Another one of those multiculturalists Britain is so lucky to have



A ‘street-smart’ teenager who conned his way into university and blew his student loan on a trip to join ISIS has been jailed for five years today.

Yahya Rashid, 19, blagged his way onto a course to study electronics at Middlesex University using a forged certificate for a BTech level 3 diploma and received £6,326.96 in student loans.

Rashid, of Willesden, north west London, used the cash meant to fund his studies to buy plane tickets to Turkey so he could help four friends travel to war-torn Syria with him on 26 February.

Despite having an IQ of just 65 - far below the average of between 85 and 115 - he was able to outfox a suspicious police officer at Gatwick Airport when he arrived ‘out of breath’ at the departure gate with his friends Khalid Abdul-Rahman and Ibrahim Amouri.

Sentencing Judge Philip Katz QC told the teenage terrorist: ‘You lied under oath before the jury and they saw through your lies and evasion.

‘You used forged documents to get into university; you told the jury without shame that you did that as a quicker way to get a degree; you previous educational history has shown you to be disobedient and obstructive. ‘You took £6,000 worth of taxpayer’s money to spend as you saw fit.'

Judge Katz continued:‘Your attendance at university was poor, no doubt because you were wasting your time with other young radicalised men.  ‘You went to Wembley mosque with them watching gruesome ISIS material on the internet to pump yourselves up.

‘There is some evidence to suggest your interest in Islamist groups predated these crimes.’

He said Rashid's Facebook chat with his father while he was on his journey 'provides insight' into his character.

Judge Katz said: ‘You were deceitful, insincere. Goodness knows what you would have gone on to do as a foot-soldier for ISIS.'

‘I’m not sure why you changed your mind and came back, but I’m inclined to think that it was to save your own skin. ‘Luckily for you, your loving family still supports you.’

Judge Katz said he was convinced that Rashid is not mentally vulnerable. He said: ‘In my view the doctor hit the nail on the head when he described you as street-smart.’

The trio had tricked their way onto a plane to Casablanca after telling a police officer they were looking for love, not war.

The group then started a journey that led them eventually to the Turkish border town of Gaziantep.

Rashid, whose family is originally from Somalia, paid £906 for five return flights to Morocco for himself and his friends.

The jury was told that before he left the UK, Rashid's YouTube account had ticked 'like' on around 300 YouTube videos, many of them Islamist-themed, although it could not be proved he had personally ticked them.

It had also been used to make comments under other videos, including one on the Charlie Hebdo massacre where a comment was left saying: 'Allah Akbar (God is great). This makes me happy.'

Giving evidence, Rashid, who was arrested at Luton airport on 31 March, said he could not remember how he paid for a flight home from the Syrian border. He claimed he had got cold feet about joining ISIS jihadis, it is said, and snuck out of a safe house to make his way back to the UK.

Rashid struggled to remember large parts of his journey home, and said he recalled a mystery donor coming to his aid at the airport in Istanbul. ‘I can’t really remember where I went but I got to an airport and I met some guy and he gave me some money to pay for my flight to Istanbul,' he said.

‘I can’t really remember how or why but he gave me the money that paid for my flight. I stayed in a hotel when I got back to Istanbul, I think I had some money left and that’s how I paid for it.

‘My father told me to go to the British Embassy and tell them I needed some money to get back to the UK, I was there for maybe an hour and then the police came and arrested me.’

The defence had claimed Rashid was a vulnerable young man with a low IQ who had done the right thing by turning back, before being arrested.

Defence barrister Mark McDonald told the jury the teenager did not want to fight for IS but simply wanted to live in what he thought was an 'Islamic utopia'.

‘You have a young man who starts off being influenced by other individuals, but realising the situation he has got himself into turns around and makes his way back to the UK,' he said.

It is up to psychiatrists to judge whether defendants with low IQs are unfit to plead.

Jurors took two and a half days to deliver a majority verdict and found Rashid guilty of preparing to commit an act of terrorism between 1 November 2014 and 31 March 2015 and a charge of assisting others to commits acts of terrorism over the same period.

Rashid also admitted a count of fraud by deception relating to him obtaining the student loan.

Rashid sat impassively in the dock throughout proceedings. He has been sentenced to five years in a young offenders’ institution for each terrorism charge, and four months for the fraud charge, all to run concurrently.

Rashid will also have a terrorism notification requirement for 15 years.

