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Cold Comfort from Norway Rachael Kohn

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/the-middle-east/cold-comfort-from-norway/
Norway’s pride in its democracy has been tainted by the May recognition of Palestine

Norway, the home of the Oslo Accords and the Nobel Peace Prize, is proud of its democracy. Every May 17, as the country emerges from its long dark winter, the capital is alive with marching bands and colourful parades of young and old dressed in their elaborate national costumes, to mark the day in 1814 when the country’s constitution was passed. It also signalled the end of 434 years of Danish rule, which by all accounts was so benign that most Norwegians did not seek independence. (Even then, Norway was given as a prize to Sweden, which attacked and defeated Denmark for backing Napoleon, but that’s another story that lasted until 1905.) Ten years ago the bicentenary of the 1814 constitution was a huge affair.

Not to let Norway’s political pride fade, in May 2024 an even greater celebration was mounted to commemorate 750 years of the country’s democratic origins. How it jumped from 1814 back to 1274 is a story briefly told on a series of billboards that stand in front of the Parliament (Storting) in Oslo. In this version, the Landslov, Norway’s first nationwide code of law, issued by King Magnus VI between 1274 and 1276, established a centralised authority for the first time over a population of perhaps 500,000, scattered across a land divided by high mountains, deep rivers and long dark winters. Consisting of four regional law books and covering marriage, property and inheritance, as well as the rules of royal succession and Christian laws, the Landslov attempted to exert control over the isolated farms and impoverished hamlets which were still vulnerable to the remnants of Viking overlords whose rule had formally ended in 1066.

How the Landslov is construed as the origin of Norwegian democracy comes down to the notion that everyone was effectively under the same law, which emphasised the qualities of “justice, truth, peace and grace, as opposed to fear, monetary gifts, hostility or alliances”. What is excluded from the narrative erected in front of the Parliament is that the Landslov attributed these virtues to the Christian laws it promulgated, which contained a prologue that emphasised the Christian faith and reflected the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Fourth Lateran Council. The Landslov would be administered through what had been local assemblies that were then turned into courts of law enforcing the new law code.

The Islamization of Bangladesh by Muhammad Yunus – Backed by Obama, Soros, Clintons by Keya Mukherjee

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21007/islamization-of-bangladesh

Meanwhile, it appears as if Yunus is waiting for the result of the November 5 presidential election in the US. A victory by Kamala Harris could pave the way for him to remain in power indefinitely and complete the process of Islamizing Bangladesh.

“New Delhi is getting increasingly concerned that banned militant outfits like Jamaat-e-Islami and even radical organisations like Hizb ut Tahrir may soon enter mainstream politics in Bangladesh, thereby posing security challenges not just for India but for the entire South Asian region…” – The Anandabazar Patrika, September 14, 2024.

Yunus is already under pressure to lift the ban imposed on Hizb ut Tahrir by Sheikh Hasina’s previous government in 2009.

“Delighted to see an old friend of my father and the foundation, Nobel Prize winner @professormuhammadyunus, interim leader of Bangladesh, who stepped in to lead Bangladesh towards a peaceful future based on equity and fairness.” — Alexander Soros, Instagram, October 2, 2024.

We Will Not Let Our Country and Continent Be Destroyed by Geert Wilders

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20992/country-continent-destroyed

We choose the power of reason.
And we will win.
Here in the Netherlands and in Israel.

Am Israel Chai. [Israel will live.]

The hatred of extreme left-wing agitators and parts of the left-liberal elite in politics and the media against our Jewish compatriots and the State of Israel since the barbaric massacre of innocent civilians on October 7, 2023, has directly fueled anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews.

It started immediately after October 7 with inflammatory demonstrations of millions of people with false flags and slogans in many European capitals, including many non-Western immigrants, who thereby demonstrated that they do not share any of our values ​​and do not belong here. Then followed the betrayal at universities and in parts of our media and politics. Both nationally and internationally, from the [Netherlands] House of Representatives to the EU and UN, as well as in newspapers and on TV. Every day again. There are now even police officers who refuse to protect Jewish objects and instead of being fired on the spot, their cowardly police chiefs show understanding.

We are as strong as our weakest link. And there are so many weak links. All of whom will be commemorating the massacres of a year ago on Monday with packs of butter on their heads [Dutch expression for hypocrites].

I will always continue to point out their cowardice. And stand up for our values, culture and traditions. That also distinguishes us from the hostile killing machines of Hamas cum suis and the defenders of all their evil. They love death but we love life. And we defend our way of life with everything we have. And so we resist with sincere and unprecedented strength against the unfortunately growing hatred of Jews and Israel.

