RUTHFULLY YOURS

At the level of regional strategy, Egypt has a central role in the anti-Iran coalition of Sunni Arab states, which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE. The violence of the Arab Spring brought to the fore the inevitable confrontation between a revisionist, aggressive Shi’ite Iran and the Arab countries deploying to defend themselves against Iranian aggression, mainly in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Africa.

There might, however, be a confrontation — unfortunately with the United States. Even as the Iranians proceed with developing nuclear weapons and using proxies to destabilize the Arab and Muslim states, the American shoulder grows colder towards both Israel and the el-Sisi government in Egypt. The current U.S. administration is known throughout the Middle East for empowering its enemies and being treacherous to its friends.

The traditional Arab stance, used by autocratic leaders to bamboozle their dissatisfied populace by pointing them at an external villain instead of at our own leaders, has clearly begun to change. Israel as the greatest enemy, is, correctly, being replaced by Iran.

The presence of the Egyptian foreign minister in Israel last month came as a surprise to many. Critical Egyptian public opinion and the Egyptian media indicate that, in the years since the Israeli-Egyptian peace was signed, the formal agreement has yet to trickle into public consciousness and that there is still considerable suspicion on both sides of the border. The same is true of the peace between Israel and Jordan.

Under the reign of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, relations had reached a new low, with Egypt covertly aiding Iran’s proxy, Hamas, against Israel.

The visit of Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to Israel in early July 2016 could be an indication that the frozen peace between Israel and Egyptians, signed by Begin and Sadat in 1979, might be thawing.[1]

At the level of regional strategy, Egypt has a central role in the anti-Iran coalition of Sunni Arab states, which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE. The violence of the Arab Spring brought to the fore the inevitable confrontation between a revisionist, aggressive Shi’ite Iran and the Arab countries deploying to defend themselves against Iranian aggression, mainly in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Africa.

Every historical act carried out by Turks is praised and idealized. History textbooks ‎do not utter a single word about the crimes committed by Turkey against the country’s minorities.

Turkey-centric theories were taught in Turkish schools and universities in the 1930s under the rule of Ataturk. Through these myths, racism and irrational views were instilled in the Turkish public.

Apparently, anti-Americanism is reaching new heights in Turkey, and many Turks do not need facts and evidence to determine who was behind the coup.

Meanwhile, Ankara recently declared that it has “concerns about the rise of xenophobia and Islamophobia in Europe.” This condemnation came from the government of a country that has slaughtered millions of its own citizens — for being non-Turkish or non-Muslim — and that has never once apologized for its crimes.

Xenophobia in Turkey is well-documented. The 2007 Pew Global Attitudes surveys, for example, showed that negative views of the United States were “widespread and growing” in Turkey, a NATO member and European Union applicant. According to the Pew Research Center:

“Of the 10 Muslim publics surveyed in the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes poll, the Turkish public showed the most negative views, on average, toward Westerners.

“On this scale, the average for Turkey is 5.2, which is a higher level of negativity than is found in the other four Muslim-majority countries surveyed (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Pakistan) as well as among the Muslim populations in Nigeria, Britain, Germany, France and Spain.

“Large and increasing majorities of Turks also hold unfavorable views of Christians and Jews.”

The 2014 Pew survey of Turkish public opinion also found a major rise in xenophobia, revealing that Turks expressed a strong dislike for just about everyone.

“Such anti-Americanism inherent in the population of an American ally is noteworthy,” wroteProfessor Doug Woodwell. “Turkish public opinion as a whole is perhaps the most xenophobic on earth… Whatever the future, at least Americans can rest assured; while Turks may have a lower opinion of the US than any other country, they are equal opportunity haters.”
“Turkey Alone Against the World”

Turkey’s hostility toward outsiders has a long history. Ever since the Turkish republic was founded in 1923, Turkish schoolchildren have been taught myths that propagate “Turkey alone against the world.”

Better and far more detailed information on immigrant success is badly needed. Naively accepting large numbers of refugees from the most dysfunctional societies on the planet, and doing so with scant assessment of the consequences, would seem almost beyond belief were not fact.
While adherence to prevailing notions of political correctness has generated strong pressure for acceptance of large scale immigration for perceived humanitarian reasons, consideration of outcomes has been accorded little attention. The current source for mass asylum seeking is coming almost entirely from the Muslim nations of North Africa and the Middle East. Without exception the governments of these nations are characterised by high levels of repression, corruption and incompetence. Economic stagnation is pervasive, relieved only by lavish non-productive spending where oil wealth is available.

