RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13415/turkey-outrage-khashoggi

There are at least 170 journalists and media workers currently in Turkish jails and prisons, according to the Platform for Independent Journalism.

Hrant Dink, as editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos, wrote about the Armenian Genocide. For this he was prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which makes it illegal to insult Turkey or Turkish government institutions or to “denigrate Turkishness.” Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper’s office in Istanbul on January 19, 2007. Eleven years after the murder, the trial is still in progress.

The Turkish government still has not officially recognized, apologized for, or made reparations on behalf any of these and other such crimes at any time in its history; impunity for past injustices continues to lead to present injustices.

It is high time for members of the Western media to stop relying on Turkish officials as sources of reliable information in their reports on Khashoggi, and start highlighting Turkey’s ongoing deadly persecution of its own journalists.

Since the October 2 murder of Saudi Muslim Brotherhood political activist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been condemning the perpetrators of the “ferocious murder,” vowing that his government would “uncover what has happened” and portraying himself as a champion of human rights.

https://isgap.org/flashpoint/gilets-jaunes-lost-in-the-funhouse/

8-11 PM December 11 Strasbourg: Terrorist attack at the Christmas market. The shooter, wounded and on the run, has been identified as 29–year-old Cherif C. a multi-recidivist criminal who has been flagged as a security risk since 2016. The current tally is two dead, a third victim brain-dead, thirteen wounded, six of them critically.

Since November 17, I have been gathering available information on the Gilets Jaunes (GJs), or “Yellow Vest Movement”, observing, analyzing, and testing my insights against accepted opinion. With rare exceptions, the GJs have been received with exceptional indulgence. The violence they spawn is both condoned and denied…attributed to the GJs and lifted from them by hair-splitting distinctions, as if, in a raging crowd of thousands, one could separate the real GJs from the opportunistic thugs, all dressed in yellow vests, all surging in the same direction. Murderous hatred and unprecedented destruction are dismissed with a Gallic shrug as an epiphenomenon that can’t discredit the voice of the people crying for justice.

What about jihad (the so-called terrorist attacks) on these same streets and boulevards such a short time ago and one after the other? Some commentators and officials did mention the danger of creating opportunities for terrorist attacks in the midst of a Gilet Jaune “demonstration.” But, I told myself, these GJ actions are in themselves terrorism, and these common ordinary Frenchmen are behaving as if they were inspired by Islamic mobs in Kabul, Peshawar, or… Gaza.

How blind, deaf, and dumb to create chaos in an already beleaguered democracy. And now the inevitable has happened. A jihad attack between one Yellow Saturday and the next. The baseless speculation that President Macron would declare a state of emergency to put an end to those pointless actions is becoming a reasonable option.

I still feel as though I have to apologize for my harsh judgment of giletjaunisme. But I will trust my intuition.

Lost in the funhouse

How can the Gilets Jaunes “movement” be evaluated on the basis of a bowdlerized version of their grievances, propositions, and actions, packaged in comparisons with the French Revolution and mai 68 to make a palatable story adapted to a variety of tastes? That narrative cannot encompass the scope, the concrete realities, and the glaring contradictions of an incendiary outburst of negative energy in the heart of a European democracy.

Editor’s note: Below are the video and transcript of remarks given by Geert Wilders at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2018 Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 15th-18th at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272252/geert-wilders-restoration-weekend-frontpagemagcom

Robert Spencer: It is my great honor and great pleasure to introduce to all of you tonight the great visionary who is going to be the one who turn things around for Europe and brought about its salvation as a continent upon which free people could still live, and the one man who has stood firm all these years against absolutely extraordinary and crushing pressure to give in, the great, the heroic, Geert Wilders.

Geert Wilders: Thank you. Robert, thank you so much for the most kind words. So, hello America, how are you tonight? It’s an honor for me to be at Restoration Weekend again, and it’s a pleasure to be amongst friends. I see so many here, great people with strong convictions and love for freedom, people who supported me for so many years, like the great David Horowitz himself. Thank you David.

But also Dr. Bob Shillman, Nina Rosenwald, Daniel Pipes, all people that I will have to say thank you so much for all you did, but also please allow me to say a word of respect to a colleague of mine in your own U.S. Congress, a hero, somebody that I respect a lot and was re-elected at the mid‑terms, the congressman from Texas, Louis Gohmert, Louis rise.

Thank you. And of course, I’m not involved in your own domestic politics, but for me one of the best news was, not only that our friend Louis Gohmert, but also that our friend Steve King from Iowa was elected. Congratulations both. And of course, it’s always a pleasure for me to be in the United States, the land of the free and the home of the brave. America is a country that is not afraid to let its own national interests prevail as it should; to do what is best for its own people–the American people–where most of the leaders in my part of the world, Western Europe, cannot even spell the word national, let alone the combination national interest, your country is led by one of the strongest and bravest leaders of the free world, and I honor him from that, Donald J. Trump.

Europe desperately needs more strong leaders like Mr. Trump for we are fighting for our existence, and I’m not exaggerating. Our freedom, our way of life, our culture, our identity, our national security, are at stake and heavily under attack, and the reason for that indeed still is mass immigration and Islamization combined with the total failure, and even betrayal by weak European politicians who are unwilling to fight back.

They, those weak leaders, do not protect us but they facilitate our destruction and when political leaders become pieces of evil, the people must speak, and so we have to do that. And that is why we do speak out and fight back. But, that comes with a price. If you dare to fight back, if you dare to speak the truth about Islam, the authorities and the Islamists will do anything to silence you. You will be taken to court. I have myself been taken to court or threatened to be taken to court in my own country, the Netherlands, in Austria, in Pakistan, in Jordan, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Saudi Arabia.

The biggest Muslim country in the world Indonesia declared me persona non grata for life.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-yellow-jackets-are-right-about-green-policies-11544991717

Seek out the most basic cause of the French riots and you’ll come to a bizarre answer: carbon dioxide. More specifically, the demonization by political activists of that vital element of the earth’s atmosphere.

French President Emmanuel Macron stirred popular rage by trying to raise the gasoline tax by about 25 cents a gallon. He argued that higher taxes would reduce fuel use and hence emissions of CO2, helping France meet the lower emissions goals to which it is pledged as a signatory to the United Nations’ Paris Agreement to fight climate change.

Mr. Macron has learned the hard way that voters don’t see climate change as a threat demanding personal sacrifices. The rebellion is global. Green measures that caused energy prices to soar damaged Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany’s 2017 election. Green energy plans were repudiated by voters in Australia and helped cause a political upheaval in the Canadian province of Ontario.

Voters in Washington state and Arizona rejected November ballot measures aimed at reducing CO2 emissions. The Journal’s William McGurn reported last week that 200 prominent civil-rights leaders have filed suit against the California Air Resources Board. Green policies, they argue, are saddling the poor with higher living costs.