RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20414/france-skyrocketing-threat

January 30, 2024. The French weekly, Le Journal du Dimanche, publishes the most comprehensive and detailed survey on what French Muslims think. Not surprisingly, the results are disturbing.

Every year, Muslims of France [the main French Muslim organization, and the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood] organizes a conference that attracts hundreds of thousands of Muslims from all over Europe. The group also invites radical imams who speak to the crowd.

The survey further showed that 49% of French Muslims want Catholics to convert to Islam, and that 36% percent want churches to be transformed into mosques… The survey also discloses that 25% of French Muslims said that the word “France” is a word they reject.

France is a country where more than 70% of prison inmates are Muslim. According to reports, the crime rate among the Muslim population is high…. There are also more than two hundred rapes every day in France, most perpetrated by Muslim men who entered France illegally. Only 7% of illegal immigrants ordered to leave France are ever actually deported

A similar situation to that of France can be found in other Western European countries, where the Muslim population may be smaller but is quickly growing.

If Europeans wish to avoid such a future and keep their culture, they need to start making that outcome unmistakably clear to everyone, not just by words but by actions. If not, what we are seeing could well mean the end of the European civilization as we know it.

January 30, 2024. The French weekly, Le Journal du Dimanche, publishes the most comprehensive and detailed survey on what French Muslims think. Not surprisingly, the results are disturbing.

The first question in the survey was about Jews. 17% of French Muslims admit that they hate Jews. 39% say they have a bad, or very bad, opinion of Judaism.

France is the only country in 21st-century Europe where Jews regularly have been murdered simply because they are Jews.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/tractors-roll-into-downtown-prague-czech-farmers-join-protests-2024-02-19/

PRAGUE, Feb 19 (Reuters) – Hundreds of Czech farmers drove their tractors into downtown Prague on Monday, disrupting traffic outside the Agriculture Ministry, as they joined protests against high energy costs, stifling bureaucracy and the European Union’s Green Deal.
Farmers across Europe have taken to the streets this year, including in Poland, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, to fight low prices and high costs, cheap imports and EU climate change constraints.

Czech farmers are planning to join protests this week, although major agricultural associations distanced themselves from Monday’s action, in which tractors blocked one lane of a major road through Prague, slowing but not completely snarling traffic.
Several hundred whistling and jeering protesters gathered outside the Agriculture Ministry yelling “Shame” and “Resign”.
“We came today mainly because of the bureaucracy around farming, the paperwork is on the edge of what is bearable,” 28-year-old farmer Lukas Melichovsky said while in the line of tractors.

Another farmer, Vojtech Schwarz, said cheaper imports did not face the same scrutiny as domestic production: “They have a different starting line because we are overseen by a million officials,” he said.
The government has said the organisers of Monday’s demonstration have little to do with real farming.
“Today’s demonstration does not have much in common with the fight for better conditions for farmers,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on X social media platform, adding some of its organisers were pro-Russian or had other political aims.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/alexei-navalny-martyr-for-democracy

The death of Alexei Navalny is an unequivocal revelation of the true nature of the Russian regime. Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian rule is a far cry from Soviet totalitarianism. Under Joseph Stalin, Navalny’s name would never have been mentioned; he would have been deported or murdered before he could ever speak out publicly. With this in mind, it’s easy to understand Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet empire, which allowed no room for freedom of expression from dissidents, and which, strangely, enjoyed a certain international ideological legitimacy through its association with Marxism. The Soviet Union not only dominated half the world but also garnered considerable support among intellectuals, artists, and political parties across the planet. Compared with the USSR, Russia now is not totalitarian but merely despotic.

Despotism is shot with a thousand holes through which public discontent about and contempt for a regime can be expressed. Totalitarianism is based on ideology and belief; despotism is grounded only in fear of the police. It relies on the violent power of men without ideology and with neither national nor international credibility. Unlike the former Soviet Union, contemporary Russia pretends to be a normal, law-abiding government, complete with courts, trials, and attorneys. Stalin didn’t bother with these trappings of democracy. Putin, however, wants the international community’s respect, so he pretends to be a part of it.

This explains the extraordinary paradox of Navalny. After he was sent to the remotest of Russian prisons, he maintained the right to an attorney; his attorney ensured his continued access to the rest of the world. His countless trials were filmed, with the recordings widely shared on social media. These were only a few examples of many other masquerades, of course, but in Putin’s mind, they gave the impression that Russia respected law and justice.

