RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16390/arab-world-change

“What is the difference between a Jewish person and an Israeli?” my mother, a religious and traditional Emirati, asked.

“Well,” she said, “when they start coming here, we shall get to know them better.”

For women trapped in the dogma of tradition, half in-half out, adventurous but guilt-stricken, we now feel proud of the choices we made to carve a niche for ourselves, because this niche is the new center. We can finally be ourselves and create the lives we wanted: to be out in the world, not in the confinements of a golden cage.

There was for so long the mantra of “Israel is the enemy.” It was a mantra that people could not break out of and that they believed without proof. These people are now quiet. We need this change in the Arab world. It has taken so long to come.

It was easier than we thought, that joint statement of the United Arab Emirates, Israel and the United States.

There were so many steps that were skipped, though: you can tell by reading on Twitter the voices of opposition from other countries that were in shock at the news. They resist the possibility, but to us, now that we are capable of acknowledging the peace that was created, the opposition feels no bigger than ants with puny pincers.

This is perhaps the first time that peace has happened without a war. It is peace for the sake of peace

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16375/turkey-erdogan-new-enemies

All those Turkish-Greek tensions in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas bolster a century-long Turkish nostalgia to take back some of the Greek islands. Yeni Safak, a fiercely pro-Erdoğan newspaper, suggested that the Turkish military should invade 16 Greek islands.

“Discussion of wars and invading Greek islands is… a tactic used by the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to distract the Turkish population from the woeful economic situation.” — Greek City Times.

Erdoğan needs epic stories of military might against real or fabricated foreign enemies to tell an increasing number of grudging voters in the face of an ailing economy. That is bad news for the entire region.

Fearing a sharp decline in his approval rating, especially in view of a looming economic crisis, Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appears to be chasing new wars with real or imaginary enemies.

Election data and research show that Turks have a tendency to unite behind their leader in times of crises or confrontation with foreign enemies. According to the Turkish pollster Metropoll, for example, Erdoğan’s approval rating peaked to 71.1% in December 2013, when he portrayed a slew of corruption allegations about him and his family as “a coup attempt.” In parliamentary elections in 2015, Erdoğan’s nationwide vote fell to 37.5% and his Justice and Development Party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/iran-israel-uae-deal/

The peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates presents the Iranian regime with dilemmas on both the foreign and the domestic front. The regime fears the emergence of a new international alliance that will have greater power to contain its hegemonic regional aspirations, and there is a new urgency to the need to prove to the Iranian people that the government’s imperialist foreign policy works to their benefit.

The condemnations in the Iranian media of the nascent Israel-UAE peace agreement are hardly surprising. The regime’s leadership is covering its embarrassment and apprehension with a stream of defamation and threats. Parliament Speaker Muhammad Bakr Qalibaf called the agreement “despicable and a betrayal of human and Islamic values,” while President Rouhani warned the UAE leaders “not to open their gates” to Israel. (An interesting exception to this pattern was the statement of former MP Ali Motahari, who tweeted, “Apart from the betrayal of UAE rulers, the blame was also on us for scaring the Arabs and pushing them into Israeli arms”.)

Israel’s rapprochement with the Gulf state is raising concerns in Tehran for a number of reasons. First, the regime fears that an alliance comprising Israel, the Gulf States, and other countries, supported by Washington and Riyadh, would be a serious roadblock in the path of Iran’s goal of regional hegemony. A multinational system of that kind would strengthen its constituent members not only on the security level but also on the economic, commercial, and cultural levels—a worrisome prospect for Tehran.

The prospect of such an alliance is particularly troubling to the regime at a time when its regional status is declining. Recent events in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have negatively affected Tehran’s ability to promote its “axis of resistance” in the region. Its status in Iraq has been weakening since the October 2019 uprisings, a pattern that gathered new momentum after the killing of Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. The deep crisis now engulfing Lebanon and the Hague’s conviction of a Hezbollah member for the assassination of PM Rafiq Hariri do not contribute to Iran’s prestige. On top of all this, Israeli air strikes in Syria are severely hampering the regime’s attempts to turn the country into a front line against Israel.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jimmy-lai-a-man-for-all-seasons-11597705349?mod=opinion_major_pos9

Taped on the wall by my desk is a photo of Jimmy Lai in handcuffs. It was taken a week ago, the day 200 Hong Kong police raided his Apple Daily newspaper and arrested him. It is my most treasured photo of Jimmy, who also happens to be my godson, having been baptized in 1997 just before the handover of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. The point is that though the handcuffs were intended to humiliate him, every man, woman and child in Hong Kong saw them for what they were: a badge of honor.

