Not encouraging cultural assimilation a liability
HENRY BRECHUN, Cambridge
I question if we are on the right path by encouraging immigrants to retain their old cultural identities.
Years ago, people "knew" that it would be just a matter of time before new immigrants would cast aside their old world habits and would take up the "sensible" habits of the new world.
This assumption no longer applies to our politically correct world and Western societies across the globe are experiencing difficulties with new immigrants who show no intention of assimilating.
We are now too tolerant of newcomers and the only culture that is dispensable is the Canadian one. Our values and traditions are the only ones to be pushed aside by order of Big Brother.
We'll remove all reference to Christ at Christmas. We'll obscure glazing at YMCAs so religious folks need not be offended by the appearance of women clad in exercise suits. We'll force changes to soccer rules to allow ostensibly religious headgear to be worn on the pitch, but we will not ask any newcomer to change.
Can't Canadians establish societal norms and reasonably expect that others who choose to move here will adapt to them instead of the other way around?
We used to think that democracy was a government by the people for the people, but ours is turning out to be a government for charter malcontents, run by lawyers.
You may think my comments to be uncharitable to newcomers, but I speak as a son of immigrants. My first language was neither English nor French and my parents arrived before there was any social safety net. In my experience, Canadians know a thing or two about the immigrant experience, but official Canada is another story.
Canada today must stop being a doormat for the world; we should establish some house rules for our newer citizens. I admit it takes a heart much bigger than my own to open up unconditionally to newcomers who chant "Death to America" in their homelands, but I am more concerned about the brain and not the heart.
We have every right to spell out expectations for our newcomers. It is in our best interest to assimilate immigrants so they become new Canadians and not hyphenated Canadians. It is right to give prime consideration to citizens who are likely to be compatible with Canadian values, instead watching our own values transform under the mass of insoluble religions or cultures.
We have much to be proud of and should be keenly aware that our success is the reason people are attracted to this nation and they don't come here as a favour to Canadians. We should not remain indifferent and neutral to what we see around us in our country.
If our multicultural policy remains blindfolded in a politically correct sense of fairness, we can expect nothing more than to transplant old world cultures and old world problems.
To see our potential future, look to Britain, where one in six British Muslims polled believes the London Tube and bus bombers were motivated by a just cause.
Or look closer to home to Minnesota, where ethnic cab drivers refuse to pick up blind fares who are accompanied by their seeing eye dogs - for religious reasons.
Sometimes being tolerant isn't a virtue - it's a liability.
http://www.cambridgetimes.ca/cam/viewpoint/viewpoint_801095.html
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Jimmy Carter: Radical Islam's Ally
By Michael D. Evans
The Left in America is screaming to high heaven that the current situation in Iraq and the war on terrorism has been caused by the right wing and that President George Bush, the so-called “dim-witted cowboy,” has created the entire mess. The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Mr. Carter viewed Khomeini more as a holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. His ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.“ Mr. Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” His adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979, that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid [ranking cleric], but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.“
The shah was terrified of Mr. Carter. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”
Let’s look at the results of President Carter’s misguided liberal policies: the Islamic Revolution in Iran; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Mr. Carter’s response was to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics); the birth of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization; the Iran-Iraq War, which cost the lives of millions dead and wounded; and yes, the present war on terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
When Mr. Carter entered the political fray in 1976, America was still riding the liberal wave of anti-Vietnam War emotion. He asked for an in-depth report on Iran even before he assumed the reins of government and was persuaded that the shah was not fit to rule Iran. 1976 was a banner year for pacifism: Mr. Carter was elected president, Bill Clinton became attorney-general of Arkansas, and Albert Gore won a place in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
In his anti-war pacifism, Jimmy Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (“the plague of Western culture”).
President Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Mr. Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.
Gen. Robert Huyser, Mr. Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has donned the mantle of Ayatollah Khomeini, taken up bin Laden’s call, and is fostering an Islamic apocalyptic revolution in Iraq with the intent of taking over the Middle East and the world.
Jimmy Carter became the poster boy for the ideological revolution of the 1960s in the West, hell bent on killing the soul of America. The bottom line: Carter believed then and still does now is that evil really does not exist; people are basically good; America should embrace the perpetrators and castigate the victims.
In the ‘60s it was mass rebellion after the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. When humanity confronts eternity, the response is always rebellion or repentance. The same ideologues who fought to destroy the soul of America with the “God is dead” movement in the ‘60s are now running the arts, the universities, the media, the State Department, Congress, and Senate, determined more than ever to kill the soul of America while the East attempts to kill the body. Mr. Carter’s world view defines the core ideology of the Democratic Party.
