RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14838/jihadi-jack-letts-isis

“He [Jack] is a very humane person and he wanted to do something to help.” Mr Letts said about his son, then adding, “He is a really kind, funny kid who is very gentle. He is totally non-violent.”

As with so much of the mitigating rhetoric that follows the imprisonment of captured British Muslims, Mr Letts’s words sit very much at odds with his son’s previous murderous statements. How mystifying then, that such a peacenik should end up in the bloody killing-fields of Raqqa.

A far bigger problem than what to do with the likes of Jack Letts and Shamima Begum is the possibility of missing British ISIS fighters returning and making their presence felt.

No matter how heartfelt a plea their parents might make on their behalf after they are captured, their children’s real inclinations might best be measured by their actions while they were free to do as they wished.

“This power [to remove citizenship] is one way we can counter the terrorist threat posed by some of the most dangerous individuals and keep our country safe.” — UK Home Office spokesperson, August 2019.

Jack Letts, dubbed “Jihadi Jack”, the British convert to Islam who travelled to Syria in 2014 to join ISIS, has been stripped of his British citizenship. The former dual-national, whose British mother and Canadian father stand by their son, exchanged his picturesque hometown of Oxford for Raqqa, to join the ranks of ISIS. He is currently awaiting his fate in the custody of Kurdish forces.

Letts, who had previously claimed to be an “enemy of Britain” and had posted on social media messages, such as “his threat to behead a group of young British soldiers on Facebook”, now says that he regrets his past misdeeds, and the pain he has caused his parents. “I feel guilty, because I am the reason (my parents) are going through this.” He told a Sky News reporter in June, evidently oblivious to the fact that his actions caused a lot more harm than merely upsetting his parents — both of whom received a suspended prison sentence for — “making money available for a terrorist purpose”.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/17/dictator-robert-mugabe-is-what-happens-when-a-country-falls-for-charismatic-socialist/

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s dictator and lifelong communist, died on Sept. 6, 2019, at the age of 95. In a country where the average life expectancy was only 44 years (according to a 2006 census), he outlived most of his countrymen.

However, his protracted and long life was constructed upon inflicting enormous and unimaginable suffering upon his people and country. For the rest of us, his incumbency should serve as a constant warning about why we should not fall for the next charismatic socialist who heedlessly promises everything.

Mugabe’s Life Before His Dictatorship

Mugabe was born into poverty. Abandoned by his father at age 10, he attended a Jesuit missionary school and eventually graduated from the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, the same university Nelson Mandela attended.

While Mugabe was receiving educator training in Ghana in the 1950s, he joined one of Africa’s nationalist movements, calling for the establishment of an independent country led by the black majority in his homeland, which at the time was still a British colony. The emergence of these nationalist movements coincided with the Cold War. The Soviet Union and Communist China expanded their influence in Africa, hoping to turn former colonies into client states.

Mugabe was imprisoned for a decade due to his anti-government political activities, and while in prison, he was elected as the president of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). During his long imprisonment, Mugabe thoroughly studied Marxist-Leninist ideology. He became a firm believer that only socialism could save his homeland, and that only his ZANU could lead the people’s revolution and bring true socialism to Zimbabwe. Therefore, ZANU must “always remain in power” and remain the only power.

Mugabe also came to see private property owners, such as the white farmers, as a threat to the socialist paradise he wanted to build. Upon his release, Mugabe led the ZANU guerrillas to fight against the white minority rule from Mozambique. Somehow, between prison and guerrilla warfare, he managed to obtain seven college degrees and was commended as an intellectual freedom fighter.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14329/britain-criticism-of-islam

“We are concerned that the definition… could be used to challenge legitimate free speech on the historical or theological actions of Islamic states. There is also a risk it could also undermine counter-terrorism powers, which seek to tackle extremism or prevent terrorism.” — Martin Hewitt, Chair, National Police Chiefs’ Council.

Islam represents an idea, not a nationality or an ethnicity. The conventional purpose of most hate-speech laws is to protect people from hatred, not ideas.

The new proposed definition would criminalize criticism of Islam. Considering the origins of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, that is probably the whole point.

