kimmy

The idea wasn't to suggest that people should feel threatened when they go to Richmond. It was to provide an example of an "ethnic enclave" or as Mrs Merkel put it "a parallel society". I was in Richmond last month and had no problems. I used to live near Ottawa's Chinatown neighborhood and the only conflict I can recall was that some of the residents felt that a funeral home should be forced to relocate because they were concerned about evil spirits. I just point out Richmond as an example of a community where newcomers have no real need to integrate into the larger culture. And in the case of a Li'l Hong Kong neighborhood, people don't find that too worrying because the Chinese community are by and large such an agreeable group. I'd feel no concerns walking through Li'l Hong Kong. I'd be considerably more worried about walking through Li'l Riyadh or Li'l Karachi. -k

I can't. Like a swimming pool lifeguard, I can only blow my whistle and shake my finger angrily at you. -k

Isn't that a direct contradiction of the cornerstone Christian tenet, namely that anyone can be redeemed? -k

The Seahawks spotted the Panthers a 31 point lead, and couldn't make it all the way back. A tale of two halves. "It was the best of halfs, it was the worst of halves." A really boring game in Denver. Peyton looked terrible, up until the fourth quarter, when he regained consciousness long enough to put together a touchdown drive to seal it. I don't think I've ever been so bored during a very close game. -k

The discussion about pedophiles seems like an effort to derail the topic by creating a false equivalence between pedophiles--who are considered deviants and predators and treated as such when discovered-- and Muslim dudes who don't know how to act around women who don't conform to their ideas of modesty-- which is the mainstream in the countries where we get refugees from. -k

I'm confident that given enough time, and pressure to integrate, migrants will adopt to western values. I have two major concerns. The first is newcomers arriving faster than they can be socialized to our way of life (ie, what Germany and other European nations are now experiencing.) The second is that given a sufficiently large local community, newcomers simply won't have any incentive to integrate. Some communities in Europe are now experiencing this... Birmingham England and Malmo Sweden are examples often mentioned. For a non-Muslim example, Richmond BC. Right now, Canada doesn't have either of these two problems. Let's learn from the experience of other nations and not repeat their mistakes. I realize that some people hold the view that we should just welcome as many as we can, and those who turn out to be rapists and whatever else could simply be sent home again. The "gotta break a few eggs" theory. But I'm of the view that elected officials' first duty is to the safety the citizens they represent. We know that some portion of Middle Eastern Muslims hold views that are extremely hostile to the safety of western women, and I'm of the view that waiting until after women get victimized is too late to figure out which ones are safe and which ones aren't. That's why I'm extremely supportive of the Trudeau government's decision to focus on women, children, and families, and steer clear of young single men. Given the failures in Germany and Sweden, I'm not sure that such faith is justified. In particular, given that law enforcement agencies in those countries prioritized covering up misdeeds by migrants above the safety of their own citizens, I think that such faith is quite misplaced. -k

I'd also point out that talking on your phone during a movie isn't against the law either, but the theatre still has the right to throw your ass out, and not let you come back until you learn some manners. Same principle. -k

This Washington Post article uses the phrase "sexual assaults", not harrassment. This Deutche Welle article uses the phrase "sexual harrassment". It also points out that this "ban" is only temporary, until social workers have more time to "educate" migrants. These guys come from a culture where they don't even know how to interact with fully dressed women. Why would anybody be shocked that they don't know how to interact with women in swimwear? Maybe giving them free passes to the pool as part of their care package wasn't such a hot idea. -k

-k

Wild finish in Arizona! And unlike the Steelers-Bengals game, it was the good kind of wild finish! With no time left on the clock, Aaron Rodgers is trying to scramble away from Cardinals tacklers, and spins and throws a perfect "Hail Mary" pass into the endzone... which is caught! For a game-tying touchdown! On the very first drive in overtime, Cardinals veteran Larry Fitzgerald catches a short pass and runs all the way to the Packers 4 yard line, then scores the game winning touchdown on a shovel pass from the backfield 2 plays later. Rodgers didn't get a chance to answer back, because that's how NFL overtime works. I don't understand why a TD on the opening drive is immediately lights out, while teams get a chance to answer back to other scores. But, that's the rules. Even though they lost the game, the incredible play by Rodgers to throw the game-tying pass is probably going to be talked about in years to come. Probably few quarterbacks in history have both the scrambling ability to evade tackles, as well as the throwing ability to make that pass while on the run. I only saw some of the first half in the other game, but damn, the Patriots looked good. Tom Brady may be a big fat cheater, but wow he is good. -k

I'm pointing out that your initial statement was extremely misleading, akin to claiming that the Vancouver 2011 riot was only 100 people because that's how many people were arrested on-scene. The argument fails? It appears you now agree that it's a good thing that Canada is taking in only a small number of refugees, and that large numbers would indeed constitute a risk... so it seems that we're both in agreement that there's some justification to peoples' concerns over bringing Middle Easterners to Canada. I think the main argument is already over, and we're just left to quibble over how many refugees it takes to constitute a risk. -k

That's not the estimated number of attackers, that's the number of suspects they've been able to identify so far. There's a difference. -k

