Tag Archives: Extremism

Stephen Harper says Islamicism is the biggest threat to Canada

From CBC. (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

Excerpt:

In an exclusive interview with CBC News, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the biggest security threat to Canada a decade after 9/11 is Islamic terrorism.

In a wide-ranging interview with CBC chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge that will air in its entirety on The National Thursday night, Harper says Canada is safer than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda attacked the U.S., but that “the major threat is still Islamicism.”

“There are other threats out there, but that is the one that I can tell you occupies the security apparatus most regularly in terms of actual terrorist threats,” Harper said.

Harper cautioned that terrorist threats can “come out of the blue” from a different source, such as the recent Norway attacks, where a lone gunman who hated Muslims killed 77 people.

But Harper said terrorism by Islamic radicals is still the top threat, though a “diffuse” one.

“When people think of Islamic terrorism, they think of Afghanistan, or maybe they think of some place in the Middle East, but the truth is that threat exists all over the world,” he said, citing domestic terrorism in Nigeria.

The prime minister said home-grown Islamic radicals in Canada are “also something that we keep an eye on.”

Harper said his government will bring back anti-terrorism clauses that were brought in in 2001 but were sunset in 2007 amid heated political debate.

Can you imagine Janet Napolitano taking the threat of Islamic terrorism as seriously? She thinks that screening Muslim males under 35 who enter the United States is “not good logic“. But groping babies and grannies is good logic.

Here’s more:

Janet Napolitano, 51, is President Obama’s new Homeland Security Secretary. She spoke with SPIEGEL about immigration, the continued threat of terrorism and the changing tone in Washington.

SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word “terrorism.” Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?

Napolitano: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.

Making judgments is wrong for people on the secular left – everyone has to be equal, and no one is ever right or wrong. This moral equivalence is going to get a lot of people killed, as in the Major Nidal Hasan incident. Political correctness kills, but you won’t get that from Stephen Harper.

“You’re not using good logic there. You’ve got to use actual intelligence that you received. And, so, you might — all you’ve given me is a kind of status. You have not given me a technique for tactic or behavior. Something that would suggest somebody is not Muslim, but Islamic, that has actually moved into the category of violent extremists,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said at a forum on U.S. security and preventing terrorist attacks.

“We have ways to make some of those cuts. And they involve the intel that comes in, the analysis that goes on. For example, we often times, for travelers entering the United States, we won’t not do what is called a secondary inspection just because they are a 35-year- old male who appears to be Muslim, whatever that means. But we know from intelligence that if they have a certain travel pattern over a certain period of time, that should cause us to ask some more significant questions than if we don’t.”

Denyse O’Leary explains why theists are lacking courage

From Uncommon Descent. Denyse O’Leary answers the question I posed in my previous post: why do otherwise intelligent, ambitious, qualified Christians shy away from answering questions about their faith?

Excerpt:

Christians confront a deep double standard, to which Darwinism has greatly contributed, by which the atheist position is considered the normal “secular”one and the Christian or other theist position a sort of disloyalty to the public good.

[…] Secular materialists use fashionable words like “skeptical” to describe themselves, when they are not skeptical at all. That confuses discourse and enables remarkably fatuous people to shape public opinion. While working on The Spiritual Brain, I confronted an astonishing fact: The secular materialist would accept any materialist premise, no matter how implausible, to support his view. In fact, I sometimes ask, is there any proposition fronted in the name of, say, Darwinism (as I did here, that you regard as absurd? I often get blank looks or protests that Darwinism is science and there are no such propositions, and an immediate change of subject. Well, when we hear that, at least we know who we are dealing with.

The Christian/theist labours under no such disability. He can accept a materialist explanation when it fits the facts, but not otherwise. But by acting this way, he becomes – in the eyes of the secular atheist – untrustworthy. He can’t be relied on to just shout the party line.

The upshot is that, the Christian risks more, speaking out, and is far more responsible for the need to have intelligent ideas. It’s much safer for Christians to bury themselves in fluffy Christian books and sweat off the flab in Christian weight loss programs, and little by little accommodate themselves to the reigning orthodoxy. After a couple of decades, they don’t even know.

So basically, I understand her to say that the the “skeptics” are actually so committed to the presupposition of naturalism that they are aggressive and close-minded. Their materialism is functioning as a sort of fundamentalism, much like you would find with Islamic radicals. A Christian can look at some new phenomenon in nature and ask the question: is it explained by materialism or is an intelligence required? But the materialist has to presume the answer before looking at the evidence – so they are close-minded to evidence, because of their non-scientific philosophy of materialism.

There are two ways to have a discussion about nature. You can ask a question and then compare evidence for various hypotheses. That’s the non-fundamentalist approach. That’s the approach used by Christians. The naturalist approach is to not allow questions to be asked and to attack the character of the person asking the question. That’s the fundamentalist approach.

And that’s where the fear and intimidation comes in. Who wants to debate with someone who is not open to having their religious pre-supposition validated against the evidence? You’re just going to get fired, censored, arrested or worse. That’s the way it is with fundamentalists like naturalist extremists and Islamic extremists. All kinds of nastiness to others is possible when you are a true believer. Denyse’s point is that the intimidation drives theists to avoid these discussions, and that leads to their decision to just focus on other things like careers and weight loss and fluff.

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FBI raids homes of anti-war leader and SEIU union leader

Here’s the news from Forbes. (H/T Michelle Malkin)

Excerpt:

The FBI and the U.S. Labor Department are investigating prominent labor leader Andy Stern in their probe of corruption at the Service Employees International Union, according to two people who have been interviewed by federal agents.

The two organized labor officials met with federal agents this summer to answer questions about a six-figure book contract that Stern landed in 2006 and his role in approving money to pay the salary of an SEIU leader in California who allegedly performed no work.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation. The FBI and the Labor Department’s office of inspector general declined to comment for the record.

The disclosure about the federal inquiry of Stern – who abruptly resigned as president of the 2.2-million member SEIU in April – comes just weeks ahead of contentious congressional elections in which the union is spending an estimated $44 million to support its favored Democratic candidates.

The SEIU has been plagued with several financial scandals since 2008, when the Los Angeles Times reported that Tyrone Freeman, head of the union’s largest California local, misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars from the union. The union ousted Freeman and demanded that he return the money. No federal charges have been filed against him, but SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette said the union has been cooperating with the FBI.

The SEIU union is connected to Obama.

Oh, and Gateway Pundit reports on another SEIU union boss being investigated.

Excerpt:

Over the weekend the FBI announced that it was investigating Joseph Iosbaker for possible connections to overseas terror groups. Iosbaker and his wife Stephanie Weiner, both anti-war activists, are suspected of activities “concerning the material support of terrorism.”

[…]According to the SEIU Local 73 website, Iosbaker is listed as the Local 73 Chief Steward. Iosbaker was also quite active earlier in the year protesting the closing of the Republic Windows & Doors factory that made the national news. Iosbaker was then listed as an executive board member of the SEIU.

Oh, and the executive director of the Arab American Action Network is being investigated.