RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/danish-heroine-goes-prison-bruce-bawer/

One of the many appalling challenges that have confronted Western European authorities since mass Muslim immigration began several decades ago is the arrival of adult – often elderly – men with underaged girls whom they identify as their wives.

Such marriages, of course, are not just permitted but encouraged under Islam. Muslims are taught to look in all things, big and small, to the example of their prophet, and they all know that one of the treasures of Muhammed’s harem – often described as his most beloved wife – was Aisha, whom he wed when she was six and deflowered when she was nine.

Needless to say, the pedofile alliances that are ubiquitous in the Islamic world – and legally sanctioned (or tacitly accepted) in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and elsewhere – are invariably arranged and forced on girls by their parents. They’re also usually cousin marriages. The BBC’s website provides a helpful whitewash – I mean, justification – of such unions: “Arranged marriages ensure that Muslim marriages are based on compatibility rather than lustful feelings.” Yes, because there’s nothing more compatible than a 70-year-old husband and an eight-year-old wife. At least you can be pretty sure that the little girl isn’t feeling a hell of a lot of lust.

Anyway, as you may recall, the year 2015 brought a flood of purported refugees to Western Europe, and in January 2016 the Danish media reported that a number of newly arrived March-December “couples,” mostly from Syria, were living together in Danish asylum centers. To her credit, Inger Støjberg – a Liberal Party member of Parliament who was then serving as Minister of Immigration, Integration, and Housing in Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s center-right government – snapped into action.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18008/turkey-poverty-economy

Erdoğan’s biggest political rival ahead of the 2023 presidential elections seems to be — poverty.

The first decade of Erdoğan’s rule actually brought relative prosperity to Turks. Per capita GDP rose sharply from $3,688 in 2002 to $11,796 in 2012… Since 2013, however, reckless nepotism, increasing authoritarianism, corruption and economic mismanagement have boosted interest-rates, inflation and unemployment, bringing per capita GDP down to an estimated $7,500.

Nearly half of Turkish workers are minimum wage earners, meaning that millions of families must survive on $233 a month

Unfortunately, since early 2018, the lira has been on a downward slide due to constant geopolitical tensions with the West, widening current account deficits, shrinking foreign currency reserves and mounting public debt.

As the lira crashes to insane historic lows, local salaries are also severely devalued.

Erdoğan is heading fast to becoming the victim of his own miscalculations: a dramatically mismanaged economy and geostrategic challenges that went beyond Turkey’s political and military might.

Perhaps these missteps will be the beginning of the end of Erdoğan’s ugly populism — his neo-Ottoman ambitions that have caused major damage to Turkey’s economy as well as the country’s international isolation.

A punishing economic crisis in 2000-2001, the worst ever in modern Turkish history, pushed millions of Turks below the poverty line. In 2002, Turks went to the ballot box to punish a ruling coalition of mainstream parties and elected as prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. By a simple twist of fate, nearly two decades later, Erdoğan’s biggest political rival ahead of the 2023 presidential elections seems to be — poverty.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/12/denmark-minister-sentenced-prison-trying-protect-daniel-greenfield/

As messed up as the United States may be these days, the Europeans periodically remind us that it gets worse. Much worse.

It’s hard to think of a more backward and warped phenomenon than the trial of former immigration minister Inger Støjberg, who tried to stop child marriage and the traffic of underage girls into the country during the Muslim migrant crisis. Or the resulting guilty verdict.

Inger Støjberg, a former Danish immigration minister and high-profile government figure during Europe’s 2015 migration crisis, was sentenced to 60 days in jail on Monday after an order she issued in 2016 was ruled illegal. 

Støjberg had said that if a member of a married couple seeking asylum in Denmark was found to be under 18 years old — the legal age for marriage in Denmark — then the couple should be separated and housed in separate asylum centers. 

Støjberg said at the time she was trying to protect “child brides” who may have been forced into marriage against their will before coming to Denmark. 

