kimmy

It was an obvious conclusion. If you had anything of substance left you'd have gone with that rather than continuing to harp on a missing link several pages back. How all of this relates back to Canada is a question I asked weeks ago in this thread: why do we assume things will turn out differently in Canada than they are turning out in Western Europe? When we see the difficulties other liberal democracies are having with Muslims, why do we assume we won't see the same effects here? And the only two reasonable answers I've been given are: -because we are bringing far fewer Muslims to Canada than those other countries are attempting to deal with. -because we are bringing women, children, and families, and avoiding single males. Obviously, both of those answers amount to an admission that there is reason to be cautious. WestCoastRunner contends that the decision to steer clear of single males is Islamophobic. She's right. And yet, this is what's being offered as one of the main reasons why Canadians need not worry about the refugees. What does that tell you? Supporters of the refugees have said over and over that 25,000 is a tiny number, not enough to change anything. They're right. But it's an admission that a larger number would be cause for concern. Most of the Muslim world has culturally entrenched, institutional misogyny. Most of the Muslim world has culturally entrenched, institutional homophobia. What makes people expect that those values won't be brought to Canada by the immigrants and refugees who come here? As we're now seeing in Europe, that's not realistic. And the only reassuring thing people can say in response is "we're just bringing a small number." It's a concession that yes, there is reason for concern. -k

I felt slightly ill just now listening to Hilary on the radio shouting about how progressive she is and how she's all about fighting inequality. While filling her pockets with speaking fees for no-media-allowed visits with Wall Street bankers. -k

I read all of that to say you've got nothing left. And I read that to say that you want to make excuses for the migrants, rather than discuss the idiocy of people who thought it would be a good idea to let hundreds of thousands of young males wander into the country with no possible idea what to do with them once they arrived. There's no conceivable way of providing jobs and comforts for all of these migrants, and yet to those who'd question the wisdom of an "open door" that invites asylum seekers from everywhere, you guys cry "racists!" "phobes!" -k

I said a lot more than that, all of which you completely ignored in favor of reminding me for the 5th time that I forgot to link the article in my earlier post, a mistake I've apologized for and been happy to correct. You apparently feel that it's of extreme importance to note that the poor dears weren't provided with jobs while their refugee applications were being evaluated rejected. I simply don't. They also weren't provided with BMWs and nice homes either, which also no doubt added to their disillusionment and contributed to their delinquency. Oh the humanity! -k

They're lifestyle surfers who picked Germany because they heard the streets were paved with gold. What makes you think they even want jobs? I'm sure that Germany is just brimming with jobs for uneducated migrants with poor language skills, if only those mean Germans would let them work. No kidding it's self-preservation. The main complaint is not with the German media, but rather with the German police, who attempted to describe New Year's Eve as "largely peaceful" and "a jolly mood", even though their own internal report proves that they knew full well at the time that they had a major disaster on their hands. They only came clean later on, when the media-- aside from the state broadcaster of course-- began to report on the issue. And likewise it is only since that debacle that German politicians have put a priority on getting rid of rejected asylum seekers. Before this, only the "far right" thought there was a problem, and everybody else depicted them as fear-mongering racists for saying it. People like yourself-- who would shout down any discussion of the subject with attacks on the character of people who don't share your rose-colored glasses view of the Muslim migrants. And as this news from Germany shocked the rose-colored glasses set out of their collective illusions, people in other countries have begun to suspect they've been lied to as well, as in Sweden where the Stockholm police have fessed up to covering up sex assaults by Muslim migrants as well. And now Swedish politicians have decided to take action on getting rid of rejected asylum-seekers as well. So having finally gotten the "perspective" you've been demanding regarding criminality among Muslim migrants, you now wish to narrow the scope to only just those who are from Syria, and those who are not single males, and I assume you'd prefer to discuss just those with jobs as well. -k

