RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/nov/30/isis-claims-responsibility-london-bridge-attack/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_campaign=pushnotify&utm_medium=push

The Islamic State officially claimed responsibility for Friday’s terror attack in London.

A statement Saturday from its news agency Amaq was translated and posted to Twitter by Rukmini Callimachi of the New York Times.

Attacker Usman Khan — who recently was released from prison after serving six years for plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange — was acting in its name, the terror group said.

Khan “carried out the attack in response to calls to target the nationals of Coalition countries,” the ISIS statement said.

Two people were stabbed to death and several others injured before police shot Khan dead on the London Bridge.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15151/france-control-migration-policy

“The number of asylum applications in France increased by more than 20% in 2018 while it is declining everywhere else in Europe. Why is it declining elsewhere and increasing in France? Maybe we need to ask the question, why is this ‘French Eldorado’ being promoted everywhere?” — MP Emmanuelle Ménard, French Member of Parliament.

Critics noted that Philippe’s measures will not resolve the underlying problem — that the French government refuses adequately to secure the country’s borders to prevent illegal migrants from entering France in the first place.

“The government has decided nothing. There will always be 255,000 legal aliens per year, plus 100,000 asylum seekers, plus all the illegal immigrants that no one has even considered counting, plus thousands of unaccompanied minors.” — Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally party.

Meanwhile, illegal immigration to and through France continues unabated.

French police recently cleared more than 2,000 migrants from makeshift encampments in northern Paris. The crackdown comes after the government announced a series of measures to curb illegal immigration.

The migration crackdown appears to be aimed at blunting the rising popularity of the anti-mass-migration party National Rally and its leader Marine Le Pen. She has dismissed the government’s actions as a “political swindle” that will increase, not decrease, immigration.

On November 28, police began removing hundreds of migrants from a camp at Porte d’Aubervilliers in the 19th arrondissement in northeastern Paris. The clearance operation was delayed by a week due to an insufficient police presence to guarantee security. An estimated 2,000 migrants are living in the camp in squalid conditions.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/11/29/the-end-looks-near-for-irans-ayatollah-regime/

Since November 15, protests have swept through Iran, erupting in at least 165 cities. Ostensibly triggered by a gasoline price hike of up to 300%, the unrest soon found a new focus: the overthrow of the ruling regime in its entirety.

The speed with which the protests spread was a clear indication that the explosive society was just waiting for an opportunity to call for regime change. In the first two days, the protests spread to over 100 cities, with unified chants of “death to the dictator.” “death to Rouhani,” “death to Khamenei,” and “neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I give my life for Iran.”

The public’s thirst for change and penchant to stand up to the regime far exceed that seen in the 2018 uprising. On day one, people closed streets, tore down or burned posters of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and attacked government buildings. According to the state-run Fars News Agency affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), in only one province, 100 state-owned banks and 56 other government locations were set ablaze in the first two days; that is double the number in the entire country in 2018. According to our information, over 1,300 government buildings, banks, Bassij headquarters, and clerical seminaries have been attacked and set ablaze, unprecedented in the past three decades.

Sensing a growing fissure within the three branches of his regime, Khamenei spoke on day two, endorsing the price hike and ordering the security forces to crack down. In the first two days, at least 61 people were killed, more than all those killed in 2018.

Tehran doubled down on the use of violence after Khamenei’s ominous speech, killing at least 251, injuring over 3,700 and arresting more than 7,000 as of this writing. But the brute force failed to stop the protesters, and by the second day the regime shut down the internet despite a massive international backlash and financial losses estimated at $370 million a day.

Still, the unrest continued.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14505/self-censorship-artists

The Index on Censorship has identified what appears to be an overly cautious approach to commissioning new artwork. “Artists will create the work that gatekeepers and commissioners will adopt….”

“I love my freedom. I’m aware of the very real threat to that freedom from Islamic fascism and I’m not going to pander to them or justify it like many people on the left are doing.” — The artist Mimsy, whose artwork was removed from an exhibit entitled Passion for Freedom at the Mall Gallery, London, on the grounds that it might be “potentially inflammatory”.

This kind of censorship among artists, however, unfortunately, only contributes to the ever-shrinking space of free expression. Some artists, evidently, only approve of certain kinds of free expression. They never appear to consider that a similar boycott might happen to themselves, if they happen to fall afoul of current political orthodoxy.

“Ai Weiwei should be the first to know that this kind of thinking is totalitarian…. Political art represents both the struggle and the vaccine against the culture of silence found in any society. The political artist breaks down taboos so that the roads are opened for the exchange of thoughts and ideas between individuals and between citizens and rulers. Therefore, political art is necessary. And so this exhibition is necessary.” — Jon Eirik Lundberg, curator of the Læsø Art Hall, Denmark.

Index on Censorship, a London-based organization that campaigns for free expression worldwide, recently launched a new support service for artists, Arts Censorship Support Service.

The service is apparently intended to “push back against censorship and keep the space for artistic freedom of expression as wide open as possible”, according to an interview by ArtsProfessional with Associate Arts Producer Julia Farrington of the Index on Censorship.

