RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15214/iran-nuclear-bomb-months

This marks a dangerous phase in Iran’s nuclear defiance. Tehran is now using a kind of prototype centrifuge that enriches uranium almost 50 times faster.

Although Iran is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it refuses to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect its sites. The IAEA is also not allowed to inspect or monitor Iran’s military sites where nuclear activities are most likely being carried out.

That is why, before it is too late, which it is fast becoming, it is incumbent on the US and the international community to take seriously Iran’s nuclear advances and urgently address its rush to obtain nuclear weapons.

The Iranian government is shortening its nuclear breakout time — the amount of time required to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon. Tehran has accomplished this through several steps in the last few months.

Iran’s government first increased its enriched uranium stockpile beyond the 300 kilogram limit; it enriched uranium to levels beyond the cap of 3.67 percent, and then activated 20 IR-4 and 20 IR-6 advanced centrifuges. The Iranian leaders even boasted that their government is now exploring new uranium enrichment programs and producing centrifuges.

Most recently, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, declared that Iran has an adequate supply of 20% enriched uranium., “Right now we have enough 20% uranium,” he told the Iranian Students News Agency, ISNA, “but we can produce more as needed”. He added that the country is resuming uranium enrichment at a far higher level at the Fordow nuclear facility — an underground uranium enrichment facility which is reportedly located on one of bases of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC­­) — injecting uranium gas into centrifuges, and operating 60 IR-6 advanced centrifuges.

https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?e=&u=47f17d17778fdf9b4e07c91ad&id=9e716a

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/24/former-mi6-chief-calls-jeremy-corbyn-danger-national-security/

https://wp.tomgrossmedia.com/

The former head of MI6 has called Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a danger to national security who is unfit to lead the country.

Sir Richard Dearlove has written in the Mail on Sunday that Mr Corbyn would pose a “present danger to our country” if he became prime minister and has access to top-secret files.

Sir Richard, who spent 38 years with Britain’s intelligence service, said Mr Corbyn’s past political activities would make him a security risk if he was in possession of such sensitive information.

“Today, in the home of parliamentary democracy, we are faced with the possibility that a leader of the Labour Party who once preferred East Germany’s political and economic model of government could become prime minister,” Sir Richard wrote.

BRITISH CHIEF RABBI: “A NEW POISON – SANCTIONED FROM THE TOP – HAS TAKEN ROOT IN THE LABOUR PARTY”

https://wp.tomgrossmedia.com/

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ephraim-mirvis-what-will-become-of-jews-in-britain-if-labour-forms-the-next-government-ghpsdbljk

Elections should be a celebration of democracy. However, just weeks before we go to the polls, the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety.

During the past few years, on my travels through the UK and further afield, one concern has been expressed to me more than any other. Of course, the threats of the far right and violent jihadism never go away, but the question I am now most frequently asked is: What will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?

This anxiety is justified. Raising concerns about anti-Jewish racism in the context of a general election ranks among the most painful moments I have experienced since taking office. Convention dictates that the Chief Rabbi stays well away from party politics — and rightly so. However, challenging racism is not a matter of politics, it goes well beyond that. Wherever there is evidence of it, including in any of our political parties, it must be swiftly rooted out. Hateful prejudice is always wrong, whoever the perpetrator, whoever the victim.

The Jewish community has endured the deep discomfort of being at the centre of national political attention for nearly four years. We have been treated by many as an irritant, as opposed to a minority community with genuine concerns. Some politicians have shown courage but too many have sat silent. We have learned the hard way that speaking out means that we will be demonised by faceless social media trolls and accused of being partisan or acting in bad faith by those who still think of this as an orchestrated political smear. Yet, I ask myself: should the victims of racism be silenced by the fear of yet further vilification?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15202/iran-tortures-protesters

This internet blackout, according to Iran Human Rights director Amiry-Moghaddam, “might indicate the Iranian authorities’ plans to use even more violence against the protesters.”

On November 22, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Twitter: “The U.S. is sanctioning the Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Mohammad Jahromi, for helping shut down the Iranian internet. We will hold members of the Iranian regime accountable for their violent repression of the Iranian people. #Internet4Iran.”

It is likely that Pompeo’s warnings had a direct effect: the following day, on November 23, NetBlocks confirmed that: “[Internet] connectivity has been restored with multiple fixed-line providers across much of Iran, allowing users to get online via wifi.”

To help the Iranian people, at the mercy of their oppressive regime, the world would do better to emulate the Trump administration’s tough posture. European appeasement and diplospeak only embolden, rather than weaken, tyrants such as those in Iran.