Interesting format change for today's all-star game. Instead of two teams playing 3 periods of hockey, it will be four teams playing a mini-tournament. Each of the four divisions fields a team, and the first two periods of the all-star game will be a game between two divisions. I gather Atlantic plays Metropolitan in the first period, and Pacific plays Central in the second period. The third period will pit the winner of the first two games against each other. The members of the winning team will apparently get substantial cash lootz, so they should be pretty motivated. -k

And if we were discussing "Syrianophobia" or "Refugeeophobia" then those would be very good points. Yeah, they don't have jobs. No kidding. I think it's quite telling that the guy who is most critical of the young Moroccans arriving, and adamant that they be gotten rid of, is the president of the German Moroccan Society. I think the section you've quoted highlights the utter stupidity of the German politicians who allowed this situation to occur in the first place. Allowing such vast numbers of young men to swarm into the country in such a short period of time was utter idiocy. And, when realizing the scale of the mistake they'd made, they decided that the best course of action would be to attempt to hide the problem-- with the help of those who would attack any attempt to discuss migrant crime as "racism!" And on New Year's Eve the migrants finally made such a large mess that it couldn't be swept under the rug anymore. And that's why Germany finally gets forced to have this conversation. My quoting hits all the major points. Your objection seems to be that I didn't mention that they aren't legally allowed to find work. What of it? So you didn't care for the term "Team Islam". If you were to choose a better name, what would it be? -k

The other thing that I think should be pointed out is that the people being kicked out of Sweden aren't "refugees", they are asylum-seekers whose applications have been rejected. "Asylum seekers" might be Syrians, but they can also be from anywhere else. Asylum requests from Syrians are likely to be accepted. But asylum seekers from other places are less likely to be accepted. I don't have any numbers for Sweden, but this article about Germany points out that large numbers of men from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia are traveling to Germany to seek asylum, and over 97% of them are rejected... Moroccans, Algerians, and Tunisians aren't fleeing from wars or famines or disasters. Most of these guys aren't real refugees, they're just abusing the process because they think the streets are paved with gold in Germany. In Germany's case getting rejected asylum seekers to go back home has become a major issue. As it stands, Germany ends up stuck with these guys even if their asylum claims are rejected. The people being kicked out of Sweden are, likewise, not refugees. They're people whose requests for asylum have been rejected. They're people who aren't really refugees and no longer have a legal reason to stay in Sweden. -k

Apologies for not including the link to the article in my previous message. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-challenges-in-idUSKCN0V6173 It's a Reuters article, citing a Jan. 8 North Rhineland-Westphalia police report for the crime figures. What "Team" am I on? Clearly you and others here have decided I am on "Team Islamophobia" as indicated by that label being continuously applied to me and to anybody else who dares suggest that there could possibly be any reason for caution. -k

"Hundreds of cases against a backdrop of a million asylum seekers!" As I mentioned before, I found your attempt to "provide perspective" to be much like Shady's playful attempts to "provide perspective" about global warming by pointing out the weather outside his window on a particular day. It fails because it only includes data from one incident, much like Shady's snow-storm. It doesn't consider crimes not committed at that train station. It doesn't consider crimes not committed elsewhere in Germany. It doesn't consider crimes committed on the other 365 days of the year. But, information about criminality among migrants in Germany is pretty scarce. I did manage to find some, and it contains both good news and bad news for Team Islam. The good news: That sounds pretty good! The Syrians sound pretty swell. The bad news: Oops. One of the most troubling things is that there seems to be a concerted effort to avoid talking about it: ...it seems like this is not a new issue, but rather one that has only come to a head recently because the New Year's Eve sex assault mob was an incident just too big to hide, though they certainly tried to pretend otherwise at first. -k

There are obvious answers to all of these questions, but you refuse to consider them. I can't speak to whether the FBI has the same "blue code" culture and history of systematic abuse that exists in many police forces. However, I think that when deaths at the hands of police are this cut and dried, the police don't need to cover it up. -k

