discriminated against at work. More than 50% say they have been victims of racism. Although 93% of those surveyed have Belgian citizenship, 42% of them say they consider themselves to be foreigners.
The results are virtually unchanged from a similar survey conducted in 2005, and imply that years of government efforts to make Belgium more multicultural have done nothing to change the minds of Muslim youth.
According to the Flemish Minister for Integration, Geert Bourgeois, Muslim youth should work harder and complain less. "That so many young people feel discriminated against and do not feel accepted means that our society still has a lot of work to do. It's actually an 'us-them' story. We as a society can and should still make an extra effort, but conversely, Muslim youth should do more as well. Perhaps an inverted research shows that we just think that young Muslims do not belong because they do not want to belong," Bourgeois said.
If Belgian multiculturalists have their way, however, asking Muslims to do more to integrate into Belgian society may soon become a criminal offense.
In February, six Belgian senators (three of whom are Muslim) introduced a draft resolution in the Belgian Federal Parliament that would make "Islamophobia" a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment.
The draft text -- which, among other objectives, seeks to equate "Islamophobia" with anti-Semitism -- is audacious in scope and if passed would pose a devastating blow to the exercise of free speech in Belgium.
According to the authors of the resolution, a person would be guilty of Islamophobia if he or she:
Considers Islam to be a single monolithic bloc, closed and static, incapable of adapting to new situations;
Considers Islam to be separate and "different," devoid of having any aims or shared values with other cultures, not influenced by other cultures and not influencing other cultures;
Considers Islam to be inferior to the West, to be barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist;
Considers Islam to be violent, threatening and supportive of terrorism, actively engaged in a 'clash of civilizations';
Considers Islam to be a political ideology, used for political and military purposes to establish its hegemony;
Rejects out of hand criticisms made by Islam of 'the West';
Shows hostility towards Islam to justify discrimination and social exclusion of Muslims;
Accepts hostility toward Muslims as natural and normal.
This definition of Islamophobia, which is based on a 1997 report published by the London-based Runnymede Trust, would effectively outlaw any critical discussion of Islam in Belgium under the guise of combatting racism.
The draft resolution has outraged free speech activists, who are demanding more public scrutiny of what they say is a "draconian" measure that is contrary to liberal democratic values. But the sponsors of the text remain unapologetic.
In an interview with the daily newspaper Le Soir, Senator Richard Miller from Wallonia accuses critics of the resolution of trying to make the draft text say things it does not say.
Miller, a member of the same Mouvement Réformateur that has accused other Belgian politicians of pandering to Muslims, claims his measure is not meant to prohibit the criticism of Islam, but only to "fight against those who often use a variety of arguments, with the result of creating unease in the Muslim population."
"As a university-educated young woman with hippie-style hair and an attitude, I, too, generally toed the standard Leftist line in the late Seventies and early Eighties.
Poverty was bad, cuts in public spending were bad, prison was bad, the Tory government was bad.
The state was good, poor people were good, minorities were good, sexual freedom was good.
And pretty soon I had the perfect platform for those views when I went to work as a journalist on The Guardian, the self-styled paper of choice for intellectuals and the supposed voice of progressive conscience.
The paper and I fitted each other perfectly. If I had been a character in one of the Mister Men books, I would have been Little Miss Guardianista.
Those of us who worked there had a fixed belief in our own superiority and righteousness. We saw ourselves as clever and civilised champions of liberal thought.
I felt loved and cherished, the favoured child of a wonderful and impressive family.
To my colleagues, there was virtually no question that the poor were the victims of circumstances rather than being accountable for their own behaviour and that the state was a wholly benign actor in the lives of individuals.
It never occurred to us that there could be another way of looking at the world.
Above all, we knew we were on the side of the angels, while across the barricades hatchet-faced Right-wingers represented the dark forces of human nature and society that we were all so proud to be against.
But then Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979; and although at The Guardian it was a given that she was a heartless, narrow-minded, suburban nightmare, I found myself listening, despite myself, to a point of view I had not heard before.
These Thatcherites were not the usual upper-class squires, but people whose backgrounds were similar to my own.
They were promoting the values with which I had been brought up in my Labour-supporting family — all about opportunities for social betterment, hard work, taking responsibility for oneself.
I always believed a good journalist should uphold truth over lies and follow the evidence where it led.
Trudging round godforsaken estates as the paper’s special reporter on social affairs, I could see the stark reality of what our supposedly enlightened liberal society was becoming.
The scales began to fall from my eyes. I came to realise that the Left was not on the side of truth, reason and justice.
Instead, it promoted ideology, malice and oppression. Rather than fighting abuse of power, it embodied it.
Increasingly, I saw how journalists on highbrow papers write primarily for other journalists or to impress politicians or other members of the great and the good.
They don’t actually like ordinary people — especially the lower middle class, the strivers who believed in self-discipline and personal responsibility.
They dismiss them as narrow-minded, parochial and prejudiced (unlike themselves, of course).
But I always wrote with ordinary people in mind.
