RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/global-terror-finance-watchdog-set-to-sanction-iran-11582240405

A global terror-finance watchdog agency is set to blacklist Iran, broadening a U.S. effort to isolate Tehran financially and potentially straining the already sanctions-battered Iranian economy.

Iran’s blacklisting by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force is expected to take place Friday and comes after European governments decided to join the U.S., according to American and allied officials.

The task force’s decision will place financial transactions with Iran under additional scrutiny and escalate the pressure on the dwindling number of banks and businesses still dealing with the Islamic Republic to cut their ties.

The blacklisting marks a step forward in the U.S. campaign to use sanctions to compel the Iranian government to end its support for terrorist groups and eliminate its nuclear weapons program. Most Western banks have already severed links with Tehran in response to the U.S. sanctions, which have also drastically cut Iran’s oil sales—its largest revenue source—weakened its economy and helped fuel street protests against the government.

European governments declined to join the U.S. pressure campaign in an effort to save the multination Iran nuclear accord, from which the Trump administration withdrew in 2018.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15629/france-crackdown-political-islam

“The problem is when, in the name of a religion, some people want to separate themselves from the Republic and therefore not respect its laws.” — French President Emmanuel Macron, February 18, 2020.

“Turkey today can make the choice to follow that path with us or not, but I will not allow any foreign country feed a cultural, religious or identity-related separatism on our Republic’s territory. We cannot have Turkey’s laws on France’s soil. No way.” — French President Emmanuel Macron, February 18, 2020.

“What we must put in place is not, as I have sometimes heard from some people, ‘a plan against Islam.’ That would be a profound mistake. What we must fight is the separatism….” — French President Emmanuel Macron, February 18, 2020.

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced new measures aimed at countering political Islam in France. The changes would limit the role that foreign governments have in France in training imams, financing mosques and educating children.

Macron also vowed to fight what he called “Islamist separatism” and to lead what he described as a “Republican reconquest” aimed at reasserting state control over Muslim ghettoes — so-called no-go zones (zones urbaines sensibles, sensitive urban zones) — in France.

In a much-anticipated policy speech, Macron, during a visit to the eastern French city of Mulhouse on February 18, said that his government would seek to combat “foreign interference” in how Islam is practiced, and the way that Muslim religious institutions are organized in France. “The problem is when, in the name of a religion, some people want to separate themselves from the Republic and therefore not respect its laws,” he said. “Here in France, there is no place for political Islam.”

Macron outlined a four-pronged strategy to combat Islamism in the country: 1) fight against foreign influences in schools and places of worship; 2) reorganize Muslim worship in France in accordance with the principles of secularism and French law; 3) fight against all manifestations of Islamist separatism and communitarianism; and 4) reassert state control over all parts of France.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/stab-city-katie-hopkins/

Four stabbings in four East London locations within ninety minutes and it doesn’t even make the news. That tells you a lot about the state of London (or Stab City, as it is increasingly known).

The British Capital is witness to daily violence that is as unrelenting as it is overwhelming. Under the Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan, homicides are the highest in a decade and knife crime offenses are at record highs.

It is against this backdrop that these horrific stabbings have become something of everyday life for Londoners, too mundane to trouble a newsdesk and too routine for a reader to care.

Sunday’s victims were all found in East London: Barking, Dagenham, Hackney and Ilford (shown on the map below). Not the sorts of places you’ll find tourists taking selfies, but all in the vice-like grip of powerful gangs, organized by postcode (zip code) controlling the supply and distribution of drugs on their patch.

Being part of a gang is a way of belonging for young lads brought up on inner-city estates, often without a father figure, desperate to find a way to belong. For many, being part of a gang is a tenuous means of survival.

Stabbings are meted out as a mechanism of initiation, retribution or control, as ubiquitous as the mopeds used to courier their drugs, or the drill music that forms a soundtrack to their lives.

One gang member said: “I don’t even know what this war is about anymore. All I know is if I step out of my territory people want to kill me, and if people come into mine, I want to kill them. It’s as simple as that.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25221

Comparative findings revealing disproportionate rates of extreme antisemitism, and antisemitic violence, or violent threats, among Western European Muslims.

The Dutch CIDI (Centrum Informatie En Documentatie Israel) annual report for 2019 just released Monday 2/17/20, recorded 182antisemitic incidents, its highest number ever registered since 1982, when monitoring began. This figure represented a 35% increase from 2018. 

Even the CIDI’s full 99 page Dutch language report, however, provided only limited anecdotal information about a select sample of the perpetrators, rendering a quantitative determination of major (and/or relative) group responsibility impossible to assess. This glaring lacuna was “enlarged” by the report’s absence of background discussion of previously published comparative findings revealing disproportionate rates of extreme antisemitism, and antisemitic violence, or violent threats, among Western European Muslims, including confirmatory data on antisemitic attitudes within the Netherlands itself.