The hundreds of anti-regime protesters and civil rights activists who have been arrested by Iranian security forces since the eruption of mass demonstrations on November 15 — after the government raised the price of gasoline — are in danger of torture, forced confessions and even death sentences.

According to the organization Iran Human Rights (IHR):

“The detainees are held in unknown places, and their families are not informed about their whereabouts. Moreover, there has been a total internet blackout imposed by the authorities making information flow very difficult.

“‘Most of the detainees could not call their families. Their relatives have tried to find out where they are held. They even do not know their beloved ones are dead or alive,’ a well-informed source told IHR.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/revolutionary-guards-honor-jewish-soldiers-at-religious-memorial-in-iran

Troops, Muslim clerics filmed listening as Kadish is recited for Jewish victims of Iran-Iraq War, highlighting regime’s efforts to appear tolerant

Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps recently participated in a Jewish religious memorial ceremony for Jewish soldiers, a rare occurrence in a country that is widely accused of persecuting its minorities and which regularly threatens to wipe out the only Jewish state.

In footage broadcast Thursday on Iranian state media, the Revolutionary Guard members could be seen saluting, alongside Muslim clerics, during this week’s memorial service at Tehran’s Jewish cemetery.

Members of the local Jewish community are heard reciting the Kadish mourning prayer in Hebrew, as well as other religious texts, in memory of the 13 Jewish-Iranian soldiers who died during the Iran-Iraq War fought in 1980-1988.

The footage wasn’t particularly surprising for Menashe Amir, a leading expert on Iran, who told the Kan public broadcaster that the Islamic Republic seeks to present itself from time to time as tolerant toward religious minorities by participating in such events, all while continuing to employ harsh policies against them.

Amir said that to be accepted by the Islamic totalitarian regime, the 8,000-strong Jewish community has to work hard to prove to authorities that they are an integral part of Iranian society, and that includes denouncing Israel.

He pointed out that a member of the Jewish community is currently in prison for the sole crime of visiting Israel — the location of Judaism’s most holy sites.

He added that like all Iranian citizens, Jews must serve in the Iranian military due to a mandatory enlistment law.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15198/norway-pakistan

While one can hardly imagine the Pakistani government responding to Norwegian pressure to stop oppressing Ahmadiyya Muslims, Hindus, women, gays, and so on, Pakistan has not hesitated to complain about developments in Norway that offend its delicate cultural sensibilities.

So it was that the representative of a purportedly free country fell all over himself assuring officials of an “Islamic Republic” that, at least when Islam is in the picture, freedom of speech and of assembly in Norway have their limits.

Once again, alas, it appears that when the exercise of fundamental Norwegian freedoms causes offense, the powers that be in Norway have no hesitation about choosing the wrong side.

There has long been what you might call a “special relationship” between Norway and Pakistan. Although they have since been overtaken statistically by Somalis, Iranians, and Iraqis, Pakistanis used to be the major Muslim immigrant group in Norway. The area around the city of Kharian in the Punjab is even known as “Little Norway” because so many people from this region have settled in Norway. Indeed, many of those folks from Kharian, having made a bundle on Norwegian welfare payments or by driving cabs in Oslo, running kebab joints, or whatever, have built veritable palaces back home. They come complete with servants (or near-slaves), and are the principal residences of some of their wives and children and where they themselves spend months at a time.

So many Norwegian voters have “second homes” of this sort in or around Kharian that Norwegian politicians have actually campaigned there. Muslim children born in Norway are routinely sent back to Kharian and environs to go to school — more specifically, to attend the madrassas, or Koran schools — so that they will not be poisoned by Western values. In recent years, Norwegian Muslim politicians and journalists have proposed that the Norwegian government finance at least one school in Kharian for local children who hold Norwegian passports.

Traffic back and forth between the two countries by people with double residency is heavy: if some day you find yourself at Oslo Airport, you will invariably see at least one long line consisting largely of bearded men, women in hijab, and armies of children, each family accompanied by tons of luggage, who are awaiting the next flight to Islamabad, Karachi, or Lahore.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14849/brexit-parliament

What has characterized the last year of UK politics is that individual MPs in the various parties have begun to seek the same freedom of action as US Members of Congress. So far, however, they are both fearful of suffering the same fate as the 21 banned by Johnson and remain inexperienced in the exercise of such freedom.

