RUTHFULLY YOURS

As it dawns on Germans that they’ve been had in more ways than one, local governments within the Federal Republic are gradually beginning to come to their senses. Although the evil that Angela Merkel has done will live on long after she is gone, the only way that Germany can hope to preserve its culture, language and traditions in the face of an alien demographic tidal wave is to crack down now. A first step:

Germany has begun taking cash and sentimental jewellery from wealthier refugees in return for aid. The measure has been introduced to pay for the more than 1.1million migrants who have entered the European country last year. It is a move that was initiated in Denmark and Switzerland, where assets worth more than 1,300 euros (£992) and 900 euros (£687), respectively, are taken from those coming into the countries seeking refuge.

In Bavaria, Germany, refugees are now only allowed to keep cash and items worth 750 euros (£578), according to The Times. Tougher measures are in place in Baden-Wurttemberg, were authorities will take any over 350 euros (£270), the Daily Express reports. Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrman said: ‘The practice in Bavaria and the federal rules set out in law correspond in substance with the process already in place in Switzerland.

Of course, there is the usual whining from leftist “advocates,” but this is just their usual smokescreen for what they really desire, which is a borderless First World thrown open to its historic enemies, and the destruction of western civilization.

There is no problem whatsoever in reconciling Islam with the West in general and Australia in particular, according to the National Imams Consultative Forum. And they’re right! Some sleight of hand and a judicious doctrinal omission or ten and it’s all hugs and kisses
I had missed it before I was alerted to it a little time ago. I took a quick look and put it aside. Life is too short I thought to attend to yet more platitudinous Islamic propaganda. But hey, all it takes for evil to triumph and all that.

The slippery document in question, issued by the National Imams Consultative Forum, is titled “An Muslim Australian perspective on some key contemporary concerns.” It was apparently the product of workshops held in 2014/15. It is comprised of 53 paragraphs under a number of headings. I will just take up a few points, but really it needs thoroughgoing scrutiny and testing.

A first thing to say is here we go again. This lot operating under the banner of Islam are a problem writ large. That is why we have to put up with a stream of apologia to camouflage the obnoxious nature of their supremacist scriptural credo and its worldwide effect of poverty, violence, cruelty, intolerance, discrimination and sexism.

It sticks out like a beardless imam; there is not a mention of any confirming Koranic verses or hadiths in the document to support the underlying theme that Islamic and Australian values don’t clash.

Under the heading of citizenship we are told, inter alia, that Muslims can be Australian citizens, while retaining brotherhood and sisterhood to all Muslims worldwide, and are not “automatically” required to take up arms to support one side or other when Muslims fight each other. Moreover, we are told: “There is no conflict between loyalty to Islam and commitment to Australia.” Bully for Islam. But, when push comes to shove, what happens if Australia is pitched in war with a Muslim country? I will leave the question hanging.

Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA) is a grassroots movement that was formed in Germany a little over two years ago. The scale of their rallies has rapidly grown. And now they’re organizing mass demonstrations for February 6th to be held in cities across Europe.

For those not familiar with PEGIDA, or for those who want to learn more, here’s a bit of background:

PEGIDA provides a structure for citizens to come together to celebrate national pride and to express opposition to Merkel’s suicidal open door immigration policy that has allowed in throngs of Muslims from Islamic countries – a policy that is destroying Germany in unthinkable ways.

If you’ve ever seen a video of a PEGIDA march, you’ll notice young and old, healthy and infirmed, day or night, in all kinds of weather, patriotic Germans show up and wind their way through the streets. Some carry flags while others hold signs. There is often an eerie silence, though occasionally a chant breaks out or you can hear the national anthem being sung. (See here, here, here, here, here, and here for a sample of videos from a few of their marches.)

The size of the demonstrations is often large, with numbers reaching into the tens of thousands. Beginning in October, the group organized weekly marches in Dresden and other cities primarily located in the eastern part of Germany (which is likely no coincidence given the region’s history and people’s first-hand knowledge of life under totalitarian rule).