Similarly, Putin grants interviews to western media, as Stalin never did. Above all, Putin regularly invites the Russian people to vote for their government. Given that he has no opponents, these events are meaningless, but the circus allows him to claim that Russia holds democratic elections. Once again, Stalin didn’t bother organizing elections—he led a revolution. Putin, by contrast, aspires to a prominent place among world leaders. His wars waged against his neighbors, whether in Georgia or Ukraine, are also about this goal, about a desire to be acknowledged as a great leader, comparable with those in the United States or China. Yet, despite these overblown efforts, he remains economically, militarily, and ideologically dwarfed by the true world powers.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20398/western-farmers

Globalization rules enabled many nations to use their comparative advantage in terms of climate, richness of soil, less expensive labor and variety of products to claim a growing chunk of the traditional Western markets. At the same time, Western farmers had to cope with the growing cost of environmental measures concocted by the “save-the-planet” lobby.

The real world is divided into nation-states with frontiers, different cultures and legal systems, and resistance to the one-size-fits-all sought by ultra-globalists.

Protesting European farmers demand a “level-playing field”, something that, if regarded as a perfect model, does not and cannot exist in every human transaction. The “win-win” concept peddled by ultra-globalists is a myth. What matters is that the sum-total of relations among nation-states does not favor some and hurt others in the medium and long term.

Most polls show that most Europeans sympathize with their farmers. But will they continue doing so if the price is more expensive and less varied food and ditching part of the ecological dogma?

In the past few weeks European farmers have taken to the streets of their capitals to advertise a rebellious mood that few expected to see.

Having enjoyed a comfortable life for decades, thanks to subsidies from their respective governments and the European Union’s Common agricultural Policy (CAP), they were not expected to invade the grand capitals together with their sheep, cows and tractors with a litany of woes.

The question of food security was first raised after World War II as a top priority for Western European nations as they tried to rebuild their shattered economies.

https://pjmedia.com/davidhasanyi/2024/02/16/tucker-carlson-is-wrong-about-moscow-n4926486

At the World Government Summit, Tucker Carlson told a gathering of world leaders that Moscow was “so much nicer than any city” in the United States. “It’s radicalizing for an American to go to Moscow,” Carlson went on. “I didn’t know that. I’ve learned it this week, to Singapore, to Tokyo, to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, because these cities, no matter how we’re told they’re run and on what principles they’re run, are wonderful places to live that don’t have rampant inflation.”

If you’re wealthy, I imagine, Moscow is pretty great. This is true of most European cities. When you’re an American tourist, you tend to stay in clean and beautiful city centers, eat at the best spots and wander around the most attractive areas of town. In Europe, you get to see onion domes that were built by serfs dotting the skyline. I’m sure it’s neat.

It is also true that if you’re an average person, Moscow is awful. The average Muscovite is most likely to live in some grim outlying apartment complex, many of which were built during the Soviet era. That’s if they’re lucky. Many Russians live in Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk and Ufa. Russia’s per capita yearly GDP is around $13,000. In the United States, it is around $83,000. It’s around $46,000 in Mississippi, our poorest state. Most Russians are living in what most Americans would consider poverty.

There probably isn’t a single quantifiable economic measure in which Russia bests the United States. None of this is even to mention that Russia is an extraordinarily corrupt place, the price of which is embedded into virtually every business transaction. I’m not sure Americans appreciate how little graft they deal with in their everyday lives. Then again, Russia ranks in the vicinity of Uganda and Togo on the corruption indexes.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/02/15/the-strange-disconnect-between-israel-and-ukraine/

Most of Europe, the U.S., and the West understandably supported arming Ukraine to repel Vladimir Putin’s Russian aggression. By contrast, such support for democratic Israel was strangely mixed.

The Ukrainian and Israeli wars are similar and yet also different conflicts—but in more ways than we can imagine.

Ukraine was invaded by a huge Russian state, with a population three-and-a-half times greater, a gross national product ten times larger, and an area thirty times its size.

Hamas, by contrast, is a terrorist clique of about 50,000-70,000 gunmen and terrorist kingpins who run Gaza. It is dwarfed by the Israeli population (20 times larger), economy (27 times greater), and area (60 times larger).

Both Russia and Hamas started the wars. Russia was convinced it would easily crush the smaller neighbor. Hamas hoped to spark a pan-Islamic jihad against the Jewish state.

Most of Europe, the United States, and the West understandably supported arming Ukraine to repel Vladimir Putin’s Russian aggression.

By contrast, such support for democratic Israel was strangely mixed.

In many elite, political, academic, and media circles, Israel is criticized for its massive retaliation after October 7, 2023.

The Western attitude toward the two wars grows even more inconsistent, if not incoherent.

There are constant calls for Israel to be “proportionate” in Gaza following the massacres of nearly 1,200 Jews, the vast majority civilians.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20385/south-africa-hamas-iran-axis

According to NGO Monitor, South Africa’s case at the ICJ is built on reports from groups with links to terrorist organizations. “South Africa’s submission to the court contains no fewer than 45 references to NGO publications, including several from outfits linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization.” — Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2024.

“The South African government is the same thing as Hamas. It’s an Iranian proxy, and its role in the war is to fight the ideological and ideas war to stigmatize Jews around the world.” — Dr. Frans Cronje, former CEO of the South African Institute for Race Relations, justthenews.com, January 26, 2024.

