RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12662/britain-parliament-grooming-gangs

The approach the British authorities have taken in response to this national disaster appears largely based on countering secondary issues — most notably, individuals that protest the grooming, including at one point the arrest of parents attempting to rescue their daughter from her abusers.

There also seems to be a tacit alliance with much of the media to silence public discourse and, when all else fails, outright suppression.

In response to Britain’s ongoing sexual grooming scandal, a group of 20 MPs signed an open letter to recently appointed Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, urging coordinated action.

As the UK Parliament has 650 MPs, the 20 signatories constitute a mere 3% willing to support the protection of children subjected to gang-rape, trafficking and torture, and at times murder. Such a paltry number of politicians willing to speak out against child sexual slavery seems yet more evidence of the moral bankruptcy of Britain’s political elite and how low the country appears to have sunk.

Britain’s media elite have ignored the letter. Reporting has been limited to the local press in Oxford and Rochdale — areas afflicted by grooming — as well as a few alternative media outlets such as Breitbart London, and indirect reference on Sky News.

A key signatory of the letter, Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, whose constituency was made infamous by grooming, was forced from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party front bench in 2017 for speaking openly about the prevalence of “British Pakistani men” in this type of child sexual exploitation. Given that Sajid Javid, then Communities Secretary, spoke in support of Champion, it is perhaps intentional that this letter was addressed to him in his new role as Britain’s first Muslim Home Secretary.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/united-nations-report-on-american-poverty-distorts-and-misrepresents/

It is unnecessary, politically biased, factually wrong, and a waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Last month, the United Nations released a report about poverty in America. A single researcher spent two weeks in our country, visiting four states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. His report was harshly critical, condemning America for “punish[ing] those who are not in employment,” among other farcical notions.

Everyone knows there is poverty in America. Thousands of public officials at the federal, state, and local levels of government attempt to address poverty, as they should. Thousands more nonprofit, charitable, and religious organizations honorably dedicate themselves to fighting poverty in our country.

As governor of South Carolina, I saw firsthand the struggles of poor communities that often lack the economic and educational opportunities enjoyed elsewhere in America. And we did something about it. During my administration, we brought record-breaking numbers of new jobs to South Carolina, spanning each one of our state’s 46 counties; moved thousands of citizens from welfare to work; and made unprecedented investments into the education of students in economically challenged parts of our state. The fight against poverty is a complicated, multi-dimensional battle, but it is one that has the attention of Americans at all levels.

It certainly has the attention of the Trump administration. Its economic policies have helped bring unemployment down to the lowest level in decades. Its tax-reform law included a landmark measure to direct billions in new capital into distressed communities in every state.

https://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/in-germany-the-immigration-worm-has-turned/

I’m in Berlin at the moment, staying not far from Checkpoint Charlie, through which I passed many times during the Cold War, and not far from the spot where, sledgehammer in hand, I did my small bit to dismantle the Berlin Wall in November of 1989. So much has changed in the nearly 30 years since that memorable moment: McDonald’s and KFC have franchises on either side of the intersection of the Friedrichstrasse and the Zimmerstrasse, where the Wall briefly opened to allow a narrow passage from the American sector’s principal checkpoint across a short block flanked on both sides by the Todesstreifen of barbed-wire and machine-gun free-fire fields. On the western side — actually the southern side, by the compass — the fearsome Wall was gaily painted with graffiti; on the other, it was a blank slate of gray concrete, fully reflective of the Stalinist Leftist orthodoxy of the only captive nation that even remotely tried to make a go of the Marxist economic, social, and moral lie.

Now, three decades after the Wall came down, I’m back in East Berlin talking to old and new German friends — most of them Ossis, or East Germans — about the current state of Germany’s overriding social and political issue: the influx of more than one million cultural aliens, mostly from the Muslim ummah and thus by faith and profession profoundly opposed to Western Judeo-Christian civilization. And their answer is… not good for the Merkel administration. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12635/exceptional-islam

“Western observers… will need to accept Islam’s vital and varied role in politics and formulate policies with that in mind, rather than hoping for secularizing outcomes that are unlikely anytime soon, if ever.” — Shadi Hamid, author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World.

“‘Islamic exceptionalism’ is neither good nor bad. It just is.” — Shadi Hamid.

“As the transition from pre-modernity to modernity proceeds with its twists and turns, the Muslim world, over time will progress and develop to the point that eventually there will arise a theology, as occurred in Christendom, consistent with the needs of Muslims and reconciled with modernity.” — Salim Mansur, author of The Qur’an Problem and Islamism: Reflections of a Dissident Muslim.

In early May, the Brookings Institution held a lecture and panel discussion in India on the question of whether Islam is “exceptional” and what it means for the future of Western democracy. A main speaker at the event was Shadi Hamid, author of a 2016 book, Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World.

Hamid, an American Muslim, repeated the thesis of his book, summarized in an op-ed in Time magazine.

“Because of its outsize role in law and governance, Islam has been — and will continue to be — resistant to secularization,” he wrote. He explained:

“Unlike Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad was a theologian, a preacher, a warrior and a politician, all at once. He was also the leader and builder of a new state, capturing, holding and governing new territory. Religious and political functions, at least for the believer, were no accident. They were meant to be intertwined in the leadership of one man.

“Second, more than merely the word of God, for Muslims, the Quran is God’s direct and literal speech. It is difficult to overstate the centrality of divine authorship. This does not mean Muslims are literalists; most are not. But it does mean the text cannot easily be dismissed as irrelevant.”

This means, he added, that “Western observers… will need to accept Islam’s vital and varied role in politics and formulate policies with that in mind, rather than hoping for secularizing outcomes that are unlikely anytime soon, if ever.”