AMSTERDAM—Islamic State has created an industry from passports seized in Iraq, Syria and Libya, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday.

At a meeting of interior ministers in Amsterdam, Mr. Cazeneuve made the case for setting up special task forces to be sent to Greece to assist the identification of fake or stolen passports.

“Daesh has managed to seize passports in Iraq, Syria and Libya and to set up a true industry of fake passports,” Mr. Cazeneuve said in a news conference after the meeting, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

He made the case for establishing this task force and for authorities in the European Union to upload any relevant information to the counterterrorism databases in the bloc.

At least two of the terrorists in the Paris attacks in November traveled on the migrant route through Greece using Syrian passports and posing as refugees, as over one million people arrived on the continent last year, mostly via Greece.

European companies are promising billions in new deals in Iran—€5.7 billion from Italian steelmaker Danieli and more than €300 million from French car builder PSA Peugeot Citroën, among others—as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani works to revive trade and political ties on the Continent this week.
Mr. Rouhani landed in Rome on Monday on his first overseas trip since the European Union lifted sanctions on Jan. 16 in return for Tehran’s implementation of key restrictions on its nuclear program.

The trip will take Mr. Rouhani from Vatican City—marking the first meeting between an Iranian president and a pope since 1999—to the gilded halls of Paris’s Élysée Palace.

With a number of U.S. sanctions still in place, European countries are moving quickly to re-establish ties to sell everything from consumer goods to aircraft.

Italian and Iranian companies signed deals valued at about €17 billion ($18.36 billion) late Monday ahead of a formal dinner between Mr. Rouhani and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Earlier in the day, Italian steel firm Danieli said it would sign deals valued at about €5.7 billion during the visit. Other firms signing agreements on Monday included oil-field services company Saipem SpA, energy group Ansaldo Energia and ship maker Fincantieri SpA, but further details weren’t available.

thanks to e-pal Bruce P……rsk
Riyadh | Saudi police officers in the district of Al-Mansuriyya in the branch municipality of Al-Shifa have arrested a man accused of having sex with his vacuum cleaner, reports the Riyadh Daily.

The man was caught in full action by his wife of 17 years before she reported her husband to authorities.

“After 17 years of loyalty, this is how this miscreant treats me,” she told local reporters. “I feel used, I feel dirty,” she added.

The suspect has denied any wrong doing and blames his wife for inventing the whole affair of which he could face 2 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for adultery

As adultery is a crime punishable by death in Islamic law, usually performed by stoning the person to death, experts believe the man’s condemnation is a light one.

I am deeply honored that my essay, “Does Have Europe Have a Future?,” elicited such substantial responses from four distinguished writers. All four have not only entered fair and useful comments on the essay but also contributed their own answers to the question posed in my title.

Peter Berkowitz and Wilfred McClay agree with me that the nation-state is not the source of Europe’s ills. And I agree with Berkowitz, following Alexis de Tocqueville, that European nations need to recover their tradition of freedom, just as I agree with McClay that such liberty must be limited by law, human or divine. It is refreshing to hear Americans encouraging Europeans to take pride in their patriotism and their national identities; in this respect, McClay rightly contrasts the grand traditions of European civilization, which gave birth to the United States and to so much else, with a European Union that is anything but united.

On this point, I part company with Claire Berlinski even as I’m grateful for her superb tour d’horizon and the weight she properly gives to the threat posed to Europe by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. To her, the only answer to the external threats menacing Europe is a single foreign and defense policy, which means strengthening and indeed uniting the European Union. I beg to differ: however much some European leaders may dream otherwise, the EU is not a military alliance. Nor do I recognize her description of German, French, and other EU military officers “eager” to “unleash” their forces against Europe’s enemies. That was not the case even during the cold war, much less now.