While the ICJ refused to throw out the case against Israel and is likely to spend the next many years deliberating on Israel’s purported and imaginary “genocide,” John Spencer, who is both chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and a retired US military officer, argued that Israel minimizes civilian casualties more than any military in history, and listed numerous examples of the lengths that the IDF goes to in order to protect civilians, such as warning before launching military strikes.

“Israel has taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that’s fought an urban war…. No military in modern history has faced over 30,000 urban defenders in more than seven cities using human shields and hiding in hundreds of miles of underground networks purposely built under civilian sites, while holding hundreds of hostages… The sole reason for civilian deaths in Gaza is Hamas. For Israel’s part, it’s taken more care to prevent them than any other army in human history.” — John Spencer Newsweek, January 31, 2024.

Action is reportedly being taken to bring Iran before the International Court of Justice on charges of Genocide. The move is long overdue.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/yemen-government-warns-of-houthi-threat-to-worlds-digital-infrastructure/

According to the World Bank, “Yemen has long been one of the poorest countries in the Middle East and North Africa.” The Shia Houthis have been living in the “rugged mountains” since the 9th century and have been battling ever since for control of Yemen and beyond. In 2003, after the American invasion of Iraq, the Houthis adopted a slogan: “Allahu akbar, death to the U.S., death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam.” The group now threatens the globe. Its siege of the Red Sea due to its support for Hamas against Israel is being felt beyond the region as reported in the Daily Mail:

The Houthis, who control swathes of Yemen, began attacking international shipping in the Red Sea on November 19 in support of Hamas in its war with Israel in Gaza.

Since then several dozen ships causing major disruptions to global trade, some 12 percent of which passes through the Red Sea.

The U.S. and U.K. have launched a massive airstrike campaign against them.

Now there are concerns the Houthis could respond by targeting the internet and transmission of financial data.

It is estimated that 17 percent of global internet traffic travels via underwater fiber optic cables in the Red Sea.”

A little history about the Houthis sheds light on their religious zeal, determination and threat. Houthis adhere to the Zaydi branch of Shia Islam, taking their name from Zayd bin Ali, the great-grandson of Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law. In 740, Zayd rose up against the Umayyad caliphate. He died in the revolt and thus was enshrined as a martyr. His “head is believed to be buried in a shrine to him in Kerak, Jordan.” Zaydis believe that Zayd bin Ali was “a model of a pure caliph who should have ruled instead of the Umayyads.” Followers of Zayd, the Houthis established themselves in north Yemen’s rugged mountains in the ninth century, and have never wavered from their mission of conquest, though they have seldom had the chance they have now to perform actions that reverberate worldwide.

https://victorhanson.com/history-and-ukraine-and-israel/

After the heroic late February and early March 2022 salvation of Kyiv by ad hoc Ukrainian forces, ebullience swept the West. Putin and his thuggish invasion were seemingly defeated and the war all but won. Amid such euphoria, billions of dollars of weapons poured into Ukraine. European and American politicos outdid each other in becoming the most ardent and generous supporters of Ukrainian resistance. Some European rhetoric of support was almost Churchillian.

The Russians were laughed at for their arrogant incompetence. Even when Russian troops persisted all through early 2023, the received wisdom remained that the looming “Spring Offensive” of 2023, replete with Western armor, artillery, and advisors, would slash through occupied Ukraine, expel the invaders, and teach Putin a lesson.

Some of us pointed to two problems with such naivete. One, historically, while it is true that the Russian military fares poorly invading, or fighting far abroad against, other countries (e.g., Japan 1905, Poland 1919–1921, Finland 1939, etc.), it eventually wins, despite blunders, stupidity, and brutality, in or anywhere near land that it considers Mother Russia, which may include Ukraine for a great deal of its history.

Two, Russia enjoys nearly four times the population, 30 times the territory, and 10 times the GDP of Ukraine. Such disparity is hard to overcome in a stationary border war, fought almost exclusively on the ground.

Consequently, many of us, while hoping Ukraine would expel the Russians back to their February 24, 2022 starting point, feared, despite massive Western supplies and training, it would slowly be ground down into a Verdun/Somme stalemate, in which losing one Ukrainian to kill or wound three Russians would still prove a losing proposition.

And here we are.

Ukrainians are still fighting heroically. But Europe, buffeted by natural gas cutoffs, inadequate munitions reserves, and upset over Ukrainian corruption, are not so loud or generous in their support.

The U.S. is sharply divided over its support, in part because those who most loudly call for defending the borders of Ukraine at nearly all costs are themselves either complicit in or indifferent to a now nonexistent southern American border. Its utter disappearance has resulted in eight million illegal aliens, many of whom are involved in drug smuggling, human trafficking, and cartel work, and all are completely unaudited.

In sum, history matters