Rarely do any of these governments change peacefully through an open fair election. Coups, revolutions or the death of a leader is the norm for any change in regime. Often this is then accompanied by a period of civil violence, commonly reaching extreme levels until some faction prevails, only to re-establish similar, or even worse, levels of repression, corruption and incompetence. That this pattern is so widespread, pervasive and persistent in these nations makes it unlikely to be only a matter of random mischance. It is difficult to avoid considering that it must arise from some common, underlying propensities which manifest as ongoing high levels of intolerance, repression, corruption, intractable factionalism, extreme violence and fanatical commitment to differing fundamentalist religious interpretations.

High levels of such immigrants present a significant problem in bringing with them these propensities. This risk must then be compounded if the same tendencies also serve to strongly inhibit assimilation into the host culture and increase still further if poor assimilation leads to concentration in ghettos where the social malaise which drove the emigration continues to be propagated. Meanwhile the dysfunction in the source nations continues apace with no sign of improvement and any facilitation of immigration elsewhere is likely to only encourage an even greater wave of refugees.

Continuation of cultural practices which clearly violate the laws of the host country are already common, and demands for legal recognition of sharia law are beginning to be made. In a democratic system, where a voting bloc of 10% of an electorate can determine the outcome of elections, it is only a matter of time before demands for such recognition start to be granted on some level and then, inevitably, expanded. The question of whether accepting large numbers of such refugees alleviates human suffering or spreads it deserves careful consideration.

Although our own governments like to pay lip service to evidence-based policy, they tend to do little to develop or assess such evidence. In Australia we already have a well-established and mostly capable government body which could readily produce the evidence needed in this regard. This is the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and all government need do is request it be done.

Existing immigration statistics are largely restricted to overall numbers for different regions and a limited amount of data on the composition of immigrant families. For a genuine evidence-based policy on immigration and refugees much more information about the detailed demographics of asylum seekers and other immigrants is essential. A much clearer picture is needed of who they are, where they come from, how and why they come, what they bring in the way of skills, where they settle, their employment, education, health and welfare requirements, crime statistics, connections with militant fundamentalism and terrorism, as well as the general nature of their assimilation or lack thereof.

How did the marriage of political Islam and the Left come to be? Look first to the West’s progressive media, academics and agenda-driven elites — the standard coterie of cultural engineers who oppose free speech, spurn history’s lessons and defame all who disagree.
“Literature always anticipates life,” Oscar Wilde opined in his essay “The Decay of Lying”; “It does not copy it but moulds it to its purpose.” Recent developments in British politics seem to confirm Oscar’s aphorism. In 2015, Michel Houellebecq published his political fiction Submission, anticipating the democratic rise to power in Europe of the Muslim Brotherhood. Widely dismissed as “Islamophobic”, his dystopian novel, set in France in 2022, identifies how Europe’s political elites abandoned the Enlightenment project, alienated the masses and created the conditions for the emergence of a new extremist politics on both the Left and the Right.

The novel’s protagonist, François, an alienated Sorbonne professor, observes that mainstream political parties had created “a chasm between the people and those who claimed to speak for them, the politicians and journalists”. The latter, “who had lived and prospered under a given social system”, could not “imagine the point of view of those who feel it offers them nothing, and who can contemplate its destruction without any particular dismay”. In this context, the political system “might suddenly explode”.

In France the explosion takes the form of a run-off in the second round of voting for the French Presidency, between Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Front and the recently emerged Muslim Brotherhood Party’s representative, the charismatic, but fictional, Ben Abbes. To avoid a far-Right victory, both mainstream socialist and conservative parties, eliminated in the first round of the French election process, give their support to Ben Abbes, who becomes the first democratically elected Muslim President of the Republic.

From the outset, the new President distances himself from jihadi fanaticism. Instead, Abbes, a disciple of Machiavelli as well as Mohammed, sees Europe “ripe for absorption into the Dar al Islam”. Subsequently, the Republic runs along sharia-approved but moderate Islamic lines. The University of Paris becomes an Islamic university, polygamy is approved and generous family payments allow women to give up work. Unemployment falls, education is privatised and Islamised through charitable donations, and small business is encouraged. The old elites convert to the faith and France rediscovers the joys of patriarchy and a sense of political purpose.