What is going on in Iraq is no mystery to those of us who have had our fingers on the pulse of both Iran and Iraq for decades. The Iran-Iraq war was a war of ideologies. Saddam Hussein saw himself as an Arab leader who would defeat the non-Arab Persians. Khomeini saw it as an opportunity to export his Islamic Revolution across the borders to the Shi’ites in Iraq and then beyond to the Arab countries.
Throughout the war both leaders did everything possible to incite the inhabitants of each country to rebel – precisely what Iran is now doing in Iraq. Khomeini encouraged the Shi’ites across the border to remove Saddam from power and establish an Islamic republic like in Iran.
Mr. Carter’s belief that every crisis can be resolved with diplomacy - and nothing but diplomacy - now permeates the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, he is wrong.
There are times when evil must be openly confronted and defeated.
Khomeini had the help of the PLO in Iran. They supplied weapons and terrorists to murder Iranians and incite mobs in the streets. No wonder Yasser Arafat was hailed as a friend of Khomeini after he seized control of Iran and was given the Israeli Embassy in Teheran with the PLO flag flying overhead.
The Carter administration scrambled to assure the new regime that the United States would maintain diplomatic ties with Iran. But on April 1, 1979, the greatest April Fools’ joke of all time was played, as Khomeini proclaimed it the first day of the government of God.
In February 1979 Khomeini boarded an Air France flight to return to Teheran with the blessing of Jimmy Carter. The moment he arrived, he proclaimed: “I will kick his teeth in” – referring to then Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, who was left in power with a US pledge of support. He was assassinated in Paris by Iranian agents in 1991.
On September 23, 1980, I had dinner with Isser Harel, the former head of Israel’s Mossad, at his home with Dr. Reuven Hecht, a senior adviser to then Prime Minister Menachem Begin. I asked Harel who he thought would be elected president of the United States. He said the word on the street was that Iran would vote in favor of Ronald Reagan by releasing the American hostages during the inauguration.
Little did I know that for months President Carter had tried to cut a financial deal to get the hostages freed, knowing it would likely mean the presidency if he succeeded. On Inauguration Day, Mr. Carter reached a final agreement and transferred $7.977 billion to Iran from the Federal Reserve, along with signing an agreement to respect Iran’s territorial integrity and granting amnesty against law suits to Iran by the hostages or their families.
I asked Isser Harel two more questions that evening. The first was what would happen to then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The answer was that he would be killed for preaching President Carter’s democratic delusions. My last question was would terrorism ever come to America. “You have the power to fight it,” he said, “but not the will. They have the will, but not the power. All of that will change in time. Yes, I fear it will come to New York and your tallest building, which is a symbol of your fertility.”
Michael D. Evans is a prominent Christian commentator on the Middle East
By Michael D. Evans
The Left in America is screaming to high heaven that the current situation in Iraq and the war on terrorism has been caused by the right wing and that President George Bush, the so-called “dim-witted cowboy,” has created the entire mess. The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Mr. Carter viewed Khomeini more as a holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. His ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.“ Mr. Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” His adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979, that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid [ranking cleric], but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.“
The shah was terrified of Mr. Carter. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”
Let’s look at the results of President Carter’s misguided liberal policies: the Islamic Revolution in Iran; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Mr. Carter’s response was to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics); the birth of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization; the Iran-Iraq War, which cost the lives of millions dead and wounded; and yes, the present war on terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
When Mr. Carter entered the political fray in 1976, America was still riding the liberal wave of anti-Vietnam War emotion. He asked for an in-depth report on Iran even before he assumed the reins of government and was persuaded that the shah was not fit to rule Iran. 1976 was a banner year for pacifism: Mr. Carter was elected president, Bill Clinton became attorney-general of Arkansas, and Albert Gore won a place in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
In his anti-war pacifism, Jimmy Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (“the plague of Western culture”).
President Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Mr. Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.
Gen. Robert Huyser, Mr. Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has donned the mantle of Ayatollah Khomeini, taken up bin Laden’s call, and is fostering an Islamic apocalyptic revolution in Iraq with the intent of taking over the Middle East and the world.
Jimmy Carter became the poster boy for the ideological revolution of the 1960s in the West, hell bent on killing the soul of America. The bottom line: Carter believed then and still does now is that evil really does not exist; people are basically good; America should embrace the perpetrators and castigate the victims.