Against giving away our country and continent to migrants who do not share our values. Against politicians, journalists and education administrators who shamelessly choose the side of evil and whose moral compass now lies in Gaza.

Talibanization of Bangladesh: Biden-Harris Administration, ‘Human Rights’ Groups Silent by Keya Mukherjee

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20986/talibanization-of-bangladesh-biden-harris

Islamist and jihadist student protesters under [Muhamad] Yunus’s leadership have established an alternative government in the country, reminiscent of Iran’s private militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Dozens of individuals, including Hindus, are falling victim to mob justice, while the perpetrators of these gruesome crimes enjoy impunity.

Notably, Muhammad Yunus is one of the major donors to the Clinton Foundation. According to a cable leaked by Wikileaks, in 2007, Hillary Clinton made frantic efforts and exerted pressure on the Bangladesh Army to appoint her friend Yunus as head of the then military-backed interim government.

Since Yunus enjoys the full support of the Biden-Harris administration, as well as Democratic Party leaders such as Barack Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, not one of the rights groups, including Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, has issued a statement condemning the attacks, rapes and murders in Bangladesh.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is an anti-democratic Islamist organization that advocates for the establishment of a caliphate. It is banned in Bangladesh and several other countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States.

[W]ill Bangladesh’s descent into radicalism continue unchecked, or will the international community finally confront the growing Talibanization threatening the stability of the region?

Days after Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee the country amidst protests led by Jamaat-e-Islami, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Hizb ut-Tahrir, Hefazat-e-Islam, and other Islamist forces, all charges against Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani, the chief of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT)—later rebranded as Ansar Al Islam—were dropped. Rahmani, along with dozens of imprisoned Islamists and jihadists, was released. Shortly after his release, Rahmani appeared in a viral video, calling on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to “free Bengal from Modi’s rule and declare its independence.”

The fight for free speech in Ireland isn’t over yet The government has shelved its proposed hate-speech laws, but this is not the end of its censorious agenda. Lorcan Price

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/01/the-fight-for-free-speech-in-ireland-isnt-over-yet/

Lorcán Price is an Irish barrister and legal counsel for ADF International. He has been advising a coalition of Irish politicians opposed to the hate-speech bill.

The Irish government’s mission to make Ireland the wokest place in the Western world suffered a setback late last week, when justice minister Helen McEntee quietly announced that the government was dropping its plan for highly controversial new hate-speech laws.

These proposed speech restrictions were included in the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill. McEntee has now conceded that ‘the incitement-to-hatred element [of the bill] does not have a consensus’. Describing these proposed hate-speech laws as lacking ‘consensus’ is a piece of masterful understatement. The legislation – which will live on with the hate-speech elements removed – has attracted criticism for its far-reaching implications for free speech, not just in Ireland but also across the West.

And with good reason. Dublin is home to the European HQs of various major tech and social-media companies, such as Meta, Google and X. If it had been introduced in its original form, the bill would have had a huge impact on social-media users across Europe and further afield, as those companies based in Ireland would have been regulated under the new laws. This would have given the domestic Irish legislation outsized global significance.

The original bill criminalised ‘incitement to hatred’, but its definition of hatred was completely circular. Ministers rejected all attempts to introduce a more workable and clear definition into the law, because doing so would make convictions ‘significantly more difficult to secure’.

The vague definitions didn’t stop there. The bill would have criminalised ‘hatred’ expressed against someone on the basis of their ‘gender identity’, which was defined as the ‘gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female’.

Bizarre and confusing passages such as this were not drafting mistakes. They were a central feature of the proposed law, designed to create a state of uncertainty as to what would constitute illegal ‘hate speech’.

Defeating Hezbollah Will Strengthen the West by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20983/defeating-hezbollah

An Israeli victory against Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon is vital to guaranteeing the security of the entire Western alliance. It will send a clear signal to Iran — Hezbollah’s paymasters — that the ayatollahs’ unremitting campaign against the West and its allies is ultimately doomed to failure.

[A]n estimated 90,000 Israelis being forced to flee their homes, leaving large swathes of northern Israel deserted. Hezbollah has said that those Israelis will not be able to return to their homes, raising concerns that Hezbollah, which had been planning to invade northern Israel, might also be planning to occupy it.

[United Nations Secretary-General António] Guterres, referring to Israel, announced that the war “did not happen in a vacuum.” Ironically, it is Guterres himself who is responsible for creating the non-vacuum that ignited the situation. According to UN Security Resolution 1701, it was the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, under the direction of Guterres, that was tasked with “maintaining security and stability throughout south Lebanon….” It didn’t.

Since the IDF launched its military campaign against Hezbollah, Israel has faced the usual barrage of criticism over civilian casualties.