Your argument-- you're just trying to put it in context!-- has been that what happened in Cologne is being overblown by anti-immigrant people who are trying to make it seem like a big deal. The number of people involved in the Cologne mob as a portion of the overall number of refugees isn't particularly important... what's important is that the number of refugees in Germany has risen to a point that a mob estimated by police as "in the thousands" formed with the result that sexual assaults numbering in the hundreds occurred while police watched, powerless to intervene, and that the Mayor of Cologne says that women need to adopt a "code of conduct" for their own safety. I've made a number of uncited claims in this thread, but I know that I can provide verification for what I've written. I didn't feel any need to provide links to support my claim of similar incidents in other German cities, but if anybody wants to dispute that claim, I know I can easily go find links to support it. If there are any specific claims you'd like me to provide cites for, I can do so if you wish. I think that making an uncited claim to easily verifiable information is quite different from posting out-of-date or incomplete information in an effort to present a misleading argument. Did you not just claim that 1 million+ of the refugees were not engaged in criminality? -k

That's the whole gist of your argument, is it not? "Why are people making such a big deal about this? Why, it was hardly anything! People are making a mountain out of a mole-hill!" I initially provided the figure 500, which you disputed with your link to "the latest figures". I stopped keeping track after it hit 500. What's your excuse? Surely somebody who had really intended to find the latest information could have come up with something better than a number that was exceeded within just the first 2 days of complainants coming forward. I think that when people speak of 18 out of 31 being asylum seekers they are making an intentional attempt to mislead, to draw attention away from the actual portion of those suspects that fit the description "Arab/North African", which was 27 of 31, not 18 of 31. I'm sure that if you see others making claims you believe are misleading you'll not be shy about pointing that out as well. Pointing out that just 0.1% of 2015 migrants were at one particular crime scene does not support the conclusion that the remaining 99.9% are not engaged in criminality. -k

er, actually what we saw was that German police and German media at first tried to hide what happened on New Year's Eve, worried that there would be a backlash against migrants. I pointed out that Swedish police were last week also caught in a cover-up of mass sexual assaults at a Stockholm music festival. While I'm sure that you have a bunch of information relating to how crimes committed by black people are reported in American media, I don't think it's applicable to the current situation in Europe where authorities are going all-out to hide the extent of criminality among migrants. -k

You said "no intent to diminish", then spent the rest of your message trying to diminish what happened. "Just 31 suspects! Just two rapes! Just 100 victims!" . If 100 complaints was the most recent information you could find, you clearly didn't look very hard. Current tally is about 670, of which over half involve sex attacks. I also believe people people pointing out that just 18 of the 31 are asylum seekers are attempting to downplay the Middle East/North African aspect of what happened. It's deceit by omission-- there's an implication that the other 13 must have been just typical Germans. But not all North Africans and Middle Easterners in Germany are asylum seekers, and as the actual numbers point out, 27 of the 31 are from countries that fit that description. And while Cologne is the largest such debacle, similar incidents occurred in other German cities as well-- Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Berlin-- as well as other cities outside Germany-- Salzburg Austria, Helsinki, and Kalmar Sweden at the very least. Information about all of those is readily available on the Google if you are in doubt. I just think it's funny that you're trying to make a case for them by saying that of the 1 million migrants, just 0.1% of them were in that particular mob in that particular city on that particular night. I'm sure that will put women at ease! -k

"Not to diminish any incident, but I'm going to try and diminish this incident." At last count there were well over 500 victims who have complained to police. Of the 31 identified when last I heard, there were 9 Algerians, 8 Moroccans, 5 Iranians, 4 Syrians, and an Iraqi, which draws a slightly more complete picture than "18 asylum seekers". That was Cologne; similar incidents happened in other German cities, as well as cities in Sweden, Finland, Austria, and Switzerland. It's certainly fortunate that not all 1.1 million refugees were at the Cologne train station, though. The mayor of Cologne says that women should not go out alone, and should stay "an arm's length" from strange men. German women apparently can't go to public pools either anymore. -k

Yes, I believe we just went over that. A white guy who has sex with somebody under 15 is a pedophile, but a non-white person who has sex with somebody under 15 isn't. What makes you think I'm so accepting of sex crime committed by white people? What makes people so accepting of mass sexual assaults committed by non-white people? -k

In short... pedophilia is a western crime... because it's not a crime outside the west? -k

My concern is not Islam as a whole. My concern is the attitudes of large portions of those who will be coming here. I realize that many Muslims in western countries have adopted more progressive outlooks than their Middle Eastern counterparts. But we don't get refugees from western countries, we get them from the Middle East. We're getting refugees from places where the prevailing cultural view is that women have to cover themselves to prevent men from being tempted. Then we act surprised when men from that culture behave badly to women who aren't covered. How surprised can we really be? -k

If pedophelia is a white-people problem, why do so many non-white countries have a significant percentage of girls married under the age of 15? -k

If the proposition here is that Westerners don't take sexual violence seriously unless it involves foreigners, I think it fails badly. Look at the amount of tension currently going on regarding the issue of rape on college campuses, as one example. Here in Canada we shut down a whole dentistry department because some of the students made rapey comments in their Facebook page. Yes, sexual assault does happen here, especially at places where drunk young people gather, like Mardi Gras, music festivals, and frat parties. In spite of that, I doubt you can produce an example of anything comparable to what just happened in Germany. -k

As people are fond of saying around these parts, the plural of anecdotes is not "data." And the inverse is true as well: the corollary of statistics is not "personal experience". Muslims in general may not be "rampant racists". But it's nonetheless apparent that countries that have taken in large numbers of people from the Middle East and North Africa have observed significant amounts of sexual violence linked to these newcomers. -k

Is O'Leary really suggesting that the Premier of Alberta could raise the global price of oil if "she knew what she was doing"? -k