In the ‘60s it was mass rebellion after the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. When humanity confronts eternity, the response is always rebellion or repentance. The same ideologues who fought to destroy the soul of America with the “God is dead” movement in the ‘60s are now running the arts, the universities, the media, the State Department, Congress, and Senate, determined more than ever to kill the soul of America while the East attempts to kill the body. Mr. Carter’s world view defines the core ideology of the Democratic Party.
What is going on in Iraq is no mystery to those of us who have had our fingers on the pulse of both Iran and Iraq for decades. The Iran-Iraq war was a war of ideologies. Saddam Hussein saw himself as an Arab leader who would defeat the non-Arab Persians. Khomeini saw it as an opportunity to export his Islamic Revolution across the borders to the Shi’ites in Iraq and then beyond to the Arab countries.
Throughout the war both leaders did everything possible to incite the inhabitants of each country to rebel – precisely what Iran is now doing in Iraq. Khomeini encouraged the Shi’ites across the border to remove Saddam from power and establish an Islamic republic like in Iran.
Mr. Carter’s belief that every crisis can be resolved with diplomacy - and nothing but diplomacy - now permeates the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, he is wrong.
There are times when evil must be openly confronted and defeated.
Khomeini had the help of the PLO in Iran. They supplied weapons and terrorists to murder Iranians and incite mobs in the streets. No wonder Yasser Arafat was hailed as a friend of Khomeini after he seized control of Iran and was given the Israeli Embassy in Teheran with the PLO flag flying overhead.
The Carter administration scrambled to assure the new regime that the United States would maintain diplomatic ties with Iran. But on April 1, 1979, the greatest April Fools’ joke of all time was played, as Khomeini proclaimed it the first day of the government of God.
In February 1979 Khomeini boarded an Air France flight to return to Teheran with the blessing of Jimmy Carter. The moment he arrived, he proclaimed: “I will kick his teeth in” – referring to then Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, who was left in power with a US pledge of support. He was assassinated in Paris by Iranian agents in 1991.
On September 23, 1980, I had dinner with Isser Harel, the former head of Israel’s Mossad, at his home with Dr. Reuven Hecht, a senior adviser to then Prime Minister Menachem Begin. I asked Harel who he thought would be elected president of the United States. He said the word on the street was that Iran would vote in favor of Ronald Reagan by releasing the American hostages during the inauguration.
Little did I know that for months President Carter had tried to cut a financial deal to get the hostages freed, knowing it would likely mean the presidency if he succeeded. On Inauguration Day, Mr. Carter reached a final agreement and transferred $7.977 billion to Iran from the Federal Reserve, along with signing an agreement to respect Iran’s territorial integrity and granting amnesty against law suits to Iran by the hostages or their families.
I asked Isser Harel two more questions that evening. The first was what would happen to then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The answer was that he would be killed for preaching President Carter’s democratic delusions. My last question was would terrorism ever come to America. “You have the power to fight it,” he said, “but not the will. They have the will, but not the power. All of that will change in time. Yes, I fear it will come to New York and your tallest building, which is a symbol of your fertility.”
Michael D. Evans is a prominent Christian commentator on the Middle East
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Only one in British police 40 officers free to answer calls
Only one in 40 police officers on duty in some forces is available to respond to 999 calls, according to a study published yesterday.
The report, from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), found that only 2.5 per cent of uniformed officers in one area were allocated to "response duties". This meant that out of 800 officers at work only 20 were free for emergency response, which included patrolling alcohol-scarred towns and cities at night.
In another force, which was also unnamed, 50 officers were on duty but only three - six per cent - were allocated to "incident management".
The HMIC findings, in a report entitled Beyond the Call, will reignite the debate over bureaucracy and station-bound duties which keep the vast majority of the record 140,000 officers in England and Wales off the streets.
The inspectorate now plans a study of bureaucracy, including a look at concerns that not enough experienced constables and sergeants are available to supervise a front-line presence of probationers and newly-qualified officers.
Yesterday's report found that some patrol officers failed to make good use of their time on duty unless closely supervised by their sergeant. This was a "highly inefficient use of scarce resources", it said.
It also found difficulties in the way forces handle the flood of 999 calls, which has risen steadily in recent years. It showed that police dispatchers routinely downgraded emergency calls. HM inspectors were told that patrol officers sometimes questioned why they were being sent on some calls. Some officers even failed to respond.
"In some cases, where patrols do not respond or make themselves unavailable, dispatch or control staff admit that they downgrade incidents in order to alleviate pressure on themselves," it said. "In other cases, they upgrade non-emergency incidents in the knowledge that only immediate and priority calls will have any chance of being resourced." The extent to which the police deal with callers only by telephone also emerged.