I saw the "flashes" you mentioned prior to the truck speeding off, and am completely unconvinced that they're muzzle flashes from guns. The feds are standing beside a vehicle that has police strobes and high-beams flashing. The police strobes and high-beams on their vehicle aren't visible in the frame... it seems unlikely that muzzle-flashes would flicker the whole frame like that when the high-beams and strobes aren't even noticeable. I think it's more likely that this is an effect of auto-light correction in the video recording equipment. Similar flashes can seen at other times. For example, similar flashes can be seen between 6:00 to 6:30, long before Finicum drives off. And what's more you can see the feds in those frames and it's clear that whatever those flashes are, they're not coming from the feds' weapons. I think the far more likely explanation is that there's no hail of bullets, the girl is lying to create spin favorable to her "team", and Lavoy drove off because he was not acting rationally. -k

China's ratio is all-ages, as the result of decades of the one-child policy. The perspective is that the issues arising from China's disproportionately male population have been observed for some time. In Sweden, for the time being, it's just 2 years in a row. If they persist in the same policies, they will be on a path to duplicating China's issues. Prof. Hudson suggests this would be tragic for both men and women. She also invites the reader to consider the plight of the women abandoned in desperate conditions in their home countries. Perhaps requiring gender balance among asylum seekers should be a consideration. She suggests other countries look to Prime Minister Trudeau's example. -k

An interesting article points out an interesting aspect of Sweden's migrant policies. Due to the huge numbers of refugees Sweden has taken in, and due to the fact that the refugees, particularly in younger age groups, are so overwhelmingly males, Sweden has created a demographic gender imbalance. To put that in perspective, China's gender ratio, the most skewed in the world due to the one-child policy, is 117 men per 100 women. The author, a professor who has studied the subject of societies with unbalanced gender ratios, believes that continuing to pursue policies that would make this unbalanced ratio "the new normal" in Sweden would have disastrous consequences for both women and men. -k

I think the progress we in the oh-so-civilized West have made is illustrated by the fact that you have to go back to the 1950s or 1920s to find criticisms like this. -k

First off, I hope you're not under the impression that I'm a Christian. As for what their answers to all of your questions might be, I can only guess. I'm highly confident, however, that if you asked Canadian Christians questions like -should gay people be beat up? -should gay people be put in prison? -should gay people be executed? The almost universal answer would be "no". There are a few exceptions, of course. In terms of what's a speck of dust and what's a plank, I think that not supporting gay marriage or not supporting gay ministers would be a speck, and wanting prison or death for gay people would be a plank. That's my perspective. -k

I fully realize that some conservatives really couldn't care less about gay people and are only feigning concern because they see it as an opportunity to complain about Muslims. That doesn't mean it's not a legitimate issue. In Germany they're removing LGBT refugees from asylum centers to protect them from the other refugees. If refugees are beating up their own LGBT countrymen at the asylum centers, what makes you think they'd be more tolerant once they're out in the general population? -k

For the red dot, I was referring to the one on the roof of the truck which had been mentioned, which is obviously the brake light. For Ryan Bundy, has it actually been established that he was shot? I read that he was "injured, treated, and released". I would think the injury was most likely from when his buddy crashed the truck. For the truck, what impacts? How is it that they fired all of this ammunition at the truck and inflicted no visible damage? Were the feds armed with airsoft rifles? I agree that at 7 seconds he's clutching a wound, but at 4 seconds he reaches for something in his jacket. At that point they have clear reason to shoot. What was he reaching for? We don't know. They did say he had a 9mm in his jacket pocket. This picture shows Finicum's jacket having a front pocket on the left side in a location that would be suitable for a right-handed draw. He could have been reaching for that. I don't know. I don't think the federal agents know either. I don't think they can be expected to know the particulars of where Finicum keeps his gun or what his preferred style of draw is. As soon as his hand goes for his jacket, they have reason to shoot him. -k