The Index on Censorship has identified what in general appears to be an overly cautious approach to commissioning new artwork. “Artists will create the work that gatekeepers and commissioners will adopt, and so [the new service] is a lot to do with making the decision makers, the commissioners, confident in taking on and challenging their own self-censorship and organisational censorship,” Farrington said. According to her, the pressure that can be exerted on arts organizations when producing controversial or challenging work has been greater than ever, in part due to a climate of online hostility.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/the-uyghur-emergency/

The Chinese government has rounded up more than a million Uyghurs and other minorities, throwing them into concentration camps.

When people talk about what the Chinese government is doing to the Uyghur people in northwest China, they tend to refer to the Nazis. They can be excused.

In April 2018, Jerome A. Cohen raised the specter of the Nazis. He is considered the dean of China scholars in the United States, born in 1930. He is a very careful, judicious man. He would not use the N-word — “Nazi” — lightly. But he said that what was happening to the Uyghurs reminded him of his relatives in Austria and Germany. Some 40 of them were killed.

At the beginning of this month, Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post had an article headed “In China, every day is Kristallnacht.” He noted that you are not supposed to bring up the Nazis, because the Holocaust was a unique event. Yet, in a discussion of northwest China, the Nazis are hard to avoid.

The government has rounded up more than a million Uyghurs and other minorities, throwing them into concentration camps, or “reeducation” camps. These camps constitute a Chinese gulag archipelago.

Among the Uyghurs, there are a relative handful of militants, as there are among the Rohingyas (the minority people whom the Burmese government has brutalized). This gives the government an excuse to go after everyone — think of Lidice, multiplied untold times.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-motives-behind-the-false

Any honest and objective appraisal of Islam’s historic jihad on the Christian world must be eye-opening, to say the very least. In the first century of its existence (between 632-732) Islam permanently conquered, Arabized, and Islamized nearly three-quarters of the post-Roman Christian world, thereby permanently severing it. Europe came to be known as “the West” because it was literally the remaining and westernmost appendage of Christendom not to be swallowed up by Islam.

For roughly a millennium thereafter, Arabs, Berbers, Turks, and Tatars—all of whom called and saw themselves as Muslims—launched raid after raid, all justified and lauded as jihads, into virtually every corner of Europe. They reached as far as Iceland and provoked the U.S. into its first war as a nation. The devastation was indescribable; some regions in Europe, particularly in Spain and the Balkans, remain inhabitable due to the incessant raiding. Some 15 million Europeans were enslaved during this perennial jihad and, according to contemporary records, treated horrifically.

In short, “if we … ask ourselves how and when the modern notion of Europe and the European identity was born,” writes historian Franco Cardini, “we realize the extent to which Islam was a factor (albeit a negative one) in its creation. Repeated Muslim aggression against Europe between the seventh to eighth centuries, then between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries … was a ‘violent midwife’ to Europe.”

Here the inevitable question arises: How could such a long, well-documented history of unmitigated Islamic aggression that had immense repercussions on the development of Western civilization now be presented as the antithesis of reality?

The answer revolves around a number of modern philosophies—from the Enlightenment to moral/cultural relativism—that have each contributed to an all-pervasive “Narrative” concerning the historic relationship between Islam and the West. In presenting the West as aggressor and Islam as victim—hence the latter’s ongoing “grievance”-based animosity—this history is as entrenched as it is the reverse of reality.

Erased: How the Middle East Was Expunged of Its Judeo-Christian Heritage

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/jeremy-corbyn-reminds-us-why-israel-exists/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=second

Corbyn hasn’t merely ‘tolerated’ anti-Semitic attitudes. He has actively transformed Labour into a safe haven for Jew hatred.

In a now-deleted tweet, the Washington Post informed its 14 million followers that the historic condemnation of Jeremy Corbyn by the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom was triggered by Labour Party leader’s strong support for “Palestinian rights.”

As numerous people quickly pointed out, this is a detestable falsehood. Indeed, the article to which the tweet linked notes that a review of online posts by Labour members uncovered “examples of Holocaust denial, crude stereotypes of Jewish bankers, conspiracy theories blaming 9/11 on Israel, and even one individual who appeared to believe that Hitler had been misunderstood.”

Despite this, the rest of the Post’s story is something of a whitewash. Like so many others that have covered Labour’s moral deterioration, it goes out of its way to note that, “Corbyn, alongside many in the left-wing of his party, are strong supporters of Palestinian rights and fierce critics of Israel’s right-wing government.” This insinuation — that Corbynite animosity towards British Jewry is predicated on the existence of a “right-wing Israeli government” — is a myth.

For one thing, despite public perception, the right-center coalition run by Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t altered Israeli policy governing the West Bank and Gaza in any significant way from its predecessors (other than, perhaps, by offering Palestinians more autonomy). For another, even if Netanyahu had altered that policy, there has never been — and almost surely never will be — any Israeli government of the right, left, or center that would placate the average Corbynite.