This is political payback for her attempt to stop the invasion. And it’s meant to send a message to any other political leader with the courage to put their finger in the dike. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/meet-new-iranian-president-norwegian-parliament-bruce-bawer/

In Norway, the king is head of state, and the prime minister is head of government. But there’s a third individual who, under law, is ranked in the official hierarchy ahead of any political figure and just after the sovereign himself. That person is the president of Stortinget, Norway’s Parliament.

As a result of the national elections on September 13, the so-called conservative coalition under Erna Solberg that had governed since 2013 was replaced by a center-left coalition under the new prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre. Eva Kristin Hansen, a Labor Party Member of Parliament from the northern county of Sør-Trøndelag, was named president of Parliament.

Barely weeks after her installation, Hansen was at the center of a minor controversy. The Christian People’s Party – which is the traditional home of Norway’s religious right and which, dwindling steadily in size over the last generation, clung on to power by its fingernails after the September elections, winning 3.8% of the vote and only three out of 169 seats – demanded that nursing Members of Parliament be allowed to breast-feed in the parliamentary chamber. Hansen responded by saying that nobody had ever told them they couldn’t, and that she’d take action to ensure that this was understood by all.

Well, that one was resolved easily enough. But a bigger scandal was waiting in the wings. In November, it was revealed that Hansen, who represents the city of Trondheim, 250 miles north of Oslo, the capital, has actually lived since 2014 in Ski, a town just outside of Oslo. To maintain her official residency in Trondheim, she’d listed a room in the home of Trond Giske, a Labor politician who resigned from Parliament in 2018 after a sexual-harassment scandal, as her official residence.

But that wasn’t all. Until 2017, Hansen had also occupied, at the taxpayers’ expense, a furnished government-supplied apartment in Oslo –  a clear violation of rules requiring that Members of Parliament live at least 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Oslo to qualify for one of these freebies. She was, it turned out, one of several MPs who’d cheated the public in this fashion. While keeping her seat in Parliament, Hansen stepped down as president of Parliament.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18026/arab-apartheid

“Not all of the professions will be opened to Palestinians under the new decree….” — L’Orient Today, December 8, 2021.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon “are socially marginalized, have very limited civil, social, political and economic rights, including restricted access to the Government of Lebanon’s public health, educational and social services and face significant restrictions on their right to work and right to own property.” — UNRWA, September 2020.

There are several reasons why the Lebanese do not want the Palestinians. One reason is that since the 1970s, the Palestinians have brought war and destruction to Lebanon and turned refugee camps into bases for terror groups.

“It is time to end this history of discrimination and systematic segregation… Qualified Palestinians should be allowed to practice their professions, especially in fields where they are most needed…. Very few Lebanese would share my view.” — Sawssan Abou-Zahr, senior Lebanese journalist, Reliefweb, August 1, 2021.

What is clear…is that the international community has long been ignoring the abuses and human rights violations by an Arab country against the Palestinians.

The demonization of Israel by so many journalists, officials and so-called human-rights groups leaves little time to ask why a Palestinian in Lebanon is not permitted to practice medicine while a significant portion of the medical staff at Israeli hospitals consists of Arab doctors and nurses.

The issue of Arab apartheid and discrimination recently resurfaced after a Lebanese minister announced that his country decided to allow Palestinians to work in several sectors that were until now reserved just for Lebanese nationals.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/chinas-economic-world-war/

The nation’s admission 20 years ago into the WTO was a grave mistake. Congress can begin to rectify this error by immediately terminating Beijing’s special trade status.

T wenty years ago today, China joined the World Trade Organization with the promise of greater peace and prosperity for all mankind. As he championed this historic mistake, then–president Bill Clinton patronizingly said, “It is ironic, I think, that so many Americans are concerned about the impact on the world of a strong China in the 21st century.” We are now witnessing how right those Americans were.