The only effective alliance we have is NATO, which implies an acceptance of U.S. leadership that the French still find unpalatable. France is indeed adept at launching policing operations in its former African colonies, but it is no more eager to support U.S. military operations in the Muslim world now than in 2003, when it refused to join the coalition against Saddam Hussein, or in 1986 when it denied President Reagan permission for American bombers to fly over France en route to Qaddafi’s Libya. True, the French are now bombing Islamic State (ISIS) forces in Syria and Iraq, but that is because ISIS poses a direct threat to France itself.

ISIS’s brutality knows no bounds. Early medieval style beheadings, crucifixions, enslavement and rapes of women and young girls are ISIS’s calling cards. They have slaughtered or abducted thousands of civilians and have committed systematic genocide against Yazidis and Christians. Yet when reports of such acts of barbarism began to emerge in 2014, the progressive left either ignored the worst demonstrations of pure evil in our time or pooh-poohed them.

For example, the far left feminist Naomi Wolf, pretending to be an objective journalist, has demanded proof of ISIS transgressions. She questioned whether the videos of beheadings by ISIS jihadists were real. “So much about ISIS seems hyped/spun,” she said on her Facebook page in August 2014. In response to accounts of ISIS jihadists’ sexual exploitation of women, she bizarrely warned us to “remember the fake accounts of ‘the HUN’ raping Belgian women that drove everyone else into World War One.” Recall that Naomi Wolf has argued in the past that Muslim women veiling themselves are doing so as an expression of their own free choice.

The proof of ISIS’s barbarism is told both in staggering numbers and heart rendering first person accounts of women beaten and raped by the ISIS predators. An estimated 3,500 people are being held by ISIS as sexual slaves in Iraq alone, according to a United Nations report issued on January 19th by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the UN human rights office. “Those being held are predominantly women and children and come primarily from the Yezidi (sic) community, but a number are also from other ethnic and religious minority communities,” the report said.

Controversy is growing in Switzerland over an alleged secret deal, made almost 50 years ago, between the Swiss government and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

The agreement, detailed in a new book, was apparently designed to prevent terrorist attacks on Swiss territory.

In return, Switzerland would offer diplomatic support to the PLO.

It followed a series of attacks in 1969 and 1970 by Palestinian groups that caused huge concern in Switzerland.

In February 1969 gunmen opened fire at Zurich airport on an El Al plane, whose pilot died in the attack. The Swiss arrested the attackers

In 1970, a bomb on board a Swissair flight to Tel Aviv brought the plane down just outside Zurich, killing all 47 passengers and crew

In September 1970, a Swissair flight on its way to New York was hijacked. Two other airliners, one British, one American, were hijacked at the same time. All three ended up at Dawson’s Field airstrip in Jordan, where more than 300 passengers were held hostage

The Council of the European Union (EU) has disqualified itself from influencing any resolution of the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict following the release of its “Council conclusions on the Middle East Peace Process” on 18 January.
Continuing its partisan support of Arab demands the EU has reaffirmed its July 2014 position:
“The EU recalls its willingness to engage further with regional partners on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative which provides key elements for the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as the opportunity for building a regional security framework.” Key elements of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative included:
1. “Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights to the lines of June 4, 1967 as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.” 2. “The acceptance of the establishment of a Sovereign Independent Palestinian State on the Palestinian territories occupied since the 4th of June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza strip, with east Jerusalem as its capital” Israel’s agreement to negotiate with the PLO on the basis of the 2003 Bush Roadmap was contingent on the removal of all references to the Arab Peace Initiative from the Roadmap along with 13 other detailed reservations.

American Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice gave the following assurances to Israel on 23 May 2003:
“The roadmap was presented to the Government of Israel with a request from the President that it respond with contributions to this document to advance true peace. The United States Government received a response from the Government of Israel, explaining its significant concerns about the roadmap. The United States shares the view of the Government of Israel that these are real concerns and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the roadmap to fulfil the President’s vision of June 24, 2002.” This fundamental disconnect between the EU and Israel over the Arab Peace Initiative continues to detrimentally impact on their relationship.