The link the Post draws is nonsensical. Are we to believe that the Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition referred to anti-Semitic terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah as his “friends” in a speech in front of Parliament because he was worried about final status negotiations? Did Corbyn appear multiple times on the Holocaust-denying Hamas-backing Iranian regime’s propaganda channel because he misses Yitzhak Rabin?

The man who participates in a 2014 wreath-laying ceremony for the terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics and prevaricates when asked whether it is “anti-Semitic to say that Rothschild Zionists run world governments” is no friend of the Jews.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15216/china-influence-middle-east

In what could prove to be a serious challenge to the long-standing hegemony Washington has enjoyed in the region, Beijing is seeking to deepen its commercial ties in the Arab world, thereby encouraging Arab states to look to China to safeguard their future security needs rather than maintaining their traditional reliance on the US.

Beijing is particularly keen to stress China’s high-tech capacities in areas such as its position as a global leader in building 5G telecoms networks, as well as its Belt and Road Initiative, the ambitious economic plan to build trade networks across the world which is designed to deepen commercial ties with the Middle East.

The US, however, might bear in mind that “withdrawing from ‘forever wars'” might be seen by adversaries of the West as an invitation to move in.

The confusion among Arab leaders over the Trump administration’s policy towards its traditional allies in the region has opened the way for China to intensify its efforts to extend its influence in the Middle East.

In what could prove to be a serious challenge to the long-standing hegemony Washington has enjoyed in the region, Beijing is seeking to deepen its commercial ties in the Arab world, thereby encouraging Arab states to look to China to safeguard their future security needs rather than maintaining their traditional reliance on the US.

Beijing is particularly keen to stress China’s high-tech capacities in areas such as its position as a global leader in building 5G telecoms networks, as well as its Belt and Road Initiative, the ambitious economic plan to build trade networks across the world which is designed to deepen commercial ties with the Middle East.

Other aspects of China’s bid to expand its commercial interests in the region include Chinese-built communications networks, fast railways, state-of-the-art airports and ports costing hundreds of billions of dollars.

Many oil-rich Gulf states, such as the United Arab Emirates, have already developed close ties with Beijing, with Emirati ministers saying they are keen to advance bilateral relations with China.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/furey-the-rise-of-the-organized-muslim-vote-in-canada

A number of puzzled columnists and policy experts are currently trying to figure out why it was that Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has broken with its tradition of voting down United Nations resolutions that denounce Israel and – as happened last week – joining the pile-on to condemn the only Jewish state in the world.

So far the working conclusion they’ve arrived at is that it was done because Trudeau covets a two-year seat at the Security Council and this is one way to win over votes at the notoriously anti-Israel body. That’s no doubt part of it.

There could be something else at play though: Maybe this is just what Canadian voters want. Or at least what one highly motivated and increasingly influential segment of the electorate wants.

In the months leading up to the election, a group called The Canadian Muslim-Vote (TCMV) was unapologetic in predicting the power the organized Muslim vote could yield over the 2019 federal election results.

“The Canadian Muslim community has the numbers to decide the winners and losers this election, which directly impacts the composition of the government we will have,” TCMV executive director Ali Manek wrote in a press release that went out on October 17 – just days before the election. “Muslim voters have turned out to the Advance Polls over Muslim Vote Weekend and we will be there on election day because we understand that we speak the loudest when we vote.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/brexit-ho/

The Tories have run a solid campaign so far, while Labour has stumbled.

After two weeks of Britain’s election campaign, which now has less than three weeks to run, the lack of excitement over its result is palpable. The national polls have been more or less steady since the starting gun was fired, with the Tories hovering around 40 percent support, Labour rising slightly to 30 percent, the Liberal Democrats stuck around 16 percent, and the Brexit party falling to single figures. The weekend saw a slight strengthening of all these trends, with the Tory percentage settling down in the mid-40s, for a lead over Labour of well into double figures. If repeated on Election Day, that would produce a solid Tory majority of about between 40 and 60 seats. As the pundits say, however, these figures could all change very rapidly under the influence of events.

The problem for all the opposition parties is that there haven’t been many events — at least not the kind that change political fortunes. Iain Martin, who edits the Reaction website, makes the original point that Britain’s parliamentary politics have been fizzing with such neurotic energy in the last two years that the conventional exercises of the election campaign — manifestos, leadership debates, extremists slipping through the net into candidacies, etc. — seem fairly dull by comparison. A truly big story was needed to provide a shock to the system and to disturb its slow, inevitable progress rightwards. Unfortunately for Labour, the biggest news story, and not just in the U.K., has been the scandal of Prince Andrew’s relationship with the late, disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein (and allegedly with at least one of the underaged women in Epstein’s entourage), which the prince’s BBC interview succeeded in the near-impossible task of making worse. It’s a scandal with legs that looks like running longer than the West End hit No Sex Please, We’re British. The strictly political effect of this scandal, however, has been to distract attention from the election altogether and so, in all likelihood, to freeze the Tory lead.