Over the past two decades, the government of China has weaponized its nearly $17 trillion economy to wage an unrelenting economic world war that has brought pain to virtually every continent and ruin to countless communities across the globe.

Since 2001, China’s economy has grown nearly 1,200 percent, transforming from a third-rate backwater into the second-largest economy, largest exporter, and dominant industrial power in the world. The PRC today makes one-quarter of the world’s automobiles, a third of all merchant ships, 40 percent of mobile phones, 70 percent of televisions, and 96 percent of shipping containers.

More worrisome, China has gained a stranglehold over the production of many essential materials and is acquiring a dominant position in key technology areas. China manufactures more than half of the world’s steel, produces two-thirds of the active ingredients in our generic drugs, and processes 85 percent of rare-earth elements. China is also making strides in the fields of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, possesses 200 of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers, and produces 70 percent of the world’s drones.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18025/iran-exporting-revolution

This may be an exaggeration, but the Kayhan editorial says that without the “Resistance Front” there would be no Iran and, of course, no Iraq, no Syria, no Lebanon, and no Yemen. Control of the four Arab countries is vital for protecting the Islamic Revolution.

In that context, Tehran has been pumping cash and weapons into regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and, until recently, Zimbabwe. It has also been in alliance with anti-war groups in Europe and North America while funding numerous non-Muslim politicians and celebrities across the Middle East.

Non-Shiite Palestinian outfits such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have also been on the payroll of the “Resistance Front” for decades.

[W]e now know that the “Supreme Guide” is ready to take bread away from Iranians so that he can continue fattening Bashar al-Assad, Hassan Nasrallah and scores of other “for sale” personalities across the world.

To be able to do that, Khamenei is counting on US President Joe Biden to ease some of the sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump.

Zarif estimated that Tehran needed a minimum of $60 billion a year to pay its military and security personnel, keep the “Resistance Front” afloat and continue “exporting” revolution.

Khamenei demands that the P5+1 deposit $3 billion a month in a German bank and another $1 billion monthly in a French bank from Iran’s frozen assets, while allowing the Islamic Republic to increase oil exports to 2.5 million barrels a day.

His [Khamenei’s] recipe is simple: Live from one day to another but, even if you can’t export oil, make sure that you can continue exporting revolution. The Khomeinist system can survive without exporting oil, but can’t do so if it stops exporting revolution.

“The greatest achievement of Imam Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution!”

This is how the daily Kayhan in Tehran, believed to reflect the views of “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, describes what it labels a “Resistance Front” led by Iran.

The paper’s editorial does not say why it needs to raise the controversial issue at this time. One possible reason may be a behind-the-scenes debate about the need for reviewing a policy that has cost Iran billions of dollars over the past decades.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/boris-johnson-trouble-katie-hopkins/

The latest announcement regarding new lockdown restrictions here in the UK has transpired. It’s the so-called Plan B.

I appreciate that Plan B has a very different meaning in the USA, where it is available in CVS for those who have forgotten contraception is necessary to avoid pregnancy. But Plan B in the UK, as announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson at a press briefing, means the Brits are once more reduced to working from home, masking up in all places, and facing the threat of a complete lockdown for Christmas.

We can all agree it is pointless trying to rationalize with the irrational. It serves no purpose to repeat the obvious evidence that the lockdowns are neither a) necessary nor b) effective.

Something far more sinister than an irrational government policy is at play. And Middle England – that great barometer called the voice of the ordinary Brit – is not playing ball anymore.

On the same day that Boris announced Plan B measures, horrible footage was “leaked” to the press about a Christmas Party held at Number 10 Downing Street – Boris’s actual home – with cheese, wine, Secret Santas, and no social distancing. The kicker: this was December 2021.

It was a practice press conference for Boris Johnson’s spokesperson Allegra Stratton, but both the optics and the content are crucifying for a supposedly serious government determined for us to believe they are “following the science” and that “no rules were broken.”