I think it shows a profound lack of perspective to compare the situation for LGBT people here to those in Muslim nations. Legal marriage for gay people is a new thing here, but even before that was achieved there's really no comparison. To check the legal status of gay people around the world, consult this handy map. As you can see, many (but not all) of the imprisonment/life-imprisonment/death countries are Muslim countries, and you can also see that few Muslim countries have any legal acceptance of gay people at all-- Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia. I think there's a world of difference between disapproving stares from old-people vs legal persecution. edit to add: Politifact delved into the question of women and gay people in Muslim countries in more detail in this analysis of Ben Carson's claims. Their verdict: not as bad as Carson claims, but overall pretty bad. -k

Good grief. The "red dot" on the roof of the truck isn't a targeting laser. It's the rooftop brake light on the back of the truck's roof reflecting off the front of the truck cap that's covering the bed of the pickup. The rest of this is fan fiction. There's no evidence of a hail of bullets in the video. It's wishful thinking from supporters who want to believe that Finicum is a martyr rather than a guy who died while acting foolishly in the face of armed law enforcement officers. -k

It looks to me like both of his hands are trying to get something out of his belt. His right hand is down there as well. Regardless. He led the police on a chase, tried to drive around a road-block, ran from his vehicle after it became stuck, and started grabbing around for something on his belt. They had strong reason to believe he was armed, and given his statements about refusing to be taken alive, I think they had plenty of justification for shooting as soon as he took his hands down. If this was a black kid in a city instead of an old white dude in the country, I'm pretty sure most "law and order" types would agree. -k

For those who don't feel like watching the white Ford Bronco drive around, you can skip to 9:00 to see the roadblock where Finicum drives the truck into a snow-bank, gets out of the vehicle, and starts running. Yes, his hands are up at first, but they don't stay up. He definitely appears to be trying to get something from his belt which is when the feds shoot him. This is a guy who carried a holstered revolver in many pictures and was known to have said he'd rather die than be taken prisoner, so I don't think you can blame the feds for shooting when his hands come down and start reaching around his waist. -k

You could look to people like Hudson Jones and Dialamah for an example of how to express your disgust at Islamophobia while also presenting ideas for people to think about. Saying stuff like "this makes me angry!" or "I'm hungry!" or "my cat's breath smells like cat food!" doesn't do anything to increase anyone's understanding of the issue. -k

The extent of the New Years Eve incident had already been described... the element you were introducing is to attempt to frame it in terms of the overall number of asylum-seekers. Your attitude seems to be that since the number of participants was small in proportion to the overall number of asylum-seekers, it's not that big of a problem. My attitude is that a 2000-man sex-assault mob that police are powerless to stop is a big problem, period. 350 sexual assaults in one location in the span of a couple of hours is a big problem, period. Women being told by their mayor that they shouldn't go out alone for their own safety is a big problem, period. .. Your cite was from Sunday Jan 10 and was posted on Jan 16... your cite was a full work-week of new reports behind. You opened with a figure of 100, and when I said 500, you edged up slightly to 170 supported by your out-of-date cite. My stated figure-- 500-- was one that I had read multiple places that week and could have easily been verified by yourself or by anybody who had the slightest interest. But you challenged me, and when I came back with the newer figure, you chided me for being inaccurate, and now claim that your own numbers weren't that different. And I don't think you once even acknowledged the 359 sexual assaults... you just jumped right to your new metric "just a handful of rapes". As the rest of the world reacted with shock and anger, you're here trying to provide your own "perspective" that in terms of the number of immigrants, the New Years Eve debacle was actually pretty minor. No, it wasn't pretty minor. No amount of tortured logic and misleading math will show otherwise. -k

I have been reluctant to do any "facilitating" in this thread where I've been heavily involved as a poster. If I weren't involved as a poster, perhaps I'd have sent WCR a suggestion (as Bonam did) regarding the previous posts. But since that outburst was directed at me, I didn't feel it would have been appropriate to put on a moderator hat at that point. If there's discontent that I'm continuing to participate as a poster rather than staying out of threads, then perhaps I should turn in my badge. -k