Just as they were sceptical of intellectual abstractions, fantasies or Utopian solutions, so was I.
Bit by bit, I saw through the delusion of the Left’s supposedly ‘progressive’ politics.
Increasingly, I turned away from their stupidity, hypocrisy and moral blindness.
They, of course, dismissed me as contemptibly ‘Right-wing’, as if that was sufficient to destroy my argument.
But I am not ideologically driven. I hate the way political debate has been polarised into warring camps, with each side circling its wagons and striking ever more inflexible, dogmatic and adversarial positions.
My battle with the Left has never been from ‘the Right’, despite what they say.
How can I be ‘Right-wing’ when I am driven by the desire to make a better world, stand up for right over wrong and look after the most vulnerable in society?
Rather, I fight the Left on its very own purported moral high ground, which I once believed we all shared, but which I came to realise it had most cynically betrayed.
The defining issue for me — the one that launched me on a personal trajectory of confrontation with the Left and with my colleagues and friends — was the persistent undermining of the family as an institution.
By the late Eighties, it was glaringly obvious that families were suffering a chronic crisis of identity and self-confidence.
There were more and more divorces and single parents — along with mounting evidence that family disintegration and the subsequent creation of step-families or households with no father figure at all did incalculable damage to children."
"Let me begin by wholeheartedly apologising for what my ancestors did to the people of South Africa and inviting you to do the same. I reject their legacy as much as is possible and, as you already know, have made it a life mission to deconstruct the phallocentric white view of ”white as right” and the misguided precept that white is central to all reality."
"... The 2011 Census determined that there were only 4.3 million White People left in South Africa. We are a minority group that is getting absolutely NO help from the Government or the International Community. Almost 800 000 of our people are currently living in Squatter Camps. That is 18% of our population. Our people are being attacked, tortured, raped, maimed, murdered and impoverished on a daily basis. We have laws in the country preventing whites from finding jobs. We have laws that determine that businesses can’t donate money to charities assisting White people. Our farms are being taken in a Government sanctioned land grab, our statues are being removed, our monuments neglected, our language sidelined and the names of our cities and streets are changed. All of this in an effort to eradicate our culture, our history and our heritage. But on top of all of this, our people are being MURDERED! …and our government calls it “Normal Crime” and our President merrily sings “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer!” “…bring me my machine gun! Let’s shoot them with a cannon!”
Read the FACTS and then convince yourself that this is “normal”…"
"... Pamela Geller, tireless campaigner against Islamic imperialism (and a lady I had the honor of being introduced by at CPAC a few years back), was scheduled to give a speech at a Toronto synagogue on May 13th. Miss Geller is not a convicted terrorist or terrorism-supporter or someone who argues for the execution of all homosexuals. If she were, she could speak at any Canadian venue with impunity. Instead, here’s what happened next:
TORONTO - York Regional Police threatened to remove a rabbi as one of the force’s chaplains if he hosted a controversial anti-Islamist speaker at his Thornhill synagogue.
Insp. Ricky Veerappan, of the force’s diversity, equity and inclusion bureau, confirmed he and officers from the service’s hate crimes unit met with Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of the Chabad Flamingo Synagogue on Tuesday.
They expressed concern about an upcoming talk to be given by Pamela Geller, a vocal critic of radical Islam. She protested past plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, and has posted anti-Jihad messages in that city’s subway system.
When the York Regional Police Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bureau show up thwacking their truncheons against their palms and saying, “Nice little multifaith advisory committee gig you got going, Rabbi. Shame if anything were to happen to it”, a prudent man gets the message:
Subsequent to his meeting with police, Kaplan cancelled Geller’s May 13 talk.
So that worked. Those who didn’t get the memo about Inspector Ricky Veerappan’s self-enthronement as Greater Toronto Area Speech Commissar are scrambling to find Pamela Geller an alternative venue. If you don’t want the coppers determining whose opinions you’re permitted to be exposed to, give ‘em your support...."
McAleer: "Most people watching your film would think lighting your water started with fracking. You said yourself people lit their water long before fracking started, isn't that correct?"
Fox: "Yes but it's not relevant."
"Although many greens in Washington State were earlier trying to use lower snow packs in the Cascade Mountains as evidence of global warming, such arguments have fallen by the wayside as the snows of Rainer have returned and continue to mount since the late 1990's after a 20 year period of mediocre snowfalls (1976-1996). In early April 1999, Paradise Ranger Station on Mt. Rainier (+14,411) recorded a whopping 280 inches of snowpack on the ground -- which is over 23 feet. That same year, Mt. Rainier's twin sister to the north, Mt. Baker (+10,750), broke the all-time snowfall record for one year with 1,140 inches (95 feet -- snowfall does not record snowpack, only the accumulation of each particular snow event) at its ski resort. The previous all-time record for snowfall in one year was held by the Paradise Ranger Station itself when 1,122 inches of snow fell in the winter of 1971-72. By mid-April of 1972, there was 302 inches of snow on the ground at Paradise, which is over 25 feet. That Washington State snow is very wet and heavy also indicates that such deep snowpacks are profound indeed. In other words, the Washington Cascades are some of the snowiest mountains on earth. Though the Cascades are certainly localized to the Pacific Northwest, they are still important weather barometers.