The report encouraged "telephone resolution" but warned that it has to be carried out in a way that does not leave the public dissatisfied.
"A number of forces have developed strategies around telephone resolution, thereby releasing valuable resources to engage in emergency response or in longer-term, pro-active problem-solving initiatives," it said. "Some eight million incidents per year are being resolved without officer attendance."
The inspectors, who looked at 999 calls and other calls to police, amounting to 67 million a year, also criticised the way officers kept victims updated about progress on investigating crimes. Their report suggested continuing to use technology such as text messages and the internet to make improvements.
Police in England and Wales deal with 33 million incidents a year. Of those, 17 per cent are classed as emergencies requiring an immediate response, with 20 per cent as "priorities" requiring a response within the hour.
Yesterday's findings echo the conclusions of independent research for the Police Federation, and reported recently in The Daily Telegraph, that as few as three uniformed police officers were available to patrol the streets, respond to 999 calls and tackle night-time disorder in some towns.
The federation research showed that officers were heavily diverted into work to meet Home Office targets and provide the Government with statistics.
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "These alarming statistics prove what we have been saying all along - that as a result of constant Government interference and diktats our police are operating nowhere near as efficiently as they could."
The Liberal Democrat home affair spokesman, Nick Clegg, said: "This is what comes from tying up police officers in reams of paperwork and Government tick-box bureaucracy. Both the police and the public want our police officers ready and able to respond to emergency calls, not locked in a station filling out forms."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1547097/Only-one-in-40-officers-free-to-answer-calls.html
Only one in 40 police officers on duty in some forces is available to respond to 999 calls, according to a study published yesterday.
The report, from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), found that only 2.5 per cent of uniformed officers in one area were allocated to "response duties". This meant that out of 800 officers at work only 20 were free for emergency response, which included patrolling alcohol-scarred towns and cities at night.
In another force, which was also unnamed, 50 officers were on duty but only three - six per cent - were allocated to "incident management".
The HMIC findings, in a report entitled Beyond the Call, will reignite the debate over bureaucracy and station-bound duties which keep the vast majority of the record 140,000 officers in England and Wales off the streets.
The inspectorate now plans a study of bureaucracy, including a look at concerns that not enough experienced constables and sergeants are available to supervise a front-line presence of probationers and newly-qualified officers.
Yesterday's report found that some patrol officers failed to make good use of their time on duty unless closely supervised by their sergeant. This was a "highly inefficient use of scarce resources", it said.
It also found difficulties in the way forces handle the flood of 999 calls, which has risen steadily in recent years. It showed that police dispatchers routinely downgraded emergency calls. HM inspectors were told that patrol officers sometimes questioned why they were being sent on some calls. Some officers even failed to respond.
"In some cases, where patrols do not respond or make themselves unavailable, dispatch or control staff admit that they downgrade incidents in order to alleviate pressure on themselves," it said. "In other cases, they upgrade non-emergency incidents in the knowledge that only immediate and priority calls will have any chance of being resourced." The extent to which the police deal with callers only by telephone also emerged.
The report encouraged "telephone resolution" but warned that it has to be carried out in a way that does not leave the public dissatisfied.
"A number of forces have developed strategies around telephone resolution, thereby releasing valuable resources to engage in emergency response or in longer-term, pro-active problem-solving initiatives," it said. "Some eight million incidents per year are being resolved without officer attendance."
The inspectors, who looked at 999 calls and other calls to police, amounting to 67 million a year, also criticised the way officers kept victims updated about progress on investigating crimes. Their report suggested continuing to use technology such as text messages and the internet to make improvements.
Police in England and Wales deal with 33 million incidents a year. Of those, 17 per cent are classed as emergencies requiring an immediate response, with 20 per cent as "priorities" requiring a response within the hour.
Yesterday's findings echo the conclusions of independent research for the Police Federation, and reported recently in The Daily Telegraph, that as few as three uniformed police officers were available to patrol the streets, respond to 999 calls and tackle night-time disorder in some towns.
The federation research showed that officers were heavily diverted into work to meet Home Office targets and provide the Government with statistics.
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "These alarming statistics prove what we have been saying all along - that as a result of constant Government interference and diktats our police are operating nowhere near as efficiently as they could."
The Liberal Democrat home affair spokesman, Nick Clegg, said: "This is what comes from tying up police officers in reams of paperwork and Government tick-box bureaucracy. Both the police and the public want our police officers ready and able to respond to emergency calls, not locked in a station filling out forms."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1547097/Only-one-in-40-officers-free-to-answer-calls.html