“[A]n alternative definition of Anti-Muslim Hatred should be specific and narrow. It should focus on addressing bigotry directed at individuals, and avoid censoring debate or freedom of expression on religion. Finally, a comprehensive definition of Anti-Muslim Hatred must take intra-Muslim hatred into account to protect those who want to speak freely or express themselves differently.” — Nikita Malik, Forbes, May 20, 2019.

In April 2018, Britain’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims began work on establishing a “working definition of Islamophobia that can be widely accepted by Muslims, political parties and the government”.

In December 2018, the group concluded its work with a “Report on the inquiry into a working definition of Islamophobia / anti-Muslim hatred.” The report defines “Islamophobia” as a form of racism, conflating religion with ethnic origin or nationality: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”[1]

The report, furthermore, claims that a definition of Islamophobia is “instrumental” to “the political will and institutional determination to tackle it.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14887/turkey-crackdown-journalists

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention was held on September 13. Sadly, no one at the meeting addressed the persecution of journalists in Turkey — not José Guevara Bermúdez, Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group, nor Béla Szombati, who represented the European Union, nor any other participant.

Amnesty International recently tagged Turkey the “world’s largest prison for journalists.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council, if it wishes to change its image from that of a laughing stock, should put at the top of its agenda calling Ankara to task. Meanwhile, however, Erdoğan’s violations of freedom of speech need to be exposed daily and loudly condemned — not only by members of the UN and the media, but by any and all allies of Turkey — and freedom of expression — in the West.

International human-rights and press-freedom organizations recently appealed to the United Nations to take action against the ongoing abuse of journalists by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

In a letter to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on September 3, eighteen organizations — led by the group ARTICLE 19, which promotes freedom of expression — called on “all Member and Observer States committed to media freedom, democracy and the rule of law” to “speak out and address the Turkish government’s repressive campaign against freedom of expression” in the forum of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention during the UNHRC’s 42nd regular session.

The letter reads, in part:

“The right to hold and express dissenting opinions and to access information has been systematically undermined by the Turkish government in an intensive crackdown on journalists and independent media, academics, civil society, oppositional voices and the judiciary. Since 2016, the human rights situation in Turkey has steeply declined, facilitated by the misuse of sweeping emergency powers and the concentration of executive power. At the time of writing, at least 138 journalists and media workers are imprisoned, with hundreds more currently on trial facing lengthy sentences on manifestly unfounded terrorism charges … Access to thousands of websites and platforms has been blocked after a government decree authorising removals and blockages of websites without judicial oversight.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/one-man-in-china/

The Chinese state is committing monstrous crimes against the Uyghur minority. So monstrous are these crimes, it can be hard to take it all in. To focus the mind. The state has rounded up something like 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities and put them into internment camps, or reeducation camps, or concentration camps, or whatever you choose to call them. Many have been tortured to death.

I wrote a piece about the general issue last year (a piece that, while general, cites individual cases).

Here and now, I would like to call attention to one man. Stalin is reputed to have said, “The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic.” Sakharov disliked talking about human rights in general. (His widow, Yelena Bonner, told me this.) He needed to talk about individuals and their predicaments.

Consider Tashpolat Teyip. Amnesty International has issued an Urgent Action notice in his behalf. Apparently, his execution is imminent. Teyip is a prominent intellectual and educator — a geographer and a former president of Xinjiang University. In 2017, he was arrested and “disappeared.” The authorities do not disclose his whereabouts today. The charge against him was “separatism” or “splittism,” an old charge in the “People’s Republic.”

To read about this case, go here (Radio Free Asia) and here (the Uyghur Human Rights Project).

Radio Free Asia quoted Teyip’s brother, Nury, who is in exile. “All of the intellectuals and outstanding scholars are being charged with groundless crimes, and just one of them is my brother. I call on the international community to act and save not only my brother, but my people as a whole.”

ttps://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/france-bleeding-stephen-brown/

It is a new, wonderful French cultural custom – to randomly attack and stab people to death in the street.

And the latest person to partake in this charming form of multicultural enrichment was an unidentified young Afghan who, armed with a knife and a barbecue spit, randomly attacked people at a bus stop in the city of Villeurbanne in the Lyon metropolitan area, killing one and wounding eight.