Soon Jimmy will go to trial on charges from sedition to colluding with foreign powers. It’s utter rot, of course. If he finds himself facing prison, it is only because Communist China, for all its size and power, fears any Chinese who insists on speaking the truth.

In this way Jimmy might be thought of as Hong Kong’s Thomas More, the difference being that while King Henry VIII wanted More to speak up, Beijing wants Jimmy to shut up. In the more than two decades since Hong Kong was handed back to China, most Hong Kong elites have cut their consciences to accommodate their new overlords. Which leaves Jimmy Lai and his printing press as Hong Kong’s single most important counter to official propaganda.

If Jimmy’s message resonates, it is in good part because his story is Hong Kong’s story. He arrived from mainland China on his own, a stowaway in the bottom of a fishing boat. In a city built by Chinese refugees, he raised himself from a scruffy teenager to the founder of a highly popular clothing chain, and then proprietor of Hong Kong’s highly popular Next magazine and Apple Daily newspaper.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16374/un-iran-terrorism

Europe’s leaders also did not support extending the arms embargo. They have been arguing that they want to preserve the nuclear deal. What deal? The deal that Iran never signed? The deal that Iran has been violating anyway?

The European powers have also ignored a recent plea by Iran’s neighbors to extend the arms embargo, as well as a recent statement made by the IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who raised serious concerns about possible clandestine and undeclared nuclear sites in Iran.

The six-country Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — submitted a plea to the UN Security Council to extend the Iranian arms embargo. The letter accurately stated that “Iran has not ceased or desisted from armed interventions in neighboring countries, directly and through organizations and movements armed and trained by Iran. As such, it is inappropriate to lift the restrictions on conventional weapons’ movement to and from Iran until it abandons its destabilizing activities in the region and ceases to provide weapons to terrorist and sectarian organizations.”

The UN’s decisions to allow “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism,” freely to have an unlimited supply chain of conventional weapons may sadly go down in history as one of the most dangerous acts against stability and world peace.

One would think that one of the most dangerous things possible would be to allow what the US Department of State calls “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism,” Iran, freely to buy, sell, import and export advanced weapons. Yet, this is exactly what the United Nations just decided to do. The UN Security Council voted on August 14 to permit the 13-year arms embargo on the Iranian regime to expire.

Even the ruling mullahs do not seem to believe that they received such a great reward. “I don’t remember [in the past] the US preparing a resolution for months to strike a blow at the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it garners only one vote [the Dominican Republic],” said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. This, he added, was a humiliation and blow to the US. Iranian politicians and media outlets are also celebrating. As the headline of the Iranian newspaper Etemad read in Persian (Farsi): “US is Defeated in Home Game: Attempts in New York to Convince the UNSC Member States Fail”.

Iran, thanks to the previous US administration, is crying victory. Among the many concessions that the Obama-Biden administration gave the ruling mullahs of Iran was setting a date when Iran’s arms embargo would be lifted. President Obama agreed to add a provision in the nuclear deal — which, by the way, Iran never signed – for the arms embargo’s disappearance.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/putin-critic-alexei-navalny-hospitalized-in-suspected-poisoning/

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, a staunch critic of President Vladimir Putin, was hospitalized in critical condition after a suspected poisoning on Thursday morning.

Navalny was on a flight to the Siberian city of Tomsk when he fell ill, and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk where he was brought to intensive care. The hospital has so far refused to share medical details with Navalny’s personal physician, although doctors did say the opposition figure was on artificial ventilation.

“We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed in his tea; it was the only thing he drank all morning,” Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on Twitter. “Now he is unconscious.”

Anatoly Kalinichenko, deputy head doctor at the First Emergency Medical Hospital in Omsk, told journalists that he could not say whether Navalny’s life was in danger.

“Poisoning is being looked at as one of the possible reasons for the deterioration of his condition,” Kalinichenko said.

Navalny has vocally criticized Putin for years, and is able to reach millions of followers through his YouTube channel. In July, Navalny led a series of protests against proposed constitutional amendments that would allow Putin to remain in power until 2036.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/american-troop-drawdown-germany/

Why should America anchor Germany’s defense? It cuts deals with Russia, has never met its NATO commitment, and is the most anti-American nation in Europe. 

President Trump recently ordered a 12,000-troop reduction in American military personnel stationed in Germany. That leaves about 24,000 American soldiers still in the country.

A little more than half of the troops being withdrawn will return home. The rest will be redeployed to other NATO member nations, such as Belgium, Italy, and perhaps Baltic and Eastern European countries.German chancellor Angela Merkel is said to be furious. She claims that the redeployments will “weaken the [NATO] alliance.” German commercial interests chimed in that the troop withdrawals will hurt their decades-old businesses serving U.S. bases.

