RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/frances-macron-tries-reclassify-muslim-terrorism-daniel-greenfield/

There’s hardly a Muslim terrorist attack committed by a single perpetrator in Europe or America in the last five years that the authorities and the media haven’t tried to spin as mental illness.

Both Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, the Syrian Muslim mass killer who shot up a Boulder supermarket, and Faisal Akram, who took a Texas temple hostage to secure the release of ‘Lady Al Qaeda’, had their attacks blamed on mental illness.

But France continues to lead the world in whitewashing Muslim terrorism as mental illness.

When Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Jewish kindergarten director, was murdered by her Muslim neighbor while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”, the authorities gave her antisemitic killer a pass because his pot smoking had supposedly brought on a “psychotic” episode.

The Halimi murder had strong echoes of the previous killing of a Jewish DJ by a Muslim killer where the expert shrink had insisted that “it is not an anti-Semitic act but an act of delirium”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-60186538

North Korea has conducted what is thought to be its biggest missile launch since 2017.

It said the ballistic missile was an intermediate range Hwasong-12.

Japan and South Korea said it reached a maximum altitude of 2,000km before coming down in the Sea of Japan or East Sea. Both countries have condemned the launch, the seventh test this month.

The UN prohibits North Korea from ballistic and nuclear weapons tests, and has imposed strict sanctions.

But the East Asian state regularly defies the ban, and leader Kim Jong-un has vowed to bolster his country’s defences.

North Korean state news agency KCNA said the missile had been launched to “verify its accuracy”. Mr Kim was reportedly not present.

It was launched to “the highest angle firing system from the north-western area to the East Sea of Korea in consideration of the security of the neighbouring countries”, the agency added.

Seoul-based website NK News tweeted the first pictures from the launch.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/01/29/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-canadian-today-n1554296

I have always thought of myself as a normal and law-abiding citizen of Canada — nothing special, merely respectable on the whole, reasonably informed, a responsible voter, and a contributor to the well-being of the country, no different from many of my fellow Canadians. I have taught several generations of students, including Police Tech classes, lectured as a Canadian scholar at embassies and universities abroad, and traveled under the auspices of the Department of External Affairs to represent the country at Canada Day ceremonies in Europe. My wife was a professor at two major Canadian universities, organized several large-scale conferences on Canadian themes, sponsored doctoral candidates from foreign countries who wished to study in and learn about Canada, and authored as well as edited several books on Canadian history, literature, and culture.

In short, we believed that we were decent and productive Canadian citizens. The result is that we are now pariahs in our own country.

The reason for this strange turn of events is common knowledge. We object to the ruinous official response to the pandemic — the mask mandates, the lockdowns and curfews, and now the mandatory vaccination protocols and vaxxports. My research over the last eighteen months and counting has been thorough and my determinations based on dispositive evidence. My working premise is to always go where the genuine evidence leads, even if it should make me feel uncomfortable.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18179/persecution-of-christians-december

Days before Christmas, on December 17, a Muslim cleric told his congregation, following mosque prayers, that wishing non-Muslims a Merry Christmas is “like congratulating murderers and pedophiles” — Breitbart.com, December 23, 2021, Canada.

The imam concluded by calling on Allah to “give strength to Islam and Muslims, to humiliate infidels and polytheists, to destroy the enemies of (our) religion and to annihilate heretics and atheists.” — Breitbart.com, December 23, 2021, Canada.

“Get lost, this [France] is not your country….” — Muslims confronting a Catholic procession, Medforth.biz, December 11, 2021, Nanterre, France.

After decapitating a Christian pastor, Islamic State-linked Muslims handed the pastor’s severed head to his widow and ordered her to deliver it to the police. — Daily Mail, December 17, Mozambique.

“The [ISIS-linked] group… forced younger, healthy-looking, and lighter-skinned women and girls in their custody to ‘marry’ their fighters, who enslave and sexually abuse them.” — Human Rights Watch, December 7, 2021, Mozambique.

“Quranic texts are not the only way to teach Arabic in schools. There are other methods such as literature, poetry and rhetoric…. The government always backs down from any removal of Quranic texts in school curricula or the subject of religion, fearing attacks and criticism by extremist groups.” — Isaac Hanna, journalist and head of the Egyptian Association for Enlightenment, Al Monitor, December 15, 2021, Egypt.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18181/russia-ukraine

Putin’s propaganda tries to portray NATO as the putative invader. At the same time, he makes much of Russia’s money out of selling oil and gas to NATO members in Europe who, in turn, allow his money to be nested in their banks.