Wilders: “[I]t is almost nauseating. We’ve been talking about antisemitism, here in the Lower House,,, for ten minutes now. And nobody, really nobody has discussed the biggest cause of antisemitism, which is of course Islam, and Islamization.”  
Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders—the Netherland’s most informed and intellectually courageous politician on the subject of Islam—inveighed against the denial of what the report’s findings actually substantiated, during a floor debate on Tuesday 2/18/20. Eschewing the craven, vacuous platitudes of his colleagues, Wilders thundered,

“[I]t is almost nauseating. We’ve been talking about antisemitism, here in the Lower House (of the Dutch Parliament) for ten minutes now. And nobody, really nobody has discussed the biggest cause of antisemitism, which is of course Islam, and Islamization”  

Observing that, “we have a million Muslims in the Netherlands right now,” and “Islam is synonymous with Jew-hatred,” Wildersdemonstrated, accurately, how “intrinsic” Islamic antisemitism was redolent within Islam’s defining text, the Koran:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/jante-vs-jihad-bruce-bawer/

Let’s begin with a quick look at a February 14 column, “This Is How Scandinavia Got Great,” by New York Times writer David Brooks – yet another legacy-media article based on the premise that pretty much everything in Scandinavia is just plain wonderful, even if the author has no personal experience of the subject one way or the other.

In his piece, Brooks argues that Denmark, Sweden, and Norway take a categorically different approach to schooling than America does, and that that different approach makes those countries splendiferous in ways that we should admire and emulate. “They look at education differently than we do,” Brooks avers, contending that Scandinavian schools focus not on transmitting knowledge and skills – what a waste of time that would be! – but on effecting “the complete moral, emotional, intellectual and civic transformation of the person” by helping kids to “understand complex systems and see the relations between things — between self and society, between a community of relationships in a family and a town.”

Yes, it sounds like borderline gibberish, but I think I know what Brooks is talking about. And it’s this: from day care onward, Scandinavian kids are indoctrinated into seeing the world through social-democratic eyes. They’re inculcated with the so-called Jante Law, an ingrained cultural mindset that, as formulated in 1933 by Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemost, dictates: “Don’t think you’re anything special….Don’t think you’re good at anything….Don’t think anyone cares about you.” In Scandinavian schools, kids learn to think and act in lockstep, to put community above the individual, and to view nonconformity and ambition as distasteful.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15624/afghan-election-winners

Of the country’s 9.6 million registered voters (among a total population of 37 million), a total of just 1.82 million votes were counted. Of these, nearly one million were discarded due to irregularities, meaning that Mr Ghani achieved his victory by winning a paltry 400,000 votes, which can hardly be described as a commanding mandate.

The result should serve as a warning to US officials as they enter a crucial phase in peace talks with the Taliban about the organisation’s true motives.

Far from having an interest in achieving a negotiated settlement of the long-running Afghan conflict, the Taliban’s ultimate goal is to persuade the Trump administration to end its military presence in the country so that it can once again seize control of the country and turn it into a safe haven from which Islamist terrorists can again plot their devastating attacks against the West.

The announcement that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has emerged as the victor in the country’s election contest could well prove to be a hollow victory so far as the survival of Afghanistan’s fragile democracy is concerned.

Declaration of the election’s outcome, which took place in September last year, was delayed because of allegations of vote-rigging in the contest, as well as claims that many Afghans did not vote because of intimidation tactics by the Taliban.

Even when the final result was announced this week, with election officials confirming that the 70-year-old Mr Ghani had narrowly claimed victory with 50.64 percent of the vote, the main opposition candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, continued to insist that the contest had been marred by massive fraud and technical problems.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15603/greece-islands-migrants

“We want our islands back… We want our lives back!!!” — Posters across Greece’s northeast Aegean islands.

The owner of the beautiful tavern… “recollects how the ‘refugee business’ works… the distance between the Turkish mainland and Lesbos is shortest here (just five miles): “It’s 1,500 euros per person and one boat takes up to 60 persons. One boat’s turnover is thus 90,000 euros if it travels once a day.”

At Moria, the largest camp on the island of Lesbos, 19,000 refugees presently seek shelter at a facility with a capacity of 2,840 people.

In 2016 Ankara and Brussels reached a deal in which the EU committed six billion euros ($6.6 billion) in migrant assistance and a more liberal visa regime for Turkish nationals in return for Turkey stopping migrants from crossing. The deal has not stopped the refugee flow from the Turkish coast. Turkey claims that so far, only about $2 billion has been paid.