Throughout the 20th century, Paradise Ranger Station (+5,400 feet) was known for its absurdly high consistent snowfalls and snowpacks. Between 1920 and 1980, Paradise usually recorded a snowpack greater than 200 inches (almost 17 feet) 4 to 5 times out of each decade. In particular, the decade of 1945-1956, and then again from 1966-1976, were characterized by very deep snowpacks. The average snowpack between 1945-1956 was an incredible 231 inches, and then 225 inches between 1966-1976, far surpassing the average snow packs of the 1930s, which was 188 inches. In comparison, even the very snowy 1920s only averaged 200 inches of snow.
....
However, the great snows between 1945-1976 came to an abrupt end by the spring of 1977 in which Paradise only had 126 inches of snow on the ground, barely over ten feet. More modest snow packs continued on up until the spring of 1996. Between 1976-1996, the Paradise Ranger Station surpassed the 200 inch mark only twice -- in the springs of 1982 and 1984. This was a very marked change from previous decades.
As such, the 1997 hefty spring snowpack at Paradise of 258 inches (almost 22 feet), was actually a harbinger of much snowier winters to come. Since 1997, Paradise has surpassed the 200-inch mark eight times. Even this last winter, which was very quiet for Pacific Northwest standards, Paradise still showed a snowpack of 197 inches in mid-April -- just 3 inches shy of that exceptional 200 inch mark.
Since 2006, Paradise has averaged a very snowy 205 inches of snowpack each year, compared to only 168 inches between 1976-1996. Even more incredible, on June 1st 2011, Paradise still had a snowpack of 201 inches -- it is off the charts to have so much snow on the ground so late in the year. Since 1996-97, Paradise has averaged 196 inches of snow pack each year, which is actually a very high number because such consistency spans almost two decades. The snows of Rainier have thus been perfectly consistent with Easterbrook's contention that 1940-75 represented a cooling trend, and that the warming trend of 1976-1997 was halted by the present cooling trend that began in 1998.
In other words, in spite of the fact that global warming advocates have been complaining that the weather of the 21st century has so far been the warmest on record, it is simply not true. According to Easterbrook, such hand-wringing is not based on original raw data, but has been created from computer model adjustments that artificially elevate the warmth of this last decade and purposefully devalue the truly warm decade of the 1930s -- the Dust Bowl years. Easterbrook states 1936 was the hottest year as far as modern records are concerned, but he also pointed out that in ages past, the earth was far warmer than it is now. Easterbrook went on to say the planet is still in the process of coming out of the Little Ice Age (1300-1850), and that the warm-up began long before human induced CO2 could have been the culprit."
"...Dr. Bernard Nathanson made history in 1984 when he narrated a film of an ultrasound which showed a child silently screaming as it was being aborted.
The film was big news. It got the nation's attention and the issue of fetal pain was hotly debated. Some denied that the child was experiencing pain, but it was generally agreed upon that if that was the case, it was a terrible thing that shouldn't be allowed to happen.
Fast forward almost thirty years to this blood-curdling testimony from Gosnell henchwoman Sherry West. It's enough to break America's heart, if it still has one:
The proprietor, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, asked her to help him with something and directed her to another room. There an 18-to-24-inch baby, who did not yet have eyes*, was lying in a clear glass pan, she recalled in horror. It was “screeching, making this noise” that “sounded like a little alien," she said. It “really freaked me out,” she said, causing her to leave the room.
"Making this noise" "like an alien"? That's called crying. It's what human babies do when they're in distress, in this case, the ultimate distress. The "aliens" here are the inhuman monsters who caused that distress.
So . . . if a baby screams during an outside-the-uterus "abortion," does it make a sound? Or, to put it another way, if an abortionist goes on trial for murdering infants, but the media refuses to cover it, is it really happening? And does America care?
This time the scream is loud and clear, but nobody's listening.
***
Hang on -- America has a heart, after all, and the Washington Post is all over it.
***
(*Huh?)
***
A headline you'll never see in the American press:
'Fetuses and blood all over the place': Medic's graphic account of 'be-heading live babies' at abortion 'House of Horrors' in Philadelphia
Brace yourselves:
Massof, who is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to the murder of two newborns at the clinic, revealed Thursday that he witnessed an abortion at 26 weeks - two weeks beyond the 24-week limit in the state.
He also claimed he saw about 100 babies born alive and then 'snipped' with surgical scissors in the back of the neck, to ensure their 'demise'.
He also spoke of the gruesome scenes at the clinic which was allegedly found dirty and rundown with rusting surgical instruments.
'It would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place. It is literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body,' he told NBC.
He also alleges the clinic's ultrasound machine was manipulated to make fetuses appear smaller and therefore younger.
Dear God in heaven."