Johnson now has two alternatives. One is to reinstate the 21. His defenders claim that this would encourage similar defections in the future. The other alternative is to stick to his unpopular decision and risk being dismissed himself by his party. Either way, the unwitting heritage of Johnson may include the end of the tyrannical powers of the UK PM.

The Bank of England in its latest report estimates that the consequences of no-deal on October 31 will be less dire than it thought a year ago, but dire they will be: GDP will shrink by 5.5%, inflation will rise from 2% to over 5%, unemployment will “surge to 7% rather than 7.5%, up from a current 45-year low of 3.8%.” In short, a very healthy economy will turn into a problematic economy. The most worrying problem, however, is that the Bank is engaged in guesswork about an event without precedent. If things turn out much better or much worse than estimated, nobody should be surprised that the Bank got it wrong.

It is remarkable that the UK Parliament has spent almost a year of debates about the Brexit deal agreed by Theresa May’s government and the European Union. Indeed, about one small detail of that deal. We shall briefly describe what that detail is before explaining that the inordinate resulting delay reflects deep and longstanding dysfunction in the whole parliamentary system of the UK.

The deal consisted of two documents, the Withdrawal Agreement (WA, 585 pages) and the Framework for the Future Relationship (FFR, 26 pages). Most of the WA consists of regulations obviously needed for winding up UK participation in EU institutions, settling mutual debts, safeguarding the interests of UK citizens resident in the EU and vice versa, and the like. Even Boris Johnson regards all that as basically good and necessary.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15192/norway-thought-police

[A]s commentator Nina Hjerpset-Østlie put it, it is now illegal “to burn your own books”. Which, she added, means that although Norway’s longstanding blasphemy law was taken off the books four years ago, Bjørnland has, in effect, reinstated it.

Jon Wessel-Aas, a prominent lawyer… called Bjørnland’s one-woman revision of the racism clause “at best prior restraint of an illegal utterance,” and at worst “prior restraint of a legal utterance.” Both forms of restraint, he noted, are unconstitutional.

In defense of Bjørnland’s novel interpretation of criminal law, Martin Bernsen, a senior official of the PST, the agency in charge of Norway’s national security, argued that burning copies of the Koran can trigger acts of violence. Under this kind of logic, of course – the so-called heckler’s veto – any statement or action whatsoever that just might antagonize violence-prone Muslims should presumably be treated as illegal, whereas burning, say, any number of copies of the Talmud or Bible is no problem, since Jews and Christians aren’t in the habit of responding to such actions with mass acts of savage bloodshed.

Americans whose memory of public events goes back more than a news cycle or two may recall Terry Jones, a previously obscure Gainesville, Florida, preacher whose announcement in 2010 of a plan to burn copies of the Koran drew public condemnations from then President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the top US military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus. Secretary of State Robert Gates phoned Jones personally and asked him not to go ahead with the burning.

In the end, Jones put off his planned 2010 action, burning one Koran in 2011, another in 2012, and hundreds on September 11, 2014.

Jones did not escape legal consequences for these actions. In 2011 he was jailed for a few hours in Dearborn, Michigan, by authorities worried about the possible consequences of his planned participation in an anti-Islam rally, but the ACLU took his side and a county court ruling upheld his First Amendment rights. He was fined $271 in 2012 for violating Gainesville’s fire safety rules. A planned mass burning of Korans on September 11, 2013, resulted in an arrest for transporting fuel, but this verdict was overturned by a circuit court judge. In short, although high-ranking federal officials from the president on down were concerned about Jones’s activities, and although some local officials overreached in their efforts to squelch his plans, the courts ultimately protected his rights.

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/11/adl-2019-data-extreme-antisemitism-among-western-european-muslims-almost-three-times-national-rates/
Yesterday, November 21, 2019, the ADL released its 2019 survey data on the prevalence (occurrence) of extreme Antisemitism (defined, below) within 18 countries assessed between April 15 and June 3, 2019. Six of these countries—Belgium, The United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy—included a Muslim over-sample, allowing for a direct comparison of Muslims vs. Christians, those professing no religion, and the overall populations. 

As ADL’s own press release stated:

“Muslim acceptance of anti-Semitic stereotypes was substantially higher than among the national populations—on average almost three times as high—in the six countries tested: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy”

In sadly typical fashion, however, the ADL downplayed these findings in its press release, effectively concealing them as the last of six bullet points, i.e., # 6 of 6.

The ADL also failed to expressly note how compared to Western European Christians, specifically, Muslims were also ~3-times more likely to harbor extreme Antisemitic attitudes as gauged by abiding at least 6 of 11 Antisemitic stereotypes queried. (see tabulated data)