Although France now has a small Democratic Muslim Party, the least convincing aspect of Houellebecq’s fiction concerns the Muslim Brotherhood Party’s rapid rise to power. It is here that political life, taking its cue from art, has intervened, and not in France, but in the UK, where the electoral system has proved far more accommodating to the rise of a non-violent form of political Islam. Transposing Houellebecq to London and fiction into political reality, recent local elections saw Labour Party candidate Sadiq Khan succeed Boris Johnson as the first elected Muslim Mayor of London. Predictably the British, American and Australian media applauded the result as a victory for tolerance and multiculturalism. Nikki Gemmell, writing in the Australian, positively contrasted London’s election, emblematic of the city’s dynamic “open, and embracing energy”, with Australia’s parochial and “paranoid defensiveness”. In the media’s enthusiastic embrace of Khan, no commentator paused to reflect whether the result in fact demonstrates a new and significant stage in the slow-motion Islamisation of the British political process.

On this new special edition of Anni Cyrus’s “Top 10”, Anni casts a disturbing light on The Top 10 Discriminating Rules Against Women in Iran, revealing the surreal discrimination women face in the Islamic Republic.

Don’t miss it!http://jamieglazov.com/2016/08/14/anni-cyrus-video-top-10-discriminating-rules-against-women-in-iran/

And make sure to watch another special Anni Cyrus Top 10 in which Anni unveils the Top 10 Most Ridiculous Crimes and Punishments in Iran, exposing the dark and barbaric world of the Islamic Republic:

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BAQA, Jordan—A self-taught imam and Islamic State recruiter who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Otaiba takes the lectern at his local mosque when the government-approved preacher fails to show, as happens most days.

Soliciting recruits there has become too risky these days because the mosques “are filled with intelligence officials,” he said. So he uses his time to identify those he thinks could be drawn to his radical cause.

“We take them to farms, or private homes. There we discuss and we organize soccer games to bring them closer to us,” he said in a recent interview in northern Jordan.

His words reflect a new boldness among Jordanian jihadists, who are speaking out more openly these days in support of Islamic State.

That openness, along with a rare spate of terror attacks, illustrates how the threat of Islamist extremism has spread in this relatively stable U.S. ally, which has long served as a bulwark against terrorism in the Middle East.

Fidel Castro turned 90 years old on Saturday, adding plausibility to the popular Cuban theory that even hell doesn’t want him. Meanwhile Cuba’s military dictatorship, now headed by his 83-year-old brother Raúl, is cracking down with renewed brutality on anyone who dares not conform to its totalitarian rule.

If President Obama’s December 2014 softening of U.S. policy toward Cuba was supposed to elicit some quid pro quo on human rights from Havana, it has so far failed. Independent groups that monitor civil liberties on the island say conditions have deteriorated in the 20 months since the Obama decision to normalize relations and ease Cuba trade and travel restrictions for Americans. Many dissident groups opposed any U.S. thaw without human-rights conditions attached and say they feel abandoned by the U.S., which they had long relied on for moral support.

Guillermo Fariñas, a 54-year-old psychologist and winner of the European Parliament’s Andrei Sakharov Prize, is one such disappointed Cuban.

In a July 20 letter to Gen. Castro, Mr. Fariñas announced “a hunger and thirst strike” until Castro “designate[s]” a vice president to meet with the opposition and declares an end to the state policy of torturing and arresting dissidents and confiscating their property. Mr. Fariñas has been taken to the local hospital in the city of Santa Clara twice for rehydration, but is now at home. He is gravely ill.

Flirting with death is a sign of desperation and it is difficult not to see a connection between that and Mr. Obama’s decision to drop the longstanding U.S. commitment to the democracy movement on the island so that he can be on better terms with the despots. Mr. Fariñas also has personal reasons for feeling betrayed.

In November 2013 he and Berta Soler, the leader of the dissident group Ladies in White, met with Mr. Obama at the Miami home of Jorge Mas Santos, the president of the Cuban-American National Foundation, who was hosting a Democratic Party fundraising event. After the meeting Mr. Fariñas and Ms. Soler told local press that they had asked the president to ensure that any change in U.S.-Cuba policy consider the views of the nonviolent opposition.

An elated Mr. Fariñas raved about the “words of support from the president of the United States, the most powerful democracy in the world,” according to a report in El Nuevo Herald. The White House did not respond specifically to my request for comment about what Mr. Obama told the dissidents that night.

When Mr. Fariñas was honored in Washington in June by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, he spoke about the great letdown he and his peers felt when Mr. Obama cut his own deal. He said since the announcement the opposition has “lived with the terrible news that the Cuban people, and especially the ones who have fought to establish a democracy in Cuba, were not going to be taken into account” in the continuing negotiations. “Many of us were discouraged.” Still, he said, they decided to fight on.

That fight took on new dimensions for Mr. Fariñas when 28-year-old Carlos Amel Oliva launched a hunger strike on July 13 and more than 20 members of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, many of them young, joined him. CONTINUE AT SITE