RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/04/paris-metro-passengers-lauded-for-preventing-antisemitic-assault-on-young-jewish-man/Passengers on the Paris Metro who prevented an antisemitic assault on a young Jewish man on Saturday night have been warmly praised by a leading community defense group.

In a statement on Monday, the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Antisemitism (BNVCA) highlighted the role played by passengers who interceded when four men attempted to chase the Jewish man.

The incident took place late on Saturday night at the Jean Jaurès station in northeastern Paris. The 25-year-old man, who wore a kippah that identified him as a Jew, was approached by four men said to be aged between 30 and 40, one of whom asked the victim for a cigarette. When the young man replied that he did not have any cigarettes, the attacker pinned him against the wall of the station, telling him, “You Jews have enough money, you can buy me some.”

At this point, other passengers intervened, blocking the four men and enabling the young Jewish man to safely depart the scene.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/only-4-glasgows-71-muslim-refugee-child-rapists-daniel-greenfield/

By the summer of last year, Glasgow had the highest number of housed refugees in the UK with almost 10% of the “asylum seekers” setting up shop in the Scottish city. The overflow of refugees, many of them from Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, has brought in government money, but also violence and crime. Refugees whose requests for asylum are rejected refuse to leave and remain on in Glasgow.

Glasgow had been eager to cash in on asylum seekers, and in the last two decades was fundamentally transformed by the tide of migrants filling up its neighborhoods. As Pakistanis became the largest minority group in Scotland, 42% of the country’s Muslim population took up residence in Glasgow.

By the 2011 census, a fifth of Glasgow’s population was non-Scottish. In Pollokshields, a quarter of the population is Pakistani. Pollokshields is also where Kriss Donald, a 15-year-old Scottish teenage boy, was kidnapped in the spring of 2004, stabbed all over his body and then set on fire by a Pakistani gang.

“His violent death was a result of political correctness that has gripped the police in Scotland,” Mike Liddell, a senior police officer warned. “Crime within Glasgow’s Asian community has been allowed to grow unfettered for years. Why? Because the police have been afraid to fight it in case they are accused of racism.”

Ayub Khan, a member of the Multi-faith Coalition group in Pollokshields, agreed, “people know that the police are too scared to come into the area and be accused of racism.”

That was 15 years ago. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-is-the-real-sick-man-of-asia-11580773677?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

The mighty Chinese juggernaut has been humbled this week, apparently by a species-hopping bat virus. While Chinese authorities struggle to control the epidemic and restart their economy, a world that has grown accustomed to contemplating China’s inexorable rise was reminded that nothing, not even Beijing’s power, can be taken for granted.

We do not know how dangerous the new coronavirus will be. There are signs that Chinese authorities are still trying to conceal the true scale of the problem, but at this point the virus appears to be more contagious but considerably less deadly than the pathogens behind diseases such as Ebola or SARS—though some experts say SARS and coronavirus are about equally contagious.

China’s initial response to the crisis was less than impressive. The Wuhan government was secretive and self-serving; national authorities responded vigorously but, it currently appears, ineffectively. China’s cities and factories are shutting down; the virus continues to spread. We can hope that authorities succeed in containing the epidemic and treating its victims, but the performance to date has shaken confidence in the Chinese Communist Party at home and abroad. Complaints in Beijing about the U.S. refusing entry to noncitizens who recently spent time in China cannot hide the reality that the decisions that allowed the epidemic to spread as far and as fast as it did were all made in Wuhan and Beijing.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/what_the_coronavirus_is_doing_and_will_do_to_china.html

The coronavirus is an epidemic in China and seems to be morphing into a worldwide pandemic.  In its current form, the virus does not appear to be extremely deadly, but the fear is that it could mutate into something far worse.  Maybe it will; maybe it won’t.

In any event, much of China is now on lockdown.  Travel is restricted, and people are being prevented from going to work to curtail the spread of the virus.  This is until February 10 at the least.  And it’s happening not just in Wuhan, the viral epicenter, but in many other provinces, including modernistic Shanghai.  As Peter Zeihan reports, “[t]he most dynamic portion of the Chinese economy — the Yangtze Basin — is at least for now closed for business.”  He estimates that this could knock off a full GDP percentage point from China’s already sagging economy.