Locals are angry. So are the migrants. Tens of thousands of migrants have illegally landed here, on the islands of Greece, since 2015. Some leave, some stay but most wait to be “processed’ in the hope of finding their ways into Europe’s richer countries, such as Germany.

“Theloume piso ta nisia mas…, Theloume piso ti zoi mas!!!” echo poster slogans across Greece’s northeast Aegean islands, inviting locals to debate the poisoning refugee catastrophe: “We want our islands back… We want our lives back!!!” Lesbos, an island situated on the easternmost corner of Europe and neighboring Turkey, is one of the victims that once was a paradise.

There is always the lighter side of things. A tavern owner recalls a 2015 dialogue with a Syrian migrant who had just disembarked from the rubber boat that carried him to a faraway corner of Lesbos after a perilous journey. The refugee arrives at the tavern and, in broken English, asks: “Tell me, quick, where does the train leave for Germany?”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-facade-of-stability-11582156842?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

There exists today no vaccine for the coronavirus now engulfing China. That is a challenge for President Xi Jinping as he struggles to contain it. But the spread of the coronavirus has revealed a truth that poses a much greater risk to Mr. Xi: There is no cure for Chinese communism except the collapse of the party.

The more Mr. Xi pursues his authoritarian agenda, the more distrust he will sow at home and abroad. Far from transforming Beijing into the world’s leading superpower, his policies will instead keep China from taking its rightful place of honor in a peaceful, modern and integrated world.

This much should already be clear from how badly Chinese authorities have botched their response to a virus that each day claims more innocent Chinese lives. The first culprits were the local authorities in Wuhan. When Dr. Li Wenliang tried to alert people about a potential outbreak, the official response was to have the police pressure him to sign a letter that accused him of spreading rumors and disturbing public order.

Then, when the outbreak did happen and a seafood market was identified as the probable origin of the virus, local authorities closed it down. They hid the threat, telling the public that the market was merely being renovated. In other words, as the outbreak was already under way the local government did what Communist governments always do: cover up.

Deception is China’s true rule of law. Now the world must start asking something that Chinese people living under communism ask themselves every day: How reliable can China’s political, social and economic institutions be when its local government leaders routinely lie to their citizens and superiors alike?

Mr. Xi has no understanding of this. He talks of a “people’s war” on the coronavirus and has mobilized vast resources to combat it. Communist governments excel at mobilizing resources because they are command economies, and these big actions—quarantining entire cities, deploying the military, building hospitals overnight—can look impressive.

But their efficacy is hobbled by the lack of free communication.

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/chinas-government-is-like-something-out-of-1984/

The Chinese communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens but to the world at large.

China is currently in a dangerously chaotic state. And why not, when a premodern authoritarian society leaps wildly into the brave new world of high-tech science in a single generation?

The Chinese technological revolution is overseen by an Orwellian dictatorship. Predictably, the Chinese Communist Party has not developed the social, political or cultural infrastructure to ensure that its sophisticated industrial and biological research does not go rogue and become destructive to itself and to the billions of people who are on the importing end of Chinese products and protocols.

Central party officials run the government, military, media and universities collectively in a manner reminiscent of the science-fiction Borg organism of “Star Trek,” which was a horde of robot-like entities all under the control of a central mind.

Thirty years ago, American pundits began gushing over China’s sudden leap from horse-drawn power to solar, wind and nuclear energy. The Chinese communist government wowed Westerners. It created from nothing high-speed rail, solar farms, shiny new airports and gleaming new high-density apartment buildings.

Western-trained Chinese scientists soon were conducting sophisticated medical and scientific research. And they often did so rapidly, without the prying regulators, nosy elected officials and bothersome citizen lawsuits that often burden American and European scientists.

https://www.jns.org/what-explains-germanys-persistent-quixotic-friendship-with-iran/

A bungled telegram marking the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, coming on the heels of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, puts some Jewish groups on edge.

At the World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Jan. 23 marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier declared: “Germany’s responsibility does not expire. We want to live up to our responsibility. By this, you should measure us.”

On Feb. 5, his office sent, by mistake, a congratulatory telegram to the Iranian regime on the occasion of “Islamic Revolution’s Victory Day” on Feb. 11.

According to a spokesperson from Steinmeier’s office, the error resulted from a coordination issue with the German embassy in Tehran. The spokesperson added that the text of the telegram erroneously sent also contained critical remarks, although it has not been publicly released.

The intent to mark the founding of a regime that pledges to wipe Israel off the map is just a small string of German actions vis-à-vis Iran that prompt pro-Jewish and human-rights activists to measure Germany’s contrition over the Holocaust unfavorably.