The reality, though, is that the group most responsible for causing casualties is Hezbollah which, like its Iranian-backed ally Hamas in Gaza, has no qualms about putting innocent Lebanese civilians in harm’s way.

Israel’s offensive to destroy Hezbollah, therefore, is very much in the West’s interests in terms of safeguarding its future security, a consideration Western leaders should take on board when seeking to address the deepening crisis in the Middle East.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20983/defeating-hezbollah

An Israeli victory against Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon is vital to guaranteeing the security of the entire Western alliance. It will send a clear signal to Iran — Hezbollah’s paymasters — that the ayatollahs’ unremitting campaign against the West and its allies is ultimately doomed to failure.

[A]n estimated 90,000 Israelis being forced to flee their homes, leaving large swathes of northern Israel deserted. Hezbollah has said that those Israelis will not be able to return to their homes, raising concerns that Hezbollah, which had been planning to invade northern Israel, might also be planning to occupy it.

[United Nations Secretary-General António] Guterres, referring to Israel, announced that the war “did not happen in a vacuum.” Ironically, it is Guterres himself who is responsible for creating the non-vacuum that ignited the situation. According to UN Security Resolution 1701, it was the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, under the direction of Guterres, that was tasked with “maintaining security and stability throughout south Lebanon….” It didn’t.

Since the IDF launched its military campaign against Hezbollah, Israel has faced the usual barrage of criticism over civilian casualties.

The reality, though, is that the group most responsible for causing casualties is Hezbollah which, like its Iranian-backed ally Hamas in Gaza, has no qualms about putting innocent Lebanese civilians in harm’s way.

Israel’s offensive to destroy Hezbollah, therefore, is very much in the West’s interests in terms of safeguarding its future security, a consideration Western leaders should take on board when seeking to address the deepening crisis in the Middle East.

End of Empire: Careful What You Wish For Mervyn Bendle

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/civilisation/the-end-of-empire-careful-what-you-wish-for/

“The Future So ended civilization in the once thriving Roman province of Britainnia. The lessons for Australia seem obvious: the collapse of an Imperial order brings only economic and political chaos, death and destruction, and regression into an era of civilizational darkness from which it takes many centuries to emerge, if ever. Perhaps those shrill ideologues, academics, teachers, media propagandists, and other useful idiots demanding the end of American Imperialism, and an ill-defined ‘End of Empire’ should do some historical research or, at the very least, should be challenged to justify their nihilistic demands. The global reality is clear, we live in an increasingly dangerous and uncivilized world where the sole guarantor of our liberal democratic system and way of life is the United States: Make America Great Again!”

The End of Empire For many years it has been de rigueur on the Left to denounce ‘American Imperialism’ and demand the end of ‘the American Empire’, usually in favour of an ill-defined ‘socialist alternative’, or some global socialist system (modelled on the European Union, or the United Nations, or Communist China) or, at an even more extreme level, a global Islamist theocracy (modelled on Iran or the Taliban). Such demands are quite shrill in Australia and are emitted with monotonous regularity by the Greens, the Socialist Left of the ALP, Islamist organizations, the various Trotskyite groupuscules, most academics and teachers in the humanities and social sciences, and much of the media and the arts. But what has been the historical experience when empires die? And, specifically, how has such an event impacted on nations, such as Australia, that exist on the periphery of an empire?

Case Study: Roman Britain  The fate of Roman Britain provides a case study of this traumatic experience. Indeed, it provides a particularly vivid example of what happens on ‘the edge of empire’ when that empire dies, and it is not at all a re-assuring picture. The Fall of Rome and the sacking of the eternal city had ramifications not only for the Italian Peninsula but for all the Roman provinces, which were closely integrated into the Imperial system; as the centre fell apart they found themselves exposed to unprecedented internal stresses and external threats, which they were ultimately unable to resist, plunging into the Dark Ages from which it took a millennium to emerge.

Britannia Perched in the Great Ocean, on the farthest margins of the Empire, by the beginning of the 5th Century, the island province of Britannia had enjoyed some 300 years of the Pax Romana. In that time, its settled and cultivated area had expanded inland from the southern and Channel coasts across fertile and productive fields to the frontiers of Scotland and Wales, beyond which lived ancient tribal societies with little interest in being integrated into an Imperial system, the immensity and complexity of which they couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

Our Ukrainian War Narrative—Paradoxes, Obsessions, and Disconnects Why does the Biden-Harris administration deify Zelensky and Ukraine but demonize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/30/our-ukrainian-war-narrative-paradoxes-obsessions-and-disconnects/

About half of America sympathizes with Ukraine’s plight and wishes to arm it.