“There was a lot of blood. It was not a small cut,” said Nina, a witness, to Le Figaro newspaper. “There was a man wounded with three young children. He had blood on his face and on his tee-shirt.”

The person killed was a young, nineteen-year-old Frhenchman, Timothy Bonnet, whose love of music had brought him to Villeurbanne by chance that day to attend a music festival.

A witness said Timothy was among the first who tried to reason with the Afghan. He said the killer “stabbed him and when he fell to the ground, he continued (to stab him)”

Another witness reported Bonnet then “had trouble breathing.”

The killer also wounded a woman who likewise fell to the ground, whom a passerby covered with her body to protect her. And still another witness told Agence France Press that “A man at the 57 (bus) stop started stabbing people left, right and center.”

One can only imagine the terror and horror of those present.

After his attack at the bus stop, the killer ran to a subway station where he wounded still another person. At the subway, four bus drivers and other passersby “isolated” the killer, persuading him to drop his weapons. One was a knife with an 8 cm. blade. Police later found a knife with a 20 cm. blade under a vehicle that also belonged to the killer.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-return-handshake-11568578218

Since President Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Islamic Republic has tested U.S. resolve with military escalation across the Middle East. Likely Iranian involvement in attacks on Saudi oil production over the weekend marks a new phase in this destabilizing campaign, and it’s no coincidence this happened as Mr. Trump is considering a softer approach to Tehran.

Saudi Arabia reduced daily oil production by about 5.7 million barrels after strikes against facilities in the country’s east on Saturday. Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed credit, though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that Iran was responsible and there was “no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.” Iran denies this, but it usually uses proxies to avoid a direct confrontation and there are no other plausible culprits.

This is more than a local dispute between two regional powers. The attacks have caused a roughly 5% reduction in global daily oil production. The Saudis have promised to dip into reserves to offset the losses, but oil prices could rise and harm an already fragile global economy if the Kingdom isn’t able to restore production fast enough.

American shale oil production can take up some of the slack but that would take time. Long-term damage to oil supplies would increase the pressure on the U.S. to ease sanctions on Iranian oil exports, which Mr. Trump has been considering.

The attack continues what is already a hot proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, an important U.S. ally. The extent of the damage raises doubts about how well the Saudis can defend against future drone assaults. Saudi intelligence and air defenses don’t seem up to the job. Saudi revenues would be hurt by a reduction in oil output, and uncertainty will complicate an initial public offering of the country’s national oil company, Aramco.

Even if the Houthis didn’t carry out this attack, Iran is backing their war against an Arab coalition in Yemen. The Houthis have become increasingly aggressive in attacking sites in Saudi Arabia and oil tankers in the Red Sea. If the Saudis cede Yemen to the Houthis, Iran will have won another proxy war, this one on the Arabian peninsula. The Saudis are far from ideal allies, but U.S. Senators who want to end U.S. support for Riyadh should consider the alternative of Iranian regional dominance.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14882/russia-solvophilia-occidentalists

Russia may be talking in Slavophile tones but deep in its heart, desires to be readmitted into the Western camp. This is seen in the way Russians dress, the kind of food they eat, the beverages they drink, the music they listen to, the TV shows and the films they watch, and the books they read. Queues in front of McDonald’s joints may be a vulgar sign of creeping Westernization.

The results of this month’s municipal elections, declared last week, show a clear setback for Putinism in its Slavophile version. The president’s United Russia party lost more than a third of its seats in Moscow that, as in other metro-centric countries, has set the tone for national politics at least since the 1920s.

Putin wants to fool the Western democracies into helping negotiate a bad patch before he returns to his old shenanigans. President Macron’s call for reintegrating Russia into the G7 summit last month was dismissed by other participants even before it made it onto the agenda.

If every nation, like every language, has its grammar, what is the grammar that might help us understand Russia today?

Even the least observant foreign visitors to Russia these days are likely quickly to discover the first rule of that metaphorical grammar: the unity of opposites. On one side, we have a Russia that is attached almost obsessively to its “otherness”. On the other, we have a Russia that craves after “sameness” as a member of the family of Western nations.

This “otherness-sameness” duality is not new in Russian history.