SOURCE






Salon writer uses Paris attacks to rant against conservative 'hate speech'

But he won't confine himself to speech.  He wants to "eliminate" those he disagrees with.  So who exactly is the Fascist here?  He sure is full of hate himself

I suppose it shouldn't surprise us that some knucklehead liberal would use the Paris terrorist attacks as a basis for an hysterical rant against conservative "hate speech."

But what surprises us here is that the author, Salon's Chauncey Devega, apparently has an incredibly low threshold in identifying "hate speech" - a lot like the campus activists who are roiling schools across the country:

"In recent months, the right-wing media has used language such as “terrorism” and “violent,” or that the latter is “targeting police for murder” to describe the Black Lives Matter movement. Such bombastic and ugly screeds–which are wholly unfounded, with no basis in empirical reality–have also been used by right-wing opinion leaders to describe the African-American students who are fighting against racism at Yale and the University of Missouri"

Well, in at least 3 separate protests, BLM activists were caught chanting "Pigs in a blanket. Fry 'em like bacon." Now, Chauncey might make the argument that the activists were simply chanting a breakfast order and that we're all racists for thinking they wanted more dead policemen:

"Bill O’Reilly has declared “war” on Black Lives Matter and in doing so described them as a type of contemporary Ku Klux Klan (KKK). At its height of popularity in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the KKK was America’s largest terrorist organization. It was responsible for the murders of thousands of African-Americans. In contrast to the KKK, Black Lives Matter is a group dedicated to protecting the human rights of all people against state-sponsored violence and police thuggery and murder.

Ben Carson, in his designated role as a black conservative whose primary purpose is to disparage black Americans and to excuse-make for white racism, recently told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly that the black and brown students who are advocating for their full rights and respect at Yale University are ushering in “anarchy” and “this is just raw emotion and people just being manipulated, I think in many of these cases, by outside forces who wish to create disturbances.”

Likewise, Fox News has repeatedly described the student protesters at Yale and Missouri using the same language. O’Reilly has even gone so far as to suggest that Black Lives Matter and the students who are protesting racist treatment are part of a cabal that is engaging in “fascist” behavior and “running wild” against white people. Trumping his allusions to “fascism,” on his October 22, 2015 episode of his TV show, Bill O’Reilly even made the absurd claim that Black Lives Matter is akin to the “Nazis.”"

All three of these individuals may have exaggerated their rhetoric, but that does not constitute hate speech. And how this connects to the events in Paris is a downright loony idea. In fact,  Chauncey never bothers to connect the Paris attacks to right wing hate speech. He just wanted to grab your attention today in order to make explicit threats of violence against his political enemies:

"These are implicit threats and overtures to violence as racial authoritarian fascists are a clear and present danger to democracy and freedom. Thus, they must be eliminated by any means necessary."

In case you've forgotten, "by any means necessary" was a favorite threat made by Malcolm X back in the day. And don't you find it a bit strange that a rant against white racism and violence would include a threat to "eliminate them" - short for murder?

No doubt racists and white supremecists are bad people and should be denounced. But murdered? When liberals start equating exaggerated political rhetoric with the kind of hate speech made by Kluxers, skinheads, and others, you have to wonder just who it is they want to target. And why.

SOURCE





What France Can Learn from Israel in Confronting Islamist Terror

By Gregg Roman

As my French friends, colleagues, and acquaintances agonize over what is to be done in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, the best advice I can think of is to look at Israel.

This tragedy was not “France’s 9/11.” Al-Qaeda effectively depleted its stateside human assets in that attack and never regained the ability to strike the American heartland. This is France’s Al-Aqsa Intifada – unfortunately, more of the same is absolutely going to follow. Whatever one's political predisposition to Israeli counterterrorism policies may be, its success fighting Islamist terror over the past two decades is the only real-world model for overcoming the specific challenges France now faces.

Here are some of the main takeaways.

First, it’s time to sacrifice some freedoms of convenience. Most Israelis don’t know what it’s like to walk into a mid-size concert venue of the kind targeted in France without passing through a metal detector and their government intends to keep it that way. They may gripe about it, but they would feel less free if their government wasn’t inconveniencing them on a daily basis.

Second, go ahead and profile. All of the jihadists bent on terrorizing France have some obvious commonalities. The reason Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport is considered the gold standard of airline security is that Israeli screeners are encouraged to single out passengers for extra scrutiny on the basis of religion, age, gender, and so forth, while waving the vast majority through terminals more quickly. Not even the most seasoned terrorist is likely to take the risk of running this gauntlet if he knows for certain he’s going to find himself in a room full of inquisitive Israelis.