After all, Kyiv was attacked preemptively by Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, in an effort to decapitate its government and turn the country into a Russian satellite, perhaps similar to the status of a Belarus or Chechnya.

The heroic ability of the Ukrainians to save Kyiv and to stop the Russian assault beyond the occupied Donbas and Crimea has hinged on Western weapons deliveries, specifically from European NATO countries and, to a far greater extent, the United States.

But now, after a reported 1 million combined dead, wounded, or missing Ukrainians and Russians (the actual figure is probably far higher), the war remains deadlocked with no end in sight.

Putin serially threatens to break the static front with tactical nuclear weapons. The Europeans are tiring. And no one in the United States has come up with a strategy to push back the Russians from either their February 2022 demarcation points or their post-2014 occupation of Ukrainian borderlands.

The result is a lot of disconnects, paradoxes, and mysteries about the war, the Biden administration’s role in it, and the general geostrategic landscape surrounding the conflict.

Ukrainian Election Interference?

Americans are demonized by the Uniparty elites for having doubts about their blank-check support for Ukraine. And while the American people are mostly anti-Putin, they are not always pro-Ukraine.

But why is that so?

For one, we know that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.

Iran’s Newest Proxy: Sudan by Peter Hoextra

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20982/iran-newest-proxy-sudan

Iran, having just had two of its major proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, seriously degraded, is apparently setting its sights on a new, “consolation prize” proxy to use as an additional base of operations: Sudan.

Iran’s strategy of supporting and infiltrating other countries and terrorist groups — as it has done in Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Lebanon, Venezuela and Yemen — appears as yet another extension of its strategy of moving into territories with weak or unstable governments to expand its influence throughout the Middle East, to create new fronts for its campaign to destroy Israel and bring down the world order led by the West.

A major port and foothold in Sudan will enable Iran to accomplish two of its goals: to continue encircling Israel in a “ring of fire” by opening yet another front from which to attack the small Jewish nation from the southwest, and to further control all international shipping in the Red Sea.

The Sudanese Armed Forces, led by [Sudanese General Abdel Fattah] Al-Burhan… although invited [for peace talks], was not represented. “We will not go to Geneva,” Al-Burhan told reporters in Port Sudan, at the time; “we will fight for 100 years.”

Al-Burhan nevertheless showed up at the UN recently, asking for talks. Why did he not respect the offer from the US and the international community when they gave him that opportunity in Geneva? Might the incident suggest a lack of candor?

Openly stating its ambition to dominate the Middle East — and to drive US forces out of the region presumably to make it easier to do so – Iran, for 40 years, through force and intimidation, has been seeking to dominate its neighbors in the Middle East, not just Israel, but also Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Iran’s militias and proxies have been firing, as well, on American assets in the region, more than 160 times just in the last year, with virtually no response from the US. Iran has also been extending its reach into Africa, especially with the increasing collaboration of two powerful allies: China and Russia.

Iran’s influence is not presently confined to any region. Iran has, for instance, been “exporting the revolution” to the Western Hemisphere, particularly, as mentioned, Venezuela, an ideal base from which to harass the “Big Satan,” especially when Iran will have nuclear weapons, which are reportedly close to being “taken public.”

This new, potential land-grab by Iran, in collaboration with Russia and China, poses yet another serious security threat not only to Israel, but also to the entire region and the United States. It is hoped that the US government, and whoever wins the November election, will give this emerging flashpoint urgent attention.

Slaughter in Bangladesh and the International Cover-Up by Vijay Patel

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20979/slaughter-in-bangladesh

Muhammad Yunus is one of the major donors of Clinton Foundation, and according to a cable leaked by Wikileaks, back in 2007, Hillary Clinton made frantic bids and exerted pressure on Bangladesh Army to make her friend Yunus head of the then military-backed interim government.

[S]ince August 5, 2024, massive attacks on Hindus, including their homes, businesses and temples began, while local media were barred from covering these incidents, as the Yunus regime has been arresting critics and journalists and bringing murder cases against them.

As Yunus is enjoying full support of the Biden administration as well as Democratic Party leaders such as Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, none of the rights groups, including Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch has issued any statement pertaining attacks (including murder and rapes) on Hindus in the country.

On August 5, 2024, Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee the country and take refuge in India following a month-long anti-government movement led by Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), ultra-Islamist Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Hizb Ut Tahrir and other Islamist organizations in the country. It was earlier perceived by many that the Biden administration had been trying to topple Sheikh Hasina from power and install Muhammad Yunus as head of the government.

Muhammad Yunus is one of the major donors of Clinton Foundation, and according to a cable leaked by Wikileaks, back in 2007, Hillary Clinton made frantic bids and exerted pressure on Bangladesh Army to make her friend Yunus head of the then military-backed interim government.