From there, things get worse.  There has already been a three-year exodus of manufacturing out of China due to uncertainties over the trade war, rising labor costs, environmental concerns, access to raw materials, and China’s increasing authoritarian nature.  This coronavirus outbreak  can only accelerate the trend of companies to relocate out of China proper.  Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross touched on this in an interview with NBC News.  He said:

Well, first of all, every American’s heart has to go out to the victims of the coronavirus.  So, I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease,” Ross told Fox Business Network on Thursday.  “But the fact is, it does give businesses yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/03/now-that-brexit-is-complete-its-time-to-strengthen-the-anglosphere/

A new world order demands new geopolitical thinking and new leadership. An informal trade, research, and defense bloc that values national sovereignty would be a good start.

As the Big Ben gong struck 11 p.m. GMT on January 31, marking the moment the United Kingdom left the European Union, thousands of people started singing “Rule Britannia” in Parliament Square. Next to the statue of Winston Churchill was a British Army Parachute Regiment flag—apt, given that the EU is German-dominated—and a few large American flags.

Churchill was half American, and Americans in London clearly love a good independence party. A world where British people are free to vote and kick out their representatives might be hard in the days to come, but it is far, far better than one that was inexorably going towards a European empire. As one of the most striking placards read, “Britain isn’t supposed to be one of the many stars in someone else’s flag.” The period from 1973 to 2020 was a historical aberration.

Perhaps this is why Brexit vexes liberals so much. Brexit is important in ways more than the simple freedom and slavery dichotomy. It ruins a much vaunted and hitherto untouchable narrative. A recent IPSOS-MORI poll shows that Remainers, those who preferred to live in the EU, are less tolerant than Leavers of other people’s opinion. A earlier survey from 2016 found U.S. Democratic women block people on social media far more than do Republican women.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15510/europe-iran-hezbollah

“Hezbollah itself has publicly denied a distinction between its military and political wings. The group in its entirety is assessed to be concerned in terrorism…” — The British Treasury, January 17, 2020.

Britain joins the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, Israel, the 22-member Arab League, the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council as well as Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay in making no distinction between Hezbollah’s military and civilian wings. In all, more than 30 countries have banned the group in its entirety.

In Germany, the EU’s largest member state, a foreign ministry official, Niels Annen, said that a complete ban of Hezbollah would be counterproductive because “we focus on dialogue.” His comment has been understood to mean that the German government does not want to burn bridges with Hezbollah’s main patron, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.

In other EU member states, government officials appear worried that a total ban of Hezbollah could jeopardize the safety of European troops deployed to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL. EU member states contribute more than 3,650 troops to UNIFIL — mostly from France, Italy and Spain.

“Hezbollah is a single large organization, we have no wings that are separate from one another. What’s being said in Brussels doesn’t exist for us.” — Ibrahim Mussawi, Hezbollah spokesman, interview in Der Spiegel, July 22, 2013.

The British finance ministry has added the entirety of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah — Arabic for “The Party of Allah” — to its sanctions list and has ordered a freeze on any assets it may have in the United Kingdom.

The move, aimed at cracking down on Hezbollah’s fundraising activities in Britain, adds increased enforcement teeth to the British government’s February 2019 decision no longer to distinguish between Hezbollah’s military and political wings and to classify the entire organization as a terrorist group.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15511/russia-primacy-africa

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow largely withdrew from the African continent, until Putin rekindled the flame about two years ago, in an attempt to restore Russia’s “glory days” and fill a vacuum wherever one is created by the West.

Between Russia’s expansionism in the region, and China’s as well, the United States would do well to remain as vigilant as ever.

While the United States and France have been helping the fragile governments of Africa’s Sahel region stave off Islamist terrorist attacks and takeovers, Russia has been busy trying to push NATO out of the area and augment its own influence there.

Moscow’s strategy rests on three pillars. The first is the cultivation of relationships with African leaders, particularly those attempting to remain in power in spite of constitutional limitations — such as, for instance, Sudan’s former dictator, Omar al-Bashir, who was recently ousted by oppositionists. The Kremlin dispatched several hundred paramilitary advisers in late 2018 to train the Sudanese military how to suppress protests.

Ultimately, Moscow’s mission to boost al-Bashir failed; he was overthrown in April 2019, a few months later.

The second pillar is the insertion of Russian agents into the inner circle of rising African leaders, such as the young, recently elected president of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina. This pillar is also likely at work in the Kremlin’s penetration of Central African Republic (CAR) President Faustin Touadera’s staff by the Russian security adviser, Valery Zakharov.