Third, recognize that deterrence isn’t fair. Since it’s impossible to dissuade suicide bombers with the threat of certain death or bodily harm, you have to threaten things they care about. Israel’s policy of demolishing the family homes of Palestinian terrorists may not be altogether “just,” but it’s necessary to counter the overwhelmingly positive social approval and financial benefits these families receive for contributing “martyrs” to the cause.

If being related to a terrorist isn’t already a deeply unpleasant experience in France, make it so. Understand that it’s neither possible nor desirable to ensure that terrorists are the only ones paying a price for their terrorism. Make whatever efforts to avoid harming innocents are consistent with your values, but don’t let the backlash from armchair counter-terrorists and Francophobes abroad dictate policy.

Fourth, target the brains behind terrorist infrastructure. Go after the people responsible for recruiting, financing, training, motivating and directing Jihadis, not just the foot soldiers. Prosecute them if you can, but if they’re overseas don’t be afraid to dispense swifter justice. Though controversial when Israel first adopted targeted killing as a counterterrorism tool, most governments (including most notably the Obama administration) now recognize its effectiveness. The number of fatalities from suicide bombings in Israel dropped from hundreds in 2002 to zero in 2010.

Fifth, fight the incitement. Americans can still afford to pretend that Islamist hate speech and indoctrination has little to do with terrorist violence, but France can’t. The French government took a step in the right direction when it deported 40 Islamists accused of incitement in June of this year. It needs to go further. Instead of avoiding the banlieues, rings of Muslim majority neighborhoods around French cities that are impoverished, crime-ridden, and blighted, gendarmeries and intelligence services should sweep into these suburbs and place community centers, mosques, and high rises under surveillance. Checkpoints should be setup at the entrances to Islamist havens and searches conducted on those commuting in and out of these areas.

Sixth, France must prioritize national security interests over sectarian grievances. It’s understandable that French Muslims are frustrated by their socio-economic marginalization, and there is surely room for improvement in how the authorities treat this estranged minority. But the rights and wrongs of this issue don’t diminish France’s right to defend itself or alter fundamental realities about what it takes to do that.

French Muslims rally in support of Hezbollah in a Paris suburb.

Finally, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, France must control and monitor its borders if it wishes to avoid a repeat of Friday’s terror attacks. The ability of at least one of the attackers to claim refugee status in Greece and move onto France was an intelligence failure of the highest degree. As Sweden, Germany, Austria, and other countries reconsider Schengen, an agreement that allows uninhibited movement around Europe, so too should France. The French Interior ministry instituted border controls immediately after the attack. This change should be permanent.

As President François Hollande declared after the attacks, France is reeling from an “act of war,” not a crime wave. Israel has demonstrated that it is possible to win such wars, but this isn’t for the faint-hearted.

SOURCE






Levin Rebukes Obama for ‘Religious Test’ Remarks: Christians ‘Have Nowhere Else to Go’

Nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin called out President Obama on Monday saying, “Nobody said there should be a religious test,” but more Christians should be allowed in because they “have nowhere else to go.”

"President Obama, speaking from the G20 Summit in Turkey on Monday said it was 'shameful' that some political leaders are suggesting the U.S. should only admit Christian and not Muslim Syrian refugees," reported CNSNews.com. Obama futher stated that America should not have a “religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war torn country is admitted.”

“Nobody said there should be a religious test,” Levin corrected. “What they said is that we should allow more Christians in this country. You want to know why, pal? Because they have nowhere else to go.”

Here is a transcript of what Levin had to say:

“Nobody said there should be a religious test. What they said is that we should allow more Christians in this country.

“You want to know why, pal? Because they have nowhere else to go. All those little countries you mentioned in the Middle East, Jordan and Lebanon and so forth and so on, they’re not taking Christians. Nobody’s taking Christians!

“So why don’t we say we are taking Christians? ‘Well, we can’t do that; we don’t have religious tests in this country.’ Sure we do. Certainly we do.

“The government now attacks Christianity left and right on morality grounds, whether it’s marriage, whether it’s abortion. What’s he talking about, we don’t have religious tests in this country? We sure as hell do.

“Oh, they don’t call it that. They call it civil liberties. I got that. Nobody is talking about religious tests.

“It’s just that Christians from the Middle East haven’t been known to commit acts of terrorism against the United States of America. What the hell is wrong with this guy? Doesn’t he have two eyes? Doesn’t he see what’s going on?”  

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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