Perhaps, but Merkel surely cannot be surprised. Six years ago, all NATO members pledged to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Yet only eight of 29 so far have kept their word.

Germany spends only about 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense. As NATO’s largest, wealthiest, and most powerful European member, it sets the example for the rest of alliance.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15643/can-terrorists-be-deradicalized-part-ii

However pure religious Islam was in its earliest phase, after Muhammad came to rule in the city of Medina and during the successive caliphates that followed his death in 632, it became a dogma that the state must be ruled by Islam, its beliefs, and its laws. Today’s radicals, whether in Iran or as newcomers in Western societies, apparently consider this a view worth fighting to uphold.

As far as Western countries are concerned, radicalization appears to rest on three things: education in many Muslim schools, upbringing in unintegrated Muslim families, and the intensity of close-knit Muslim communities.

When implemented, these measures will certainly increase the likelihood of long-term deradicalization. But more still needs to be done to prevent the spread and acceptance of radical views in the first place.

In the first part of this analysis, “Can Terrorists be Deradicalized? Part I,” of the ongoing threat of Islamic radicalism in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, it seems to have proven difficult to take convicted terrorists and turn them into pious Muslims who repudiate violence.

The great irony, as some reports have shown, is that the very fact of being imprisoned or, in some instances, being trained in deradicalization courses can actually result in further radicalization. So far, not enough work has been done to identify and act on this problem, but it has been recognized by experts such as Ian Acheson. And the UK government has published important findings on the subject.

The truth is that many modern Western states seem to have trapped themselves in a range of social attitudes — such as the well-intended wish to show empathy or sound hospitable, or a fear of offending, or laws condemning “hate speech”, or simple self-censorship — that can unfortunately ignore or even sustain radical Islamic belief systems. This is not to say that the UK, France, or other countries actively promote the sort of radicalization that so often leads to acts of terror; but our failure to act, our insistence on political correctness, combined with a need to appear innocent of anything that might conceivably be considered anti-Muslim “hate crimes”, often leads to such results.

http://Canada’s Conservatives Welcome Extremists, Reject Reformers by Jakob Glogauer

The Conservative Party of Canada might favor extremist Muslims in order to secure more votes and broaden the party “base.” All the while, Muslim reformers with a long history of loyalty to the party are being rejected, and not chosen as candidates. Party members who oppose advancing Sharia law and who run for leadership positions are disqualified.

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and current Conservative leadership candidate Peter MacKay co-founded the modern Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) based on the promotion of “freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.” Canada’s right-wing, however, has recently been consorting with Islamists patently opposed to these fundamental ideals.

Across the Western world, extremist Muslims have long partnered with the Left, perhaps out of a shared partiality for identity politics; or, at the very least, because progressive movements can easily be exploited to advance radical causes. Now, however, even the Conservative establishment is courting Islamist activists and politicians. At the federal level, frontrunners in the CPC leadership race, Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole, have each welcomed prominent extremist activists into their campaigns.

In January of this year, O’Toole appointed Walied Soliman as his campaign chair. Throughout his professional career, Soliman has supported applying the Sharia banking system in Canada. In an interview with the Globe and Mail, Soliman dismissed concerns that a Sharia-compliant economy would violate Canada’s secular system. “This is simply about market demand and interest,” he said. He may, of course, support more than that.

One LGBT group has criticized O’Toole for welcoming an advocate of Sharia into his campaign. Why, they asked, is Soliman “unable to publicly reject sharia law despite repeated attempts for clarification. Does he believe in sharia application to #LGBTQ people?”

O’Toole replied, “I will always oppose any threat to those principles [of “freedom, democracy, and the rule of law”], here and at home, including Sharia law. Any suggestion otherwise is preposterous, tinfoil hat thinking. The fact I even have to say this is profoundly sad.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/bangalore-burning-radhika-singh/

It was pretty late at night; I don’t really remember what exact time though. I was watching some random videos when the phone started to ring. “Don’t get out of the house. Stay put,” warned a friend calling from Delhi.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Your city is burning.”

“What?” I gasped in disbelief.

Bangalore is a peaceful place. The crowd is educated, civilized, white-collared corporate types. Riots are not part of the norm in this city of IT parks. I switched on the TV. Yes. The city was indeed engulfed in flames. The mad mob had come for Bangalore now.

***

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, with their fake narratives about my country, have convinced the world that we are a living hell for the “minorities” — the Muslims who constitute the second largest religious denomination in this country. Far from the truth, these stories are nothing but an orchestrated attempt to paint the Muslim population as a meek, orphaned and harmless segment of our society. The reporting perpetually hides atrocities perpetrated by Muslims and promulgates amplified versions of minor incidents involving a Muslim “victim” — just as the media does worldwide.