Putin tries to pose as a potential victim of a non-existent aggression.

Putin seems to be dreaming of a cordon sanitaire for Russia, one that is more of a cultural-political shield rather than a glacis in military terms. He wants Russia surrounded by Finlandized countries from China to the Caspian Basin, the Middle East and East and Central Europe.

Rather than threatening invasion, Putin should try to make his Russia so attractive that Ukrainians and others wish to choose it as a model rather than looking to old Western democracies. That, however, means that Russia must change and deal with its centuries-long identity crisis between European aspirations and Asiatic fears.

By the time you read this article, Russian troops may have entered Ukraine or even captured its capital Kiev in a blitzkrieg that would have made Field Marshal von Paulus green with envy. Or, maybe you would witness nothing but more sabre rattling by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18143/turkey-istanbul-mayor-erdogan

“If we lose Istanbul, we lose Turkey.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

It appears that [Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu’s] “terrorists” are actually people who are being probed for links with illegal organizations but who have not been prosecuted — let alone being found guilty by courts.

This kind of intimidation, further victimizing Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu in the eyes of the voters, will simply boost his popularity — and at a time when Erdoğan’s ratings are plummeting.

Erdoğan, it seems, did not want opposition mayors to gain further popularity by helping the poor.

It would be premature to conclude that there will be a historic shift in Turkish politics in 2023. All the same, the reports are real, and so are Erdoğan’s fears, panic and increasingly reckless governance.

Turkey’s secular state establishment was shocked when a young militant Islamist won the mayoral elections in Turkey’s biggest city, Istanbul, in 1994. “Who wins Istanbul wins Turkey,” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, at that time Istanbul’s mayor, would often say. History would prove him right.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/23/britain-has-a-muslim-anti-semitism-problem/

Rakib Ehsan is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and a patron of Muslims Against Anti-Semitism (MAAS).

Highly segregated communities have become breeding grounds for Islamism and anti-Jew hatred.

On 15 January, Malik Faisal Akram, a 44-year-old British Pakistani Muslim from Blackburn in north-west England, took four people hostage at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. In return for their release, he called on the US authorities to free Islamist terrorist Aafia Siddiqui from nearby Fort Worth prison. In a phone call during the siege to his brother, he said that ‘maybe [the authorities will] have compassion for fucking Jews’. An FBI hostage rescue team eventually entered the synagogue and shot Akram dead.

Despite the FBI’s attempt to downplay Akram’s anti-Semitism, he was clearly motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment. He targeted a synagogue. He used anti-Semitic language. And he was reported to the UK police a year ago for threatening to bomb and kill Jews. How did we get here? How has it come to pass that a British Islamist anti-Semite has carried out an act of terror at an American synagogue? And how should we respond to it?

Anti-Semitism in British Muslim communities

British citizens’ involvement in anti-Jewish Islamist terrorism is sadly nothing new. Back in July 2012, married couple Mohammed Sajid Khan and Shasta Khan were both jailed for planning terror attack on Jewish targets in Greater Manchester. After a domestic dispute at their home, police discovered a stash of terror-related material which included beheading videos, Islamist propaganda glorifying Osama bin Laden, and bomb-making manuals. Another married couple, Ummarayiat Mirza and Madihah Taheer, were both sentenced to prison in December 2017 for plotting a terror attack in Birmingham. Targets included a city-centre synagogue.

https://henryjacksonsociety.org/

We are currently living through what many observers regard as the most dangerous geopolitical crisis for a generation. Russia has massed a vast military force along its border with Ukraine and is threatening to unleash a full-scale invasion of the country if its demands are not met. The ensuing conflict would likely be the largest in Europe since WWII, with unclear but dire consequences for the entire continent.

At the heart of this crisis is one man’s refusal to accept the verdict of the Cold War and his burning resentment at modern Russia’s diminished standing on the global stage. Throughout his political career, Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his desire to revive Russia’s international prestige and address the perceived geopolitical injustices of the recent past. These imperial ambitions have found expression in Putin’s increasingly public obsession with Ukraine, a country whose very existence has come to embody the Russian ruler’s darkest fears and his many historical grievances.

A clear understanding of Putin’s Ukraine obsession is essential for anyone who wishes to make sense of the current crisis. Luckily, this task has been made considerably easier by the summer 2021 publication of a 5,000-word essay on the topic authored by Vladimir Putin himself.

Entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” Putin’s remarkable treatise showcases his contempt for Ukrainian statehood and his belief in the artificial nature of the country’s current separation from Russia, which he blames on insidious outside influences. Putin the amateur historian states unequivocally that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people” and concludes by declaring “I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”

The Russian president’s tract has certainly helped raise international awareness of his Ukraine obsession. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace recently penned his own article on the subject and drew many alarming conclusions from his sober analysis of Putin’s own words. “President Putin’s article completely ignores the wishes of the citizens of Ukraine, while evoking that same type of ethno-nationalism which played out across Europe for centuries and still has the potential to awaken the same destructive forces of ancient hatred,” noted Wallace. Nevertheless, relatively few Western politicians or policymakers appear to have fully grasped the scale or implications of Putin’s preoccupation with Ukraine.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18135/erdogan-ambitions-east

Obsessed with reviving Turks’ imperial days of glory, Erdoğan is turning to Turkey’s east to create a pan-Turkic/Islamist strategic alliance consisting of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan, with part-time, tactical alliances with Iran, Qatar and Bangladesh.

The idea is to bring together three Muslim nations: NATO member Turkey; Azerbaijan with its rich hydrocarbon resources and growing military capabilities; and Pakistan with its nuclear weapons.

It is not a coincidence that Erdoğan has visited Azerbaijan more than 20 times during his presidency.

Ankara appears to hope that the U.S. exit from Afghanistan has created space for the leadership role of Turkey and Pakistan.

It all looks promising. Except it is not.

The Turkey-led move to upgrade Turkic-speaking states’ cooperation into a political unit that could weaken Beijing’s and Moscow’s influence in Central Asia will no doubt come under close Chinese and Russian scrutiny.

In theory, Iran is Turkey’s “Muslim brother.” In reality, it is (Sunni) Turkey’s (Shia) sectarian adversary, historical rival and cross-border contender in Shia-majority Iraq and Shia-ruled Syria.

And, finally, Russia. Azerbaijan is still more of a Russian turf, than a Turkish one. More Azeris speak Russian than those who love to roar the Turkic slogan “one nation, two states.” Pakistan remains China’s strongest ally and appears happy to consider itself Chinese territory.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ambitious neo-Ottoman policy calculus has earned Turkey unprecedented international isolation. Turkey won the title of being the world’s only country that was sanctioned by all of the United States, Russia and the European Union in the past five years. Turkey’s negotiations for full membership in the EU have come to a halt and the European Council has started infringement procedures against NATO’s only Muslim member state. Obsessed with reviving Turks’ imperial days of glory, Erdoğan is turning to Turkey’s east to create a pan-Turkic/Islamist strategic alliance consisting of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan, with part-time, tactical alliances with Iran, Qatar and Bangladesh.

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2022/01/25/putins-waited-30-years-to-sort-out-ukraine-n1552603

“Ukraine’s induction into the Western alliance system would mean that the US missiles could hit Moscow in 5 minutes, rendering Russian air defence systems ineffectual and obsolete,” writes former top Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar in his blog. Since 1991, when the U.S. and Germany assured Gorbachev that NATO would NOT expand eastward if Russia agreed to German unification, Russia has believed that the West betrayed a solemn commitment by pushing NATO towards Russia’s border (this is disputed by most U.S. sources).

Russia thinks in terms of firepower and facts on the ground. Putin has spent the past dozen years turning Russia’s armed forces into a well-armed, efficient instrument (it took less than 24 hours to put Russia’s 6th Airborne into Kazakhstan and just three days to kill everyone who didn’t like it). He’s lurked in the tall grass waiting for an opportunity to settle accounts.

Why now? Because he can. U.S. sanctions mean less than they did in the past because China wants as much overland energy supply as it can get (in a scrap, the U.S. Navy could interdict tanker supply from the Persian Gulf). China and Russia are joined at the hip in high-tech (Huawei has a huge presence there). The specter of a Russian-Chinese alliance spooks the West, with good reason.

The Europeans don’t want a fight with Russia. When Germany’s equivalent of the secretary of the Navy, Admiral Schoenbach, said last week that Putin “deserves respect,” he was forced to resign, but he spoke for the overwhelming majority of Germans.

NATO is weak, China is ascendant, and the U.S. is confused; Russia is well-armed and prepared. That’s why Putin is making his move now.